(Untitled)

[shirleym]

So I promised you all a little explanation of that poll I posted awhile back, and then never got around to it. Nothing is getting done at work this afternoon, so here I am

Comments

[barking_iguana]

The only Hemingway I've read is The old Man and the Sea, may decades ago. I didn't recognize it as Great Literature, perhaps because I've never been able to put up with the wordiness and refusal to get to the point in Great Literature. I thought TOMATS was a great read, though, and I finished it in one evening, staying up past when I had planned. I read one Beckett play in my teens, too. I was amused, but not enthralled.

[cinema_babe]

That was pretty much how I did it.

I can't deal with Faulkner, I found I had to work so hard trying to understand what the characters were saying that I could barely follow the action. I don't care for Southern Gothic in general, though.

Beckett is one of my favorite playwrights. I find reading him amusing but I feel as though I really didn't get a good appreciation until I actually saw his work live.

I like the Romantic Brits (The Bronte sisters and Austin) but I suspect that I liked them more in when I was younger than I do today. Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo and Thomas Hardy form my triumvirate of favorite authors. I like wordy if the wielder of the pen can tell a compelling story and paint me into the picture with his/her words.

Hmmmm...... this is much longer than I thought it would be.

[bychoice]

I have an english degree and have read all kinds of fancy high literature. However, I wouldn't read any (or at least almost any) of it of my own free will now or for fun (except perhaps Shakespeare). I don't go for mopey characters, slow plots, or mood pieces. I think that truly great literature is something with a good plot that moves, a good, sparse use of language, and and characters that are believable and yet special. So, I didn't answer your poll, because while I have found that is some older books it isn't in the "Great Literature" category usually.

[barking_iguana]

Oh, yeah. I like reading Shakespeare. Playwrights are better often better than novelists at keeping the action going. And Shakespeare wasn't about artsy, recursive comment on the form of the play, he was about the actual characters and stories. But I think of anything from before the age of novels as in the same category as The Bible, not as what Shirley was talking about

[bychoice]

Tristram Shandy is a hard slog. I didn't make it through that either. That was the same class as "Moll Flanders". I hate that book.

I liked "Dangerous Liasons", and that was translated from French. I also liked "Three Musketeers" and "Queen Margot". I'm not sure if I'll make it through "The Count of Monte Cristo", though, as the beginning is really seriously dragging.