If books provide food for thought...

[ono no komachi]

What kind of food would your favourite book be?

If Crime and Punishment is a hearty stew providing lots of nutrition but perhaps not much in the way of frills and garnish; and PG Wodehouse is a sherry trifle, a bit boozy and eminently digestible, slipping down with the greatest of ease....

Is Harry Potter the equivalent of the Milky Way, the book you can read between meals without ruining your appetite for something more substantial?

What books equate to what kind of foods in the view of the Palimpsesters (and should the females among us be known as Palimpsisters)?

[Colyngbourne]

God forbid that I should ever be known as a 'Palimpsister' :evil: Soroptomist, sistren, sorority - I hate 'em all.
However, the food idea is a good one - need time to think about it.

[ono no komachi]

Do you have the same objections to fraternity, brotherhood, fraternization?

I freely admit that the other terms may now have distasteful overtones of American girlhood, but I'm intrigued as to why you might hate them... :?:

[Colyngbourne]

The shorter version: you're right - I don't hate the 'masculine' versions anything like I react to the feminine ones. I am not a 'clubbable' female who enjoys 'sisterly' gatherings. A fraternity sounds way better.

[idioteque]

Dostoeveski would be a plate of twenty bran crackers and a glass of water.. you know that it is all good stuff, that you will be better nourished for it but it can be damned hard work getting through it :wink:

[Lucoid]

I'd like a nice gooey chocolate cake please - any suggestions?

[amner]

Thomas Harris's Hannibal ... oh, sorry, I was just going on the look of it.
.

[Lucoid]

That's probably more of a huge knickerbocker glory - too sickly to stomach but you feel you should carry on till the end. (Very judgemental of me - I haven't read it.)

[pandop]

I think Dickens is a 12 course dinner - nice once in a while, but better without the courses

(I have to admit to prefering abridged Dickens - I know he had to fill space in the magazine, but we dont need to read all of that to enjoy the story)

Hazel

[Lucoid]

I'm not sure that I've ever read him abridged, but I can imagine it's a pleasant way to do it.

By the way, I think I've got my gooey chocolate cake of a comfort read in mind - I'll be on the hunt for a copy of either the Scarlet Pimpernel or The Three Musketeers this coming weekend... they could be just the thing. (If anyone doesn't agree, please let me know quickly before I waste my time!)

[joy]

The only Dickens I ever finished was Bleak House which is superb, I've never tried an abridged version but do admit to speed reading through a lot of the description.

[Colyngbourne]

The Scarlet Pimpernel is a great read :D . I've got about four or five of Baroness Orczy's Pimpernel books from a late teenage craze (my Somerset Maugham craze happened at the same time). Of course nowadays there's the added amusement from the recent serialisation with Richard E. Grant and Martin Shaw as Blakeney and Chauvelin.

[Lucoid]

I still haven't uncovered a copy of the Scarlet Pimpernel at an affordable price, but am keeping my beady eye out in all the charity shops. I read Anne of Green Gables in the end - not quite a gooey chocolate cake but close enough (maybe more of a sickly but delectable treacle tart).

[Lucoid]

This morning on Radio 1 Sarah Cox described Love Actually as a Marks & Spencer's trifle - of no nutritional (life-improving) value but sweet, creamy and uplifting. Or something along those lines anyway.

So, what foods would you describe your favourite films as? Or are we all fed up (tee-hee) with this thread?

[m.]

Hawthorne's "The House of Seven Gables" is a pumpkin pie with a non-lethal dose of arsenic.