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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Books You Can't Get Into
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
I remember vividly the first book I never finished, even though I started it maybe a dozen times. I was an avid reader when I was young, reading my assigned books, and those of the other classes just because they sounded interesting. But "The House of the Seven Gables" just made my brain hurt. Don't know why, and I remember very few of those books I finished so long ago.
It felt like a horrible personal failing that I finally got rid of the book, probably at a church sale.
I am also one of those who read, and enjoyed, "The Silmarillion" It's just that next time, I'll create a spread sheet while reading it! ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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Kyzyl
Ship's dog
# 374
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Posted
The whole Games of Thrones (Fire & Ice, wahtever...) series, ugh. Just couldn't do it. Could not keep track of who was who and where. More importantly, just didn't care about any of the characters.
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I need a quote.
Posts: 668 | From: Wapasha's Prairie | Registered: Jun 2001
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Sighthound
Shipmate
# 15185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kyzyl:
The whole Games of Thrones (Fire & Ice, wahtever...) series, ugh. Just couldn't do it. Could not keep track of who was who and where. More importantly, just didn't care about any of the characters.
Snap. Mind you, it is fantasy and I really struggle with fantasy as in some ways I have a prosaic mind.
Also War and Peace. And King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett. I usually like Dunnett, but this one I tried three times, including once on a really boring train journey, but I couldn't get past page 100. And that was a struggle.
[ 31. March 2013, 16:04: Message edited by: Sighthound ]
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Supporter of Tia Greyhound and Lurcher Rescue.http://tiagreyhounds.org/
Posts: 168 | From: England | Registered: Sep 2009
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Kyzyl
Ship's dog
# 374
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Posted
I'm OK with fantasy but George R.R. Martin is just nowhere near my cup of tea or coffee.
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I need a quote.
Posts: 668 | From: Wapasha's Prairie | Registered: Jun 2001
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infinite_monkey
Shipmate
# 11333
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Posted
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was neither.
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His light was lifted just above the Law,
And now we have to live with what we did with what we saw.
--Dar Williams, And a God Descended
Obligatory Blog Flog: www.otherteacher.wordpress.com
Posts: 1423 | From: left coast united states | Registered: Apr 2006
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Egeria
Shipmate
# 4517
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Posted
I guess I didn't get the Jane Austen gene; I've never been able to stay awake past about page 30 of Pride and Prejudice . A long time ago, I got through Sense and Sensibility , but I don't remember it at all.
Somehow, I did finish Moby Dick when I was in high school--I had to pick something from American literature for a particularly loathsome class, and I had always loved biology...
Gone with the Wind is another one I didn't finish--and I'm not going to try it again, either. Life is too short to spend with creeps like Scarlett and Rhett.
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"Sound bodies lined / with a sound mind / do here pursue with might / grace, honor, praise, delight."--Rabelais
Posts: 314 | From: Berkeley, CA | Registered: May 2003
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
I feel such an ignorant scrote. The only books appearing in these lists that I've ever read are the Tolkien and Pratchett ones.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Gextvedde
Shipmate
# 11084
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Posted
I'm glad I'm not the only one who couldn't get on with Tolkien. It certainly wasn't for want of trying. I managed to get through the fellowship and halfway through the Two Towers but had to give up due to lack of interest.
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"We must learn to see that our temperament is a gift of God, a talent with which we must trade until he comes" Thomas Merton
Posts: 293 | From: The Twilight Zone, near the M25 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eigon:
I'm a Barchester fan - I first came across The Warden as the radio version, and then read that and Barchester Towers and a couple of others before I ran out of steam with the one where the vicar signs some sort of promissory note and gets hopelessly into debt.
Tangent: why does any charcter in a Victorian novel ever put their name to some else's promissory note? About, oh, a third of Victorian literature seems to be about the trouble that people get into when they do this: so you'd think that anyone in ther C19 who'd ever read any fiction at all would know that this is one thing you should never do! it's a bit like the way that TV soap characters never seem to watch TV soaps, I suppose.
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
Tea wrote:
quote:
On the Road
It's short, it's easy, it's important, so why haven't I done it yet? Part of me feels like the forty year old virgin, and another part of me suspects that I am now too old to enjoy it anyway.
I feel the same way. A friend of mine organized a reading a few years ago, with a local collector of jazz on vinyl providing a hard bop soundtrack. Maybe I would be able to make it through something like that.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Fr Weber
Shipmate
# 13472
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
When it comes to those big Russian doorstops, I think the translation makes a huge difference. The Penguin translation of Karamazov, for example (IMHO) is crap. I still love the book (I've read it twice) but spend a lot of time sighing over what a better translator could have done with it.
