Doorstop recommendation

[Dr. Drib]

Almost forgot: If you want to be wrapped and caressed in language, to 'dream' while reading, I can also recommend this very dense and consuming novel below:

Marguerite Young - Miss Macintosh, My Darling

NOTE: Not available in ebook in the U.S. (to the best of my knowledge). It is available from kobo UK. Also, this was published in 1966 (?), and probably falls outside of the time period you're interested in exploring.

I've always loved this photo of her and her manuscript.

Here's a good site to explore:
https://www.margueriteyoung.site/who...oto-gallery-2/

[Catlady]

Which Les Miserables translation? I picked up the audiobook of the Christine Donougher translation a while back and was planning to try to read it in the new year.

[issybird]

A lot to address here and much food for thought.

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Almost forgot: If you want to be wrapped and caressed in language, to 'dream' while reading, I can also recommend this very dense and consuming novel below:

Marguerite Young - Miss Macintosh, My Darling

Hah! Well I remember that obese paperback. I got about halfway through and didn't abandon it deliberately, but didn't get back to it. I'm done. That is, it's too recent! (Whew!)

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Some modernist literature, which you may or may not care for, such as the three listed below:

Hermann Broch - The Sleepwalkers
https://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-...s%2C222&sr=8-1

Elias Canetti - Auto-da-Fé
https://www.amazon.com/Auto-F%C3%A9-...3394513&sr=8-1

Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Without-Q...s%2C215&sr=8-1

Broch is close and will go on a longer-term list. His The Death of Virgil has been on my tbr for a while. It's too short and too new for this challenge, but I'd like to get to that first.

I've read Musil's The Confusions of Young Törless which I greatly enjoyed; of course that was an early work and short. My only issue with Man without Qualities is length; it's why I haven't tackled it until now and I think it would be too long in the context of other long, if not as long, books. Someday (I hope).

As for Canetti, I've read his three memoirs and Crowds and Power and all were stellar. So I have no idea why I've not read Auto-da-Fé; just never got to it. If I were to choose it, I'd have to sub it for Magic Mountain and I've had a hankering to reread that for a long time. But, at least it's not so long that I couldn't read it as an "ordinary" choice; it also has potential along with a few others as a backup, if something's not working.

I appreciate these suggestions. Mitteleuropa in the century from the 1848 revolutions through the end of WWII is of particular interest to me. Among the authors I've read in the past few years are Miklós Bánffy, Robert Walser, Gregor von Rezzori, Joseph Roth, Dezső Kosztolányi. So this was a good nudge to tackle consequential texts of the period.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Which Les Miserables translation? I picked up the audiobook of the Christine Donougher translation a while back and was planning to try to read it in the new year.

That's an issue. I have the Julie Rose translation as an ebook and the Donougher translation in audiobook. Tentatively, especially since I prefer to listen to audiobooks when I own them, I'll listen to Donougher and skim the Rose in tandem as a backup (and for stretches when I zone out). If I find one a much better experience than the other, I'll go with that.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

That's an issue. I have the Julie Rose translation as an ebook and the Donougher translation in audiobook. Tentatively, especially since I prefer to listen to audiobooks when I own them, I'll listen to Donougher and skim the Rose in tandem as a backup (and for stretches when I zone out). If I find one a much better experience than the other, I'll go with that.

I picked up the Donougher-translation audiobook for the multicast narration; I thought that might be more palatable than the Frederick-Davidson-narration version I already had (Wilbour translation).

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I picked up the Donougher-translation audiobook for the multicast narration; I thought that might be more palatable than the Frederick-Davidson-narration version I already had (Wilbour translation).

I like Frederick Davidson - a lot, in fact - but I don't know he's ideal for Hugo. And one of my hard-and-fast rules about translations is that it's money well spent to pay for a modern one than to read a public domain translation for free.

[jackm8]

Consider Sinister Street. It is long and just fits 100 year requirement. It's pretty much forgotten now, but was considered a major success and influence at the time of publication. Gustave Flaubert type mix of realism and romanticism, with plenty of exceptionally well written purple prose. I'm not sure if the protagonist is such a pompous snob intentionally, or he's just the mirror of the writer at the time of writing. Either way, I ended especially enjoying all those over the top passages.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by jackm8

Consider Sinister Street. It is long and just fits 100 year requirement. It's pretty much forgotten now, but was considered a major success and influence at the time of publication. Gustave Flaubert type mix of realism and romanticism, with plenty of exceptionally well written purple prose. I'm not sure if the protagonist is such a pompous snob intentionally, or he's just the mirror of the writer at the time of writing. Either way, I ended especially enjoying all those over the top passages.

Here you go:

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/co...inister-street

Download responsibly.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by jackm8

Consider Sinister Street. It is long and just fits 100 year requirement. It's pretty much forgotten now, but was considered a major success and influence at the time of publication. Gustave Flaubert type mix of realism and romanticism, with plenty of exceptionally well written purple prose. I'm not sure if the protagonist is such a pompous snob intentionally, or he's just the mirror of the writer at the time of writing. Either way, I ended especially enjoying all those over the top passages.

