A book MK should read to inspire a song

[IrisRose]

Okay, new topic.   Let's suggest new books for MK to read.  These should be books that say something important, something that he would find full enough to get a good song out of.     So prolly no silly lightweight stuff, like Harlequin Romances (are they still printing those things)   or too challenging like Finnegan's Wake.   Then, those of us who are so inclined, could suggest a line for him--not that he'd use it. . . .

Here's mine: 
All Quiet on the Western Front   by Erich Maria Remarque (Remark)    a novel about World War I told from a German soldier's point of view   
The novel (which is really true) emphasizes the common soldier as pawn in the world games of the powerful.   It shows the soldier's agony both on the battlefield and among those people at home whom he is fighting for and who have no comprehension of what he is going through.   


"Dragging days, and soldiers cry
They're looking for the blame
Exploding nights and soldiers die
The generals will not claim
The souls of dying men and horses
On these fields of hellish shame. . .

Oh that's pitiful, but you get the idea.   
If you don't want to tackle a line or two, just say what the book is about and why it would appeal to MK.

[Dan]

Mountains Beyong Mountains
-Tracy Kidder

I'm sure he could write a song using Dr. Farmer as one of his characters.

[jacki]

Cold Mountain, because it's chock full of the indomitability of the human spirit. But hopefully he would just go by the book; the movie took liberties.  Water For Elephants....It reminded me obliquely of The Electric Michelangelo. Marie, you must read that book. And I'm lousy at poetry....my rhymes are mawkish at best. I know I can come up with other books, given a little while to think about it.

[draad]

On the WW1 theme, I'd go for Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.Superb storyteller. Uses language beautifully. Intense romance/love/eroticism against the barbarity of trench warfare.

Gread thread. I like it!

[superval99]

"Birdsong" is one of my favourite books.  It describes the horrors of WW1 so well.  I first read it when I was on holiday on an idyllic Greek Island and the beauty of that place contrasted sharply with the carnage described in the book.  The love/eroticism was handled sensitively too.     Maybe it's a bit too close to BIA though for another MK song!

[draad]

Think you may be right there Val.

[draad]

Not strictly books here.
I think Mark would find some great stuff to work on/inspiration  if he were to read some of the poems of Robert Burns. Yes - I'm being deadly serious!! Lots of poems on country life, nature, observations, values/humanity - who can forget " a man's a man for awe that", love and romance, and some great epic tales like Tam o' Shanter. Imagine Tam riding through the night and howling winds to Mark's guitar! Wow! Dusty - back me up here! I think I may need some help.

[IrisRose]

Draad, I agree!

[draad]

You must have some Scottish blood in you.

Then let us pray as come it may
(as come it will for awe that)
that sense and worth o'er a the earth
shall bear the gree and a that.

For a that and a that
it's comin yet for a that
that man to man the world o'er
shall brothers be for a that.

This was written in the 1700's by peasant farmer R Burns esq. C'mon Mark, put it to music!

[je suis desole]

Actually I've been wanting him to suggest some new books! But in the meantime:

Measuring the world - about Gauss and von Humboldt, although it's might suggest something too close to Sailing to Philidelphia

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes - a fictionalized account of Sir Authur Conan Doyle's attempts to clear a man accused of murder.


Has anyone read Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson? It's been getting good reviews and I can't decide whether to buy.

[Fieneke2]

Welcome to the forum Je suis desole, it's great to see your post!


There are a few books that impressed me very much. One of them was from

Virginia Andrews- the Dollander series:
- Flowers in the Attic; Petals in the wind; If there be thorns

"Her most well-known novel is the infamous bestseller Flowers in the Attic (1979), a tale of four children locked in the attic of a wealthy Virginia family by their estranged religious grandmother for four years."

I sometimes was emotional and got angry, was shocked and felt oppressed and sad by reading the first book. It felt as if I was one of the children. It was so strange and wrong that a grandmother could treat children like that way and I wished I could help! 

I realize it was a book I was reading, but look what happened the last years with children! How ill some people are and how bad in real live children are treated and abused also. Think about the little girls in Belgium who were kept prison by Mark Dutrout! Or think about that girl in Austria that was kept hostage in a cellar for many years! Another example is that daughter that came in the news last year who got children of her dad and nobody knew she was hidden in the garden, while her dad told his wife and others she was gone? How often do we get news like that in future? It makes me mad, everybody should keep their hands off children and people who can’t defend themselves! 

Fieneke

[je suis desole]

Hi Fieneke2
This place felt so much like home I just jumped in. It sure is nice to see everyone here!

One other book I'd like to mention is 'A stranger to myself" the wartime diary of Willy Peter Reese, a young German soldier on the Eastern front during WWII. Reese is a talented observer of what was happening around him and to himself. The book contains many vivid descriptions of what it was like to be an ordinary soldier in a truly nasty war.

[draad]

You are a frighteningly well read lady! I'll look Reese up.

[je suis desole]

Oh, I don’t know about well-read, but I’ve read some semi-obscure works at university. There’s an academic work called “How Life writes the Book” by Thomas Lahusen. The story is an interesting one about how a man picked up for “counter-revolutionary” activities eventually received the Stalin Prize for literature for his novel “Far from Moscow”. Unfortunately the book has a post-modernist slant and is nearly as impenetrable as any work of socialist realism. I wish someone would rewrite the story as I think it would make an interesting biographical sketch.

Oh, and I’ve been enjoying On Green Dolphin Street and Songbird is now sitting on my reading shelf.

[draad]

Birdsong. You need to let me know what you think about it. It really moved me.