Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Arts and Entertainment => Topic started by: Deano on 12 January, 2009, 09:03:29 pm
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You know what I mean - those thick tomes and improving books which people say you need to read and which you haven't, won't or don't want to read.
I'll nominate On the Road by Jack Kerouac - I tried to read it when I was about 20, and I couldn't. A cheerless parade of tedious, drugged-up tossers trudging from miserable place to miserable destination, with added gimcrack philosophy. And it was more dated than the flat earth theory.
I haven't read Finnegan's Wake, either, but I'm doubtful that anyone has.
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A long list.
Anything by Dickens
The Catcher In The Rye
Catch-22
Any corseted chick lit by George Eliot/the Brontes/Jane Austen
Ulysses, obviously (because no-one has - they just buy it and it sits on the shelf until they die)
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Dostoyevsky. Repeated attempts, but it's no use - I just switch off.
Iris Murdoch. Maybe I'll appreciate it more when I'm older.
Oddly enough, I have actually read Ulysses - every single goddamn page of it. It was the only book I had with me on a safari in Malawi, and the enforced lack of any other reading material is probably the only way anyone's ever going to finish it.
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Aye. I too have read Ulysses. Ironically it took me a day less than a year. My syntax has been irrevocably ruined and I now want to insert umpteen commas, hyphens and assorted colons in every sentence to compensate.
Never read Dickens or Brontë. No desire to either.
I want to read the Canterbury Tales but suspect it will be a while before I manage it.
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Catch-22 also.
Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake also.
War and Peace
A Tale of Two Cities - I usually romp through Dickens but got mired with this one.
Capt Corelli's Mandolin - does that count?
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I've read Ulysses - and one summer I ploughed my way through the whole of Proust.
I can't really recommend it. I just ended up with a hearty loathing of self-centred hypochondriacs.
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Catch-22
I actually enjoyed that.
Any corseted chick lit
Mmm, corsets :)
But otherwise no intention of reading my wife's large collection of Austen.
War and Peace holds no appeal either.
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Agreed on Jack Kerouac (self-absorbed drivel) and Dostoyevsky (the very definition of tedium).
But Roger, you are doing yourself a disservice - most of what you mention is actually fantastic reading. You're also wholly misguided to describe George Eliot as "chick lit" - give Middlemarch a try, it's awesome.
I've not read Ulysses in its entirety, but I have read passages of that and others of his, and from what I've read, I think I rather like Joyce's style. It's a damn sight more digestible than Kerouac, at least.
Jezza, I've also been contemplating giving Iris Murdoch a go lately. Let me know how you get on.
d.
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Nonono, you've missed the point of Dostoyevsky. I read the murder passage from C&P to a class of fifteen year olds, and they were so entranced that they didn't want to go when the bell rang - they asked for more. And it wasn't my reading that was gripping them.
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I did read War and Peace as a young teenager and avid reader, but afterwards I still wasn't sure of the story line. It was just so complicated, with so much happening for so long, that the words sort of went in and then straight out again :-\
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Moby Dick. Keep meaning to.
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Not read anything by Proust or Joyce. In both cases, started, but decided being able to say I'd read 'em wasn't worth the unutterable tedium of actually doing it. Ariadne summed 'em up nicely. Ditto Kerouac. Joyce had little nuggets of purely linguistic pleasure, but there was too much wading through verbal sludge to get to 'em.
Never read anything by any Bronte except some of the poetry. Tried Eliot in my book-devouring youth, but couldn't take to her. I did manage some Dostoyevsky, & even Sholokov, from my grandmothers bookshelves. I think the imagery & exoticism made them palatable, even at the age of 12. Ditto with Tolstoy.
Are the works of Iris Murdoch considered classics now? If so. they're on my "not read" list.
What else? I've never read Pamela, but didn't need to to appreciate Fieldings piss-take of it. Which reminds me - there are still Fielding novels I haven't read. Yet. And of Elizabeth Gaskell, I've only read Mary Barton.
What about classics read, but since regretted?
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I want to read "Rebecca"
I keep hearing that opening line - and it calls to me.
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These two have been sitting in my 'to read' stack for over three years!
1) Machiavelli's - The Prince
2) Conrad - Nostromo
Other books keep barging in front though, I will try and read them soon.