Well, even David McDuff's tin ear is an improvement over Constance Garnett. (shudder)
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"The Eucharist is not a play, and you're not Jesus."
--Sr Theresa Koernke, IHM
Posts: 2512 | From: Oakland, CA | Registered: Feb 2008
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Fr Weber
Shipmate
# 13472
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Posted
The first time I tried to read Foucault's The Order of Things, I just. Could. Not. Get through it.
The second time I succeeded, through sheer bloody-mindedness if nothing else. What an irritating chore that book was, and how frustrating in general Foucault is to read; for each glimmer of intelligibility you have to wade through 10 pages of impenetrable nonsense.
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"The Eucharist is not a play, and you're not Jesus."
--Sr Theresa Koernke, IHM
Posts: 2512 | From: Oakland, CA | Registered: Feb 2008
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
Hemingway.
Not the full books, The Old Man and the Sea has to be The. Best. Book. Ever.
But the short stories that make the collection The Snows of Kilimanjaro, I couldn't get into them. For me Hemingway needs something longer to get going.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
"Even Homer nods" - I read the unreadable Till We Have Faces only because C.S. Lewis wrote it.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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angelica37
Shipmate
# 8478
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Posted
Several books I never finished have been mentioned on here already. Ulysses, was hopeless and just didn't make sense to me, though I have loved Lord of the Rings for years the Silmarillion was too much like the Old Testament (which I also never finished)
I did make it through 'War and Peace' one Christmas holiday when the weather was bad and quite enjoyed it but the author I really can't get into at all is Thomas Hardy, we had to read 'Tess' at school and I still never finished it.
Posts: 1351 | From: Suffolk | Registered: Sep 2004
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
The Charlie Brown New Years TV Special involves a subplot where Charlie Brown is assigned "War and Peace" as a homework assignment over Christmas break. Glad to hear that someone actually enjoyed that task. (He ends up falling asleep while trying to read it on New Years Eve, misses the little red haired girl at the New Years dance, and almost fails after writing his report based on what he got out of the plot summery on the dust jacket.)
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Bax
Shipmate
# 16572
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Posted
Wuthering Heights: I've tried twice but gave up twice.
Wolf Hall: Just could not get interested in it after about 50 pages.....
Lord of the Rings, admittedly it was a while since I tried, but not tempted to try again....
I always feel guilty about not finishing a book and somehow can never quite get around to disposing of them (to the latest jumble sale or whatever). One of the reasons I tend to always get books from library nowadays!
Posts: 108 | Registered: Aug 2011
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The5thMary
Shipmate
# 12953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Secret Garden. Most of my friends loved it. I was bored. Read it again ten years ago to see why friends still call it a favorite book of their youth. I was still bored.
Lord of the Rings. I liked Hobbit - not a favorite, but pleasant. But LOTR, couldn't get into it, dull and plodding.
Plato's Republic. Was assigned in college. Put me to sleep so I never read it. Would I like it now? Is that the one where that envisions women "held in common" by all men? I wouldn't like it.
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. I also tried to read some of the Oz books but just got bored. I read some Carson McCullers book about a diner and the people who are regulars there... the title escapes me at the moment... it was a thoroughly depressing book and I really felt suicidal after I read it! Well, it didn't help that we were horrendously poor last month and the day I read the McCullers book we hadn't eaten in two days... never read depressing books when you haven't eaten in a few days and are really poor! ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.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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The5thMary
Shipmate
# 12953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I never quite finished "The Three Musketeers", but I hope to do so.
That's another book that I feel semi-literate for never having read, but I console myself with a vague recollection that I read it as a child in comic form - I think they were called Classics Illustrated.
Dumas' (Dumas's?) The Count Of Monte Cristo is pretty cool - and readable.
Oh, mercy! "The Three Musketeers" is a f*cking hilarious book! I found a torn up copy of it on the bus a few years ago and took it home. I couldn't stop laughing, it was so witty and well-written.
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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
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
I found a torn up copy of it on the bus a few years ago
Wow, you live in a literate neighbourhood!
About the only reading matter I ever find discarded on public transport are out-of-date racing form guides.
(Edited to fix code)
[ 04. April 2013, 06:56: Message edited by: Firenze ]
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
I found a torn up copy of it on the bus a few years ago
Wow, you live in a literate neighbourhood!
About the only reading matter I ever find discarded on public transport are out-of-date racing form guides.
(Edited to fix code)
Down-market scud mags as well, surely? Or is that just around here?
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
I tried to read "Three men in a boat" because it was reputed to be funny.
Yawnarama. I got about half way through.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
'Three Men in a Boat' was hilarious when I was 10 years old and it was read out loud to us, in instalments, by our teacher. Not sure that I'd want to read it now, as an adult.
