The Movie City of Joy took a minor character from the novel so it could be a vehicle for a Hollywood star, in this case Patrick Swayze. I think World War Z, mentioned elsewhere on this thread, was guilty of the same, but I can’t remember if Brad Pitt’s character is even in the novel.
u/thoughtfullycatholic has an accurate take on Stoicism, but I think chapter one is MC’s roll call of every positive character trait he was exposed to growing up, and hopes influenced him. In this line it’s a lack of self entitlement and resentment.
Not notes, but I bookmark any passage I like. Later I photocopy and cut out the excerpt to paste in a notebook. I scrapbook all my favourite passages.
Okay, this definitely warrants absolute craziest book status. Where to start? Flaming dogs? THE BABY SCENE?
The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles…when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.
That has, hands down, the creepiest last sentence. I mean Japanese horror movie creepy. And it was written in 1892!
There is that romantic bonding scene in the sewers with all five of them.
I learnt the phrase Ergodic literature in relation to House of Leaves. To paraphrase Wikipedia - nontrivial effort is required by the reader. Worth it though.
I loved Lincoln in the Bardo for showing me an entirely new way to write a book. Like nothing I’ve ever read. Deserved it’s Booker prize.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is constantly surprising, but if that’s the absolute craziest book you’ve read I’m glad to announce you have many wild surprises in store in your reading journey.
I know right? And they’re both absurdly fun.
I happen to be reading both Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being. Wasn’t planned - just the next two on my library TBR list. Dr Z happens at the birth of the Russian revolution, and ULoB is a result of that revolution, with Soviet Russia invading Czechoslovakia. But it’s not just that connection. I keep coming across passages that complement each other. Here’s two with the same theme of (un)inspiring speeches.
From Doctor Zhivago (Trans. Pevear)
The greatest success fell to the worst orator, who did not weary his listeners with the necessity of following him. His every word was accompanied by a roar of sympathy. No one regretted that his speech was drowned out by the noise of approval. They hastened to agree with him out of impatience, cried ‘shame’, then suddenly, bored by the monotony of his voice, they all rose to a man and, forgetting about the orator, hat after hat, row after row, thronged down the stairs and poured outside.
From The Unbearable Lightness of Being
She kept coming back to the speech Dubcek had given over the radio after his return from Moscow. Although she had completely forgotten what he said, she could still hear his quavering voice.
LOL. Yes, you certainly do!
You might enjoy this link chain of ‘reversals’, with passages from Margaret Atwood and this one from Vonnegut, among others.
I liked this passage below not so much for its beautiful prose, but for it’s wonderful and profound absurdity.
Once, to make the point that I should study while I was young and learning came easily, my grandfather had told me about a man he knew when he first came to Kansas, a preacher newly settled there. He said, “That fellow just was not confident of his Hebrew. He’d walk fifteen miles across open country in the dead of winter to settle a point of interpretation. We’d have to thaw him out before he could tell us what it was he had on his mind.” My father laughed, and said, “The strange part is, that may even be true.”
I posted it with a bunch of other pieces last week titled On Truth.
A great addition to the Discworld list.
Also “inconceivable!” Though I haven’t read the book, so it might only be a movie line.
This will be removed by mods shortly. Post on r/bookquotes.
I don’t know if this is what you mean, but The Hand that Signed the Paper by Helen Demidenko was a controversial winner of Australia’s most prestigious literary prize the Miles Franklin Award. It won best fiction even after Demidenko family memoir of WW2 Ukraine was revealed to have been written by Helen Dale, the daughter of UK immigrants.
Demidenko and Khouri both feature in the Wiki article List of fake memoirs and journals.