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Moby Dick. Keep meaning to.
I've started it twice and not managed to get past page 200. It is good, though, I just get distracted by other books.
Lord of the Rings: didn't manage to get past the first chapter. Dull dull dull!
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I read the murder passage...
I admit I gave up before I got that far. Perhaps I'll give it another go one day. Or perhaps I won't. I know which is more likely.
d.
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I've been about 12 pages into The Count of Monte Cristo for a year now.
The language is so flowery its best read aloud...
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Lord of the Rings: didn't manage to get past the first chapter. Dull dull dull!
Read it when you're 11 or 12. I did (found The Hobbit in my primary school library, read it, then went looking for more by the same author), & loved it. I still have the 3 volume hardback edition I was given for Christmas around then.
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My mum used to rave about Heidi. I should sit down and read that one day.
Moby Dick, our little book club tried reading it, but bad things kept happening to people, car crashes, lost luggage etc. So it was declared a cursed book, and we vowed never to try read it again.
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I have read War and Peace (on my second time through at present) it's good.
Haven't read any Dickins, Brionte or to my shame any Hardy.
Have had a stab at "The Prince" but failed to finish it.
Have read Catch 22 - Brilliant
On the Road - OK when your 16 a nit silly when your 40 but describes a period well.
Have bought but not yet read Canterbury Tales and Pilgrims Progress.
Gibbons "Decline and Fall" is on the pile waiting to be read as is one volume of Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples".
Shakespeare I don't bother with at all, I love him but don't like reading plays.
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I read the murder passage...
I admit I gave up before I got that far. Perhaps I'll give it another go one day. Or perhaps I won't. I know which is more likely.
d.
Crime and Punishment is by far my favourite book. If you can read it intensively enough, you really become drawn in. I was "Raskolnikov" and I was terrified of being discovered.
I don't think it works if youonly dip into it from time to time.
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If it was written before 1900, chances are I haven't read it. Books written before 1900 rarely have explosions, helicopters or film adaptations starring Bruce Willis.
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Any corseted chick lit by George Eliot/the Brontes/Jane Austen
Eliot and Austen only turn into chick lit when transcribed to television, because the brilliance and (particularly in Austen's case) wit of the writing are lost. Probably most of the complexity of Eliot's sub-plots are also lost on screen.
If you want a readable Bronte, try Charlotte's 'Shirley'. The story of an independent woman who was christened with a boys' name.
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I never read Goethe's Faust during the time I was studying German. We were told it was unthinkable to study for a degree in German without reading it, but I managed.
Never read any Hardy, Bronte, Eliot or Austen.
I'm with torussa on Crime and Punishment - I couldn't put it down. I've got several other Dostoyevskis lined up.
I've also read most Dickens (but could never get into Pickwick Papers).
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I had a brief desire to read some Conrad, I went down to the library and found neither hide nor hair.
Damon.
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I read the murder passage...
I admit I gave up before I got that far. Perhaps I'll give it another go one day. Or perhaps I won't. I know which is more likely.
d.
Crime and Punishment is by far my favourite book. If you can read it intensively enough, you really become drawn in. I was "Raskolnikov" and I was terrified of being discovered.
I don't think it works if youonly dip into it from time to time.
Yes! That's it - you do become Raskolnikov. And it was my favourite novel for a long, long time.
If you can't get into it, I would recommend reading 'Notes from Underground' or 'House of the Dead' first.
My confession:
I had a huge collection of Dostoyevsky, and I read it all except The Idiot, which I couldn't get into at all, and The Manor of Stepanchikovo, which kept calling me, but I never started :-[
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...1) Machiavelli's - The Prince...
Don't bother. You're not missing much.
Other books keep barging in front though, I will try and read them soon.
Relax, and read those instead :)
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Remember those Readers Digest abridged classics ? What was the point in those then ? Why would you want to read a bowdlerized version of a book rather than the actual book ?
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Well, having read the full version of Gulliver's Travels, I'm rather glad there was an abridged version for when I was a sensitive minor! :o
Seriously, Superstoker enjoys classic novels, but he struggled with the Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo etc, but very much enjoyed some carefully abridged versions.
