I liked "Bovary"...It made me a little depressed, but it fit. Not read Moby Dick...someday, maybe. It's not speaking to me right now. I don't read much SF, honestly. Sometimes romances are fun if they are light-hearted or comic. I like personal poems. I believe rap is art. I also missed the meeting on appreciating it for the most part. They're fairly famous litfic short story writers, Susan. I guess they're not who you had in mind, if you don't know who they are.

I guess - except I don't think you have to transcend the genre to be read as literature. You can be entirely genre, just better written. If James Joyce took every trope of a western and invested all his writing skill into it then I wouldn't say he'd transcended genre.

The intransitive sense of the word means to rise above or extend notably beyond ordinary limits, which seems to be what you're saying he'd be doing. Someone who creates something that feels fresh, new, and true while sticking to that which is old and familiar has managed to transcend genre, in my opinion.

It's that old 110% BS or something.

They're fairly famous litfic short story writers, Susan.

Ah. That explains it--I'm not a short story reader and am therefore pretty much ignorant of the big names.

Hmm. Who do I mean? Sleep-deprived mind drawing a blank. What I have in mind are the kind of books that typically get read in book clubs or in programs like "If all Seattle read the same book." But I'm blanking on author names.

I'm kind of hesitant to say anything although I did want to post about different things.

I've been trying to read more books that I probably would have read in high school and in college if I ever really was able to meet a challenge in high school and, well, finished a semseter in college.

Actually I kind of started off last summer with Middlemarch, which I read on the beach and it still smells like sunblock. I liked Middlemarch a great deal and even when I was exasperated by the characters I was still rooting for them. The edition I read has notes in the back to explain a lot of the references that Eliot put in the book that someone from that era would understand but might not be apparent to the modern reader.

I also read To the Lighthouse which I mentioned before finally clicked for me. I always had a problem getting my head around the language and then one day it sounded lovely instead of confusing.

I keep starting books and then getting distracted and never finishing them, or moving through them slowly. Right now I have these books started: David Copperfield, Sons and Lovers, the Odyssey, A Passage to India, Moby Dick, and Master and Commander.

oh and Crime and Punishment.

I like most of them but I keep stumbling in parts. Right now Master and Commander is giving me fits because I like the characters and I think I like the story but there's so much about the ships and the time period that I just don't understand that sometimes I feel like I'm flailing. I want end notes like I read in Middlemarch.

I figure in a few months I'll give Austen another whack. I like to go back and try things I don't think I like and see if anything's changed. That's how I discovered I like strawberries, aspargus, and To the Lighthouse. Of course I still don't like tomatoes and 2001 no matter how many times I've tried them so maybe Austen will be like that.

Let me add a disclaimer that this is my own way of dealing with things I don't like.

I meant to say this weeks ago but I tried to read Laura K Hamilton's new Merry Gentry story but stopped before page 3. I wasn't interested in reading what I consider to be professionally written Mary Sue-ism.

mearaing --

Not sure I like the idea of a book club thread because I'm not sure we could come up with a way to choose the books. But my mind is open.

Madame Bovary was brought up in derogatory terms. But while that one didn't really find any defenders

Didn't defend it upthread, but I liked it as an examination of the dilemma of a mid-19th century woman who didn't fit into "her place."

Not terribly comfortable with deep discussions of lit, likely because I'm self-taught to a great degree. I've had to build my own roadmaps and don't have the vocabulary for much of the discussion. I also approach much lit from a historian's POV. Which means I enjoyed many books a lot more once I had the background to understand more fully -- Tom Jones, I'm looking at you.

Enjoy Austen, but my fave is Sense and Sensibility. Another one that improved greatly on second reading, when I knew where Austen was going and realized to what extent she was criticizing the Romantic movement.

I like most of them but I keep stumbling in parts. Right now Master and Commander is giving me fits because I like the characters and I think I like the story but there's so much about the ships and the time period that I just don't understand that sometimes I feel like I'm flailing.

I'm good with the time period, but I'm about halfway through the series, and my eyes still glaze over when they get into the specifics of sails and masts. I think I finally understand what it means to have the weather-guage, though. Kinda. Probably better than Maturin does, at least.

Problem is, I have a plot bunny for a novel set on a ship of that era, which means I'll have to get a much better grasp on the details sometime soon. "He ran up the such-and-such mast, because one of the topsail-thingummies needed to be tightened, or maybe loosened, 'cuz it was all stormy and shit and if they didn't do something the ship would, like, sink, or go way off course" just isn't good enough when you're trying to be the Patrick O'Brian of romance writers.

Didn't defend it upthread, but I liked it as an examination of the dilemma of a mid-19th century woman who didn't fit into "her place."

Except there are so many of them that are better written, and contain fewer anvils!

Not terribly comfortable with deep discussions of lit, likely because I'm self-taught to a great degree. I've had to build my own roadmaps and don't have the vocabulary for much of the discussion.

I think this is an important point, and it's something I see often in fandom. It's made worse because a: vocabulary shifts and change, and seems to do so faster in the academic world than outside of it, as terms we used when I was in college a decade ago appear to now be used commonly to mean something almost completely different (see: fannish kerfuffles, recent); and b: in fandom especially, some of the academics don't understand the intimidation factor of academic language to those who do not speak it, and can get downright snarly about it.

The mast and sails were confusing me until I got to where Maturin has them explained to him then I kind of had an idea of how it worked. Not really but a better grasp of it. I'm not very far into it they had their first little skirmish.

It was giving me fits trying to figure out what kind of man Jack Aubrey is but his beginning friendship with Maturin is what's kept me going.

This is definitly not like the Sharpe's books.

Jen, much later:

Are you asking, "If I identify with a character, can I no longer analyze it?" or "Can I only analyze if I identify with the character?" Or neither?

I'm asking the first. I suspect steam escapes from Hec's ears when people get too character oriented, and a couple of his remarks led me to wonder if he thought that identification mandated a lack of ability to discuss or analyse.