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It's never too late to read the classics, brah.
Posted on 5/29/17 at 8:12 pm
Posted on 5/29/17 at 8:12 pm
In the summer of 2015, at the age of 49, I decided that I was embarrassed that I had read so little literature in my life. This after being an English major at LSU (albeit one who took a lot of poetry and composition classes and avoided novels like the plague). Anyway, I decided to start reading the classics that I had never read. What actually got me going was that I read In Cold Blood in 3 days and decided, hey, I can do this. I decided to start with something easy (Dracula) and got heated up after that. Since August of 2015, I have killed the following (and you can tell I like the Russians):
In Cold Blood (Capote)
Dracula (Stoker)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky)
Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
Lolita (Nabokov)
The Ambassadors (James)
The Power and the Glory (Greene)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
Ulysses (Joyce)
Silence (Endo)
Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
Fathers and Sons (Turgenev)
No sign of slowing down. About to shift gears and read something modern. Maybe Pillars of the Earth.
In Cold Blood (Capote)
Dracula (Stoker)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky)
Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
Lolita (Nabokov)
The Ambassadors (James)
The Power and the Glory (Greene)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
Ulysses (Joyce)
Silence (Endo)
Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
Fathers and Sons (Turgenev)
No sign of slowing down. About to shift gears and read something modern. Maybe Pillars of the Earth.
This post was edited on 5/30/17 at 3:28 pm
Posted on 5/29/17 at 9:06 pm to Slippy
The classics are all I read, to be honest. They are the most rewarding, and they heavily influence the works of later great novels.
For example, the "recent" novel on here that everyone loves is Blood Meridian. Blood meridian is heavily influenced by moby dick and heart of darkness.
For example, the "recent" novel on here that everyone loves is Blood Meridian. Blood meridian is heavily influenced by moby dick and heart of darkness.
Posted on 5/29/17 at 10:48 pm to Slippy
Good list. (though I haven't read quite all of the books on it).
Dostoevsky is some powerful stuff. His books kind of mess with my head when I'm reading them. Kind of put a pall on my normal cheerful outlook.
Dostoevsky is some powerful stuff. His books kind of mess with my head when I'm reading them. Kind of put a pall on my normal cheerful outlook.
Posted on 5/30/17 at 7:57 am to Slippy
All those Russians and no Dead Souls?
Posted on 5/30/17 at 9:22 am to Slippy
quote:
It's never to late to read the classics, brah.
Agree but it's also never too late to spellcheck your subject especially on the Book Board.
Posted on 5/30/17 at 9:39 am to Slippy
quote:
It's never to late to read
Maybe it is.
That being said, I just started Moby Dick. I also have Walden on my list for this summer.
Posted on 5/30/17 at 11:13 am to Slippy
The Brothers Karamazov is the greatest novel ever written imo.
Posted on 5/30/17 at 11:50 am to Slippy
Good on you. When I was actually in school and texts were assigned to me, I had a little interest but unfortunately I placed things in low priority, got by without reading much (just paying attention in class and using sparknotes etc.).
Now that I'm older and I look at my bookshelf filled with so many great works that I've never read, I've been going back and reading things that I should have read long ago.
Currently on Huxley's Brave New World.
Now that I'm older and I look at my bookshelf filled with so many great works that I've never read, I've been going back and reading things that I should have read long ago.
Currently on Huxley's Brave New World.
Posted on 5/30/17 at 6:23 pm to Slippy
quote:
About to shift gears and read something modern.
quote:
Maybe Pillars of the Earth.
Anyway, let me know if it's good. I've seen the Pillars miniseries and enjoyed it. I actually liked World Without End miniseries better.
Posted on 5/30/17 at 7:44 pm to Slippy
Can never go wrong with the classics. Those are the type of books I need to get into. Those are some pretty good books you guys have listed. The 3 off the top of my head I need to read are Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, The Three Musketeers, and Tale of Two Cities.
Posted on 5/30/17 at 7:48 pm to efrad
quote:
Currently on Huxley's Brave New World.
I hear that one is amazing.
Posted on 5/30/17 at 8:08 pm to Slippy
May I suggest some Hemingway?
