Reading with Cunard

[Wadadli1]

 

Here it is! I got it!

[534]

 

Here it is! I got it!

 

I love it!

Betsy

[qm2]

I usually purchase a book from the library and try to read it on my crossing, but time doesn't allow me to read very much, I am usually too busy on a crossing, busy at what I don't know, I guess I am very busy at nothing with not enough time to do it in.

[Kindlychap]

I often take a book on the Titanic with me - especially on a crossing!

 

Matthew

[Wadadli1]

I often take a book on the Titanic with me - especially on a crossing!

 

Matthew

 

For our trip this past Christmas/New Years to the Caribbean, I brought one called, "Not Without Peril". It's loads of stories of people who died on Mt. Washington, in New Hampshire, US. Plenty of trouble in that one. Snowstorms in June, things like that. Just the thing to cool you off under the hot sun. :p

 

If I bring a book, it will definitely be something about shipwrecks, or, as you say, the Titanic. Can't resist.

[Nitty]

i'm just interested, why must the book be about some kind of catastrophe?

glenn.

[travel-to-go]

 

Here it is! I got it!

 

Perhaps the back could show the famous pic of the ship nose high, with the line "Don't tell me to HAVE A NICE DAY!":mad:

 

I often take a book on the Titanic with me - especially on a crossing!

Matthew

KC, When was the last time you went on the Titanic!

Wouldn't the book get awfully wet? :eek:

 

Karie, who really did read it that way at first! <G>

[calikak]

Almost forgot, I also just finished reading Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss. Sad and beautiful. I read The Kite Runner on vacation last year, which was also sad and beautiful.

[Wadadli1]

i'm just interested, why must the book be about some kind of catastrophe?

glenn.

 

Not sure, but if I were to guess it's because I have the utmost faith in the ship and its crew, so it's to potentially irritate the ones who worry and complain about everything, if they should notice. No idea why I should want to (potentially) do this, save to be a Pest. I tend to not be terribly politically correct, in the current over-doing definition of it.

 

And stories like this are not only informative (don't do this!) but they are also interesting. Not what we tend to do in daily life. :p I really like adventure stories, whether they end well or not.

[Wadadli1]

PS: Nitty, I really am sympathetic to the innocent victims of things like shipwrecks. The ones who ask for disaster because of their bad choices/decisions (some of the climbing/mountaineering stories), not so much.

 

Again, the stories are very interesting and enlightening. I am a non-fiction kind of person, besides.

[Bramcruiser]

The menu.

Otherwise, probably nothing.

I usually don't find the time for shipboard reading; as we all know, there's nothing to do and not enough time to do it.

 

Oh I hear you. Actually, I usually do bring a book along on my vacations but I end up reading it only on the long flight. Last time the book was never opened once during the seven days of our cruise.

 

Still, a trip to the bookstore is in the plans before leaving for this year's cruise. Now what should I read? The Poseidon Adventure?:eek: Lately, I've been reading the short stories of a Canadian radio personality Stuart McLean who has these quirky and comical stories of the adventures of a middle class married couple - David and Morley - and their two kids and their dog.

 

David

[Kindlychap]

Perhaps the back could show the famous pic of the ship nose high, with the line "Don't tell me to HAVE A NICE DAY!":mad:

 

 

KC, When was the last time you went on the Titanic!

Wouldn't the book get awfully wet? :eek:

 

Karie, who really did read it that way at first! <G>

 

 

Oddly enough, 1912. We got off at Queenstown.

 

Boat was a bit shoddy. Picked up a real ship later - not looked back with Cunard since.....

 

Matthew

[emrmom]

 

Don't forget to look at our guest lecturer's book Hummingbird's daughter.

Here is his web page: http://www.luisurrea.com/home.php

 

Look for the thread on this.

 

Karie,

who is half-way through a book on "Wrecking (salvaging) in the Keys" that I bought a couple of years ago...and it's a fast read!

If they'd just make them all waterproof so I can read them in the spa!

 

Thanks for the shout-out, Karie!

