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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Books You Can't Get Into
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
To read Ulysses, you need to be in the 1930s and rather drunk... Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.
When I read Ulysses one summer, I was sitting in a very comfy chair in the living room with some music on low.
When I read Plato at UC San Diego in 1972, I found what you need is a long summer by the sea and a good professor: both conditions were fulfilled as the university had a world-class department of philosophy including one professor who was famous at the time.
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Jane Austen - she's the third member of the Victorian trinity: Dickens, the Brontes, Austen. Can't stay awake after the first two pages of any of 'em.
How someone who can read those can't read Tolkien I really, really don't get. At least it's obvious what he's on about.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
What's Victorian about Austen? ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
And she's a much easier read than Dickens. Shorter books containing shorter sentences made up of shorter words.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Yup. And real people rather than caricatures (fond though I am of Dickens). And say what you like about Austen, the Brontes, and Dickens, there's not a single 'f*cking elf' ((c)CS Lewis) in any one of them. That has to be a bonus.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Boadicea Trott
Shipmate
# 9621
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Posted
Wolf Hall.
I found it boring, tendentious, prosy and thoroughly incoherent in parts, and I failed to finish it. ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
I would prefer to be locked in a lift with my crazy ex-sister-in-law for eight hours than ever have to read a Hilary Mantel historical book again.
To be fair, her "Fludd" was *much* better written, though she should still not have bothered to write it IMO.
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X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett
Posts: 563 | From: Roaming the World in my imagination..... | Registered: Jun 2005
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
What's Victorian about Austen?
My mistake. Fact remains I fell asleep before I got interested enough to find her actual dates.
Easier to read than Dickens is damning with faint praise.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
I read "Secret Garden" for the first time last year and... oh, God, the Cockney "accent" or manner of speaking just put me off entirely. I couldn't understand a word they said and the damn book seemed to go on and on.
Cockney? You mean The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett? I can't remember any cockneys in it! Most of the characters are speaking rather standard turn-of-the century upper-middle-class English Some of them are written in a sort of stage Yorkshire, though very mild. (Wuthering Heights goes a lot further.) I'm not sure there are any cockneys at all. Or do you mean another book?
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Yup. And real people rather than caricatures (fond though I am of Dickens). And say what you like about Austen, the Brontes, and Dickens, there's not a single 'f*cking elf' ((c)CS Lewis) in any one of them. That has to be a bonus.
No, it hasn't. I find limiting characters to humans so, well, limiting ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
I read "Secret Garden" for the first time last year and... oh, God, the Cockney "accent" or manner of speaking just put me off entirely. I couldn't understand a word they said and the damn book seemed to go on and on.
Cockney? You mean The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett? I can't remember any cockneys in it! Most of the characters are speaking rather standard turn-of-the century upper-middle-class English Some of them are written in a sort of stage Yorkshire, though very mild. (Wuthering Heights goes a lot further.) I'm not sure there are any cockneys at all. Or do you mean another book?
I think Dickon speaks Yorkshire - and I guess if one's idea of Cockney is Dick Van Dyke Mockney, getting it mixed up with some other regional accent would be an easy enough mistake to make.
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Yup. And real people rather than caricatures (fond though I am of Dickens). And say what you like about Austen, the Brontes, and Dickens, there's not a single 'f*cking elf' ((c)CS Lewis) in any one of them. That has to be a bonus.
Some of us love elves. ![[Axe murder]](graemlins/lovedrops.gif)
Thank you for what you said, Trudy. No one I was at university with would have admitted to writing essays without reading the texts, but maybe we were all at it and simply not saying so.
Nen - feeling slightly less of a fraud.
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Jane Austen - she's the third member of the Victorian trinity: Dickens, the Brontes, Austen. Can't stay awake after the first two pages of any of 'em.
I would say the third member of the trinity is Trollope. I like most of the Palliser novels. I am currently re-reading Can You Forgive Her?.
Moo
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Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
George Eliot is the one I've not yet been moved to read.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Jane Austen died before Queen Victoria was even born.
She is absolutely wonderful.
As is Dickens - I'm thinking of taking Bleak House with me into hospital - I've just begun re-reading it this evening, and it is inspiring enough to make me forget an upcoming operation.
