Re: Language changes, spelling reform (was Conlangea Dreaming)

(this post rather off-topic)

> > > I spent the whole summer reading one book... but then again, it was The
> > > Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoyevsky, so that can explain it - 700 pages,
> > > and 700 of the densest pages I've ever read. It takes forever to read
> > > just one chapter! After that I knocked off Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut in
> > > a few days. It was like 75-100 pages a day - that's no 1000 pages, but
> > > it's pretty good for me - it beats the 12-odd I was doing for the
> > > Brothers Karamazov. Of course, this was only reading for an hour or two
> > > a day, I filled my time otherwise as well.
> >
> > <laugh>  I was warned off Dostoyevsky by a Russian Jew from Boston (my
> > comp sci partner one class) who was taking a Russian lit class.  Go figure.
>
> I actually really like Dostoyevsky, but damn it's dense. Once I spent a
> good half hour on one paragraph, just trying to figure out how it
> related to the things that happened before it, and the first sentance of
> the next paragraph. Brothers Karamazov was worth the effort tho, it's a
> great book if you don't mind the denseness. Right now I'm about 30 pages
> into Notes from the Underground, and after that I alread have copies of
> The Dobule & Crime and Punishment ready for reading, but I won't likely
> get to them - I have 3 novels to read in my English classes at school,
> and that's trouble waiting to happen.
I *loved* _The Brothers Karamazov_, although it was certainly one of the
most difficult books I've ever read.  I haven't yet had the opportunity to
tackle any other Dead Russian Authors, but I look forward to the next
opportunity.  BTW, Karamazov was so dense and slow-going that I stopped
for a weekend and read *all* of _1984_ for a break, then plunged back
it.  It was definitely worth it, though, since I wrote my free-response
essay for the AP English test on it.

>
> > The 3 slowest and densest reads in my life:
> >
> > _Gödel, Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid_ by Douglas A. Hofstadter.
> > J.S. Bach, Gödel's incompleteness theorems, artificial intelligence,
> > EScher's artwork.  Stunningly good and worthwhile, but I was doing about
> > half a chapter a day because I had to learn everything to understand what
> > came after.
I read this book, but found it to be a disappointment.  The author had
some fascinating things to say in the first half, but he was completely
incapable of paring out unnecessary junk, of which there were tons.  The
dialogues between chapters tried to be cute but wound up being merely
irritating, and there were several threads that contributed nothign to the
authors purpose.  It was a good try, but it needed some editing.

> >
> > Selections of Aquinas' _Summa Theologica_, which I swear I don't
> > understand how anyone could have finished it and made it influential.
> > <shudder>
> >
> > The Communist Manifesto by Marx.  <shudder>
> >
> > Only the first one was worth in IMHO, historical value aside.
> >
> Of those 3, I've only read the Communist Manifesto, and I agree that
> it's a very dense read, and there's *WAY* too much irrelevent stuff in
> there - the first quarter of the book, apart from the opening sentance,
> is all about French communes, for crying out loud. It never get's tied
> into Communism, either. A highly over-rated book, IMHO. Denseness can be
> forgiven with a book like The Brothers Karamazov, because it's very much
> so required to make the book what it is, but with the Communist
> Manifesto, it's just bad writing.
I have one worse.  I attempted to read "After Babel: Aspects of Language
and Translation" but gave up about halfway through because the author
would chase tangents ad nauseum and *never* seemed to get to his original
point.  It was a like a long, dry, stream-of-consciousness on
languages.  A great subject matter, but terrible book.  Plus, the author
was fond of quoting long passages in Latin, German, and French without
translating them, which I found arrogant and irritating.

So, if anyone's thought about reading the above book, don't bother.

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"It is of the new things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and
improvements and change.  It is the old things that startle and
intoxicate.  It is the old things that are young."
-G.K. Chesterton _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_