To my mind, you are suis generis and beyond comparison or generalization.

I'm not beyond comparison or generalisation, at least not any more than anyone else here is. But I appreciate the sentiment.

In re exposure to the classics at a young age? I can speak to this, and will. I was, by a country mile, the afterthought baby of my family; the nearest sibling to me in age is nine years my senior, the oldest 17 years my senior. I was also very sickly as a kid: one stint in an iron lung for polio, again for the resultant pneumonia. In there was also scarlet fever and a few other things.

Result of that was that I was read to, a lot. My brother - a member of AFI in those days, stationed in Berlin, and fluent in, count 'em, eleven languages - would come home on rare occasions, and he'd read to me: clearest memory was Cymbeline in German. I spoke not one word of the language, but the flow of it was staggering. My cousin Felicia then read it to me in English. There was no crit possible, or needed, or desired. I was six. No idea in hell what the play was about, but I damn well surfed on the rhythm of the language. Totally visceral, first genuine reaction I had, and it stayed with me.

My sister Alice - she of the French PhD - would read to me, as well. Her favourite, obviously, was Lewis Carroll. She's made cutout dolls of all the characters, a la Tenniel, and we'd act them out, verbatim, on my bed. Loving the characters, loving the journey they were on, wondering what would happen if I could someday write my own, and send characters like that down a left fork in that road. Is that anti-intellectual? I don't know. I don't think so. I just know I loved it.

Then my cousin Donny, reading to me from The Odyssey. I fell in love with it: Circe, Polyphemus, Calypso, the entire journey. Years later, at school, I was astonished at how much of it I remembered.

Somewhere in there, before I healthied up and people stopped reading to me, I heard The Wind in the Willows, a truckload of Shakespeare (The Tempest is the most clear in my memory), my first Michael Drayton (that remains my favourite poem by anyone, ever), William Blake, John Milton (I thought he was a poopy old girlhater and never changed my opinion on that), Edna St. Vincent Millay, Milne, some Russians in Russian (they were teaching me the language, which I never used and promptly forgot), and Aristophanes.

But in 1968, my sisters' college buddies made it very clear that, while they were amused as hell by her prodigal sister, said sister couldn't possibly be taken seriously because she didn't like (insert following Serious Writers here). They then managed to ruin a couple of my favourite pieces - I can't read Kenneth Grahame anymore because they killed it - by dissecting them.

So, yeah, I get defensive.

I can't help but think that there's something structurally lacking more than intellectually.

will not mention the book club idea again.

Oh, God, Red Badge of Courage...that is another "time I'll be begging for as I lie dying" book(And maybe it *is* a little non-intellectual, putting Homicide quotes in a post like that...but bear with me and find it endearing or something, ok?) It was short but did not feel that way. But to be fair to Mrs. G., whose favorite it was, I only remember some discussion about how nature moves on without us.

Heather, I like the idea, but I for one would not want to be the person trying to find a book everyone would want to read.

Of course, I'll never be able to take part unless everyone wants to read my Adult Health Nursing textbook.

No, Heather, I wasn't disagreeing with you - I think that would be worthy of discussion, along with other ideas to get us thinking about the same books at the same time a little more often. I'd be into it, anyway.

eta: Where I think (and I'm pretty much making this up as I go along, mind) is that an undifferentiated, unstructured literary thread may be better suited for some purposes than others. So there may be other structures we want to encourage to address some of those. What, specifically, that would mean I don't know - and I haven't really been subbed to this thread for long enough to be throwing blanket diagnoses around, for that matter.

But I find this thread more useful than stimulating, I guess. Good for finding recs and jotting down titles to check out at the bookstore; not so good for the sustained debate. So maybe there's a way out there somewhere to address that.

I don't think you do find one that everyone wants to read. You find one that's good for you and people read it.

My tastes run from Princess Daisy to Godel, Escher, Bach so chances are everybody's going to love or hate something.

They then managed to ruin a couple of my favourite pieces - I can't read Kenneth Grahame anymore because they killed it - by dissecting them.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--
We murder to dissect.

(Wordsworth, "The Tables Turned")

I have a BA and what is laughingly called an ABD (all but dissertation) in English, specializing in late 19th century American. This means that I have read an appalling amount of lit crit. The best of it gives new meanings and insights into a work--something that I've found here in the discussions of the Jossverse--and the worst of it (deconstructionism, I'm looking at you) is errant nonsense. I'm not good at literary criticism, per se. My response tends to be "ooh, I liked that" or "gah, let's stake Isabel Archer to an anthill." I usually snuck around that in grad school by writing papers about themes (The sense of place in The Professor's House, scientific influences on Henry Adams).

I did come to believe that the concept of the canon is important, and it evolves through time. A good example is Moby Dick, which was certainly not appreciated in Melville's lifetime. It took an era more tolerant of non-linear storytelling and more interested in the metaphysical to appreciate what I see as it's many virtues. What the canon does is keep alive great works of literature, most of which have endured because they do illuminate something about the human condition or are just beautifully written. I don't think we have enough distance on the 20th century to know what will be 20th century canon in the 22nd century. It may well include the collected works of Joss Whedon. If I had to bet, I'd only put money on Faulkner.

I read books for different reasons, and there are months and even years in which I just can't wrap my brain around books like Moby Dick, even though I love them. I'm very happy that I have both Melville and Jennifer Cruisie, Willa Cather and Connie Willis, Mark Twain and Deborah Grabien.

Heh. P-C, I love Wordsworth, but I didn't discover him until my late teens.

In re a structured discussion/book club-ish sort of thread, that's precisely the kind of thread I'd avoid; I find this thread useful for the same reason brenda m does, but I'm on the opposite side of the field, in that I'm not looking for stimulation. I run away from it at lightspeed.

Are people thinking about two separate threads? I thought b.org was anti thread-proliferation?

(One half of pass-page readover done. I can now shower and eat and go south with a clear conscience.)

edit: (blows a kiss at Ginger)

I'm considered a "literary" writer. That's one reason my editor, who is Queen of the American Mystery Publishing world, is so happy she can call these even remotely mystery books.

Hec, do you have an issue with identification? How much is too much? And I include woobie-fication in this question too. I've seen you be snappish in Jossverse when it felt like posters were getting close to a fictional character.

I do think it's a kind of distortion, and it bugs me when it hits me as "The Reader As Mary Sue." "I was reading Catcher in the Rye and I realized, I am Holden Caulfield."

In the Jossverse examples (Spikefen, Kittens) other forces were at play. I think the Kittens identified with what Tara represented - which meant that her character (to them) could never be treated just as a character in a narrative. Spikefens (I'm carefully using this word to denote the crazy-ass end of the Spike fan spectrum) didn't identify with Spike so much as projected their wants/needs on the character. Again, he represented something like a romantic ideal/woobie (or something, I'm not sure exactly) so that any deviation from that ideal set off seismic tantrums. These are both incredibly static, reactionary ways to view a character. It puts them in amber (so to speak) and doesn't allow them to change past the point where the fans latched on to them. I think that's a problematic way to view any show/book/movie.

Do you think it's a in/less valid way to approach fiction?

Nabokov (in his Cornell lectures) ripped into identification as one of the lowest modes of reading. He was very disparaging. I'm not nearly that dogmatic about it, but I do think it's a very narrow lens to view any book.

Do you think it precludes your way?

No way! I'm right. There's no precluding.

please note dogmatic intransigence intended for comic effect