Trollope is eminently Victorian and a bit of a bore: costume soap opera.
There's lots of things that leave me cold, but obviously other people enjoy them.
PS - Can't say I like the Brontes, but then you're either a Bronte person or an Austen person. George Eliot is a bit on the worthy side. The Victorians themselves would have thought one of their greatest novelists was Thackery.
[ 05. April 2013, 21:39: Message edited by: venbede ]
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
quote:
Originally posted by Nenya:
I never managed to get into Jane Austen either and I've had several goes as I'm sure I must be missing something and my mum, God rest her, used to read and reread them. I got through an entire English degree without reading Austen... and even wrote an essay on her work... not something I'm proud of.
Nen - wondering if she's going to regret her own honesty.
I seriously doubt there's a person anywhere with an English degree who's never written a paper on a book they didn't finish, or just skimmed. Well, maybe there are lots of them and it's just you and me that are the slackers. I was a master of this kind of paper in my undergrad years, I'm sorry to say. And this was before the Internet when you couldn't even google a plot summary. But seriously, Pamela? Life's too friggin short.
Also guilty as charged. Although I will note that my grades went up significantly in my third and fourth year when I actually started reading the assigned reading most of the time. I can actually identify the week when I discovered that- I had to read Frankenstein for a Romanticism class, and Walker Percy's Lancelot for the final semester of the two year Humanities seminar. I couldn't put either of those books down, and like that, the reading bug that had gone away at some point in middle school when we had to read lots of dreary angst-ridden young adult fiction was back.
It still didn't get me through the House of the Seven Gables a year later, but at least I was able to write the paper on something else that I had read.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
George Eliot is the one I've not yet been moved to read.
Give her a go, Ken, do! She is unsurpassed as a plotter of plots, and writes the most beautiful, measured prose. She is in many ways the heir of Austen, and is as far from the Brontes as she could be. Where her contemporary Dickens relies heavily on mad coincidences to drive his plots along, Eliot scorns any such trick. Everything for her is character-driven, and every success and/or catastrophe is the result of a beautifully worked out chain of cause and effect. You couldn't find a more intelligent writer.
Plunge in and start with Middlemarch. It is sheer soap opera. Not one, not two, but three love stories to get thoroughly caught up in, and a host of fascinating supporting characters. I read it in my final year at school, and once alarmed my friends by throwing open the door of the sixth year common room and announcing excitedly, "Rosamund has got engaged to XXX!" (I won't give it away!) Other beauties are Silas Marner and Felix Holt, the Radical - and she has some wickedly clever short stories too.
Just avoid The Mill on the Floss. 'Depressing' doesn't begin to describe it. I never could get through that one.
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
I'm less of a George Eliot fan than Cottontail and I won't point out where I disagree.
She was an earnest young evangelical who lost her faith early, but in each of her books religion (a different sort of religion in each book - she was a good liberal) plays an important part.
You might be interested in Adam Bede where a principal character is a woman Methodist preacher.
I'm interested that when male Victorian authors bring in religion, it is embarrassing and there's the thought they are playing to their audience.
When women Victorian authors deal with religion, they take it seriously, George Eliot in particular.
(There is some very moving religious imagery in Dickens, but the trite sentimentality is round the corner.)
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Pine Marten
Shipmate
# 11068
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Can't say I like the Brontes, but then you're either a Bronte person or an Austen person.
Yes. I am most definitely a Bronte person. I've tried reading Jane, and managed to get through one of hers, and I can't even remember now the title. Dickens is another I've tried and can't get through, except A Christmas Carol. I'm going to try George Eliot one day, as Mr Marten has several titles, but she will have to join the growing number of books 'to be read' on the shelves.
Has anyone come across The Secret of the Kingdom and The Roman by Mika Waltari? Set in the 1st century they are not high literature, but are a damn good read.
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
Posts: 1731 | From: Isle of Albion | Registered: Feb 2006
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Try Silas Marner, pine marten. It's quite short (which is the great thing about A Christmas Carol. And I find very moving.
Just to show I can be flawed by books, I've not got past the first canto of Spenser's The Faerie Queen. You have to read poetry out loud to yourself, unlike novels which I skim.
But I'll get the b****r some day. (Long books are just a challenge to me. Can't help it. That's the way I am.)
