|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Jul 28, 2014 22:52:53 GMT -5
I'm reading Gulliver's Travels. I read quite a bit of it years ago when I had a Norton English Lit anthology that I found in the hallway in my old apartment building. But it didn't have the whole thing in the anthology and I've always wanted to read all of it. I don't believe I've ever read any Washington Irving, so I might put that on the list as something to consider to read this year. (I'm also considering Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry VIII and Coriolanus. And I was also reading all the works of the Bronte sisters until I got sidetracked. I read Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Agnes Grey, Jane Eyre and The Professor. All I have left is Shirley and Villette. Might get back to that project this year.) How do you like Gulliver's Travels? Swift is one of my favourite writers - the biting wit and satire have rarely been equalled. The Battle of the Books and Tale of a Tub are worth reading as well, if you like his style. There's something about 18th century English prose that rubs me the right way, something about the rhythm and the way they turn their phrases. I read a lot of the Brontës' stuff a year or two ago - all the novels, except for Agnes Grey and The Professor, plus a collection of the juvenilia (mostly Charlotte's and Bramwell's, since almost all of Anne's and Emily's was lost). The three big novels - I rate Anne's Tenant of Wildfell Hall up there with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights - are amongst the most powerful reading experiences I've ever had, and I found both Shirley and Villette intensely involving - to the point where perhaps I should talk about a Big Five rather than a Big Three. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on them - you don't see those two talked about as much as JE, unfairly, I think. There are scenes in all these books that will live in my brain forever. BTW, I have to recommend reading Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë after you've finished the last two novels. It's been superceded by more recent bios enjoying the advantage of all the research of the subsequent 150 years, but Gaskell was a first-rate writer and novelist herself who knew Charlotte personally and was able to speak or correspond with some of the closest friends of her childhood. It's one of the most memorable books I've read the last few years. I haven't read very much of Gulliver's Travels as yet. I have been reading Allison Weir's The Life of Elizabeth I and it's very compelling. It's about 500 pages of text and I thought I would probably be taking a break about halfway through (which is my habit with most long history books). But The Life of Elizabeth I has been very suspenseful.
There's always something going on - Catholics plotting against her; she's stringing along the king of France with marriage negotiations; Mary, Queen of Scots, returns to Scotland after many years in France; the pope basically issues a fatwa against Elizabeth - and the threads overlap, disappear for a few years and then reappear again. It's like Elizabeth is a Chris Claremont character. Philip II of Spain is Magneto. Mary, Queen of Scots, is the White Queen. Lord Burghley is Professor X. Francis Drake is Nightcrawler.
I have read three or four chapters of Gulliver's Travels and I like it a lot so far. Once I finish this book about Elizabeth, I'll read Gulliver a lot more quickly.
The Bronte sisters are all great. All the books are amazing. Don't neglect Agnes Grey. As much as I love The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I think I prefer Agnes Grey for its focus.
And The Professor is also an interesting read. It's kind of charming in its eccentricities. (It's not hard to read, not at all. But I can see why it was rejected for publication at first.) The main character goes off on the Belgians a few times, reminding me of that Monty Python sketch called Prejudice.
I never read Gaskell, but I'll put it on the list to be read after Shirley and Villette.
I'm also interested in reading more Walter Scott. All I've read is Ivanhoe. Scott's a very eccentric writer.
|
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Jul 28, 2014 23:45:08 GMT -5
I haven't read very much of Gulliver's Travels as yet. I have been reading Allison Weir's The Life of Elizabeth I and it's very compelling. It's about 500 pages of text and I thought I would probably be taking a break about halfway through (which is my habit with most long history books). But The Life of Elizabeth I has been very suspenseful.
There's always something going on - Catholics plotting against her; she's stringing along the king of France with marriage negotiations; Mary, Queen of Scots, returns to Scotland after many years in France; the pope basically issues a fatwa against Elizabeth - and the threads overlap, disappear for a few years and then reappear again. It's like Elizabeth is a Chris Claremont character. Philip II of Spain is Magneto. Mary, Queen of Scots, is the White Queen. Lord Burghley is Professor X. Francis Drake is Nightcrawler.
I have read three or four chapters of Gulliver's Travels and I like it a lot so far. Once I finish this book about Elizabeth, I'll read Gulliver a lot more quickly.