I sometimes try to read children's stories to see what all the fuss is about. 'The boy in the blue pyjamas', for example, was epic. However, I tried, but really couldn't get into, the first Harry Potter book. I'm too old for Wizard Stories, even those that 'everyone' is supposed to read.
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
I don't think anyone's mentioned Philip Pullman yet - I've tried several times to read 'Northern Lights' but always grind to a halt after a few pages. I've decided life's too short and have given up.
M.
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Chorister mentioned Harry Potter. My sister* gave me the first two for a birthday a few years ago, and not being averse to the odd kids' book, I read the first one. Light, entertaining, derivative of course ('Hogwarts' from the St Custard's, human chess from The Prisoner), but well done. Then started the second one and realised that I couldn't care less about any of this. But then I suppose I was a good 25 years older than the presumed target readership.
*She went through a phase of giving me fashionable books that I couldn't stand. Gave me that tedious one about the dog that impaled itself on the garden fork because it could no longer stand (a) living in Swindon (b) living over the road from that tiresome autistic kid. By the time I'd read it I was looking at the garden fork too.
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Polly Plummer
Shipmate
# 13354
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Posted
5th Mary, if you thought the people in The Secret Garden were Cockney, you definitely missed the finer points of the book!
Posts: 577 | Registered: Jan 2008
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ArachnidinElmet
Shipmate
# 17346
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Posted
Re: Harry Potter. I was given all 7 books by a well meaning friend, and my mother who not-so-secretly wanted to read them herself. The first two (the shortest) were a struggle, the next two a little better, then I saw the size of book 5. It's the size of a phone book; you could kill someone with it. It remains unread taking up space on the bookcase better used for better books.
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'If a pleasant, straight-forward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres' - Kafka
Posts: 1887 | From: the rhubarb triangle | Registered: Sep 2012
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I never quite finished "The Three Musketeers", but I hope to do so.
That's another book that I feel semi-literate for never having read, but I console myself with a vague recollection that I read it as a child in comic form - I think they were called Classics Illustrated.
Dumas' (Dumas's?) The Count Of Monte Cristo is pretty cool - and readable.
Oh, mercy! "The Three Musketeers" is a f*cking hilarious book! I found a torn up copy of it on the bus a few years ago and took it home. I couldn't stop laughing, it was so witty and well-written.
I was a little surprised to see someone consider themselves less literary for never having read "The Three Musketeers." It's a great yarn, and definitely worth a read, but hardly high literature.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Might not be "high literature" but it is bloody long.
Same's true for The Count of Monte Cristo. I read or reread it a few years ago and I was surprised to find the bit about Edmond Dantes being the best hash dealer in Europe.
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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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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
I was a little surprised to see someone consider themselves less literary for never having read "The Three Musketeers." It's a great yarn, and definitely worth a read, but hardly high literature.
My term was literate (semi-literate, actually), not literary.
No, I suppose it's not "high literature", but then I was not suggesting that it was, only that it has a more or less recognised place in the Western canon.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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chive
Ship's nude
# 208
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Posted
As part of the mental I have strict rules about my life and one of them is that if I start a book I have to finish it no matter how rotten it is. That meant that I managed to read the complete works of Tolstoy last year which is something I never thought I'd manage. It does mean that I do read some crap though.
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'Edward was the kind of man who thought there was no such thing as a lesbian, just a woman who hadn't done one-to-one Bible study with him.' Catherine Fox, Love to the Lost
Posts: 3542 | From: the cupboard under the stairs | Registered: May 2001
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
I got through the first Game of Thrones book and there were only two characters I cared about. I've been lent the second one and really can't get into it, although my son in law assures me it's brilliant.
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.
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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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Pine Marten
Shipmate
# 11068
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by M.:
I don't think anyone's mentioned Philip Pullman yet - I've tried several times to read 'Northern Lights' but always grind to a halt after a few pages. I've decided life's too short and have given up.
M.
I had a box set of His Dark Materials and managed to read through the trilogy eventually - the first was ok, the second not bad (my preferred book of the three), but I had to force myself to get through the last book, it was so tedious and preachy. I put the box set on the secondhand book stall that we had at a street festival outside our church, and I was quite touched when a young boy bought it eagerly and went away very happily clutching it tightly. I do hope he enjoyed it more than I did.
I am another who can't get through Tolkien. An ex-boyfriend tried reading The Hobbit to me several times, but I kept falling asleep after a few pages.
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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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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
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.
[ 05. April 2013, 13:50: Message edited by: Trudy Scrumptious ]
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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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.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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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
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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.
Posts: 8913 | From: Page 28 | Registered: May 2001
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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.
Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
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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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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
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.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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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
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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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."
Posts: 2377 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2007
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