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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Pine Marten
Shipmate
# 11068
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Posted
Ha! I remember doing The Faerie Queen for A level - long sunny days listening to Miss B reading aloud about the Bower of Bliss...
Yes, thanks, I might try Mr Marten's copy of Silas Marner, which I know he enjoyed very much.
But for sheer passion, wildness and downright cruelty, you can't beat a good dollop of Wuthering Heights
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
Posts: 1731 | From: Isle of Albion | Registered: Feb 2006
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
I'm less of a George Eliot fan than Cottontail and I won't point out where I disagree.
She was an earnest young evangelical who lost her faith early, but in each of her books religion (a different sort of religion in each book - she was a good liberal) plays an important part.
I read about a long conversation someone had with her where she said that it was impossible to believe in religion, and that duty was sacred.
This intrigued me because my sense of duty comes from my religion.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
I'm more of a Bronte person than Austen - not that I've read them all but I revisit "Jane Eyre" on a regular basis and keep meaning to reread "Wuthering Heights."
I love some of Thomas Hardy too - particularly once I learned that he thought of himself as a poet and so excelled in description but didn't necessarily paint people too well. Couldn't get into "The Return of the Native" though. Life really is too short.
I agree with cottontail about George Eliot - dive into "Middlemarch" and don't be put off by the length. I studied it for A level and we all enjoyed the love affairs. Mind you, it was an all girls' school and we had to take that kind of excitement where we could find it.
Nen - Prince Hal, anyone?
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
I'm less of a George Eliot fan than Cottontail and I won't point out where I disagree.
She was an earnest young evangelical who lost her faith early, but in each of her books religion (a different sort of religion in each book - she was a good liberal) plays an important part.
I read about a long conversation someone had with her where she said that it was impossible to believe in religion, and that duty was sacred.
This intrigued me because my sense of duty comes from my religion.
Moo
I think the quote was something like "God, immortality, duty. How impossible to believe the first two, how impossible to ignore the third".
The opposite of having your cake and eating it.
The evangelical high mindedness remained when the belief had disappeared.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
She is in many ways the heir of Austen, and is as far from the Brontes as she could be. Where her contemporary Dickens relies heavily on mad coincidences to drive his plots along, Eliot scorns any such trick. Everything for her is character-driven, and every success and/or catastrophe is the result of a beautifully worked out chain of cause and effect.
Both Austen and Dickens are comic novelists. As is Trollope. Eliot has no doubt many worthy merits, but her comic talent isn't one of them.
Of course, Dickens relies on mad coincidences to drive his plots along. That's the sort of book he's writing. It's like objecting to Shakespeare on the grounds that people would notice that the supposed boy was actually a woman.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nenya:
I'm more of a Bronte person than Austen - not that I've read them all but I revisit "Jane Eyre" on a regular basis and keep meaning to reread "Wuthering Heights."
I love some of Thomas Hardy too - particularly once I learned that he thought of himself as a poet and so excelled in description but didn't necessarily paint people too well. Couldn't get into "The Return of the Native" though. Life really is too short.
I agree with cottontail about George Eliot - dive into "Middlemarch" and don't be put off by the length. I studied it for A level and we all enjoyed the love affairs. Mind you, it was an all girls' school and we had to take that kind of excitement where we could find it.
I could have just about written that post, Nenya, although I love The Return of the Native. I'm so glad your class read Middlemarch. I think it should be required reading for girls because it continues on where Austen and Bronte usually stop -- on the wedding day. With Elliot we get to see some of the real disappointment marriage can be once the glow begins to dim. Only Elliot and Tolstoy tell us about that.
I love Hardy though, and should include him with his glimpses of real marriage. He certainly gave us a tragic wedding night in "Tess."
I'm a Bronte person, at least I would put Charlotte and Anne above Austen but I like Austen very much, too.
On topic: I can't get into any Science Fiction. My real life exists in that century between 1810 and 1910.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Middlemarch is a wonderful book, but there are certainly coincidences for the sake of the plot.
Mary Ann Evans does do humour ("mellow" is the word that I suspect her Victorian admirers would have used) but it is a bit heavy handed.
