The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Lawrence Durrell was a great writer. Gerald Durrell was an an entertaining writer. Care to guess whose books I have re-read?

I have seen the TV show The Durrells based on Gerald Durrell's books. I found it quite fun to watch.

[maddz]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Lawrence Durrell was a great writer. Gerald Durrell was an an entertaining writer. Care to guess whose books I have re-read?

Lawrence Durrell was entertaining as well - have you not read https://www.amazon.co.uk/Antrobus-Co...dp/B008022XEG/ / https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/antrobus-complete ?

[Martinoptic]

Thanks for the link. I started reading bitter lemons, but found it a bit dry. Antorbus looks as if it might be fun.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Lawrence Durrell was a great writer. Gerald Durrell was an an entertaining writer. Care to guess whose books I have re-read?

I think Lawrence was overrated and I don't think he's aged well; I can't imagine slogging through that overwritten tripe again. Gerald is fun.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I have seen the TV show The Durrells based on Gerald Durrell's books. I found it quite fun to watch.

The Durrells is very different from the books and the books took liberties with the truth themselves.

Originally Posted by Martinoptic

Thanks for the link. I started reading bitter lemons, but found it a bit dry. Antorbus looks as if it might be fun.

I love the Antrobus stories.

[maddz]

Originally Posted by issybird

I think Lawrence was overrated and I don't think he's aged well; I can't imagine slogging through that overwritten tripe again.

I'll confess to attempting The Alexandria Quartet on several occasions and bottling out. The only reason I try to read it is because my great aunt lived in Alexandria at the time the series is set and she was part of the literary set there. It does come across like Simon Raven who has also aged badly although I have a liking for The Roses of Picardie and it's sequel, September Castle. The 1950s louche settings are distinctly past their best-before date; I suspect we'll see the same with modern millenial fiction, especially metro-sexual rom-coms in the next decade or so.

Bitter Lemons is more reportage than fiction so, yes, somewhat dry.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by maddz

I'll confess to attempting The Alexandria Quartet on several occasions and bottling out.

The thought of reading something from four points of view that I wasn't even sure that I wanted to read from one point of view stopped me.

[HLS]

Reading the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson one after another. gets longer with each book. Oathbringer is a whopping 1,220 pages

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by HLS

Reading the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson one after another. gets longer with each book. Oathbringer is a whopping 1,220 pages

Hey, at least eBooks don't weigh that much.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by maddz

Lawrence Durrell was entertaining as well - have you not read https://www.amazon.co.uk/Antrobus-Co...dp/B008022XEG/ / https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/antrobus-complete ?

I have read almost all of his books including White Eagles over Serbia plus some of his non-fiction and poetry. My main objection to his writing is his preoccupation with erotic complications even when they have (IMHO) little to nothing to do with the story.

I did enjoy reading and comparing Prospero's Cell to Gerald Durrell's Corfu Trilogy (My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods). The way they both fictionalized their families experiences living in Corfu was like catching both ends of a game of telephone.

OTOH, the Alexandria Quartet, the Avignon Quintet and the Revolt of Aphrodite duology were books that I read but have never found myself wanting to re-read.

[issybird]

An example of a long title backfiring:

According to Goodreads, one of the books I'm reading is called A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jew. Which startled me extremely, and not only because the crook in question was Irish Catholic. On inspection, it turned out that el Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue was cut off.

[ownedbycats]

Not sure if that's better than a headline getting cut off in the middle of the word "analyst."

[Martinoptic]

[maddz]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Not sure if that's better than a headline getting cut off in the middle of the word "analyst."

At one point I was working at the Animal and Public Health section of a pharmaceutical company. It took a year before someone pointed out the 2nd 'l' was missing from people's business cards...