The Bronte sisters are all great. All the books are amazing. Don't neglect Agnes Grey. As much as I love The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I think I prefer Agnes Grey for its focus.
And The Professor is also an interesting read. It's kind of charming in its eccentricities. (It's not hard to read, not at all. But I can see why it was rejected for publication at first.) The main character goes off on the Belgians a few times, reminding me of that Monty Python sketch called Prejudice.
I never read Gaskell, but I'll put it on the list to be read after Shirley and Villette.
I'm also interested in reading more Walter Scott. All I've read is Ivanhoe. Scott's a very eccentric writer.
I definitely intend to read Agnes Grey some time; probably The Professor as well, but that one's lower down on my list as I think she re-worked some of its material in Villette. After reading the all these books by the Brontës, I'm sure you'll find Gaskell's Life of Charlotte extremely interesting. Of course it's criticised now as being responsible for "the Brontë myth", but I think that's a bit of a bad rap: Gaskell did her research as best she could at the time, and while she may have misinterpreted some things, most of the basic facts are accurate, as far as I know, and for me there's no substitute for reading as close to a first-hand account as is possible. Gaskell's own novels are excellent reads as well, going by the three I know - Mary Barton, Cranford, and North and South. I plan to look for more of her work in the future. I never read Walter Scott until a few years ago, but I am an admirer now. I recommend starting with the one that made him famous (as a novelist - he had already won considerable popularity as a poet), which was Waverley. I also liked Rob Roy and The Heart of Midlothian, and of course Ivanhoe. I'd like to read more of his medieval stories, like The Talisman and so on, but you don't see many of them around, much to my disappointment. |
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Jul 29, 2014 0:04:39 GMT -5
One reason I'm interested in Walter Scott is because of how much the aristocratic South loved him. I have a master's degree in history and my thesis was on the newspaper business in Natchez, Mississippi, from 1800 to 1865. Those aristocratic Southerners loved them some Sir Walter Scott. One of the manor houses in Natchez was called Waverley and another was Melrose (that's from Scott, isn't it?) and there were items in the newspapers about Scott all the time. There's speculation about who wrote the Waverley novels, and eventually it seems to be an open secret in the years before it was revealed that Scott wrote them. So for a long time, Scott was someone I knew quite a bit about about without ever reading his books.
Also, I heard that the Southerners so loved the medieval ideas of chivalry that for a time it was a fad for Southern gentlemen to have tournaments where they actually had jousting and combat and so on. But I never came across any evidence of that in the newspapers or in any letters or diaries. Maybe in another part of the South? I can totally see those crazy South Carolinians doing something like that.
|
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Jul 29, 2014 0:16:42 GMT -5
Yes, and of course Mark Twain famously accused Scot of being responsible for all the deaths caused by that love of the American Southern gentleman for the code of chivalry and personal honour represented in Scott's books. I assume he must have been referring to the later novels, the ones about knights in armour, none of which I've read, unless Ivanhoe counts, because in the Waverley novels, which deal with the more recent history of the last spasms of Scottish rebellion against English rule in the 18th century, there's very little of that kind of thing, and what is there is in no way presented in an uncritical manner. In fact, I was quite struck by the realistic attitude, bordering on cynicism at times, of the narration.
|
|
|
|
Post by coveredinbees on Jul 29, 2014 0:59:33 GMT -5
I broke in and says:
“They’re in an awful peck of trouble, and—”
“WHO is?”
“Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker; and if you’d take your ferryboat and go up there—”
“Up where? Where are they?”
“On the wreck.”
“What wreck?”
“Why, there ain’t but one.”
“What, you don’t mean the Walter Scott?”
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2014 3:45:38 GMT -5
Took a few days off to read some other stuff, but leapt back into the Poe oeuvre tonight. 7 short stories and 31 poems into it now and I just reached the first story I had read before, which is currently on deck (MS in a Bottle). Still a little bit before I get to the heart of his body of work that I am more familiar with, but getting there. Some of the earliest stuff was interesting, but the last run of poems has been a little lackluster, and some of the semi-comedic tales haven't struck my fancy, but they have all been interesting reads in terms of seeing the evolution of one of my favorite writers early on in his career, something you don't often get to see when you only sample his work in mostly academic settings of survey courses or in reading works found in popular collections.
-M
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2014 2:46:29 GMT -5
Well finished MS Found in a Bottle by Poe, which I had read a loooong time ago (high school maybe) and thus have finished through 1833 of Poe's career. 1834 brings more familiar works by him.