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I'm starting to suspect that classics do date - my 2 are not the slightest bit enthused by most of the things I read as a child (and not just 'cos it was girly) eg Swallows and Amazons series, John MAsefiled (though I only really enjoyed Jim Davis), Alan Villiers, RH Dana, my favourite Hdgson Burnett was 'the lost prince' which seems to have faded into oblivion. Also stuff like Baroness Orczy.
(you will have spotted that I went for the historical novel genre).
to the original question, I can no longer remember what I have and havent read, I know I read Brothers Karamazov but can't remember any other Dostoievsky, some Turgenev (I read Fathers and Sons, everyone else read Sons and Lovers (forgot author)).
It took me several years to get beyond the first page of Redgauntlet (Scott) and I can still quote the beginning (I'll spare you).
I am getting lazy and may never get around to reading the rest of Chaucer, though I have his complete works, the Parliament of Fowls is supposed to be good. Also les Chansons do Roland, Mallory, Froissart.
I have no desire whatsoever to read the confessions of St Augustine.
I would like to read Requiem pro un campesino espanol without recourse to a dictionary.
And I have read Ulysses, the 'no punctuation' bit is just hype - after all, there isn't punctuation in spoken word either, the brain inserts it - which is what my brain did with Ulysses.
I also read the Gulag Archipelago (age 13/14) though I think this isn't a classic.
JB Priestly - has anyone even heard of him now?
Orwell seems to have been reduced to Animal Farm and 1984
etc.
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My favourite Orwell is Down and Out in Paris and London. Never got round to the Road to Wigan Pier though.
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I've read it all. Even "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" and the Penguin four volume set of the collected letters, essays and journalism.
I was a bit of a fan about 25 years ago.
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Read the lot (except for the essays, etc) in my early teens, along with many other books. Discovering girls & beer cut down my reading a lot.
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I have no desire whatsoever to read the confessions of St Augustine.
But it is great. Obviously he is a bit repressed but hey
As for "classics" I haven't read
Vanity Fair. I started it, was amused but I then started something else and the copy I had vanished
War and Peace. I've read a lot of other Tolstoy but not the "big one"
The Interpretation of Dreams. I've had a copy for approx 15 years but never got around to it
The Masks of God. I've read "the hero with a 1000 faces" and I started the masks of god, but read someat else instead
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I love classics and often tend to go for them rather than modern stuff.
There are some I haven't read but not many that I haven't read but want to read (or feel that I should).
Joyce and War and Peace are the main big omissions.
My favourites are:
Dickens - read all and loved most. Perfect as a book for Tube journeys and (done well) great for TV.
Fielding - Tom Jones is the most brilliant novel ever.
Thackeray - I used to love Kubrick's film of Barry Lyndon until I read the book and realised he'd butchered it. However I've never liked Vanity Fair, and have made several attempts at reading it.
Crime and Punishment is extraordinary, I can't see how anyone doesn't find it fascinating.
Austen is also brilliant and so perfectly written - I don't bother with TV versions.
The Brontes are uneven but brilliant in parts.
DH Lawrence I read but never liked.
Conrad is over-rated I think, other than Heart of Darkness and frankly you might as well watch Apocalypse Now in which Kubrick makes up for what he did to Barry Lyndon.
Orwell of course.
Have read most of the modern Americans - apart from On The Road (I'm not sure it is a classic really). Catch 22, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Mice and Men etc. Apart from Catch 22 none of them grabbed me.
Solzhenitsyn I think counts as a classic, certainly the Gulag Archipelago. Not easy but an enduring work I think.
And I will never ever again try to read Gabriel f**king Garcia f**king Marquez or Isabel c**ting Allende.
To Arabella's post, I've been quite pleased that my kids have enjoyed adventure classics. Maybe you just need to try something different. Depends on age and inclination of course but my boys, especially the middle one who is only just nine have loved being read classic books that they wouldn't read themselves. We've done:
Treasure Island and Kidnapped - not easy reads for children with the older language and Scots dialect but cracking stories.
Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer - also need occasional translation.
Conan Doyle - Hound of the Baskervilles is great. Meaning to try The Lost World at some point.
Currently on Jules Verne - Around the World in 80 Days and probably Journey to the Center next.
My
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I've been about 12 pages into The Count of Monte Cristo for a year now.
The language is so flowery its best read aloud...