Thank you Twilight for the point about marriage. I must re-read Daniel Deronda. In fact Austen's accounts of long married couples are not particularly rosy (Mr and Mrs Bennet being the prime examples.) No wonder she never married herself. (Mary Ann didn't marry until her old age: she knew earlier a loving, mutual relationship which didn't need to be regarded as merely socially respectable.)
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
I do doggedly finish any novel I begin nowadays and I even return to ones I haven't got ( Wuthering Heights, Portrait of a Lady) in the hope that I will see the point.
But in my early twenties/late teens I began Women in Love as it was on my reading list. I couldn't finish it and I never want to try it again.
My wife and servants can read Lady Chat as much as they like, but I won't bother.
PS I read Charlotte Bronte's Vilette years ago. I did finish it but found it deeply depressing.
[ 06. April 2013, 21:57: Message edited by: venbede ]
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
In fact Austen's accounts of long married couples are not particularly rosy (Mr and Mrs Bennet being the prime examples.)
The very brief references to the Crofts' marriage in Persuasion are quite attractive. My favorite scene is where Admiral Croft is driving with Mrs. Croft beside him. Occasionally he gets distracted and the horses start to wander. Mrs. Croft reaches for the reins and corrects the situation. Anne Elliott, who witnesses this, thinks that probably their whole marriage is run this way.
Moo
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
And say what you like about Austen, the Brontes, and Dickens, there's not a single 'f*cking elf' ((c)CS Lewis) in any one of them. That has to be a bonus.
Hugo Dyson actually, not Lewis.
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
Mention of Don Quixote up the thread reminds me of one of my first dates as a teenager.
I walked for miles to the girl’s house, took her to a film and back on the train, walked home for miles in the dark, prepared something to eat, and sat up reading Cervantes until the wee hours as some sort of compensation for not even getting to First Base in the process that leads to getting to First Base.
That was the time I was omnivorously devouring any writer or book that came to my notice with an energy and persistence which I think we lose after adolescence.
Along with Cervantes, some other examples I remember from that period are Andre Gide, Henry James and Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, none of which or whom I have read since.
[ 07. April 2013, 07:01: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
That was the time I was omnivorously devouring any writer or book that came to my notice with an energy and persistence which I think we lose after adolescence.
I miss that. Someone up thread said she couldn't get into Joyce Carol Oates. I was early twenties when I first read her novel, Them. I got so into it that I did nothing but read, sleeping for very short periods, for three days until it was done. When I came up for air I realized I was running a fever. Back then, I didn't just read great books, I experienced them like comas.
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
I do doggedly finish any novel I begin nowadays and I even return to ones I haven't got ( Wuthering Heights, Portrait of a Lady) in the hope that I will see the point.
But in my early twenties/late teens I began Women in Love as it was on my reading list. I couldn't finish it and I never want to try it again.
My wife and servants can read Lady Chat as much as they like, but I won't bother.
My hat is off to you. ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif) I still feel bad if I don't finish a book (and sometimes flick through to the end reading two words from each page, just to say I've skimmed it) but feel more and more that the world is too full of books I do want to read to spend time on ones I'm not enjoying.
I was a child in the 60s but had teenage brothers and there was a copy of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" hanging around, which always fell open at a couple of very interesting places. ![[Eek!]](eek.gif) It completed my sex education when I was about 8.
Nen - always rather forward for her age.
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
That was the time I was omnivorously devouring any writer or book that came to my notice with an energy and persistence which I think we lose after adolescence.
I miss that. Someone up thread said she couldn't get into Joyce Carol Oates. I was early twenties when I first read her novel, Them. I got so into it that I did nothing but read, sleeping for very short periods, for three days until it was done. When I came up for air I realized I was running a fever. Back then, I didn't just read great books, I experienced them like comas.
Interesting - I connect some of my most intense book-reading experiences with fever. I had pneumonia several times as a child - during one of those episodes, my mother brought me The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Even occasionally now, I can start a book in a fever and it's almost as though the completion of it, is part of the healing process.
I am trying to walk away from the "I've started, so I'll finish" book-reading syndrome, but it is very rare. About a year ago, I forced myself to finish the (deservedly) forgotten Wieland for my Real Life book group. I remind them of that, every time one of them complains about my choices (Catch-22 for example).
