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Post by everso on Aug 26, 2009 10:00:10 GMT
No Robert E Howard or HP Lovecraft either...this list was obviously assembled by a ponce! "Tekeli-li" AH My daughter and s-i-l are Lovecraft mad. So much so that their twins (not yet 3 yrs old) have this little dragon-looking green soft toy with some weird name. Beth was trying to tell me it's name yesterday and I kept saying "Yeeeessss, um, dragon" My daughter later told me it's real name but I've forgotten. Bad nanna! |
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Post by everso on Aug 26, 2009 10:20:46 GMT
What about Charles Dickens then?
The Pickwick Papers is on my desert island list for sure. However, I find Dickens tends to be in two camps. Books like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Pickwick are very readable, even though they tend to have Piffle-length sentences, barely coming up for breath. But has anyone read Our Mutual Friend or A Tale of Two Cities? (Actually, I have "read" A Tale of Two Cities by audio cassette, which made it much easier going).
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Post by housesparrow on Aug 26, 2009 10:33:09 GMT
As a teenager I read a lot of Dickens; like a lot of adolescents I liked reading about the seedier side life, but could not get on with a Tale of Two Cities. I've heard it said that it is unlike any other of his books. However when I read it as an adult it seemed a good read.
I've abandoned Our Mutual Friend several times!
The older I get, the less I want to read about tragedy and cruelty, and there is a lot of that in some Dickens novels. Bleak House never really appealed.
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Post by Alpha Hooligan on Aug 26, 2009 20:26:57 GMT
No Robert E Howard or HP Lovecraft either...this list was obviously assembled by a ponce! "Tekeli-li" AH My daughter and s-i-l are Lovecraft mad. So much so that their twins (not yet 3 yrs old) have this little dragon-looking green soft toy with some weird name. Beth was trying to tell me it's name yesterday and I kept saying "Yeeeessss, um, dragon" My daughter later told me it's real name but I've forgotten. Bad nanna! His name is Cthulhu - "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,"   I feel that I somehow missed out as a child, we had no plush Cthulhu toys back then.  AH |
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Post by percyplum on Aug 26, 2009 20:59:10 GMT
I never got on with Dickens...in fact I loathed reading his books with a passion when I was younger. Funnily enough, A Tale of Two Cities was the only one I liked! But I find as I've got older, some of the dramatisations are OK although I still can't be bothered with the books.
Two of my favourite authors are Neville Shute and HE Bates. I defy anyone to read Requiem for a Wren and not want to cry...even my husband was moved by it. And Bates's The Darling Buds of May is a delight.
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Post by everso on Aug 26, 2009 21:44:46 GMT
I never got on with Dickens...in fact I loathed reading his books with a passion when I was younger. Funnily enough, A Tale of Two Cities was the only one I liked! But I find as I've got older, some of the dramatisations are OK although I still can't be bothered with the books. Two of my favourite authors are Neville Shute and HE Bates. I defy anyone to read Requiem for a Wren and not want to cry...even my husband was moved by it. And Bates's The Darling Buds of May is a delight. I remember reading The Darling Buds of May when I was 15. It seemed very sexy to me - but in an innocent sort of way. |
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Post by everso on Aug 26, 2009 21:46:24 GMT
My daughter and s-i-l are Lovecraft mad. So much so that their twins (not yet 3 yrs old) have this little dragon-looking green soft toy with some weird name. Beth was trying to tell me it's name yesterday and I kept saying "Yeeeessss, um, dragon" My daughter later told me it's real name but I've forgotten. Bad nanna! His name is Cthulhu - "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," I feel that I somehow missed out as a child, we had no plush Cthulhu toys back then. AH Cthulhu! That's the little fellow. I thought it was a dragon. I have a strange family. |
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Post by motorist on Aug 27, 2009 4:25:32 GMT
Cop for this, everso (there are more episodes on youchoob if you like this one)  |
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Post by housesparrow on Aug 27, 2009 7:37:37 GMT
No-one has mentioned Virginia Woolf as the writer some feel they should read, but often don't.
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Post by aubrey on Aug 27, 2009 15:05:47 GMT
Does anyone here like Elizabeth Bowen? Did she do Afterward? I like that - and The Demon Lover. If In The Heat of the Day is as good as that (for atmosphere, I mean) I'll dive on it (when I find a copy). Isn't the idea of a plush Cthulhu toy a bit wrong? |
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Post by everso on Aug 27, 2009 18:05:37 GMT
Does anyone here like Elizabeth Bowen? Did she do Afterward? I like that - and The Demon Lover. If In The Heat of the Day is as good as that (for atmosphere, I mean) I'll dive on it (when I find a copy). Isn't the idea of a plush Cthulhu toy a bit wrong? Don't tell that to my 2 year old grandaughter! |
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Post by aubrey on Aug 27, 2009 20:26:25 GMT
I'd like one myself (our cats would probably like it) but they should really be slimy, shouldn't they?
Good night.
