plane journeys with ppl laughing at their reading material is yr idea of heaven no doubt
― blap setter (darraghmac), Monday, 21 July 2014 16:22 (nine years ago) link
this thread makes me feel bad for not really liking austen, tho i understand why ppl do. i've given her a try several times, and i always come away feeling the way i do after a long, tedious meeting at work. there are bits i remember fondly (the dad in 'pride and prejudice' is pretty funny) but i've never really found any of her characters that engaging or memorable. prob my fault, not hers.
frederik b is otm that dostoevsky comes from a world that's completely alien to ours in most ways, so much so that i don't think he can be blamed if pretentious college kids or whoever pretend to see themselves in his characters. anyway, the truly insufferable kids are the ones insisting they will never read dostoevsky because st. nabokov disapproved of him.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 21 July 2014 17:32 (nine years ago) link
demons is my second favorite novel ever at this point but still feeling v good about my austen vote (beyond the natural pleasure of minority selfrighteousness) (i think)
halfway thru my first read of emma cuz of this thread, not embarassed to admit i keep track of characters like "oh right breckin meyer". maybe i'll try the gambler again next. found it too upsetting the first time tbh lol.
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 21 July 2014 18:10 (nine years ago) link
voted autism
― switching letters guy, Monday, 21 July 2014 19:15 (nine years ago) link
hah clueless is the best. heckerling gets austen.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 July 2014 19:51 (nine years ago) link
what's the best austen to start with? i actually remember liking 'emma' more than the others i tried, but ended up misplacing my copy during a move.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 21 July 2014 20:01 (nine years ago) link
P&P is as good a place. Also Persuasion because it's short and so unlike the others.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 21 July 2014 20:05 (nine years ago) link
persuasion is long as fuck
idk Emma or nothing sorta. Mansfield park is sort of brilliant qua minor work and has one of the most fuckable male leads in lit but you should probably read fanny burney &/or ms Radcliffe first really /:
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 21 July 2014 20:12 (nine years ago) link
My Penguin copy of Persuasion is just over 250 pages!
S&S is more minor than MP, I think. It lacks the tensions that make the latter so frustrating in places.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 21 July 2014 20:15 (nine years ago) link
'long' has this british vernacular sense im sort of addicted to
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 21 July 2014 20:16 (nine years ago) link
in my head Persuasion is definitely "the long one"
― Daphnis Celesta, Monday, 21 July 2014 20:20 (nine years ago) link
felt v much ambushed by emotion at one line of wentworth's. "am I not yet so much changed?". something like that, anyway.
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 21 July 2014 20:28 (nine years ago) link
P&P should be your first, I think. Persuasion is really short, though; you guys are weird.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 July 2014 21:41 (nine years ago) link
Best introduction tbh is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009 parody)
― 龜, Monday, 21 July 2014 21:44 (nine years ago) link
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Pirates and Ninjas and Bacon
― Daphnis Celesta, Monday, 21 July 2014 21:59 (nine years ago) link
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41u0oA1ReQL._SY300_.jpg
has anyone read this? is it good?
― bus people are fine broad thinkers (soref), Tuesday, 22 July 2014 00:49 (nine years ago) link
Pride Prejudice and Poops
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 22 July 2014 01:12 (nine years ago) link
persuasion def the short one to me. mansfield park the long one.
― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 22 July 2014 02:39 (nine years ago) link
Never given these two a proper go.
http://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/norte-end-history
^ However I am watching this film -- 'based' on C&P -- so that might inspire me.
In regards to Austen boyz who are into ECONOMICS are reading her: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p020wmkt
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 22 July 2014 09:53 (nine years ago) link
I liked this talk by the climate ethicist, Stephen Gardiner. He uses the opening chapter of S&S - where a husband and wife incrementally talk themselves out of their obligation to support the husband's mother and sisters - to analyze moral corruption around climate change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChgJIhWXXbE
― jmm, Tuesday, 22 July 2014 18:02 (nine years ago) link
giving p&p another try. it's pretty funny!
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 25 July 2014 01:35 (nine years ago) link
Mr. Bennett!
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 July 2014 01:35 (nine years ago) link
Yeah, the relationship between Lizzie and her father is one of the great joys of that book--he's retreated from the foolishness of his family to the point where he's actually letting them all down, but the vibe of intellectual equality and pride he has in his one really clever (not just "book clever") daughter... It's just lovely.
― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Friday, 25 July 2014 01:37 (nine years ago) link
making Donald Sutherland perfect casting in the otherwise meh 2005 adaptation.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 July 2014 01:55 (nine years ago) link
"Harriet Smith was the natural daughter of somebody."
