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Does anyone else struggle with Dostoyevsky? I'm about halfway through The Idiot (translated by Alan Myers) and it kind of feels like a slog, which is a shame because I love the idea but it's just scene after scene of psychopaths babbling at each other. I know that's kind of the point, but it's giving me real "glancing at my watch" vibes and I can't tell if it's worth pushing through.
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May 11, 2022 18:08
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Franchescanado posted:Notes From Underground is pretty short, and it's basically the narrator's paranoid thoughts and moral justifications. I like that this writer suggests that: quote:For Dostoevsky, familiarity with Dickens goes a long way because I can't stand Dickens.
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May 11, 2022 20:20
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derp posted:the pull quotes on my copy are all about how funny it is O_O Reactions to Lolita have been weird since it came out but to be fair, it is funny, which is part of Humbert trying to seduce the reader. I've sometimes thought the best way to adapt Lolita would be as a stand-up comedy routine, because humor is one of the most effective ways to (try to) bring people onto your side of a story, and would really go hand-in-hand with stuff like how much of Louis CK's stand-up routines (remember all the great jokes about public masturbation?) are now grimly unfunny in light of his abuse. Honestly, it's part of why I actually really like the musical adaptation, because for all of its faults it comes the closest to the actual tone of the novel, where you have to do battle with his framing of events.
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Jun 12, 2022 17:54
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I mean, that line is also given to Quilty, who Humbert would love for you to believe is too disgusting to deserve to live. It's the same as in the book, where you're conscious of how Humbert is presenting the other characters to you, as opposed to them existing in a neutral space. It's kind of an interesting use of the genre in that regard.
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Jun 12, 2022 19:45
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Criminal Minded posted:Yeah, no problem! My favorite store, besides having the best selection in town they have two adorable black cats just hanging out. Where is this so I can plan my next vacation around it?
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Aug 20, 2022 05:28
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blue squares posted:While we're posting bad takes that everyone hates, here's mine: the characters in War and Peace are completely unrealistic. They're not unrealistic, they're just kind of stupid and Tolstoy's really good at laying out the ways they're stupid, which is why it's so fun to read. The bit where Pierre goes to someone's house and fucks up their obsessive furniture arragement by sitting in the wrong chair is extremely funny. It's like The Sopranos.
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Dec 11, 2022 22:41
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I know nothing about Franzen as a person but I really liked The Corrections for its ability to bend the narrative voice just enough for you to get insight into not just how the characters think, but what they misinterpret or ignore. As the different voices start to pile up, you get a great insight into how the blinders of their perspectives and outlooks damage their understanding of one another, which is just really fascinating to me. That kind of sprawling psychological insight is why I loved Anna Karenina and Buddenbrooks.
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Jan 20, 2023 22:13
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I almost accidentally bought a second copy because I didn't realize it was just a re-translation with a new title. (The one I have already is "Kukin kuolee itsekseen" i.e. "Everyone dies on their own" whereas the new one is "Yksin Berliinissä" i.e. "Alone in Berlin".) I did that with Camus's The Stranger, which was also published as The Outsider, though having two translations of such a short book is kind of interesting because you can basically read them back to back. I'm sure it's been done, but it makes me want to read a book that's presented as two translations of a nonexistent book, and each translation is different enough that it radically changes the meaning of the text.
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Mar 12, 2023 18:06
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Lex Neville posted:knobakov knob, knoba, knobakov
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May 24, 2023 21:45
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thehoodie posted:i need to feed my family let them eat books
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Nov 11, 2023 23:01
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Lobster Henry posted:I wonder how the hell I read To the Lighthouse five or six years ago and didn’t get much out of it. There’s something astonishing on every page of this book! The dinner scene in To The Lighthouse is one of my favorite passages in any book, and there's been more than one moment in every Woolf book I've read where I just have to put the book down for a second because the cumulative emotional impact is so overpowering. She just went beast mode at all times.
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Jan 4, 2024 00:03
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Finished Woolf's The Years. The last segment collects basically every character who's still alive into a single room, and it made me wish I'd kept track of them in a chart because a lot of them I just plain forgot about, not because they're forgettable but because the book moves between them so often throughout that you really only get glimpses of many of them (also I read this over too long a period). I'd rank this somewhere above The Waves and below To The Lighthouse, but it contains some of my favorite themes (failure to connect, the unrelenting passage of time, the way some people do everything they can to hold on to the nowness of now) and expresses them so unbelievably beautifully that I almost want to reread it right away just because I can't believe that it was all in there.
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Jan 8, 2024 06:43
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Gaius Marius posted:The biggest problem to me is how flabby his prose is. He would just jam in adjectives and adverbs everywhere. His desire to emblazon a single image into the minds of his readers limits his ability to create anything truly striking. I think I agree with most of this, especially in his later years his writing has a real Abe Simpson lip-flappin' forgot-my-dentures quality. I had to put down one of his collections after suffering through a really dumb story about an old guy who time travels back to the 50s after getting divorced from his nagging shrew wife and has sex with a hot girl unspoiled by the ravages of modern society. Ironically, the best versions of his stories are the ones adapted for TV.
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Apr 25, 2024 21:50
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