Now that's a book that wasn't on my radar! Even though it fits as a book that I read back in the day and is only the barest glimmer to me now. It a period I love, too, and I know enough about it that I understand the background and the unsaid. Yet while it'sold enough and long enough, I want to feel I'm improving my mind, at least a scootch, i.e., it doesn't have quite the heft (other than physical) I'm looking for. But thanks for the trip down memory lane and I think I'll download it at that, for dipping into purposes.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

If you like Dostoevsky, I would second 'The Brothers Karamazov'. It's his final work, and I'm one of the people who thinks it probably surpasses 'Crime and Punishment', especially because one of the chapters in TBK is essentially a redux of C&P in a more refined and polished form, since Dostoevsky had had more time to refine his ideas by that point.

I read the Slater translation of C&P and the P&V translation of TBK, FWIW.

Originally Posted by issybird

The Brothers Karamazov is virtually certain to make the final cut. It will be the Michael R. Katz translation which I bought last year when it came out. And promptly forgot.

Ohhhkay. So I decided to start off with Brothers K, in the Katz translation. It was going swimmingly, I was enjoying it, and then I hit a wall. I figured I'd push through, forcing myself to read it for at least a chapter a day....

And then tonight, I realized that I most recently had been reading the Pevear translation! I own both Pevear and Katz and had downloaded both to my Kobo, thinking I might read the P&V footnotes while reading Katx. When the book opened to the first page yesterday I ascribed it to a bad touch and navigated to where I left off. I noted that remaining reading time had jumped ten hours, but I thought that was Kobo adjusting to my speed. What I couldn't figure out was why something I'd been enjoying had turned into such a slog.

So, greatly relieved! I have an explanation and I'll be sure not to make the mistake again. And I'm going to reread the chapters that I'd forced myself through in P&V.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by issybird

Ohhhkay. So I decided to start off with Brothers K, in the Katz translation. It was going swimmingly, I was enjoying it, and then I hit a wall. I figured I'd push through, forcing myself to read it for at least a chapter a day....

And then tonight, I realized that I most recently had been reading the Pevear translation! I own both Pevear and Katz and had downloaded both to my Kobo, thinking I might read the P&V footnotes while reading Katx. When the book opened to the first page yesterday I ascribed it to a bad touch and navigated to where I left off. I noted that remaining reading time had jumped ten hours, but I thought that was Kobo adjusting to my speed. What I couldn't figure out was why something I'd been enjoying had turned into such a slog.

So, greatly relieved! I have an explanation and I'll be sure not to make the mistake again. And I'm going to reread the chapters that I'd forced myself through in P&V.

I love that we are polar opposites on P&V who I greatly enjoy.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

I love that we are polar opposites on P&V who I greatly enjoy.

I'm very grateful that for so many of these books, there are options! I can't resist adding that when I told my tale to my sister who is an academic in Russian, she said that she thinks Constance Garnett is unjustly disparaged despite not being entirely accurate. Because, according to my sister, unlike many other translations, Garnett is a good read. Which really is the point.

So here's to all of us finding our personal good reads!

[paola]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'm thinking about my 2025 reading challenges and I'd like to change things up a little. So for one challenge, I plan to read six doorstops that I haven't read in decades, if ever.

This is what I've got so far:

• Middlemarch
• Moby Dick
• Don Quixote
• Les Misérables
• The Magic Mountain

Here are my requirements: English language, at least 100 years old, an "important" work, long. I'm preemptively nixing the obvious choice which would be a third English-language nationality and meets all my requirements: Ulysses. I've read it and I'm not feeling it for this challenge. Also, no Dickens or Trollope. I've been immersing myself in Trollope for several years now and I've already picked a Dickens as my fallback sixth choice: Our Mutual Friend. Oh, and not Villette which I loved but am not ready to reread. I am also open to non-Western works, just nothing too ancient. A novel, not runes.

None of this is set in stone, so an appealing recommendation could lead me to jettison another choice. I'm also flexible, within reason. Not English, not quite hitting the century mark, longish instead of long. You get the idea.

So what have you got? What weighty tomes am I not considering?

well, you are probably all set with all these suggestions, but just in case you haven't read them, and steering clear of translations:

The Woman In White, by Wilkie Collins, though you may well have read this already; and
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding

Not recommending these by experience, but as my to read doorstoppers!

And Middlemarch, what a joy to read!

[issybird]

Originally Posted by paola

well, you are probably all set with all these suggestions, but just in case you haven't read them, and steering clear of translations:

The Woman In White, by Wilkie Collins, though you may well have read this already; and
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding

Not recommending these by experience, but as my to read doorstoppers!

And Middlemarch, what a joy to read!

Tom Jones made my list!

[paola]

Originally Posted by issybird

Tom Jones made my list!

it will be fun to compare notes when we are both done then!