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
If I don't enjoy it, I don't finish it. Life is too short to waste it reading something you don't enjoy. Though I think the internet has killed my attention span.
[ 07. April 2013, 19:31: Message edited by: Ariel ]
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
In fact Austen's accounts of long married couples are not particularly rosy (Mr and Mrs Bennet being the prime examples.)
The very brief references to the Crofts' marriage in Persuasion are quite attractive. My favorite scene is where Admiral Croft is driving with Mrs. Croft beside him. Occasionally he gets distracted and the horses start to wander. Mrs. Croft reaches for the reins and corrects the situation. Anne Elliott, who witnesses this, thinks that probably their whole marriage is run this way.
Moo
Interesting discussion ![[Smile]](smile.gif) Her observations of Charlotte and Mr Collins suggest ways in which even new marriages might not be so rosy and how these disappointments might be managed.
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Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
But Charlotte's marriage wtih Mr. Collins was not made for love, so there was never any question of disappointment, only of how it could be made bearable.
I agree about the Crofts, and think there are other successful marriages in Austen: John and Isabella Knightley, and the newly-wed Westons, in Emma; and the Gardiners in Pride and Prejudice. And don't you think we are meant to assume that Elinor and Marianne's parents' marriage had been successful in Sense and Sensibility?
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
Posts: 8913 | From: Page 28 | Registered: May 2001
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The5thMary
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# 12953
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Posted
Sorry, everyone of the British Isles whom I insulted with my ignorance of the dialect spoken in "The Secret Garden". ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) I suppose it's sort of akin to people thinking everyone in the Southern United States all speak with some sort of accent like they did in "Gone With The Wind". ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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God gave me my face but She let me pick my nose.
Posts: 3451 | From: Tacoma, WA USA | Registered: Aug 2007
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Kaplan Corday
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# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
Sorry, everyone of the British Isles whom I insulted with my ignorance of the dialect spoken in "The Secret Garden". I suppose it's sort of akin to people thinking everyone in the Southern United States all speak with some sort of accent like they did in "Gone With The Wind".
Every time I think of The Secret Garden, which did nothing for me, I contrast it with Philippa Pearce's 1950s children's classic Tom's Midnight Garden, which I still love.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Kaplan Corday
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# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
I think it should be required reading for girls because it continues on where Austen and Bronte usually stop -- on the wedding day. With Elliot we get to see some of the real disappointment marriage can be once the glow begins to dim. Only Elliot and Tolstoy tell us about that.
There are a few weddings followed by unhappy marriages in Dickens, too - the Bumbles and the Lammles spring to mind.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
Kaplan Corday : I disagree with many things you say, but with Tom's Midnight Garden our hearts beat as one. A delightful, charming book which I read for the first time when I was 62!
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Pine Marten
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# 11068
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
Sorry, everyone of the British Isles whom I insulted with my ignorance of the dialect spoken in "The Secret Garden". I suppose it's sort of akin to people thinking everyone in the Southern United States all speak with some sort of accent like they did in "Gone With The Wind".
That's ok - I laughed like a drain! My daughter loved the book, and I remember us reading it together more than once at bedtime when she was little.
quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
Kaplan Corday : I disagree with many things you say, but with Tom's Midnight Garden our hearts beat as one. A delightful, charming book which I read for the first time when I was 62!
Oh yes, a wonderful book which I first read in 2009 when I was 59 - my heart beats along with you two!
Thinks to self: why are children's books often so much better than adults' books...?
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
Posts: 1731 | From: Isle of Albion | Registered: Feb 2006
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
Sorry, everyone of the British Isles whom I insulted with my ignorance of the dialect spoken in "The Secret Garden". I suppose it's sort of akin to people thinking everyone in the Southern United States all speak with some sort of accent like they did in "Gone With The Wind".
Every time I think of The Secret Garden, which did nothing for me, I contrast it with Philippa Pearce's 1950s children's classic Tom's Midnight Garden, which I still love.
same here
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
Sorry, everyone of the British Isles whom I insulted with my ignorance of the dialect spoken in "The Secret Garden". I suppose it's sort of akin to people thinking everyone in the Southern United States all speak with some sort of accent like they did in "Gone With The Wind".
No insult taken...