And if you really are looking for a nonfiction "disaster" tale, try his The Devil's Highway about a group of Mexican illegal immigrants lost in the Arizona desert in May 2001. Scary and sad and very informative about a very hot topic (so to speak) these days.

 

Cindy

[travel-to-go]

Thanks for the shout-out, Karie!

And if you really are looking for a nonfiction "disaster" tale, try his The Devil's Highway about a group of Mexican illegal immigrants lost in the Arizona desert in May 2001. Scary and sad and very informative about a very hot topic (so to speak) these days.

 

Cindy

 

I don't know, Cindy. I'd have to be in the right mood to read that. I would just get too angry. Unlike some people, right here in my state, I feel that most of us are very lucky, indeed privileged, to have been born here, or in some cases immigrated to this country legally(America.) What makes me better or more deserving than someone else, who, by dint of where they were born, was not "lucky" enough to be born here, or maybe because they aren't the favored immigrant population at the moment, does not have the opportunity to come here legally? Most of the people in this country today, their ancestors did not come from here. They were either "invaders", people who came uninvited and took over what was not theirs to take, or immigrants themselves, legally or illegally. And what is the difference between someone from India or Turkey or Romania, coming here to go to medical school or engineering school, or to practice medicine or engineering, or someone from Haiti, whose life is threatened by both daily violence and economic catastrophe- as in starvation. Yet we don't consider them as people deserving of "asylum" Economics is not a reason to flee a country, even though a person can be just as dead of starvation as the ravages and dangers of being in the political opposition. Asylum is a joke. Like so many things in this (and other) countries, we pick and choose according to our own needs when to be sympathetic. I suppose I should shut up as this is not the right place. I do know illegals here, who, in my opinion, have just as much of a right to benefit from living in America as anyone else. I'm talking about people who are contributing, hard-working members of society. Some pay taxes and social security on which they can never collect. But thank you for the suggestion. I shall put it on my list. It does sound like something I would like.

 

Karie,

who feels very lucky indeed, just because I happened to be lucky enough, through no fault or effort of my own, be born an American.

[Seachange couple]

What will you read aboard your next Cunard sail. A cruise/crossing is the best chance I have to really do justice to a good book.

 

On my double crossing on 26 June I will be reading "Ghosts of Spain" which deals with the hidden past of Spain in relation to the civil war.

 

What will others read?

 

David.

Does anyone read the "inspector Rebus" novels by Ian Rankin, now they would be my first choice for the flight from and to Australia, but hopefully the entertainment on QM2 will keep me busy for the six day crossing.

[dak]

What about "Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo" by William Makepeace Thackeray, arguably the record of the first cruise undertaken for leisure?

 

David

[dak]

The sad events of the last couple of days may suggest another title:

 

Cutty Sark & Thermopylae by M. C. Armstrong, C. W. Hume, and Cyril L. Hume

 

One of the glorious clipper battles and one which reinforced the "bad luck" reputation of Cutty Sark.

 

David

[Nitty]

Not sure, but if I were to guess it's because I have the utmost faith in the ship and its crew, .

 

When I went on my first cruise which was on Fred Olsen Line, we were waiting to go through passport control and they were playing "my heart will go on" from the then newly released Titanic film.

 

I was scared anyway so this didnt help at all! I could not read anything about a disaster at sea when I was on any kind of ship/boat.

 

Nitty Mrs :o

[Kindlychap]

When I went on my first cruise which was on Fred Olsen Line, we were waiting to go through passport control and they were playing "my heart will go on" from the then newly released Titanic film.

 

That's outrageous!!

 

How on earth could they play such drivel?

 

Matthew

[nitwit]

That's outrageous!!

 

How on earth could they play such drivel?

 

Matthew

 

what music do you like matthew?

glenn

 

[Kindlychap]

what music do you like matthew?

 

glenn

 

Ah! Caught you not reading carefully enough!

 

You've missed the references to late Mozart........

