KEV67
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Posts posted by KEV67
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When reading a long classic, say Bleak House, I just try to read a chapter a day. Some of these books have 70 chapters or more. I think The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling had well over 100 chapters but they were quite short, so I might have read two chapters a day for that one. That means some books take me a couple of months to get through, but I usually read several books concurrently.
I have recently bought Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. It is huge. I also want to read War and Peace this year. So I doubt I will get to many other classics this year.
I read Ulysses by James Joyce last year, which was a real struggle. Not only was it very long, not only did I not understand most of it, not only was I bored by some of the bits I did understand, but the chapters were long. I just read ten pages a day, stopping on the first full stop on the tenth page.
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It was a great book. Whoever did the translation for my copy did a great job. I enjoyed the wit and intelligence in the conversations. The plot is over the top. I wondered at one point, maybe more than one point, where it was going and whether a plot hole had opened up. Maybe it was not a plot hole or maybe it was a plot hole but was noticed and patched up. Edmond Dante served revenge on everyone who betrayed him in a way that suited the form of their betrayal, but he was very severe. It started off slow, but it picked up speed in the second half, particularly after the count arrived in Paris.
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When I read it I thought, 'This woman thinks deep. I don't think I've thought about anything as deeply in my whole life.' Compared to hers, my thoughts are like a budgerigar chirping, 'Who's a pretty boy' to its owner. Pretty grim read though.
A friend gave me a poster of the film as a bit of a joke, as my name is Kevin. Some of my friends seemed to think this was hilarious. I've never seen the film, but it's supposed to be good. The bit that interests me the most it that it says it contains sexualised nudity.
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I read Mrs Dalloway and found it tedious, possibly because I did not like any of the characters. I wasn't taken with all the head hopping, and I like books to have chapters. To be fair there were the bongs of Big Ben where one could put one's bookmark. I also read To The Lighthouse in which very little happened. There was a woman in it who was having difficulty finishing a painting to her satisfaction, because of a tree being in the wrong place or something. Why didn't she just set up her easel somewhere she liked the view? I think I must be emotionally very shallow and that there is no hope for me.
In the BBC culture poll of the 100 best British novels as voted by foreign academics and book critics, Mrs Dalloway came 2nd and To the Lighthouse 3rd. The only two books in the top 20 I have not read are The Waves by Virginia Woolf at 16, and Clarissa by Samuel Richardson at 14. Clarissa is huge, longer than War and Peace, so I won't have to worry about The Waves for a while.
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Spoiler
Poor Tess. I am re-reading the book. If only she'd kept her trap shut.
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I have read The Talented Mr Ripley and Ripley Under Ground.The first one made me feel very tense, because I was worried he was taking too many risks and would get caught. Yet, obviously I should have hoped he was. I have done one or two violent things and also have my secrets, although nothing in Ripley's class (or the class below that or the class below that). I wouldn't like to live his double life. Ripley Under Ground was not as good as the first. There are three others. I cannot say I am very keen to read them. There are some Quarry books I have noticed published by Hard Crime Books which I like the look of. Quarry is a hitman I think. However, I feel I ought to read the whole Ripliad first.
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I have read it. It is a melancholic book. It is about frustrated lives.
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I have read a few, including:
- Moby Dick, Herman Melville
- The Sea Wolf. Jack London
- The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemmingway
- Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
- The Nigger of Narcissus, Joseph Conrad
- Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
- Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
- Aubrey-Maturin series, Patrick o' Brian
- Hornblower series 1-5, C.S. Forester
Moby Dick was the best, although it is very long, with frequent digressions into all things cetological, for instance, whether a whale is an animal or a fish.
I am currently half way through the Hornblower series. C.S. Forester started his first book with Horatio Hornblower already a post captain of a ship. He made the same mistake as Patrick o' Brian after him. He set the first book too late in the Napoleonic Wars and ran out of war, but then Forester went back to the beginning of Hornblower's career.
Captain Ahab hunted whales; Wolf Larson (Sea Wolf) hunted seals; the old man caught big fish; Kurtz collected ivory; Robinson Crusoe was on a mission to buy slaves; Jim tried to escape his shame; James Waite just tried to stay alive, while Captains Aubrey and Hornblower fought French, Spanish and Dutch men-of-war all over the high seas.
Does anyone have any other suggestions?
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I think I will read Tess of the d'Urbervilles again. I read it quite a few years ago, but I read the Oxford World Classic edition, which included most of Hardy's later alterations to the story. I would read the Penguin edition next, which is based on the first book version of the story. I did like a lot of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. but I thought there was also something sick about it. I have not read Jude the Obscure but I watched the film with Kate Winslet and Christopher Ecclestone. That was a good film, but that story also had a very sick episode in it. So sick, I resolved not to read it, although it is supposed to be one of his best written books. I have also read Far From the Madding Crowd, The Woodlanders, and The Return of the Native. I liked how each book had a different landscape. The Woodlanders was in a forest. The Return of the Native was on a heath. Far From the Madding Crowd was set in mixed farmland although sheep play a large part. I suppose Tess is set on farms too, although three different sorts. I like all the agricultural details/
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The Hobbit, followed closely by Watership Down.
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I am not a fan of Virginia Woolf and do not understand why her books are so highly rated. I do not like her books. I do not agree with her long-winded essays. In the BBC Culture top 100 British books list, To the Lighthouse came 3rd and Mrs Dalloway came 2nd. In To the Lighthouse there was a character who kept trying to paint a landscape or a seascape, but she was never satisfied until the end, because a tree was in the wrong place or something. Move your flipping easel then, is what I thought. I sometimes worry about my inability to understand and like Shakespeare and Woolf. In Oscar Wilde's De Profundis he tells his ex-boyfriend, Lord Alfred Douglas, that his cup is too small to comprehend sublime art. I think that must be my problem too.