Depends on the translation. I read the Penguin translation and loved it. A friend was griping about how dull they found the book, so I looked at her translation. It was an american edition which had completely missed out all the irony and totally lost the point of half of the converstations. I had a similar experience with "Phantom of the Opera" (though in that case I was the fool who had bought the american translation, because it had a shinier cover :-[ ).
Rule of literature: don't read American translations of french novels. American translators don't seem as tuned to french humour as British translators.
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Wuthering Heights.
Well I say haven't - I did start once but binned it because it was depressing and written in a grinding venacular I found tedious.
But thats just me.
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Wuthering Heights.
Well I say haven't - I did start once but binned it because it was depressing and written in a grinding venacular I found tedious.
But thats just me.
It's not just you - I hated it (but finished it in the vain hope that there was some spark of hope for some of the characters). The other Brontes works are not bad.
I have just finished my dissertation, which has been about the London Library, and its stuffed full of writers (past and present) whose works I should have read:
Belloc
Conrad
Shaw
Eliot
Kipling
Fielding
Woolf
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And I will never ever again try to read Gabriel f**king Garcia f**king Marquez or Isabel c**ting Allende.
Just shows, dunnit. I agree with you about DH Lawrence, but I do like Marquez, and the odd bits I've read of Allende
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I've read every Hardy novel. Even "A Laodicean", which is poo.
That's the equivalent (to rip off Christopher Brookmyre) of being a Queen fan and having "Hot Space" in your collection.
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DNFs:
On The Road - seemed very dull, and I confess I couldn't read it without punctuation
Riddle of the Sands - (probably a 2nd Div classic, but still dull)
The Kite Runner - (again, a bit marginal.)
Grapes of Wrath
Finished and Loved:
Catch 22 (Hilarious yet moving. The sequel was another DNF)
... Mockingbird
Mice and Men
Zen ... Maintenance (does this count?)
There must have been others, but until my bibliophile partner made me start a book diary I forget 2/3rds of what I read. (or start).
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I rarely DNF anything, but Foucault's Pendulum bored me rigid.
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Whereas I DNF loads of books.
When I was younger I used to start books, really enjoy them for a while and then about 3/4 of the way through, lose interest. I would then force my way through the rest due to some sort of mistaken guilt reverence for "the book".
Luckily, I now feel able to do what I like.
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I love classics and often tend to go for them rather than modern stuff.
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Conrad is over-rated I think, other than Heart of Darkness and frankly you might as well watch Apocalypse Now in which Kubrick makes up for what he did to Barry Lyndon.
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Strange - I love Conrad. I found Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and especially Nostromo utterly absorbing.
Otherwise, I agree with most of what you said. And you've reminded me to read Tom Jones.
(BTW, Coppola directed Apocalypse Now, not Kubrick)
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Any corseted chick lit by George Eliot/the Brontes/Jane Austen
Eliot and Austen only turn into chick lit when transcribed to television, because the brilliance and (particularly in Austen's case) wit of the writing are lost. Probably most of the complexity of Eliot's sub-plots are also lost on screen.
If you want a readable Bronte, try Charlotte's 'Shirley'. The story of an independent woman who was christened with a boys' name.
I don't think any film versions of them come over well, for the reasons you state. I recently read Great Expectations for the first time, having seen bits of the various film and TV versions. Lovely though David Lean's film looks, it completely misses the charm and wit of Pip the narrator.
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The only DNF in the Library at present is The Trial. There's a couple of DNSs, but only The Poetic Edda is likely to pass muster as a classic.
On checking a recent list of Books Published By My Employers Which Have Won Major Awards, I was not sure whether to be appalled or gratifed that the number of them I have actually read is this: 0.
I am a Palestinian Philistine.
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You didn't finish The Trial?! :o
Easier not to have started, but I thought it stood out from a lot of turgid crap that passes for classics.
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You didn't finish The Trial?! :o
Easier not to have started, but I thought it stood out from a lot of turgid crap that passes for classics.
I had to start it, coz it was a present from Matthias Who Is Called Oscar (who was staying with us at the time), but by about halfway I found myself not really caring about what happened to Josef K.
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I rarely DNF anything, but Foucault's Pendulum bored me rigid.
+1 for that, I cant think of a more pretentious book. I DNF'd on War & Peace too.
