I was warped forever, I think, by encountering (unabridged prose) translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and of The Three Musketeers, well in advance of anyone telling me that I was required to read them. After that, I was pretty much conditioned to expect my great literature to give me epic sweep with a side order of panache. Small wonder that I turned into a medievalist and a genre-lover; most Victorian and modern mainstream novels were and still are completely lost on me.
Moby-Dick, thank goodness, I didn't have to read until grad school, where it definitely grew on me with the reading. (See epic sweep and panache, above.) If I'd had to read it in high school, I might never have come around.
I discovered in high school that how the books were taught could turn them into road kill. I read Count of Monte Cristo on my own, and Les Mis....when we had the latter for a class, suddenly it turned tedious and horrible because of the grunt memorization of trivia required, and those horrible essays on "relevance" and "theme".
I absolutely loved Invisible Man. It was required summer reading for an AP English class and I think I was the only one in the class who enjoyed it. Not many even cracked it open.
The Great Gatsby was a favorite; I think that was when I first started actively noticing what diction and syntax do in descriptions. I guess The Count of Monte Cristo is considered a classic? I read it in 7th grade and not only is the story appealing but every time I read it again I discover something new about characterization or plotcraft.
Classics, classics. I picked up Middlemarch and The Mayor of Casterbridge on my own and loved them. No big others come to mind; I don't think I've actually read very many.
I adore The Count of Monte Cristo with a mad passion - but only, I discovered, in the translation I grew up with. I'd never thought about it; this was The Version, how could there be another? Then I bought a smart new edition to replace my disintegrated old one - and it was a different translation, and unreadable. Like a favourite novel retold by another writer, sentence by sentence. Hateful...
Once when power went out during an ice storm, one neighbor had a generator--it was weird to see one house lit up (and yes, the NOISE from the generator) when the rest were quiet.
How did you get sunstroke as a kid? What happened?
As for classics, I liked the Russians a whole lot. Now I don't remember them so very much--I haven't reread them --but there are a couple of scenes in War and Peace that stick in my mind. One is where the character Petya (all this time I've been remembering it as a different character, but just now Google Books has proved me wrong) imagines a symphony in his head the night before battle...he dies in the battle, and the gift of that music always moved me: I typed it over here
Oh, I loved War and Peace so, so much, especially when I discovered that Tolstoy had gone to visit the peasants at Borodino and culled memories from the oldsters.
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Moby-Dick, thank goodness, I didn't have to read until grad school, where it definitely grew on me with the reading. (See epic sweep and panache, above.) If I'd had to read it in high school, I might never have come around.
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The Great Gatsby was a favorite; I think that was when I first started actively noticing what diction and syntax do in descriptions. I guess The Count of Monte Cristo is considered a classic? I read it in 7th grade and not only is the story appealing but every time I read it again I discover something new about characterization or plotcraft.
Classics, classics. I picked up Middlemarch and The Mayor of Casterbridge on my own and loved them. No big others come to mind; I don't think I've actually read very many.
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How did you get sunstroke as a kid? What happened?
As for classics, I liked the Russians a whole lot. Now I don't remember them so very much--I haven't reread them --but there are a couple of scenes in War and Peace that stick in my mind. One is where the character Petya (all this time I've been remembering it as a different character, but just now Google Books has proved me wrong) imagines a symphony in his head the night before battle...he dies in the battle, and the gift of that music always moved me: I typed it over here
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Oh, I loved War and Peace so, so much, especially when I discovered that Tolstoy had gone to visit the peasants at Borodino and culled memories from the oldsters.
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