Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of… the 1860's, pt.1 (1860-1864)

Daniel, do you know of a (good) English translation of 'Amor De Perdição'? (I suspect you've read it, but maybe you did so in Portuguese?)

Oof, Portuguese literature in translation tends to be a nightmare once you get past Saramago, Pessoa and some Eça. I read it in school yeah, found it rather sappy at the time but I have enjoyed other Camilo novels since.

Do you speak French? My impression is that France is much better at translating Portuguese lit than the Anglo space, probably because of the huge immigrant population.

I read French p ok I think, so I'll have a go at it. The translation issue you laid out might be why there's hardly any English translations to be found of said books, compared to French, Spanish etc.

Oh, to be clear, I meant "a nightmare" in the sense of none of it being available, not that Portuguese is particularly hard to translate when compared with French, Spanish, etc. I think the lack is more to do with geopolitical soft power, alas. :(

Ah, gotcha :) Yeah, that is a shame.

Flaubert bis for me.

― pomenitul, mardi 19 mai 2020 18:15 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

same here. almost voted for gautier's capitaine fracasse which i really enjoyed as a kid, as i did jules verne. but for the latter, my fondest memories of his books are for other ones, michel strogoff and de la terre à la lune (planning to go to the moon being shot from a massive cannon, what's not to love!). great expectations didn't leave much of a mark, but also falls in the category of books i read abridged versions of for school. i almost started reading les misérables at the beginning of the confinement and just after having seen ladj ly's movie but could not find a copy at the library i went to before everything shut down.
tbf i did not expect that a list of novels from the early 1860's would deal mostly with childhood reads.

"Eppie in the coal hole!"

!!!!!!

Love 'Amor De Perdição' the Oliveira film, which will hopefully be reissued someday.

Only read Fathers and Sons. Eliot is the big gap in my reading life.

voted for journey to the center of the earth mainly for the long sequence at the beginning where they spend what feels like weeks trying to decipher a mysterious coded manuscript only to accidentally discover (SPOILER) that you just have to hold it up to the light cuz it's backwards writing!

xp xyzzzz when/if you do try Eliot, I'd say start at the peak w Middlemarch; Mill is cool except maybe for the ending, but at least it's melodramatic, not wimpy. Can't go too wrong with either (haven'tread the others). Alfred's our resident advisor on her.

I love the Mill ending!

I like the Trollope’s parliamentary novels but ‘Can you forgive her?’ is a drag. Alice Vavasor has to be the worst female character in Victorian fiction. I started rereading the series recently and it’s no wonder she gets dropped from adaptations. Her whole will she won’t she vacillation is infuriating.

I think Silas Mattner is the pick for me, although I have fond memories of journey to centre of the earth and didn’t realise it was so early. I’d assumed it was 1890s.

Humiliated And Insulted by Fyodor Dostoevsky would be a good song title

The Palliser novels blur, but I guess that's the point. The Way We Live Now, which isn't in the series, is probably my favorite.

I need to restart my reread of the Parliamenty series, got diverted by rereading the Patrick O’Brien novels, but I think Phineas Finn is my favourite novel and character.

That's the first I read.

dow -- thanks, and yes going straight for Middlemarch.

Amazing how this suddenly gets SO much more "currently canonical" when you cross 1860. Anyway, Can You Forgive Her? for me. Les Miserables and Great Expectations are both probably great but also both ruined for me by enforced middle-school reading when I couldn't grasp them.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Oh wow, middle school? They wait until high school to drop the classics on us in Portugal.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Well this is an upset!

Can you forgive them?

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of… the 1860's, pt.2 (1865-1869)