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Fielding - Tom Jones is the most brilliant novel ever.
Thackeray - I used to love Kubrick's film of Barry Lyndon until I read the book and realised he'd butchered it. However I've never liked Vanity Fair, and have made several attempts at reading it.
Similarly, it was Lindsay Anderson's brilliant film that made me want to read Tom Jones. Likewise, I soon realised that the film was totally different to the book. I still love the film but I love the book even more - it is one of the funniest things I've ever read, not to mention one of the rudest (I don't think you could get away with filming half of what happens in the book without giving it an R18 certificate).
I've seen the film of Barry Lyndon but not read the book.
Austen is also brilliant and so perfectly written - I don't bother with TV versions.
Some of the TV versions are good (Persuasion with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds was brilliant) but they usually bear only a passing resemblance to the books. Austen is a bitingly funny and clever writer and that is always lost in the screen adaptations. One of the worst screen versions was Andrew Davies' take on Emma, which left out key episodes in favour of gratuitous dancing scenes, and interpreted other episodes in such a way as to miss the point of most of the scene entirely.
I love Jane Austen - well, all of her books except Northanger Abbey.
DH Lawrence I read but never liked.
Bloody awful. I once got top marks off my English teacher for a parody of Lady Chatterly's Lover, which I'm very proud of.
Have read most of the modern Americans - apart from On The Road (I'm not sure it is a classic really). Catch 22, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Mice and Men etc. Apart from Catch 22 none of them grabbed me.
The best of 20th Century American literature is just about as good as literature gets - but you've missed the very best exponent out of your list, namely F Scott Fitzgerald. I always assumed The Great Gatsby had to be overrated until I actually read it. I'm also a huge fan of Raymond Chandler, who owes a lot to Fitzgerald (as do Philip Roth and the rest of them).
d.
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I rarely DNF anything, but Foucault's Pendulum bored me rigid.
It took me about 50 pages to get going then I thought it was a real page turner
Mind you, I like most of Ecos stuff. "The Island of the day before" wasn't too great though :)
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I cant believe no one has mentioned Ernest Hemingway yet. I loved The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls but really haven't got round to any of the rest.
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I cant believe no one has mentioned Ernest Hemingway yet. I loved The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls but really haven't got round to any of the rest.
In my last comment about C20th American authors, I knew there was a name I was missing but I couldn't put my finger on it...
d.
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Austen is also brilliant and so perfectly written - I don't bother with TV versions.
Some of the TV versions are good (Persuasion with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds was brilliant) but they usually bear only a passing resemblance to the books. Austen is a bitingly funny and clever writer and that is always lost in the screen adaptations. One of the worst screen versions was Andrew Davies' take on Emma, which left out key episodes in favour of gratuitous dancing scenes, and interpreted other episodes in such a way as to miss the point of most of the scene entirely.
I love Jane Austen - well, all of her books except Northanger Abbey.
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Persuasion, in my opinion, is her best written work - Northhanger Abbey I did not get at all. The Amanda Root/Ciaran Hinds 'Persuasion' was much better than the Rupert Penry-Jones one. Pride and Prejudice is brilliantly funny - Mr Bennett nearly has all the best lines!
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I've read every Hardy novel. Even "A Laodicean", which is poo.
That's the equivalent (to rip off Christopher Brookmyre) of being a Queen fan and having "Hot Space" in your collection.
I am that Queen fan, but I haven't read A Laodicean. I struggle with Hardy's novels - I much prefer his poetry.
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I struggle with Hardy's novels - I much prefer his poetry.
So did he.
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I struggle with Hardy's novels - I much prefer his poetry.
I prefer his bike :thumbsup:
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I've seen the film of Barry Lyndon but not read the book.
Oh if you liked Tom Jones you'll enjoy Barry Lyndon.
My bad on Apocalypse Now (and no redemption for Kubrick). Point remains the same though - a rare case of a film that I think is actually better than a classic book.
Some of the TV versions are good (Persuasion with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds was brilliant) but they usually bear only a passing resemblance to the books. Austen is a bitingly funny and clever writer and that is always lost in the screen adaptations. One of the worst screen versions was Andrew Davies' take on Emma, which left out key episodes in favour of gratuitous dancing scenes...
