A literary confession topic

[anamardoll]

(You're not the only one who still finds 1984 not-put-downable, by the way. I didn't want to disagree, what with this being a SAFE TRUST TREE confession topic. But you are not alone. )

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Noah98

This is a really fun topic by the way

1. Love Star Trek but...like Star Wars more! Babylon 5 Firefly is awesome though

2. To address the "classics are meaningless" comment: Some books are not read for entertainment, but enlightenment or information. While the classics may be dull and no longer fun, some serve an important purpose in educating the populace. Someone mentioned Orwell's 1984 as being boring. While I vehemently disagree (I couldn't put it down), I respect the opinion on its "entertainment value," but I hope we can all recognize how profoundly important that novel was and still is as a warning to mankind. Once you give up your personal freedoms and liberties, good luck getting them back!

3. I do agree that unlike 1984, some classics just don't hold up when viewed in a modern lens. For example, Catcher in the Rye is very much a "so what" book now.

Anyway, just my two cents.

1. No way is Star Wars better then Star Trek. Babylon 5 was great. Firefly was so-so.

2. With a lot of the classics, it's not so much the story that's the problem. It's the writing that's the problem. I can watch movie adaptations of a lot of classics I would not be able to finish reading.

3. And some are dull in both writing and story.

[Noah98]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

1. No way is Star Wars better then Star Trek. Babylon 5 was great. Firefly was so-so.

2. With a lot of the classics, it's not so much the story that's the problem. It's the writing that's the problem. I can watch movie adaptations of a lot of classics I would not be able to finish reading.

3. And some are dull in both writing and story.

I probably should give Babylon 5 another chance. Very passionate fans.

I can agree with your #2 and #3. A lot of times it's tough to get through the dated language.

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Now that was one of favourite points in the movie... when I realised we'd passed the Bombadil point without his presence...

I had no problem leaving that out of the film

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by Noah98

I probably should give Babylon 5 another chance. Very passionate fans.

I can agree with your #2 and #3. A lot of times it's tough to get through the dated language.

The production value was awful in the first season and got a little better as the show went on. The acting can be very weak but the story is amazing. Keep in mind that one episode of B5 was made with a budget that was 1/4 of the budget for Voyager.

Seriously, the story is unbelievably tight. I had friends who started watching in Season 2 and didn't think they had missed much by not watching Season 1. Then they watched Season 1 and went "Holy Crap". There is stuff in the first episode that you just don't fully get until the fifth season.

It is my all time favorite Sci Fi show.

Better the anything Star Trek produced because it was a long term story arc and JMS was perfectly happily to screw with the main characters for many seasons. Better then Battle Star Galactica and Farscape because it was so tightly written. I can't compare it to Fire Fly because the series was cancelled too soon and had oh so much potential.

[Daithi]

In regards to Sci Fi shows, I was really ticked off that Caprica didn't make it. I was so getting into that series. I'm not holding out much hope that were going to see another quality series on the Syfy channel that has the "story arc" format for a while.

[Imre]

My confession: I can't stand Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books. The way he characterizes women, the way the books drudge on and on and on!

I agree mostly about the classics being dull -- though some of them are still worth reading for the 'moral' of the story.

I've read all of the Twilight books.

I also like young adult books!

[AkumaTakeshi]

Originally Posted by Imre

My confession: I can't stand Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books. The way he characterizes women, the way the books drudge on and on and on!

I agree mostly about the classics being dull -- though some of them are still worth reading for the 'moral' of the story.

I've read all of the Twilight books.

I also like young adult books!

Welcome to the forum Imre Hope you stay around now that you started to participate ^^

Been wanting to read Wheel of Time but I heard both good and bad things about it so I don't know.

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by Daithi

One more confession: I enjoyed the Hobbit, but could only make it half way through the rest of the LOTR series. It got very monotonous after awhile.

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Ooh! That's a good one. Lord of the Rings confession: I can't stand all the poems and songs and excessive world-building. I don't care about the elf heritage. Just get back to the ring stuff, stop telling me what everyone sits around and eats and talks about in Rivendell for freaking forever.

Ah, The Lord of the Rings... it's such a boring book, it's such an exciting book...

[DMB]

Writing off "the classics" doesn't make sense unless modern writing is much better. I see no evidence for that. But obviously as we recede in time from the writers and as both language and culture change, classics become more of a challenge and are probably harder work to read. But the big question is: what does one get out of them? All reading of fiction is a trade off among entertainment, effort and education. The proportions vary with the vintage of the works.