Though its more like thinking everyone in the Southern United States speaks like John F Kennedy. ![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
(Semi-seriously a Cockeny accent and a Boston accent are closer to each other than either are to a marked North Yorkshire accent)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Golden Key
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# 1468
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Posted
I love both "Secret Garden" AND "Tom's Midnight Garden". Came across the latter as an adult.
My one problem with SG is the small section where the author briefly preaches directly to the reader: when Colin's dad is far away, and hears his late wife's voice (?), and comes to his senses. There's commentary to the effect that "he'd really screwed up on this, and should've done that"--but it wasn't him thinking that. A small blot on an otherwise magical book.
Speaking of which, one of my favorite passages in SG (and in all spiritually-oriented books) is when Colin asks Susan Sowerby if she believes in Magic. I won't get the dialect right, but Susan says something like "I never heard it called that before. But it's the Great, Good Thing, and it doesna' matter what tha calls it!"
![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif)
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Nenya
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# 16427
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
I love both "Secret Garden" AND "Tom's Midnight Garden". Came across the latter as an adult.
My one problem with SG is the small section where the author briefly preaches directly to the reader: when Colin's dad is far away, and hears his late wife's voice (?), and comes to his senses. There's commentary to the effect that "he'd really screwed up on this, and should've done that"--but it wasn't him thinking that. A small blot on an otherwise magical book.
Speaking of which, one of my favorite passages in SG (and in all spiritually-oriented books) is when Colin asks Susan Sowerby if she believes in Magic. I won't get the dialect right, but Susan says something like "I never heard it called that before. But it's the Great, Good Thing, and it doesna' matter what tha calls it!"
I agree with all of that; I read both as a child and found them enchanting.
If ever you feel tempted to read the sequel to "The Secret Garden" which is by Susan Moody and entitled "Misselthwaite" my advice is, don't. It's very poor, IMO, and rather ruins the original until you manage to forget it. Same goes for Susan Hill's sequel to "Rebecca" ("Mrs de Winter") which I read years ago and have fortunately managed to forget the details of.
I'm told the exception to the rule of sequels/prequels being a disappointment is "Wide Sargasso Sea" but I've never felt brave enough to try it.
Nen - to whom treasured books are precious friends.
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
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venbede
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# 16669
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Posted
Wide Saragosso Sea is utterly different from Jane Eyre and can't really be called a prequel except in the technical sense. The Caribbean is a bit different from the Yorkshire Moors, and the books reflect that!
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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L'organist
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# 17338
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Posted
The Hobbitt - tried 3 times at ages 9, 17 and 30, failed every time. (You can imagine a birthday gift of The Lord of the Rings went down a storm).
Fanny Hill - oh God! repetitive and deeply dull.
To the Ends of the Earth - I thought I was a Golding fan till I tried this.
Anyone care to start another thread about unwatchable "classic/great" films?
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Wide Saragosso Sea is utterly different from Jane Eyre and can't really be called a prequel except in the technical sense. The Caribbean is a bit different from the Yorkshire Moors, and the books reflect that!
Happen I'd take a graidely fancy to it, then.
Nen - who loves accents.
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
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venbede
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# 16669
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Posted
I think I read it when I went on a resort holiday to St Lucia. Come to think of it all three books I know that feature West Indian Islands (with no blacks) viz. Wide Saragosso Sea, Treasure Island, and Arthur Ransome's Peter Duck, all depict the islands as deeply depressing.
Peter Leigh Fermor's The Violins of St Jacques is wonderful, even though it depicts a whole island destroyed in a volcano.
I'm aware that all these books are from the white point of view.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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L'organist
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# 17338
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Posted
Please people can we all remember to take the pills regularly?
PATRICK Leigh Fermor
Wide SARGASSO sea
(sorry, I'm just a pedant...)
[ 10. April 2013, 15:55: Message edited by: L'organist ]
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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The5thMary
Shipmate
# 12953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Please people can we all remember to take the pills regularly?
PATRICK Leigh Fermor
Wide SARGASSO sea
(sorry, I'm just a pedant...)
Better a pedant than a piss-ant.
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God gave me my face but She let me pick my nose.
Posts: 3451 | From: Tacoma, WA USA | Registered: Aug 2007
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