Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I love 19th century novels, personally. One doesn't have to have all day free in order to read them.
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Oh, I like them, too; I was thinking of scenes where the characters themselves seem to spend all day reading.
And of course you may have noticed that you are not typical. (I hope I'm not the first one to break this to you).
Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
I think part of the loss of popularity in some areas for the 19th century novels is the way they were written. Back when Lew Wallace wrote Ben Hur for example he could take the time to describe the setting in great detail before jumping into the story. Today you can't get away with that, and many people don't have the patience for that because where as he had to paint a vivid mental picture of the setting we can turn on the TV and see the area where a given story is set (assuming it's a real world story). We don't need the long descriptions in order to see Paris for example, or the Sistine chapel. Our ancestors didn't have that option so the long descriptions were necessary.
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By this logic, why read at all when we can just watch TV or read books? There were pictures (photos even) of the Sistene chapel at that time, for example.
I agree that some people don't have the patience for longer form reading, including these kinds of descriptions. But I strongly disagree that they are now superfluous because we have television.