Joyce is the only one I’ve read but I refuse to vote for him because I hated Portrait of the Artist so much and the humour didn’t really land for me.
― scampus milne (gyac), Monday, 26 October 2020 13:24 (three years ago) link
"Light And Darkness by Natsume Soseki"
This is pretty good, though unfinished.
Haven't read that Joyce..
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 26 October 2020 13:55 (three years ago) link
I will never not vote Joyce
Cosign. Portrait is nowhere near Ulysses or Finnegans Wake for me but it's still Joyce.
― emil.y, Monday, 26 October 2020 17:17 (three years ago) link
Should I read Burroughs and Haggard?
I was thrilled to soak up Burroughs as a child and wish I could recommend some of his work, but his politics, especially his racism, make his work inaccessible to me now, though my tolerance for early 20th century pulp is a lot higher than most people's
I read Haggard for the first time last year (King Solomon's Mines) and had a similar reaction, though I might get to She eventually
voted for Joyce
― Brad C., Monday, 26 October 2020 17:44 (three years ago) link
what's The Hate Of A Hun about?
― sarahell, Monday, 26 October 2020 17:50 (three years ago) link
To be fair, King Solomn's Mines has surprising all-men-are-equal stuff explicit in the text, though it's still very imperialist.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Monday, 26 October 2020 22:39 (three years ago) link
Jimmy Joyce earned this one, straight up.
― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Monday, 26 October 2020 22:53 (three years ago) link
I remember both Haggard and Buchan as being so racist that it poisoned their books for me, though I don't retain much about Haggard's writing beyond that.
― Lily Dale, Tuesday, 27 October 2020 01:00 (three years ago) link
I've a copy of King Solomon's Mines knocking about, but so far I've been happy to just think of Quartermain as the befuddled himbo of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
"Germans in Australia during WWI" is as far as wikipedia will go. This being 1916 I'm gonna guess it's not a sympathetic portrayal.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 27 October 2020 10:08 (three years ago) link
I wonder if anyone has written a book about HG Wells' 'late style'. Has anyone *read* late HG Wells?
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Tuesday, 27 October 2020 23:32 (three years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Wednesday, 28 October 2020 00:01 (three years ago) link
Chinaski, the new Adam Roberts critical Wells biog is for you.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Wednesday, 28 October 2020 00:33 (three years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Thursday, 29 October 2020 00:01 (three years ago) link
looooooool
― emil.y, Thursday, 29 October 2020 00:01 (three years ago) link
haha
― A Scampo Darkly (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 29 October 2020 08:01 (three years ago) link
Thanks for taking me as sincere, James Morrison! It was more a comment on just how many books Wells cranked out and indeed if anyone read - and still reads - them.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Thursday, 29 October 2020 10:58 (three years ago) link
Once heard a BBC thing on why authors fall out of favour and they gave Wells as an example and put it down to his views on eugenics, which feels half baked. Surely lots of still-in-canon authors shared those?
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 29 October 2020 11:12 (three years ago) link
I've read two of these: Chaturangah and the one apparently we've all read. Both novels about young men coming of age, with an interesting contrast in the treatment of religion/spirituality. The main character of Chaturangah is drawn ever closer to it, whereas the main character of Portrait is running as fast as he can in the opposite direction.
― o. nate, Monday, 2 November 2020 20:05 (three years ago) link
― Fizzles, Monday, 2 November 2020 20:22 (three years ago) link
Wells is still historically important as a writer of science fiction, but by now all his 'prophecies' have either been surpassed by scientific developments or else proved to be fallacious, so they've lost a major part of their initial fascination. The major exception would be The Invisible Man, which was never really science fiction, but an allegory of science, more like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Frankenstein than like The War of the Worlds. Late Wells was more pontifical and topical, and far less imaginative.
― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Monday, 2 November 2020 20:55 (three years ago) link
I read a fair amount of Wells when I was a kid, and thought he was a good storyteller. Checked in a few years ago, and found him the same (myself too: no levels were revealed by adult eyes). This one was prophetic enough:
The Land Ironclads" is a short story by English writer H.G. Wells, which originally appeared in the December 1903 issue of the Strand Magazine.[1] It features "land ironclads," 100-foot-long (30 m) armoured fighting vehicles that carry riflemen, engineers, and a captain, and are armed with remote-controlled, semi-automatic rifles...
The story contributed to Wells's reputation as a "prophet of the future"[3] when tanks first appeared on the battlefield in 1916. For contemporaries, Wells's rather sketchy battle between countrymen "defenders" (who rely on cavalry and entrenched infantry) and attacking townsmen carried echoes of the Boer War, as well as of his 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, which also featured a struggle between technologically uneven protagonists.[4]The story opens with an unnamed war correspondent and a young lieutenant surveying the calm of the battlefield and reflecting upon the war between two unidentified armies.
Yeah, liked the points of view; the correspondent is old and getting older as he stands there and watches.
― dow, Tuesday, 3 November 2020 01:58 (three years ago) link
Middlebrow can be good. Mark S has referred in passing to the Beatles as middlebrow.
― dow, Tuesday, 3 November 2020 02:00 (three years ago) link
i have nothing against middlebrow! i just wonder whether it's peculiarly subject to going out of fashion.
I quite like Wells' short stories, and his history of the world was the first major synoptic history i read.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 3 November 2020 11:07 (three years ago) link
I should admit that this kind of "prophecy" might have seemed pretty freaking obvious to anybody halfway keeping up with steady gains in this kind of technology x imperial rivalries x the past century or centuries of European history. By 1903, he was contributing this story to a well-established subgenre---good article about it here:http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/future_war
― dow, Tuesday, 3 November 2020 16:56 (three years ago) link
Daniel, where art thou?
― pomenitul, Wednesday, 11 November 2020 20:20 (three years ago) link
Saw a disturbing adaptation of HG's "The Magic Shop" a few nights ago on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Don't know how much of that came across in the original; part of the effect here was perfect casting. The ending seemed like it might have been lifted by the author of a story famous via Twilight Zone adaptation, but that now seems a bit cuet compared to this.
― dow, Wednesday, 11 November 2020 23:02 (three years ago) link
Sorry pom! Moved house and we won't have wi-fi until the end of the month :( so tethering my phone's net to keep this up
Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1917
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 12 November 2020 13:45 (three years ago) link
Thanks, Daniel! Just wanted to make sure you were ok – the polls can obviously wait. And congrats on your new home!
― pomenitul, Thursday, 12 November 2020 13:48 (three years ago) link