[BobLenx]

Public domain books boring?

Twain? Wilde? Wilke Collins? Stoker? Shelley? Tolstoy Dostoevsky? Wells? Burroughs? Dickens? Hardy? Verne? Wolfe? Cooper? Hawthorne? Doyle? Fitzgerald? Dumas? Lawrence? London? Hilton? Orwell? Poe? Sinclair? Melville? Stevenson?

Boring? Good grief - these rank among the greats of the art of writing. I mean, Wilke Collins INVENTED the modern mystery novel.

Actually I have owned my Sony eReader for about ten months and have NEVER purchased an eBook yet. Everything I have read on it is in the public domain - about 80 so far.

There are very few modern authors I care to read, and those I pick up at the library for free. I find most new books to be somewhat interesting, but with relatively shallow thinking behind them - about as mind engaging as your average television show. Dean Koontz is at least familiar with the English language and can turn a phrase - love the "Odd" books.

There is just something about settling down for a week with a 500 plus page book by Charles Dickens and knowing you are reading something with great layered plots, amazing characters, descriptive environment, social commentary, wonderful writing - a book that tens of millions of people over many decades have enjoyed before you - a book that millions more will be reading well into the future. There are always multiple levels of meaning to anything written by Dickens.

I never find myself skipping along rapidly to get through a boring section, which is common with many modern authors I read. Dickens doesn't build up to hit you with one big zinger at the end - he hits you with zingers throughout the novel. I have wept while reading Dickens - and I have grinned openly and laughed - I have felt pity - and guilt - and remorse - and happiness - and sadness - basked in the warmth of a kitchen fireplace with the characters - savoured the rich odors of the evening meal cooking - wiffed the smoke curling from the lips of the pipe and cigar smokers relaxing after dinner - shivered in the cold snows and rain - felt their pains and grief and loss - revealed in their delight - I've witnessed their birth - watched them grow to adulthood facing reality and responsibility - in good times and bad - and have been by their bedside when they passed into imortality with tears pouring down my cheeks.

I feel a sense of regret when I near the end of a novel like Little Dorritt or Bleakhouse or Oliver Twist or Nicholas Nickleby or The Old Curiosity Shop - I don't want them to stop. There is a sadness in losing old friends at the end of a Dickens novel. There is nothing like this for me in anything written by modern authors.

While I might agree that the pedantic approach of many English teachers in high school can make even a great novel boring, go back and give them a try as an adult with no reports to write, no tests, no anxiety about giving a wrong answer to a question., no pressure to have "chapters 23 through 34 read by tomorrow's class with a three-page analysis".

Bob