MS Found in a Bottle is an interesting piece, the first real horror attempt it seems, and the first short story devoid of any comedic or satirical aspirations by Poe. It doesn't seem out of the ordinary for ghost ship/lost souls at sea type stories, but I am not sure if that trope predates Poe and he is tapping in to it, of if he is experimenting with something a little fresh (not well read enough in the genre to know). It would seem that at least the idea of ghost pirates or souls trapped at sea or what have you predated Poe by a bit, as they seem to me to have origins in folk lore, but I have no idea here...time maybe to do a little research. If anyone can point me in a helpful direction, it would be appreciated.
-M
|
|
|
|
Post by Rob Allen on Aug 6, 2014 18:12:51 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Aug 6, 2014 22:00:28 GMT -5
Interesting: I would have thought that this idea went back to ancient times, to not long after whenever it was that human beings first started sailing or exploring in vessels large enough to be called ships, but it looks like wiki's history starts at a comparatively recent date, in the colonial era. |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2014 23:40:30 GMT -5
Thanks for the link Rob, so it does pre-date Poe but was not all that common beforehand.
-M
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2014 0:22:10 GMT -5
Getting back to this again after a week's break. Back with a double dip-the short story The Visionary (The Assignation) which includes in it a poem by Poe entitled To One in Paradise.
I had a couple of false starts trying to read this tale. The poem is quite good, but the story seems to be nothing so much as an elaborate framing sequence to present the poem in some kind of context. The twist ending is classic Poe, but the story otherwise fails to come together for me. There is no sense of foreboding, no anticipatory build up, it just seems to wax along until the end. There is some set up, bit it's not effective and the story just seems to move forward aimlessly with tangents and diversions until it hits its mark and delivers the poem and the ending. Not one of my favorite efforts of Poe's. Interestingly, there is a year's gap between this work and the next published effort by Poe, so I'll be curious to see if his style evolves in the meantime, stepping closer to what the classic Poe I know and love is.
-M
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2014 13:21:06 GMT -5
Read Berenice: A Tale by Poe this morning. Perhaps the creepiest thing by Poe yet in his early career, but I found many shades of Shelly's Frankenstein here-young man who is more experienced with books than life experience early in his life reading books of less than acceptable social acceptance, ill-fated engagement to a cousin or rare beauty, narrator/protagonist prone towards obsessiveness, etc. All I have to say is that it's a good thing I never read this as a kid as I had enough difficulties dealing with my irrational fears of dentists, this might have sent me over the edge!
-M
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2014 16:03:40 GMT -5
Took a quick diversionary break to read a book from the library-read the Godwulf Manuscript by Robert Parker-the first of the Spenser novels. Quick read, fun and entertaining. I was looking to read some genre stuff where the setting played a factor in the feel of the story, specifically something New Englandish, so I decided to give the Spenser books a quick looksee. The library had an omnibus that had the first three novels collected, so have that out currently and breezed through the first novel. Some of it feels incredibly dated-it is clearly the early 70s but I like period pieces and it reads more authentic than period pieces written later, but some of the obvious seventies elements are sometime humorous in that wiw we were really like that kind of way.
-M
|
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Aug 24, 2014 19:03:13 GMT -5
I read the first few Spenser books and found they were OK as light entertainment but whenever they tried to start philosophising about this and that - usually "the male code" or some such nonsense - the results were laughable.
Also, Spenser himself could be a little annoying at times. There's a basic problem that comes up when hard-boiled writers decide to go with first-person narration by the tough guy protagonists of their novels: how do you make it clear that he really is someone to be reckoned with without at the same time making him sound like a self-satisfied git, always showing off to the reader about how tough he is?
To my mind there are only a few writers who completely succeeded in avoiding this trap - Hammett, Chandler, and Rex Stout are the three who come to mind, though I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting or haven't read yet.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2014 19:32:34 GMT -5
I've read and wholly enjoyed Chandler and Hammett, not a lot, but a sample of each. Never tried stout. I would agree both were vastly superior to Parker, but Parker was good light entertainment as you said, and I was reading with an eye towards how the setting was used. I picked Boston, because of all the major cities that oculd be used as a setting, it is the one I am most familiar with so I have the best sense of the liberties taken with the setting versus how the reality of it plays int he book.
-M
|
|
