| CRussel |
02-25-2017 02:10 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
(Post 3481443)
I'm curious about those who fall into those two decades. Off the top of my head, I've got Waugh, Hemingway, Orwell, Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, although of course there are many others.
From your comment, I think you want something recent (in this context) and not a moldy old book that's no good, to employ a member's phrase. How about The Forsyte Saga? Good read, author's a Nobelist, started the Brit television drama craze in the US that persists to this day.
Or there's the very readable F. Scott Fitzgerald, although the club did read something by him several years ago (full disclosure: one of my favorite club discussions ever).
It's a fun question and I shall continue to think about it although i know the clock is ticking.
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I remember not particularly enjoying F. Scott Fitzgerald in my youth, when it was required reading, but my opinion might well have changed by now. Worth a thought.
As for The Forsyte Saga? Perhaps. Though it's rather large, even if you only look at the first triplet. Though the first book alone would be a more manageable 220 pages or so. OTOH, I've wanted an excuse to read this epic work for years. So, why not. Time is short, but I'll nominate it in the hope that others will be willing to come along for the ride.
I nominate book 1 of The Forsyte Saga, The Man of Property, by John Galsworthy.
Quote:
John Galsworthy (1867-1933) devoted virtually his entire professional career to creating a fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians: the Forsytes. He made their lives and times, loves and losses, fortunes and deaths so real that readers accused him of including as characters in his drama real individuals whom they knew. He was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.
The entire saga comprises three trilogies of books, of which this is the first. The other two ("A Modern Comedy" and "End of the Chapter") are available as separate downloads.
This first trilogy, "The Forsyte Saga", chronicles the life of three generations of the Forsyte family, a wealthy upper middle class English family, in the turbulent years between the 1880s and the 1920s - a time period during which English society was completely transformed. The books are set against the great events of the day - the Boer War and WWI, the rise of Labour, the death of Queen Victoria, and much more.
This book was originally published as three novels, with a short story "interlude" between each one, the structure being:
The Man of Property
(Interlude) Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery
(Interlude) Awakening
To Let
This is far from "light reading", but richly rewards the effort. Once you get "into" the story, these are great books.
This book was previously uploaded by HarryT (the above text is mainly what HarryT wrote), that's why I start with v4. Since his version was, as he told me, just a direct translation of the PG text, I've created this new one, for this I proofread the text (at what I call level 2, hundreds of corrections done, checking against a scan from the Internet Archive), added a music score fragment and a family tree, curly quotes, italics, etc.
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I've linked to Jelby's version, since it was built on HarryT's and edited, but if you prefer others, there are multiple versions in the PCML. Choose the one that you prefer!
Also, here's an Audible link for the David Case narration of the first volume. Again, there are multiple versions if you have someone you prefer, though I find that hard to imagine, David Case being one of my favourite narrators of all time. |
