KEV67

I can see you can have up to ten options on a poll. In the Victober rules, you are allowed to read a work of literature that completes more than one challenge. I quite like that idea, because in the past the four organisers presented a challenge each, then there was a group challenge, and a read-along. That can amount to a lot of reading. Personally, all I am prepared to read is one long story, a shorter story, and some shorter works. such as essays or poems. However, some readers take on a lot. So how do you want to do this? Perhaps each participant (or first 10) issues a challenge. Then we present the challenges in a poll and the top three or four are picked?

The Victober challenges have been set: Read a book about the countryside or about the city Read a book with a female main character Read a sensation novel Read a popular Victorian book you have not read yet Read Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell I am not sure I like the challenges. In particular, I do not like the read a book about the countryside or the city challenge. Isn't that most Victorian novels. I don't like the read a popular Victorian book challenge neither because they have said that can be a book that was popular when it came out or a book that is popular now. Those are two quite different things. Nevertheless, I will read East Lynne, which is a sensation novel and a bestseller and has a female main character. It sounds quite interesting. I thought about reading Trilby by George du Maurier about a young artist's model called Trilby, which was extremely popular when it came out. I might read that another time. I will make a start on Framley Parsonage after East Lynne. I will not read all the Gothic Tales, but I might read Lois the Witch. I am not sure I like the sound of it, though. I considered reading Agnes Grey, which is also quite short.

Interesting, it was written as a screenplay in the 70s but rejected. So the author turned it into a book and tried to pitch it as a screenplay again. Lots of actors have been pitched for the starring role, including Arnold Schwarzegger and Pierce Brosnan. Makes you wonder what sort of film it would be.

Richard Pevear, who was one of the translators of my copy of War and Peace wrote about he translation in the introduction. He used the example of "Kapli kapali," which he translates as "Drops dripped." Other translations have been "The branches dripped," "The trees were dripping," and "Raindrops dripped." Pevear also said Tolstoy deliberately repeated words, where as English translators have been taught it is bad style so use different words. There was another example in which some children were playing at travelling by coach to Moscow. The translators usually spell out that they are playing, while the original assumes the reader understands that without saying. I read The Count of Monte Cristo a couple of years ago. I could not find the name of the translator in my copy of the book, but it was a superb translation. The best thing about the book is the sparkling dialogue, which I doubt could have been any better in the original French.

I have started reading The Red and the Black by Stendhal. I read in the introduction that Marie-Henri Beyle (Stendhal's real name) was one of the French officers that retreated from Russia in 1812, which I have just been reading about in War and Peace. What are the chances of that?

Which poem would you like read out at your funeral? It's the done thing these days. Obviously you don't ask a question like this without having an answer of your own. Mine is The Rolling English Road by G.K. Chesterton, which combines my love of country with my love of boozing: Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire, And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire; A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head. I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire, And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire; But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made, Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands, The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands. His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun? The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which, But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch. God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier. My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage, Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age, But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth, And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death; For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen, Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

I quite liked Norwegian Wood although it was very sad. It made me want to visit those Japanese mountains. I am sure I started reading an Earthsea book when I was a boy, but I think it was a bit past my reading age. I found it rather strange and unsettling. Come to think of it, I found Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness rather strange and I was about 45 when I read it.

You're right. I'll scratch Faulkner.

Got to say I am not enjoying the epilogues much. The second is mostly a boring essay on social science. The first was mostly a boring essay on the limitations of history writing. The first epilogue is slightly interesting in that it contains traces of the book Tolstoy originally intended to write. Just got seven more pages of the second epilogue, and Tolstoy's appendix, then that's another big beast whose head I can mount on the wall

I was just reading the blurb of Whiskey When We're Dry (which I am currently reading). Guess what? It is currently in development for a feature film. I don't know if that means for sure it will be a feature film. I have a theory the reason why there are not many classic Western books is that they all get turned into films almost immediately. Regarding the scope of Westerns, would the forum consider The Last of the Mohicans a Western? I started reading, but I can't remember if I finished it. I remember it being pretty good. I watched the film with Daniel Day Lewis. I was impressed with his ability to run long distances very fast.

I have tried reading Dracula before. I did not like it and gave it up, but I will try it again. I am thinking about reading something by John Faulkner because of the Great American Novel. I gather he used to write them, or at leàst one of them.

Now that I have read (almost) War and Peace, and having read (but not understood) Ulysses last year, I feel I have read most the great books. Now it's just Dante, Shakespeare, Beowulf and the Greeks, but maybe I don't have to worry about them. However, I still have a bit of a TBR to conclude my getting well read project: Clarissa by Samuel Richardson Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky Les Miserables by Victor Hugo A La Recherche du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust (do I have to?) Paradise Lost by John Milton Something by John Faulkner (do I really have to?) Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (not looking forward to this) Something by D.H. Lawrence Dracula by Bram Stoker

Whiskey When We're all Dry is turning out better than I thought. There is something to be said about the Wild West. There are the vast spaces without much in the way of law. People were well armed. People were desperate. It was probably not a unique environment in those ways, but I cannot think of any quite the same. Sword and sandals books aren't quite the same. King Arthur books or Medieval books about knights aren't the same. Most the fighting is done by armies in those books. There's not so much private enterprise.