The Sun Also Rises
For Ehom the Bell Tolls
And, of course, Old Man and the Sea
The Sun Also Rises
For Ehom the Bell Tolls
And, of course, Old Man and the Sea
Posted on 5/30/17 at 8:22 pm to Kvothe
Posted on 5/30/17 at 10:21 pm to Slippy
Nerd mode: [on] off
I feel a bit guilty at times reading literature (even though I love it) instead of technical, cultural or historical material (even though literature often contains much of the latter two). However, it would definitely be in my professional best interest to learn another language, so what I've begun to do is read some of the easier and shorter classics (think things like The Picture of Dorian Gray) in French. The great thing is that I've downloaded a French to English dictionary on my Kindle and can switch it to my default dictionary when reading a French book. This makes for rapid translation of the many words I still don't know by simply clicking on the word mid-sentence in my Kindle (as opposed to flipping through a dictionary). And now I'm turning a bit of a guilty pleasure into something that also makes me more competitive from an international business perspective.
Nerd mode: on [off]
I feel a bit guilty at times reading literature (even though I love it) instead of technical, cultural or historical material (even though literature often contains much of the latter two). However, it would definitely be in my professional best interest to learn another language, so what I've begun to do is read some of the easier and shorter classics (think things like The Picture of Dorian Gray) in French. The great thing is that I've downloaded a French to English dictionary on my Kindle and can switch it to my default dictionary when reading a French book. This makes for rapid translation of the many words I still don't know by simply clicking on the word mid-sentence in my Kindle (as opposed to flipping through a dictionary). And now I'm turning a bit of a guilty pleasure into something that also makes me more competitive from an international business perspective.
Nerd mode: on [off]
Posted on 5/31/17 at 12:28 am to Slippy
A Lost Work by Edith Wharton Rediscovered
quote:
In February of 1901, Walter Berry, a lawyer and member of élite society in New York, expressed a regret in a letter written to his close friend Edith Wharton. “How I do wish I could run on to see the first rehearsal of the Shadow,” he wrote.
At the time, Wharton, who was thirty-nine years old, was not yet a novelist, having only published shorter fiction and poetry, as well as co-authoring, with Ogden Codman, “The Decoration of Houses,” an 1897 book about interior design. But she was a budding playwright, and, as two scholars have just deduced in an important bit of detective work, Berry’s glancing reference was to one of her works: “The Shadow of a Doubt,” a three-act play that was in production in 1901. It was to star Elsie de Wolfe as Wharton’s heroine, Kate Derwent, a former nurse married to John Derwent, a gentleman above her social station. Kate’s role in assisting the suicide of her husband’s former wife, Agnes, whom she tended to after an injury, is revealed in the course of the drama.
The production was cancelled, however, and the work slipped into obscurity. It is not mentioned by any of Wharton’s biographers, nor does Wharton mention it in her own memoir, “A Backward Glance,” in which, perhaps understandably, she skates over her brief and not especially successful career as a writer for the stage. (In the first years of the century, she had written a handful of plays, but “The Shadow of a Doubt” would have been her first professional production, had it materialized. Later, she collaborated on an adaptation of “The House of Mirth,” which proved less successful than hoped.)
It has now come to light thanks to the sleuthing of two scholars, Laura Rattray, who is a reader in American literature at the University of Glasgow, and Mary Chinery, a professor of English at Georgian Court University, in New Jersey. They are publishing their findings in the new issue of the Edith Wharton Review, and hope that the play’s discovery will shed new light on the period of Wharton’s life before her ascent to literary fame, as well as illuminating her better known works in previously unimagined ways. They also hope that it will be enjoyed by Wharton aficionados, and beyond. “I’m not going to claim that it is a lost masterpiece of the American stage,” Rattray told me. “But it has a really interesting female character at the core, and there are lots of witty one-liners.”
Posted on 5/31/17 at 7:52 am to lsusportsman2
quote:
The 3 off the top of my head I need to read are Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, The Three Musketeers, and Tale of Two Cities.
Posted on 5/31/17 at 12:10 pm to Slippy
quote:
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
one of my all time favorite books.
I love when Apocalypse Now come into conversation and I say the dumb cliche, "oh that book was definitely better" and no one knows what book I am refering to
Posted on 5/31/17 at 1:43 pm to Slippy
I sometimes think about how few of the classics I've read. That maybe I should take a couple years and only read them. I'd feel intellectually superior for sure, but I don't think I'd enjoy them that much. and there are just so many.
Posted on 5/31/17 at 4:26 pm to ksayetiger
quote:
I love when Apocalypse Now come into conversation and I say the dumb cliche, "oh that book was definitely better" and no one knows what book I am refering to
Yeah, everyone loves someone who does this!
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