I keep thinking of the dancing scenes in The Armstrong and Miller show.
The best of 20th Century American literature is just about as good as literature gets - but you've missed the very best exponent out of your list, namely F Scott Fitzgerald. I always assumed The Great Gatsby had to be overrated until I actually read it. I'm also a huge fan of Raymond Chandler, who owes a lot to Fitzgerald (as do Philip Roth and the rest of them).
Yes true I do like F Scott Fitgerald though the Great Gatsby is really his only classic innit.
Hemingway also, and I'm not averse to Saul Bellow but again, it isn't that I don't like them they just don't grab me in the way that Tom Jones, P&P, Crime and Punishment or Hard Times have, where I want to tell everyone how much I loved it.
And I adore Raymond Chandler. Very little would give me greater pleasure than to hear of the discovery in an attic of a box filled with unpublished Chandler novels. I just wasn't sure it would count as a classic in the sense of the OP.
And anyone in the above posts who put Captain Corelli's Mandolin or the Kite Runner will be damned to suffer eternity in a book club meeting every Tuesday in purgatory.
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Captain Corelli's Mandolin
I thought it was rather good. But perhaps not a Classic in the same vein.
I have to agree above with Apocalypse Now. Heart of Darkness seemed rather turgid compared to it.
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I think Vanity Fair is the only classic I've failed to get through.
The only Austen I've read is Emma. I suppose I may get round to the others.
I think I've read all of Dickens' novels and may well do again.
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I rarely DNF anything, but Foucault's Pendulum bored me rigid.
Just kept going with no changes of pace all the way through? ;)
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And I adore Raymond Chandler. Very little would give me greater pleasure than to hear of the discovery in an attic of a box filled with unpublished Chandler novels. I just wasn't sure it would count as a classic in the sense of the OP.
ChrisO - I left it deliberately vague, so we're not tied into a Leavisite canon. So I started with Kerouac, borderline at best.
And I'd say there's no doubt about Chandler's classic status - he definitely had a classical, elegant style to his writing. And Marlowe is one of the great creations of 20th century fiction.
Anyway - I was going through some old books which have lurked at the backs of shelves, so I can add a couple which I haven't read. Yet. I'll stand them somewhere prominent as a reminder:
To Kill a Mockingbird (I saw it was already mentioned, but it was only 75p in the local Oxfam)
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Stern (another charity shop find)
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
I don't know why I haven't read these - they're just books which I've forgotten about as I've gone onto something else. All bought because they seemed to be books I should read. Maybe they are.
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And I adore Raymond Chandler. Very little would give me greater pleasure than to hear of the discovery in an attic of a box filled with unpublished Chandler novels. I just wasn't sure it would count as a classic in the sense of the OP.
As Deano says, Chandler is definitely "classic" - not least for defining a genre and remaining unsurpassed within it. Much parodied, nevefr bettered.
d.
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I think everyone should read "The Rachel Papers", "Money" and "London Fields" by Martin Amis, but I know some people can't get on with the clever-clever style and vocabulary. I'm sure they'll all be regarded as classics in a few decades' time, although they're thrillingly nasty compared to the stuff mentioned above. "Success" is also a brilliant and ingeniously constructed short novel, but his later stuff isn't so accessible.
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War and Peace holds no appeal either.
Apart from the over-analytical bits at the end, I enjoyed War & Peace. Great for historical background (from the Russian perspective, of course) and context fro the whole sad attempt by Napoleon to inflict his will on the Russian people.
I've never read anything by Shakespeare.
I started the Dice Man, but got so pissed off with it, that it just sits there.
I read loads of the classics when I was in Sweden, but for the same reason as everyone has mentioned, it was 20 years ago - no ebooks then - and they were all the library had.
Anyone read Eyvind Johnson or Vilhelm Moberg?
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We don't seem to have mentioned much science fiction have we ?
I suspect it suffers from being interesting and popular and therefore more difficult to count as a classic.
My 12 year old son, who reads a lot anyway, was looking for a book to read on the plane on the way back from Abu Dhabi.
Knowing he liked the film I pointed out a copy of I Robot on the shelf and he exclaimed "Oh really, there's a book of it !"
Cue explanation of Asimov and the Laws of Robotics and that it had been around for quite some time, even before I was born in the days when we had no internet and had to fend off woolly mammoths.
