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Messages - dembia

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General Discussion / Re: Orwell Short Story
« on: April 10, 2011, 01:03:50 pm »
I read it I read it!

There are some things I liked in particular.

(1) The quote from Ecclesiastes. "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." I think this is true, mainly. Well, not completely. Anyway, he did a great job at messing this sentence up.

(2) "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink." This metaphor is terrific. =]

He said that in this essay he did a lot of the things that he was condemning. I didn't see him go against himself at all.

I think I do do a fair amount of what he says, when I write. Depends what I'm writing. Well, a good thing for me is that I'm not familiar with many of the catch phrases that people use (or, I hear them but I don't remember them).

It'd be fun though, to try to talk sentences (fake conversation) of just catch phrases. Like trying to talk with using only song titles. hehe.

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General Discussion / Orwell Short Story
« on: March 24, 2011, 08:29:24 am »
Hey guys:

The next short story is one by Orwell, see here:

http://www.world-english.org/stories_orwell.htm

We can leave a loose time frame for when to talk aboot this one.

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General Discussion / Re: The Gift of the Magi
« on: March 10, 2011, 04:42:13 pm »
Are you saying that they should have made Christmas Love instead?

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General Discussion / Re: Meta-thread: discuss what stories you want to discuss
« on: March 02, 2011, 08:43:21 pm »
The Tales of Beetle and Bard says Nidhi

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General Discussion / Re: The Gift of the Magi
« on: February 27, 2011, 11:01:36 am »
Alright! It was a good story, though I predicted the ending about 60% through. The writing was mostly pretty nice and enjoyable to read, though some of the words were unfamiliar.

There are some features that result from a story being a short story. You don't get the opportunity to learn about the characters much. We start off with the two characters, and we only know a sentence or two about their past. People like to hear that stuff I guess, but I also like the fact that the story is able to quickly get to its point. But also, it sounds like the writer has the urge to be more "epic" ("O all you who receive gifts...". The metaphors that described the value of the the hair and the watch were really strong.

I did not know that the biblical story of the Magi is what started the idea of gift-giving at Christmas. That's good to know (see Biblical Magi on Wikipedia). It's interesting that the author chose Della's prized possession as her hair. Her hair will grow back so she'll have use for the combs, but the dude's watch is never coming back. He lost out in this one! =P

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General Discussion / Meta-thread: discuss what stories you want to discuss
« on: February 27, 2011, 09:41:56 am »
In high school, I read this essay by George Orwell about the english language. It's superb! I suggest it for some point in the future!
http://www.world-english.org/stories_orwell.htm

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General Discussion / Internet resources for short stories
« on: February 27, 2011, 09:40:40 am »
This was just the result of google searching, etc (how real research is done nowadays).

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General Discussion / How this stuff could work
« on: February 27, 2011, 09:33:03 am »
My idea is the following, but make suggestions!
  • We read one short story a week, announced over the weekend.
  • At some point in the week at your convenience, post any thoughts you had about the story and conversation will ensue.
  • Each week, another "member" picks the short story of the week.
  • The short story must be accessible easily. Maybe we should start with things online. You can download them illegally and I'll get it distributed. It can also be something commonly available at a library, though that would probably hurt chances of people reading it.
  • I think the short story should be less than 20 pages long, as a soft rule.
  • Each week will have a new forum thread. You can still discuss old .
  • As for conversation, etc, I don't think there should be any rules. You can stray from relevant topics, etc. Be kind, etc.
  • You can choose essays or poems as well
  • You can write essays and stories and share those (Andy!!)
  • My idea is that we'll focus on fiction, but I don't really care. Nonfiction would be cool/awesome/spectacular

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General Discussion / The Gift of the Magi
« on: February 26, 2011, 05:25:40 pm »
The story for this week is The Gift of the Magi. This will run from today through next Sunday (March 6 2011).

The story: http://www.online-literature.com/donne/1014/

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