brenda, I don't really know what "arch" means, but I'd probably agree. That whole book was a slew of "Nice concept, poor execution."
Whoa! I... I think I'm having a thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a thought. Now I'm having a plan. Now I'm having a wiggins.
Xander ,'First Date'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Polter-Cow - Nov 08, 2006 11:05:35 am PST #1510 of 28157
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
sj - Nov 08, 2006 11:21:15 am PST #1511 of 28157
"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."
I keep hearing good things about Middlemarch. What the blinking hell is it actually about ?
It's rural life in England in the 19th century. Lots of different characters and different things happening. It has the most beautiful writing.
Beverly - Nov 08, 2006 11:43:27 am PST #1512 of 28157
Days shrink and grow cold, sunlight through leaves is my song. Winter is long.
I think I'm handicapped by having read Jane Eyre first time as an adult, and everybody in it just made my teeth itch. Jane was a whiner, Rochester was a dolt, St. John was a self-important prig, all the women were ciphers, and the little girl was just an irritant. Maybe I'd have been able to spend an afternoon with the housekeeper. Maybe.
I'd read WH as a teen, though, and while I thoroughly despised Cathy, Heathcliff, the whosey family and practically everybody in the book, the setting suited me. I like the blasted heath. And it fit my sense of sturm and melodrama that everybody dies! Yes! Take that, stupid no-sense-making life!
... I may be slightly emotionally overinvested in my reading material.
Dana - Nov 08, 2006 11:47:52 am PST #1513 of 28157
I'm terrifically busy with my ennui.
Well, St. John is a self-important prig.
askye - Nov 08, 2006 11:58:59 am PST #1514 of 28157
Thrive to spite them
P-C, if you read Middlemarch make sure you get a copy with footnotes, I believe mine is a Penguin edition. Eliot references lots of events and situations that were current to the times but you probably wouldn't know about.
I believe she wrote it originally in installments for a magazine, so you could think of it like a box set for as series.
Jessica - Nov 08, 2006 12:01:07 pm PST #1515 of 28157
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset
I think I'm handicapped by having read Jane Eyre first time as an adult, and everybody in it just made my teeth itch. Jane was a whiner, Rochester was a dolt, St. John was a self-important prig, all the women were ciphers, and the little girl was just an irritant. Maybe I'd have been able to spend an afternoon with the housekeeper. Maybe.
When I first read Jane Eyre, I was ten, and I *loved* it. I reread it as an older teen, and had the same reaction as your paragraph above -- I couldn't read the book fast enough to get away from these people.
I don't remember how old I was when I read Wuthering Heights, but I remember loving it at the time. More for the atmosphere and the DRAMA than for the characters.
Calli - Nov 08, 2006 1:43:35 pm PST #1516 of 28157
I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul—Calvin and Hobbs
I read both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights when I was 14 or 15. And then I reread both of them when I was in my 30s. Jane Eyre held up better, for me.
Connie Neil - Nov 08, 2006 4:07:47 pm PST #1517 of 28157
brillig
I read Jane Eyre for the first time about six years ago and I adore it.
Fred Pete - Nov 08, 2006 4:51:14 pm PST #1518 of 28157
Ann, that's a ferret.
P-C, if you read Middlemarch make sure you get a copy with footnotes, I believe mine is a Penguin edition. Eliot references lots of events and situations that were current to the times but you probably wouldn't know about.
I'd recommend that for a lot of Victorian novelists. A lot of them (Trollope also comes to mind) were very much of their time. Which grounds their work in a reality but also means they make a lot of dated references.
Megan E. - Nov 09, 2006 4:00:53 am PST #1519 of 28157
Had to share this. I was in a bookstore yesterday and overheard this conversation:
Customer: "Do you have the new James Bond book?"
Clerk: o_O ?
Customer: "You know, Casino Royale?"
Clerk: Welllll, if you go to the fiction section under F, as in Flemming, Ian Flemming, we might have a copy. If you don't find it let me know.(pause)
Customer: "It doesn't have a movie cover so I'll wait. Thanks".
Wasn't Casino Royale the first James Bond book?