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I read Ulysses this Summer. I read it ten pages a day and got through it in three months. It reminded me of books on engineering and technology that I thought I would understand, but didn't. There were some sections I did understand and even enjoy. Didn't they go to a brothel at one point? I liked that scene. Other sections just annoyed me. All the changes in style seemed arbitrary to me. No doubt they were not arbitrary, but I have not ready the original Ulysses myth, which I suspect provides the clues. Even Molly Bloom's soliloquy at the end: was it really better for not having any punctuation? One of the things I disliked about the book is that it is not enough to read what is already a long book. Other readers say you should read Dubliners first to get you up to speed. Then you ought to read the Greek Ulysses myth in order to understand the references in the James Joyce version. Then you have to read a book that explains what Ulysses is about and why it is so good. My suspicion is that James Joyce was writing a text book for English Literature university undergraduates.
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I thought Wuthering Heights was great. I actually liked The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I did not think much of Shirley. We studied Jane Eyre at school for O level and that poisoned that book for me. I think it is a bad idea teaching books like Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice to schoolboys.
Oops, looks like I already replied to this thread. Well, I have not changed my mind.
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I have read all six of her novels. I have not read Lady Susan. I liked Pride and Prejudice and Emma the most. The others i did not think as good. All the same, I do not think men enjoy her books as much as women. I thought The History of Tom Jones was a better book than any of Austen's.
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The Victorian attitude was spare the rod and spoil the child. Corporal punishment only started to fall out of fashion in the latter half of the 20th century.
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I have recently finished Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. It is about a British consul in Mexico around 1938. He is a hopeless alcoholic. It is not an easy read, but the writing is very lyrical. It was like a stream-of-consciousness Graham Greene novel.
I read Ulysses by James Joyce earlier this year. Most of it was beyond my reading age, but I liked the bits I understood.
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I agree with some of the previous posters, in particular about Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Time Machine. I would also like to add The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
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I just finished the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I thought was very good. It was funny and entertaining, and historically interesting.
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I liked Wuthering Heights. Odd sort of book, but poetic. I actually liked The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on the whole. I think AB must have really witnessed behaviour like that to describe it so vividly. Chicks really love Jane Eyre, but I am prejudiced against it because I had to study it for O level. I read Shirley as well, but I was disappointed with that. I thought it was going to be a factory novel like North and South, Mary Barton and Hard Times, but it just was not very good.
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I have recently finished The Brothers Karamazov, which had a long trial scene. It bored me tbh. I don't know what C19th Russian trials were like, but it surprised me how speculative the defence and prosecuting lawyers were allowed to be. That made me wonder about other famous books with trials. Personally I thought the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird was rather weak. The trial in the book In Cold Blood surprised me a little bit because both the prosecution and defence used biblical quotes and references to scripture. They should keep God out of it, other than swearing on the Bible, and maybe they should not do that. There was a trial in Mary Barton. I was surprised by how rushed it was. I don't know whether the trial was realistic or not. The only other trial I can remember offhand was Fagin's in Oliver Twist, and during that Fagin was rather in a daze.
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No Moby Dick, no Lolita?
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I do not like very unlikely coincidences in books, which are used to push the plot along. For instance, I thought it was very weak in Jane Eyre when she left Thornfield Hall in a random direction, was set down when her fare ran out, wandered around the countryside for a couple of days and then ended up at her cousins' door. If there had been some reason for her going towards a certain place, like the town name had a familar ring to it, that would have been better. I thought The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope was fairly realistic, except the plot depended on two characters not knowing each other, but known to someone else, independently going to live in the same house in London.
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I went through a period when I tried to memorize some poems. For most of my life the only verse I could remember was the Lord's Prayer and how to say grace, both from primary and middle school.
Some of the poems I attempted to memorize were:
- Ozymandius
- Invictus
- If
- Let Me to the Marriage of True Minds...
- Partes Quies
- I Am
- The Rolling English Road
- Dulce et Decorum Est
- The King's Breakfast
- Leisure
- Blue Remembered Hills
- Psalm 23
- Ode to a Mouse
I suppose I should check if I can still remember them.
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I am still struggling to think of a fifth writer I would have in my top 5. I refuse to include Virginia Woolf. Having watched those Comoron Strike adapations on the BBC, I don't think I place J.K. Rowling on it. I quite enjoyed the TV adaptions but I did not think the plots were great. I am still considering my criteria:
- How long have they been read? (although I also want to pick something written 20th or 21st century)
- How influential have they been on society?
- How much great work did they produce?
- How often are their worked adapted for plays, radio, television, films?
- How many formats did they work in: novels, plays, poems, short stories, journalism, essays, biographies, philisophical or religious works, etc?
- How innovative were they?
- How many people actually read and enjoy their stuff?
It might have to be Chaucer because I cannot think of anyone in the 20th or 21st century that stands out above the others (except Orwell). My own favourite 20th century author was George MacDonald Fraser of the Flashman books, but great as he was, he's not going to make it on the list. Robert Graves perhaps, but he just didn't write enough.
Reading Very Long Books
in General Book Discussions
Posted
Indeed, just don't ask me what happened or what it's about.
TBF, I did like some bits in it, such as the pub scenes, and the brothel scenes, and Leopold Bloom breaking into his own home.