In my youth I made a determined effort to read through the English writers up to the end of the 18th century. A few are still among my favourites, including Fielding and Defoe. No way would I ever tackle Richardson's novels again!

I don't find Jane Austen romantic at all. But I love her writing and the vivid portraits she draws of her social circle. I did read all of Fanny Burney's novels and since getting my Kindle I have reread Evelina. Her novels are interesting as an influence on Austen, but are nowhere as valuable in themselves.

I have to agree with the criticisms of Wuthering Heights. I find it an embarrassing book. It reveals far too much about it's author's fantasies. Emily is considered an important poet, but Charlotte is a more considerable novelist. Given that two of the Bronte girls were obliged to work as governesses, it is hardly surprising that she wrote about governesses. I like Shirley the most of her books and I also like Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. That is really not romantic in the popular sense, although the Bronte writing style is literary romanticism.

But I find some 19th-century writers off-putting: Dickens in particular. I don't find all that many of his characters believable and his comic creations are often irritating bits of crowd-pleasing that mess up his stories. I think he was a successful hack.

But I cannot agree with writing off Hardy. I love his novels and poetry. The novels are rooted in his native countryside, which I knew well in my teens. (I used to walk all over it.) The stories almost grow out of the land. But I can imagine that they are less appealing if you don't know the places.

I have to confess to having failed to get very far with A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, having never managed to finish even the first book, despite several attempts. On the basis of Shirley Conran's maxim that "life is too short to stuff a mushroom", I don't intend to go back to it. But I nonetheless feel guilty. It seems to be a badge of whether one is genuinely literary or not.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by DMB

In my youth I made a determined effort to read through the English writers up to the end of the 18th century. A few are still among my favourites, including Fielding and Defoe. No way would I ever tackle Richardson's novels again!

OMG, CLARISSA!

I did a whole semester in college on Clarissa for a graduate school entry term paper thing. I later rated it 2 stars on Amazon, and I've had commenters get shirty with me because It's A Classic.

[ProfCrash]

We were reading Wuthering Heights in my AP English class. It was my teachers favorite novel. Our first assignment was to write an essay defending the position that Wutherng Heights was a classic.

I wrote my essay on why Wuthering Heights was not a classic. I argued that for all of the metaphors and great use of other literary devices in the book, the characters were unlikeable and in the end, the book was unbearable because of that.

I got an F on the assignment but aced the class and passed my AP English exam with a 3. Not the best but it got me some college credit.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

We were reading Wuthering Heights in my AP English class. It was my teachers favorite novel. Our first assignment was to write an essay defending the position that Wutherng Heights was a classic.

I wrote my essay on why Wuthering Heights was not a classic. I argued that for all of the metaphors and great use of other literary devices in the book, the characters were unlikeable and in the end, the book was unbearable because of that.

I got an F on the assignment but aced the class and passed my AP English exam with a 3. Not the best but it got me some college credit.

I love it!

I did something similar in college. I wrote a paper on The Scarlett Letter based on the idea of gender role reversal. My paper stated that the book had obviously gender role reversal and that BOTH of the MMCs were talking the female role and the MFC was taking the masculine role. I think I made several comments/statements saying that the men were emasculated by their lack of strength. My teacher was a little misogynist so I got a fat red D on that one. But it felt soooo good.

[Joybells]

I couldn't get into Dickens at the approved stage of school, but reread several in my twenties, and realised that there are no normal people in Dickens - everyone is larger than life - a caricature if you will - and if viewed as a written forerunner of a comic book, the verbosity was pertinent in overpainting the characters.

I loved Wuthering Heights as a teen - and have seen several movies of the story which are fascinating in the variation of the directors' take on the characters. I've come to the conclusion that Cathy and Heathcliff were just totally out of control, but that could be the view of a straitlaced granny, as when I was a teen I was carried away by the angst and raging hormones.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by Joybells

I couldn't get into Dickens at the approved stage of school, but reread several in my twenties, and realised that there are no normal people in Dickens - everyone is larger than life - a caricature if you will - and if viewed as a written forerunner of a comic book, the verbosity was pertinent in overpainting the characters.

I loved Wuthering Heights as a teen - and have seen several movies of the story which are fascinating in the variation of the directors' take on the characters. I've come to the conclusion that Cathy and Heathcliff were just totally out of control, but that could be the view of a straitlaced granny, as when I was a teen I was carried away by the angst and raging hormones.

As I get older I've concluded that Cathy and Heathcliff were insane. And thank God they kept their insanity isolated from the majority of the rest of the world.