Apres-Juneteenth and Heat

[sartorias]

Last night the power went out for several hours.

Comments

[sparta5]

As an English/Humanities/Theatre major, my list of "read"s and "favorite"s is pretty long.

I think something that was big for me in high school were the discoveries of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells (hey, they were new to me. :-) ). From the Earth to the Moon/Around the Moon and War of the Worlds are still among my favorites. The similarities in Verne's stories to what really happened with the Apollo program blew me away. It still does.

[sartorias]

My spouse made his way to science fiction through Wells and Verne, loving them with a passion.

[glemsydoodles]

I didn't really get to classes in which I enjoyed the books until a few years ago. If anything, my classes made me love The Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses even more-- reading them in the Latin was nothing short of amazing, and reading translations for mythology or English classes was still great fun. In more conventional literature, I found out in freshman year how much I love Ray Bradbury's writing...actually, most of the classics I've read and liked weren't through school, but from rummaging through my mother's boxes of books from her undergrad days. What made it more interesting is that they were arranged somewhat by theme, so I'd have a dystopian-future period where I read 1984, A Clockwork Orange, and Brave New World in quick succession.

[sartorias]

Interesting about the themes! I wish I had enough Latin to read the real classics in their native habitat, so to speak.

[glemsydoodles]

One of my professors informed me that if I were to learn ancient Greek with my only goal being to read the Oedipus cycle in the original, he would consider it a completely worthwhile endeavor. Classics people are so cool. :)

[sartorias]

Ohhhh that would be so awesome.

[anonymous]

A quick note on an unrelated topic: your publisher appears to be doing more to promote you. I have just received a review copy of King's Shield. I believe this is my first-ever review copy of one of your books. Yay!

Gorgeous cover, by the way.

[sartorias]

Wow, that's good to know! I don't think they sent out the previous books. Hope you enjoy it, whoever you are! :-)

[sartorias]

Er, I should say, I hope you enjoy it if you choose to read it. Sorry about the arrogant assumption--blame it on 114 degree heat, and my brain, she is FRIED to Les Crispies.

[jaunthie]

Like a lot of the above commenters, I was assigned a lot of books I loved in English classes by authors I already knew I adored (Austen and Shakespeare are two obvious examples) even if I hadn't already read that particular work. (Although I do wonder if the reason Emma ties with Northanger Abbey as my least favorite Austen novel is because I had to read Emma in a particularly dreary English class one year.) Loving Burney and Brunton and Richardson all extended from that, I'm sure, so it wasn't a surprise at the time. Similarly, I certainly loved the Oddesey and the Illiad, but I'd grown up on Greek myths, so that wasn't particularly new, either. It was all part of a piece, which organically included Beowulf too. And my dislike of a lot of the early 20th century "classics" probably stems at least in part from the circumstances of the English class I encountered them in

[sartorias]

That's a wide spectrum of books! It's great when a couple of them turn out to be winners.

[skogkatt]

The Great Gatsby, like many others have already said. I remember just loving the imagery. I was on a real discovering imagery kick that year (11th grade), and I took to Fitzgerald immediately. We also did a great poetry unit that year, which led me to Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

I honestly can't remember anything else. I read widely outside of class, and I can remember hating several forced reads (The Scarlet Letter and Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" were both required no less than three different times, and oh, I hated them more each year!)

[sartorias]

Yep, those two were on my stinker list as well.

Kate Chopin

[k_10b]

She'd be on my list of wonderful discoveries through assigned reading. I had to read the short story "The Storm" and fell in love with her voice. The Awakening is one of those classics I try to re-read at least every 4-5 years.

Re: Kate Chopin

[sartorias]

I always liked "The Storm" though except for the recital scene (and the beautiful writing) I didn't take to The Awakening. Many of my peers did, though: discovering Kate Chopin was an exhilarating part of the evolution of women's studies for so many of my age mates, in the early seventies.