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My review of Lurkey's Chud is up at Eruditorium and you fine people are credited at the end. Obviously further conclusive evidence that Cultural Marxism was invented on the LF forum at SA.
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Sep 9, 2016 10:39
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there wolf posted:Is this a joke? Kovoth isn't literally telling Ambrose to go rape a woman. He's pointing out that what Ambrose is doing is forcing himself on a woman, and he's deliberately doing it where his victim is discouraged or unable to defend herself by making a scene. It's the way actual sexual predators act and it's loving refreshing to see any novel, much less a fantasy one, call that poo poo out. yeah, but it's done in exactly the same way a reddit niceguy he even bows for chrissakes
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Sep 9, 2016 13:36
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I read most of The Ambassadors by Henry James, and agree with this review: quote:From now on, when someone tells me that a book is "bad", I will ask if they've read The Ambassadors. If they answer in the negative, I will say, "gently caress you, then. You do not have the right to apply the label 'bad' to a book. You do not know what 'bad' writing is." http://personal.dougshaw.com/ReviewsTop100/review27.html
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Sep 9, 2016 15:03
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Phyzzle posted:I read most of The Ambassadors by Henry James, and agree with this review: those loving ivory tower liberals  "Now I'm just a simple country book reviewer" reviews are the worst The Vosgian Beast has a new favorite as of 15:31 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 15:29
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People having hang ups against the books they had to read in school is so weird
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Sep 9, 2016 15:43
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The Saddest Rhino posted:People having hang ups against the books they had to read in school is so weird People say English classes destroyed their love of literature, but I've never met anyone who said this whose love of literature ever extended far beyond Goosebumps and Dragonlance.
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Sep 9, 2016 15:45
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I picked up "The Ambassadors", oddly, at an airport bookstore. I was moving to another country, and right here was a famous book about moving to another country. I gave it a few chances, but I am now moved to add after so much insistence on the scenic side of my labour that I have found the steps of re-perusal almost as much waylaid here by quite another style of effort in the same signal interest—or have in other words not failed to note how, even so associated and so discriminated, the finest proprieties and charms of the non-scenic may, under the right hand for them, still keep their intelligibility and assert their office. Infinitely suggestive such an observation as this last on the whole delightful head, where representation is concerned, of possible variety, of effective expressional change and contrast. One would like, at such an hour as this, for critical licence, to go into the matter of the noted inevitable deviation (from too fond an original vision) that the exquisite treachery even of the straightest execution may ever be trusted to inflict even on the most mature plan—the case being that, though one's last reconsidered production always seems to bristle with that particular evidence, "The Ambassadors" would place a flood of such light at my service. It was not very good.
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Sep 9, 2016 16:21
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The Vosgian Beast posted:People say English classes destroyed their love of literature, but I've never met anyone who said this whose love of literature ever extended far beyond Goosebumps and Dragonlance.
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Sep 9, 2016 16:30
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The Saddest Rhino posted:People having hang ups against the books they had to read in school is so weird There are books that are just dry. I remember that I've had to read a book for my literature class - as I'm a quick reader (if I enjoy a book I can go through it in a matter of hours), I thought to myself that I'll be able to spend a weekend on it and be done. I've managed to crawl through 50-100 pages, because the book was so uninteresting and bland, and you basically had to remember every detail (as, what this person was wearing during the meeting with the other person and how many owlets were sitting on the windowsill, etc).
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Sep 9, 2016 17:46
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I've never read any Henry James and have no opinion on the quality of his writing, but I think that "two chapters were transposed and nobody noticed/acknowledged it for fifty years" bit is pretty hilarious, if kind of apocryphal-sounding.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:03
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The Saddest Rhino posted:People having hang ups against the books they had to read in school is so weird People generally resent being forced to read something, this is not particularly weird and in fact is actually the norm.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:11
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Everyone complains about having to read The Scarlet Letter or The Pearl, but I haven't met anyone that hated when their class read Shakespeare.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:12
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E: ^^^^ who the gently caress didn't like The Pearl and why? That book owned. The Saddest Rhino posted:People having hang ups against the books they had to read in school is so weird I feel like a lot of schools teach books that are certainly important for the literary canon but the average teenager doesn't give two shits about that and just sees an exceptionally dry novel. The only books I hated in high school were A Scarlet Letter (which I still had some grudging respect for, even if reading it was a maddening experience) and A Patchwork Planet, a book I read for some contemporary lit elective course. That book could maybe go here: it has a sort of interesting main character but his journey to not being a total fuckup and living his own life rather than vicariously living the lives of others (through breaking into peoples' homes and looking at their pictures - before you could do this on Facebook) is just boring trite poo poo. Even as a teenager with zero life experience I thought he was a loser from beginning to end. He ends up banging his short tomboy lady friend and her breath reeks of pork rinds. Phyzzle posted:I read most of The Ambassadors by Henry James, and agree with this review: That Robert Young quote slays me.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:19
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To be fair schools tend to give you essays about verb choices in chapter 3 because the book is well known and there are specific verb choices in that chapter that have a point. It would be dumb to pick up a (literary) book at random and assume you can get the book's ~true artistic meaning~ from such a specific thing. Doesn't stop people trying though.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:23
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Strategic Tea posted:To be fair schools tend to give you essays about verb choices in chapter 3 because the book is well known and there are specific verb choices in that chapter that have a point. I went through a lot of honors and AP English courses in high school and never, not once, was asked a question like that. It was all questions about interpretations, themes, and (obviously) some basic comprehension stuff to make sure you did the reading in the first place. You know, pretty basic reading and critical analysis, which seems fair. I would be very surprised to find out that that is not the norm. Did you maybe get beat up once by a test once in high school and the stress is making you generate false memories?
