Quote from the book you're reading

"The fight's over, and Tone is burning off his excess aggression by throwing sweet-and-sour pork balls at the seagulls. Spencer walks back, tucking his shirt in, sits down next to me and opens another can of lager. Spencer really has a way with a can of lager; watching him, you could almost imagine he's drinking from a martini glass. "

Starter For Ten by David Nicholls

 

"By the time he reached Times Square he was drunk with well-being. He felt the ebb and flow of bright, liquid blood in his veins. With trip-hammer rhythm it rose and fell, dilated his heart, bathed his vision, surged through his pulsing limbs. Bright, red, liquid blood: in a state of euphoria it made men wise, lucid, sane; diluted it produced flaccidity, neuroticism, despair, and melancholy; clotted is gave the spangled phenomena of solipsism, the terrors of epilepsy and chorea, the hierarchies of caste, the unfathomable magnitudes of dementia. In a single red corpuscle were sufficient enigmas to confound all the colleges of science. In blood were men born and in blood they died. Blood was potent, fecund, magical. Blood was an ecstasy of pain and beauty, a miracle of creative destruction, a particle of the divine essence, perhaps the essence itself. Where blood flowed life ran strong. Where there was song there was blood, and where there was worship there was blood. There was blood in the sunset, in the flowers of the field, in the eyes of maniacs and prophets, in the fire of precious gems. Everywhere where there was life and song and drunkenness and worship and triumph there was blood."

 

“He spoke about cognition.”
“Is that all you know? Don’t you remember anything?”
“I remember the verses he interpreted.”
“Whose verses?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let me hear.”
“Ahriman knows not
The secret of God’s unity.
Ask Asaf, he knows.
Can a sparrow swallow the mouthful of the Anka-bird?
Can a single jug take in
The waters of a great sea?’”
“Those are the verses of Ibn Arabi.They say that the perception of God’s wisdom is possible only for the chosen, only for a few.”
“And what remains for us?”
“To comprehend what we can. If a sparrow cannot swallow the mouthful of the Anka-bird, it will still eat as much as it can. You cannot scoop up the whole sea with a jug, but whatever you scoop up is also the sea.”

 

How do you like this?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Would recommend?

 

I would.
I'm hesitant to judge the writing style of an author who is translated to English and you may have a totally different opinion if you read a Czech to Croatian translation (I assume the languages are similar?) but something about the writing came off as a bit pretentious to me. Could be something was lost in translation
And he mostly uses a fictitious story as a device, a vehicle for his philosophy. It's really more of a philosophy book than a work of fiction. So I thought the characters were a little flat, not particularly fleshed out
But I did like it a lot, particularly the last half once I got over those complaints lol.
It made me think, which is all you can really ask of a book
And I enjoyed reading about Prague during the Soviet invasion and under communist rule, that was interesting

 

@Meliai i'm interested in your opinion of the film, if you watch it.

 

Some of these guys will go on walking long after the laws of biochemistry and handicapping have gone by the boards. There was a guy last year that crawled for two miles at four miles an hour after both of his feet cramped up at the same time, you remember reading about that? Look at Olson, he's worn out but he keeps going. That goddamn Barkovitch is running on high-octane hate and he just keeps going and he's as fresh as a daisy. I don't think I can do that. I'm not tired -not really tired- yet. But I will be." The scar stood out on the side of his haggard face as he looked ahead into the darkness "And I think... when I get tired enough... I think I'll just sit down”
― Stephen King, The Long Walk

 

This thread was starting to seem pretty pretentious, but a little Stephen King cleared that right up.

 

I've been trying to find it. I think I'll try the library

 

Here's what it says at the top of the current page:

 

allow me to share with you my philosophy of human beings. It can be summed up in four words: I like good people. You seem like good people. I can’t say that’s all that matters to everyone, but it’s what matters to me.”

Scalzi, John. The Ghost Brigades (Old Man's War Book 2) (p. 113).

 

Very entertaining series.

 

It has some very interesting ideas and I like interesting ideas.

 

May you drink deeply.

 

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.

Exodus 21: 7-8
The Bible

 

That was a great series

 

May you never thirst.

 

Yep! I'm rereading it as we speak.

 

"And make no mistake, lonely is absolutely the worst thing to be. Tell someone that you've got a drink problem, or an eating disorder, or your dad died when you were a kid even, and you can almost see their eyes light up with the sheer fascinating drama and pathos of it all, because you've got an issue, something for them to get involved in, to talk about and analyze and discuss and maybe even cure. But tell someone you're lonely and of course they'll seem sympathetic, but look very carefully and you'll see one hand snaking behind their back, groping for the door handle, ready to make a run for it, as if loneliness itself were contagious. Because being lonely is just so banal, so shaming, so plain and dull and ugly."

 

They say nothing lasts. It’s all gray. Gray for what? Gray for rain. And pink for poodles. Colours for everything. They say, green for work. Now what is it? For Idleness? I think the black. You there below decks, run me up a little black ensign. Well? For lust. What are they going to say? Red? No. Not red. I think the brown. Brown for lust.