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 4 August 2014 20:06 (nine years ago) link
^^^
― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 5 August 2014 00:04 (nine years ago) link
good thread let's do again
― local eire man (darraghmac), Tuesday, 13 January 2015 22:39 (nine years ago) link
I'd probably go for Austen this time. there was what Kevin Blackwell once memorably called on some TV punditry "the width of a gnat's cock" in it the first time round.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 21 January 2015 20:57 (nine years ago) link
twoagc *in it* the first time round.
it's not a particularly Janeite phrase I feel, but a buffoon in Dostoevsky certainly.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 21 January 2015 21:00 (nine years ago) link
darragh do you mean a new matchup or, let's just argue about austen some more
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Thursday, 22 January 2015 08:25 (nine years ago) link
my next one was going to be the romantic Big Four vs pound/eliot
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Thursday, 22 January 2015 08:26 (nine years ago) link
def both thomp
― local eire man (darraghmac), Thursday, 22 January 2015 08:31 (nine years ago) link
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, 21 July 2014 20:16
I wanna know more about this.
Austen, of course.
― bamcquern, Thursday, 22 January 2015 08:48 (nine years ago) link
it's about the same as saying smth is "mission"
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Thursday, 22 January 2015 09:11 (nine years ago) link
a chore? an unrewarding effort?
but you can use it of anything from visiting friends in zone 4 to, like, a family member, a genre of music, the ouevre of a major novelist
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Thursday, 22 January 2015 09:12 (nine years ago) link
I want to see which one gets cut to make a romantic Big Four.
― woof, Thursday, 22 January 2015 10:05 (nine years ago) link
yeah apparently for some minutes earlier i totally forgot about the existence of john keats?
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Thursday, 22 January 2015 14:01 (nine years ago) link
well if he will write his name in water
― woof, Thursday, 22 January 2015 22:23 (nine years ago) link
https://medium.com/@paulmasonnews/schmausterlitz-58d005d29592#.ijei72fuu
^ reminded me of the fun we had in this thread.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 10 January 2016 23:20 (eight years ago) link
in laughs, the first seventy pages of demons is giving jane a run for her money
― devvvine, Wednesday, 8 May 2019 21:05 (four years ago) link
I am finishing Karamazov and I picked Mansfield Park to re-create the um, spirit of this thread.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 8 May 2019 22:17 (four years ago) link
I’ve read Crime, Underground, Brothers, Demons, The Idiot, The Gambler/The Double. Haven’t read any in a numbers of years. I am so anti-religion these days I don’t know if I could deal with D’s nonsense now.
Haven’t read any Austen, unless I read something in high school and forgot. This thread is making me want to!
― Mazzy Tsar (PBKR), Friday, 17 May 2019 19:38 (four years ago) link
Austen captures the politely strangled reserve of her characters just as fully as Dostoevsky captures the extreme emotional volatility of his. She's great, but the tone of their respective novels could hardly be more different.
― A is for (Aimless), Friday, 17 May 2019 19:45 (four years ago) link
This is the top Goodreads review of Pride and Prejudice pic.twitter.com/ZXbbUh6uAj— Nick Douglas (@toomuchnick) July 11, 2020
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 12 July 2020 15:49 (three years ago) link
Feel like Tolstoy would have been a more appropriate comparison? Idk
― 龜, Sunday, 20 July 2014 bookmarkflaglink
As I finish Middlemarch wonder if Eliot would've been an even closer result with some of the "politics of taste" we got here.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 16 November 2021 10:08 (two years ago) link
This piece reminded me of this poll
Men make up just 20% of the audience for literary fiction. Please, I beg you, get over yourselves and into novelistic chitter chatter! https://t.co/R8x8ZYlFuP— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) May 17, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 17 May 2022 13:26 (one year ago) link
Broadly speaking there is a mini-genre of pieces by women writing about why men hate fiction and why, which could be worth exploring though I haven't as I'm pretty dismissive.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 17 May 2022 13:30 (one year ago) link
ime it seems to be men who don’t read who don’t read fiction, I’ve never known anyone who reads at least semi regularly who was dismissive of reading fiction.
― gyac, Tuesday, 17 May 2022 13:33 (one year ago) link
This piece is a bit different because it goes onto talk about men who don't read fiction at all from the set-up which is more SF/genre reader Vs 'proper' canon fiction.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 17 May 2022 13:42 (one year ago) link
I wouldn't say the piece does a great job of selling literary fiction.
Or it seems to concede the premise that literature is basically about chitter-chatter.
― jmm, Tuesday, 17 May 2022 14:34 (one year ago) link