 

[in his music], Mozart...invites us to share his emotional world; he takes us by the hand, as it were, and leads us, ultimately requiring us to follow wherever he goes. Hence his joys are our joys, his sorrows our sorrows; and the hauntingly beautiful autumnal world of the music written in 1791 [Mozart's last year], where the sun's rays are slanting sharply and are soon to turn into sunset and twilight, is peculiarly our own, perhaps on a massive scale (given the world's present situation). Mozart probably did not intend to portray this, but it seems to accord better with our pessimistic view of life than the optimistic self-enclosed comfort of Haydn, or the life-asserting triumphs of Beethoven. Like Wagner's Ring cycle, which becomes more important to humanity every year, its truths more compelling (possibly because Götterdämmerung is a closer reality than it ever was before), Mozart's music becomes increasingly an essential part of our lives. The drama in his operas, his revelation of truth and beauty, has always been perceived in Figaro and Don Giovanni; now it is also strongly felt in Cosi fan tutte and La clemenza di Tito, while The Magic Flute's mystery and majestic solution of seemingly incompatible stylistic elements appear to us with ever greater relevance. The Mozartian legacy, in brief, is as good an excuse for mankind's existence as we shall ever encounter, and is, perhaps, after all, a still small hope for our ultimate survival.

—H.C. Robbins Landon, 1986, from the Preface to his,

Mozart's Last Year

That comes as near to my personal C r e d o as one can get. (Apologies for the odd spacing. The word was rejected by the software for some reason!)

 

Matthew

[nitwit]

Ah! Caught you not reading carefully enough!

 

You've missed the references to late Mozart........

 

[in his music], Mozart...invites us to share his emotional world; he takes us by the hand, as it were, and leads us, ultimately requiring us to follow wherever he goes. Hence his joys are our joys, his sorrows our sorrows; and the hauntingly beautiful autumnal world of the music written in 1791 [Mozart's last year], where the sun's rays are slanting sharply and are soon to turn into sunset and twilight, is peculiarly our own, perhaps on a massive scale (given the world's present situation). Mozart probably did not intend to portray this, but it seems to accord better with our pessimistic view of life than the optimistic self-enclosed comfort of Haydn, or the life-asserting triumphs of Beethoven. Like Wagner's Ring cycle, which becomes more important to humanity every year, its truths more compelling (possibly because Götterdämmerung is a closer reality than it ever was before), Mozart's music becomes increasingly an essential part of our lives. The drama in his operas, his revelation of truth and beauty, has always been perceived in Figaro and Don Giovanni; now it is also strongly felt in Cosi fan tutte and La clemenza di Tito, while The Magic Flute's mystery and majestic solution of seemingly incompatible stylistic elements appear to us with ever greater relevance. The Mozartian legacy, in brief, is as good an excuse for mankind's existence as we shall ever encounter, and is, perhaps, after all, a still small hope for our ultimate survival.

—H.C. Robbins Landon, 1986, from the Preface to his,

Mozart's Last Year

That comes as near to my personal C r e d o as one can get. (Apologies for the odd spacing. The word was rejected by the software for some reason!)

 

Matthew

 

ah mozart, the robbie williams of his day.

 

i was reading carefully enough, i just really wanted to put that:D

 

 

[dak]

 

 

what music do you like matthew?

 

glenn

 

 

 

I wonder whether something nautical and powerful might be to Matthew's liking e.g.

Steuermann, lass die Wacht from Wagner's Der Fliegende Hollander?

 

Mozart somehow seems very gentle and precise for a North Atlantic crossing.

 

David

[Wadadli1]

When I went on my first cruise which was on Fred Olsen Line, we were waiting to go through passport control and they were playing "my heart will go on" from the then newly released Titanic film.

 

I was scared anyway so this didnt help at all! I could not read anything about a disaster at sea when I was on any kind of ship/boat.

 

Nitty Mrs :o

 

So you wouldn't want Nittywitty to get you this for your birthday?

 

http://www.ejincy.com/product_p/swt-1113.htm

 

Don't sock me! You should see how horrible I am when it comes to flying. I do those LaMaze breathing exercises so I don't a) hyperventilate b) scream c) both.

 

And add d) have a cocktail.

[nitwit]

if i gave her that as we were going aboard she would have a blue fit!:D