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Despite not liking Asimov's politics (nor his fondness for a cheap pun, as in a lot of the short stories - don't get me onto the Sakkaros! ::-) ), I enjoyed a lot of his writing, and IMO, I, Robot and the Foundation Trilogy count as classics...
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I think everyone should read "The Rachel Papers", "Money" and "London Fields" by Martin Amis, but I know some people can't get on with the clever-clever style and vocabulary.
That's me, that is. I did get to the end of "London Fields" eventually, but it was bloody hard work, and I never did understand why Keith Talent's Cavalier was always described as being "heavy".
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I tried to read Stevenson's "Treasure Island" but got bored because I felt nothing was really happening. The other classic I tried & gave up with was Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"; I couldn't get on with the writing style and I gave up because I couldn't figure out what (if anything) was going on in the story. Ooo, & I also gave up on Solzhenitsyn's "August 1914" (tho whether it's old enough to be classed as a classic is datable). The first section was brilliant and then he seemed to get bogged down with the general just charging around on horseback from battlefield to battlefield.
I've never read any works by Austin or Dickens, but I'd like to give them a go at some point. I ended up reading quite a few classics during my two fieldwork trips to China because that was the only stuff the English book shop in Lanzhou stocked. God knows why, because it isn't the sort of stuff that's particular easy to read for people who are learning English as a foreign language :-\ It was great for me, tho and I ended up reading a variety of stuff, inc.
- Elliot's "The Mill on the Floss", which I was initially sceptical about but in the end thought it was brilliant
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles - tragic but wonderfully written & I've since read Jude the Obscure
- Lady Chatterley's Lover
- "The Invisible Man" by HG Wells (keeps Chris O happy as it's a science fiction book :D)
- "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne - gave up on it
I think everyone should read "The Rachel Papers", "Money" and "London Fields" by Martin Amis, but I know some people can't get on with the clever-clever style and vocabulary
The only book I've read by him is London Fields, again when I was in China. It enjoyed it, but not enough to encourage me to go off and read more books by Amis.
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If Martin Amis's tossed-off trash are classics, then they are classics I shall not read. I got part way through Time's Arrow before I realised it was just a small good idea wrapped around with the author's smug self-congratulation, and that I would never get those hours back.
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If Martin Amis's tossed-off trash are classics, then they are classics I shall not read. I got part way through Time's Arrow before I realised it was just a small good idea wrapped around with the author's smug self-congratulation, and that I would never get those hours back.
Time's Arrow wasn't even his own idea.
I liked The Rachel Papers but I read it when I was 17, which is the right age to read it - much older and I doubt I'd have been nearly so impressed. It does have some great lines, though.
d.
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I got through abour 40 pages of London fields, after picking it up from a Freecycle chap. Not for me. :-\
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Erm. . .
. . . all of the above, I think!
Certainly no Dickens. Only Shakespeare was 12th Night for O-level literature. Only Thomas Hardy was likewise ('The Mayor of Casterbridge')
No Dostoyevsky, Solzhenytsin or other Eastern 'classics'. No Bronte, Catherine Cookson (fishheads and heaving bosom) or any of that bolleaux. No Kerouac, Sartre or pseudo classix moderne, a total croque de IMHO.
Read loads of Freddie Forsyth, thoughbut. ;)
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Oh Yeah. Forgot.
No Frank McCourt - or any other of that kind of 'Four Yorkshiremen sketch' genre of literature. ::-)
None of those books that seemed to feature in Asda/WalMart's top 20 over this summer.* (Want a top seller in Asda's top 10? Write a story about child abuse as a retrospective kind of biography, fact or fiction, doesn't matter.) :sick:
J
*Yo! Asda! Aint gonna be your BITCH!!!!!
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If Martin Amis's tossed-off trash are classics, then they are classics I shall not read. I got part way through Time's Arrow before I realised it was just a small good idea wrapped around with the author's smug self-congratulation, and that I would never get those hours back.
Time's Arrow isn't great.
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I've not read the Tale of Genji (& if anyone has - in full - I'd like to know), nor The Narrow Road to the Deep North, but I intend to read the latter.
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1,000 novels everyone must read (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/1000novels).
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Aagh! Crappy web design! Where's the fricking list?