So many people are put off from reading Dickens by school. I was put off him. I decided to give him another chance on his 200th anniversary, by reading Great Expectations. It was the most moving book I've ever read. Bleak House comes near it in that's it's so well written. I have read about another six of his books. They all have something but none were be as good as Great Expectations and Bleak House in my view.

I often feel ghost stories lack punch. They are often quite short for one thing. Another thing is that ghosts have a difficult time interacting with the living while remaining strictly ghosts. They can transmit information, but quite often they are stuck in their own time loop, and ignore the living world. On the other hand, they are the supernatural entity you are most likely to meet in your earthly life. Well, you might only think you meet them, but you are far more unlikely to meet any vampires, werewolves, zombies, minor deities, or devils. Come to think of it, you might meet a witch or a warlock, but whether those witches and warlocks can actually effect any real magic, probably not. Stephen King does ghosts quite a bit. There were ghosts in Bleak House and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. My favourite ghost story is actually, GBH by Ted Lewis, which is mostly a crime story.

Does anyone do Victober? It's a BookTube (YouTube) thing. Katie from Books and Things and three other readers with YouTube channels mount a series of Victorian literature challenges. It's either a lot of fun, or a lot of reading. Last year the challenges were to read something by an author you'd liked before, to read a Victorian collection of letters or diary, to read something you'd been putting off for a long time, to read something in your favourite genre, and to read Shirley by Charlotte Brontë. Then you discuss them on GoodReads. I don't always feel the challenges are very scientifically selected. OTOH, it's a rare opportunity to discuss Victorian literature with other people. It takes place in October. I am guessing the group read will be Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell: she's well ahead in the poll. I don't know what the other challenges are yet. I hope one of them will allow me to read Framley Parsonage, because that's on my TBR shelf.

What does the forum think of him? I have read several short stories, including Daisy Miller and Turn of the Screw. I was not very keen on either. He is often well represented in greatest books of al time lists. A Portrait of a Lady is supposed to be good.

Just Volume 4, part 4 and the epilogue to read. It turned into an appraisal of history for a while. I don't know what historians think of Tolstoy as a historian.

Started reading a western called Whisky When We're Dry by John Larison. It's about a girl who's an amazing shot. No doubt she offs a load of bad guys when she gets a bit older. That's a thing I've noticed: even the westerns you can still buy in bookshops, with the big exception of Lonesome Dove, are a twist on the old macho western. I think Blood Meridian subverts the genre, but I have not read it yet. The last western I thought I was reading turned into some weird western/horror/sci-fi mash-up (Beyond the Horizon, Ryan Ireland). You can still buy True Grit by Charles Portis, which is a great book, but that's largely about a girl too.

There was a sad bit in War and Peace where one of the main characters dies. I deliberately did not read it on the train, because I was worried about blubbing. In the event I didn't blubb. I can't remember many times when I've blubbed reading stuff, but the last chapter of Watership Down does it for me. I don't know why, because it's a good an ending as you'd want for a rabbit getting on in years. It comforts me that it probably means Watership Down is actually a good book. I read it lots of times as a boy, but the last time I tried to read it as an adult, it seemed very old-fashioned. It is, however, one of only three books I have read in which a believable religion has been built by the author for its characters. The other two were by Ursula Le Guin for The Left Hand of Darkness, and J.R.R. Tolkein for The Simarilion, which was a sort of Bible for Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Actually, come to think of it, I blubbed the penultimate chapter of The Hobbit.

I have heard a lot about it but I've never been. What's it like? Is it like Glastonbury? Can you camp?

You obviously have no soul.

This can be a bit embarrassing when in a coffee shop or on the train. SPOILERS I did cry the last chapter of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Moreover, I have always teared up every time I read the last chapter of Watership Down. It's not much of a spoiler: rabbits don't live a very long time.

I sometimes hear that a book loses something in translation. For instance, that War and Peace, great book that it is, is better in Russian. Mind you, War and Peace contains a lot of French, and I can read most the French. I did suspect The Brothers Karamazov lost something in translation. When a book is written in verse, I cannot see how it can be translated accurately. I think a bigger problem is when you have characters who speak colloquially or with accents, or have mannerisms of speech. In Huckleberry Finn, Jim speaks with southern, black accent. Huck speaks with a back woods accent. Most the characters speak with, what I read was, a Pine County accent. A Brazilian on another book forum said these accents were translated into standard Portuguese.

They used to sell several books by Ira Levin. I was not aware he had written so many famous books. I did not know he'd written The Boys from Brazil, Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives. They are all more famous as films. I read Stepford Wives. I did not think it was as good as the film. I also bought The Talented Mr Ripley and White Teeth from there. I don't like all their range, but it is quite interesting what they think will most appeal to their customer base.