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Sep 9, 2016 18:50
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Ryoshi posted:I went through a lot of honors and AP English courses in high school and never, not once, was asked a question like that. It was all questions about interpretations, themes, and (obviously) some basic comprehension stuff to make sure you did the reading in the first place. You know, pretty basic reading and critical analysis, which seems fair. Not particularly, but I'm thinking of the kind of stuff you get asked at like 13? Where you wouldn't get asked about repetition in these three pages if the teacher didn't know drat well that it was important. It kind of feels like people who didn't like or get that sometimes assume actual literary criticism is basically the same? Except they don't see the reasoning behind it so they think you just pick something really specific and spin unsubstantiated claims out of it? I don't think that's the case myself so 
Strategic Tea has a new favorite as of 19:09 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 19:06
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e: welp
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Sep 9, 2016 19:07
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We didn't do tests in my English class - it was taught by an English Lit PhD and we were writing college-style long critical papers. I was exaggerating about "verbs in the third chapter" but I was talking about the tendency of literary criticism to hyperfocus on small details like word choice and symbolism and then expound on those. Of course there's absolutely nothing wrong with that level of analysis - I just really don't enjoy it at all, especially when I have to do it to a book I love. So what I mean if I say that literary criticism ruined my love of reading, I don't mean "I had to read Emily Bronte instead of Goosebumps," I mean "I hated having to write papers about Heathcliff and Catherine instead of just reading the book." (I'm pretty sure a lot of music and film majors feel the same way about music theory and film theory.) I also found literary criticism useless as a background for writing fiction - we never even talked about things like the difference between scene and narration, or what makes a memorable character, or how to construct a plot. Even though we were reading books that did those things well, we just took them for granted while we talked about whether the mud on the hem of Elizabeth Bennet's dress is meant to imply that she's been thinking about sex (or having sex).
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Sep 9, 2016 19:35
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Kay Kessler posted:Everyone complains about having to read The Scarlet Letter or The Pearl, but I haven't met anyone that hated when their class read Shakespeare. I really liked The Scarlet Letter and the only thing I found more insufferable than Shakespeare was A Separate Peace
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Sep 9, 2016 20:08
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I was one of the few people who liked reading Shakespeare in High School in my area, but then most people in my hometown were backwards hicks who can barely speak English.
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Sep 9, 2016 20:27
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pookel posted:I say it because having to write critical papers about the books I enjoyed reading tended to suck all the fun out of them. I enjoyed *reading* books - not reading and writing stuffy critical papers about things like the hidden meaning symbolized by the author's verb choices in chapter 3. And I was reading stuff like Wuthering Heights and Les Miserables (in translation, but unabridged) for fun as a young teenager, so it wasn't a matter of preferring easy-to-digest crap. (I did like Dragonlance, though, I'll admit). On the other hand, I wrote three separate critical essays about my favorite novel in college and only love it more as a result. Had a lot of veins to mine, at least.
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Sep 9, 2016 20:51
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Arcsquad12 posted:I was one of the few people who liked reading Shakespeare in High School in my area, but then most people in my hometown were backwards hicks who can barely speak English. (Forgive me!)
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Sep 9, 2016 21:22
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I found that when I went back to the novels I'd read in school (e.g. The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha) a few years after I left school, I enjoyed them a whole lot more. I think when you're able to read them at your own pace instead of the pace of the entire class, and when you aren't stopping every four or five pages to discuss it in a way that's very focused toward how the content might come up in an exam question, it's easier to enjoy them.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:31
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Oxxidation posted:On the other hand, I wrote three separate critical essays about my favorite novel in college and only love it more as a result. Out of curiosity, what was the novel? I had a similar experience with The Brothers Karamazov.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:45
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Could. Could barely speak English. If they still can't understand English then this is correct even if they're not still backwards hicks. Clunky as hell though.