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Post by everso on Aug 27, 2009 23:51:51 GMT
I'd like one myself (our cats would probably like it) but they should really be slimy, shouldn't they?Good night. It IS a rather silky plush fabric that it's made of. Yes, I can see a cat would like it. |
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Post by Patrick on Aug 28, 2009 0:12:31 GMT
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Anyway, being a boring middle aged fart, I can't remember who I told this, but I ordered Graeme Greene's "Journeys Without Maps" t'other week - and was sooooo looking forward to reading it - 'cos I like his fiction and you would suppose that this factual travel guide would be a gem of anecdotes and stories. It had such a prickly beginning that it was like trying to climb over spiky rocks to get to the sand dunes, and even then it was just a cold, cold book. I renewed it - hoping that I'd get along with it - but nothing - took it back this week. Really disappointed. Slightly with myself for not pushing more - but nevertheless............. It might be me actually. I made another discovery in the Library that of Tove Jansson's "Winter Book" I hope I have more luck with it - but I'm so distracted at the moment, and I don't know why. |
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Post by Flatypus on Aug 28, 2009 0:26:18 GMT
Lovecraft's writing was so over the top (and some of it more so for him personally because he had a phobia of cold) that it's impossible to imagine a viable Cthulhu - the slightest glimpse is supposed to send anyone raving mad. Returning to books, I am sure we must have had some Dickens at school if only because I remember him as thoroughly unreadable and his characters straight out of the melodrama he loved so much. Of all of them, I loath Christmas Tale and Pickwick Papers above just about anything ever written, if only for their annual Christmas exhumation.
If only they had told us that there were other English writers in the mid 19th century! I think Thackeray or Trollope might actually be readable. I did enjoy P&P but I admit that although I found it very funny and its types (especially the Boy Racer) so recognisable today, I have not finished Northanger Abbey (in fact I last saw it several layers deep on the sofa and have idea where it might be now!)
I think the most memorable thing I had to read school was Das Brandopfer by Berthold Brecht, the simple tale of the pork-specialising butcher who finds himself designated as the Jewish Butcher and his gradual understanding of what is happening and ultimate self-sacrifice. On a very similar theme, also ending in redemptive self-sacrifice Des Teufels General by Carl Zuckmayer. Probably it takes a Hitler or a Stalin to motivate such searching into the human soul. English writes never had that conscience to address. Actually, I would add most of H.H.Kirst to that as well including his 'Gunner Asch' rather more light-hearted series.
The rest of the original list of seven - well why? Ulysses - why not go the whole hog and read Finnegan's Wake? Moby Dick - one madman's obsession. Hamlet - is that really 'the human condition' any more than the gospels are?
If anything, perhaps Chaucer should be obligatory - in the original! Far more than Shakespeare, he gives characterisation of types who can still be recognised today, both as narrators and in their stories, and tells us so much about a time we really know very little of at all. Just the experience of reading and then fitting the pronunciation to the metre tells us far more about our own language than Shakespeare ever will because it is distinct enough to show how it has developed. Shakespeare's different pronunciation still amounts to little more than accent so can nearly always be read in modern English and notoriously often has been in 'posh' English further removed from him than anything else.
Perhaps I would recommend The Picture of Dorian Gray as well, and Brave New World as describing just the world of superficial []ipermanent party[/i] demanded of us to live in.
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Post by trubble on Aug 28, 2009 13:13:42 GMT
Does anyone here like Elizabeth Bowen? Did she do Afterward? I like that - and The Demon Lover. If In The Heat of the Day is as good as that (for atmosphere, I mean) I'll dive on it (when I find a copy). I am no expert because I have only just started reading her. I bought a book for my mother years ago thinking she'd like it but she didn't so I didn't bother either. I heard her described as good in her day but lightweight/fluffy and outdated. Now I have started reading Friends and Relations and I think she's brilliant, not dated except that she's set in a different era which I think should be more correctly described as period even though it's not. Lightweight only in that she has a light touch. Her observations and story-telling power is excellent. She's my new thang. |
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Post by everso on Aug 28, 2009 15:59:13 GMT
I loath Christmas Tale and Pickwick Papers above just about anything ever written, if only for their annual Christmas exhumation. I haven't read A Christmas Tale, so can't comment, but, oh, The Pickwick Papers is a wonderful read! How CAN you not like it? It's such a nice, jolly, funny book. And the Christmas at Dingley Dell chapter is so cosy. Are you sure you've read it? |
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Post by aubrey on Aug 28, 2009 21:18:01 GMT
Elizabeth Bowen did not seem fluffy to me. Very atmospheric and effective. I didn't find her dated, either, though obviously she was writing in a different time: like everybody who's not writing now.
(People who complain about old books being dated are weird, sometimes - like they want the characters to pull out their mobiles or something.)
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Post by everso on Aug 28, 2009 22:40:33 GMT
Elizabeth Bowen did not seem fluffy to me. Very atmospheric and effective. I didn't find her dated, either, though obviously she was writing in a different time: like everybody who's not writing now. (People who complain about old books being dated are weird, sometimes - like they want the characters to pull out their mobiles or something.)Actually, I'm sure Sam Weller probably had a mobile. Shape of message fixed |
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Post by Flatypus on Aug 29, 2009 5:05:08 GMT
I loath Christmas Tale and Pickwick Papers above just about anything ever written, if only for their annual Christmas exhumation. I haven't read A Christmas Tale, so can't comment, but, oh, The Pickwick Papers is a wonderful read! How CAN you not like it? It's such a nice, jolly, funny book. And the Christmas at Dingley Dell chapter is so cosy. Are you sure you've read it? I haven't read it. Incessant TV and radio adaptations have put me off wanting anything to do with that silly shower of pompous Hooray Henry idiots. The nearest I ever got was starting to write a series of what happened next memoirs about literary characters when I imagine an aged Sam Weller relating other self-important worthless snobs he served in his life as a cynical East End Jew (which I assume from the Yiddish V-W inversion) . I did Uriah Heape as well, whom I imagine developing to a millionaire Marxist (made his millions provisioning workers on the Great Western Railway). he is the only character in Dickens I have some respect for. He is loyal to his mother, and unlike the spineless hypocritical grovelling toady Copperfield stands up for their rights against the patronising Establishment that can afford to smile sweetly and flip another halfpenny in his direction. [i[Vive la Revolution![/i] (but bleed the buggers dry first  ) |
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