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Sep 9, 2016 22:11
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I read Ready Player One because the internet recommended it. It's really gently caress bad. Most of it is lists of pop culture poo poo from the 80s. The rest is the most unlikable fedora tipping protagonist you can imagine. He goes on a big euphoric rant about how religion is bad, pwns n00bs with his superior 80s knowledge (and the whole room cheers him), and finds a geeky gamer girl who likes him for no reason. It's a shut in neckbeard fantasy which would be OK if the writing or story was any good, but as mentioned it relies completely on "hey remember thing from the 80s? We do too!" For some reason they're making it into a film.
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Sep 9, 2016 23:02
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Berious posted:I read Ready Player One because the internet recommended it. fixed. Terrible book, but lots of people like it. I really don't get it. I think Stranger Things does the 80s nostalgia pop-scifi thing way better.
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Sep 9, 2016 23:14
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Ambitious Spider posted:fixed. That's because Stranger Things was a story that happened to be set in the 80s, instead of a story that smashes your teeth in with 80s paraphernalia to try and trigger some sort of nostalgia response.
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Sep 9, 2016 23:21
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71VFzClEoG0
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Sep 10, 2016 00:06
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Kay Kessler posted:Everyone complains about having to read The Scarlet Letter or The Pearl, but I haven't met anyone that hated when their class read Shakespeare. I can't stand Romeo and Juliet because I sat through it in four classes, two in high school and two in college. I just wanted to write the paper and be done with it.
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Sep 10, 2016 00:50
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queserasera posted:I can't stand Romeo and Juliet because I sat through it in four classes, two in high school and two in college. I just wanted to write the paper and be done with it. Did your class need to read it out loud, in class, in its entirety? Nothing fosters a love of literature like the stumbling, monotone, bored recitations of teenagers.
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Sep 10, 2016 01:26
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Dienes posted:Did your class need to read it out loud, in class, in its entirety? Nothing fosters a love of literature like the stumbling, monotone, bored recitations of teenagers. Yes. And stopping at all the lewd parts for explanations. Why is there always one kid in every Shakespeare class who wants to write their essay on Billy's werty derdys?
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Sep 10, 2016 01:32
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I think that it really depends on the class itself. I had three college-level courses that covered Shakespeare, and only one of them was enjoyable; if the other students are dumb as rocks (dual-enrolling at community college) or the professor is up his own rear end (junior year at actual college), it can be impossibly draining. The Satanic Verses. Not hugely dense, but yeah, there's a lot of possible options to take with a work like that.
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Sep 10, 2016 01:56
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They should Titus Andronicus instead. It's basically all sex and violance. It also includes the best exchange in any Shakespeare play ever: Demetrius Villain, what hast thou done? Aaron That which thou can't undo Chiron Thou hast undone our mother Aaron Villain, I have done thy mother.
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Sep 10, 2016 01:58
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The problem with reading Shakespeare in English classes is that you're not supposed to read Shakespeare. It was never meant to be consumed as words on a page, and it's really unfortunate that that's a lot of people's first introduction to his plays. Going to see a good production would obviously be best, but is pretty hard in most places. And there's almost nothing worse to sit through than a bad production of Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet is also way loving overused in classes, because unimaginative teachers think "teens just have to relate to these dumbass kids who kill themselves". Titus Andronicus actually would be a great intro. It's his shlockiest play, and the Julie Taymor film with Anthony Hopkins from the 90s is pretty great. I saw a production in England that had a fifteen foot high blood spray at the end before almost everyone on stage was massacred. poo poo was amazing.
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Sep 10, 2016 02:26
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Strategic Tea posted:yeah, but it's done in exactly the same way a reddit niceguy Hero fantasy. If your problem is that it sounds like a STDH, that's fine, but it's a separate issues from whether a line is sarcastic or not.
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Sep 10, 2016 03:26
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Just stopping by to say I hate Romeo and Juliet. I moved a lot during high school and had to read that fucker four times. I hate it so much. Macbeth was bitchin', though.
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Sep 10, 2016 03:42
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there wolf posted:Hero fantasy. If your problem is that it sounds like a STDH, that's fine, but it's a separate issues from whether a line is sarcastic or not. Dude You can stop You will not win this
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Sep 10, 2016 03:43
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Dienes posted:Did your class need to read it out loud, in class, in its entirety? Nothing fosters a love of literature like the stumbling, monotone, bored recitations of teenagers.
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Sep 10, 2016 04:08
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there wolf posted:Hero fantasy. If your problem is that it sounds like a STDH, that's fine, but it's a separate issues from whether a line is sarcastic or not.
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Sep 10, 2016 05:03
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