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Sham bam bamina! posted:What I don't get is how deeply, desperately important it was to give her some kind of "lifetime achievement" Booker when she already had one. Yeah, but it's a sequel to a book that made for a successful TV show and I wish this was just my sarcasm but it's probably the real reason oh please kill me immediately
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Oct 15, 2019 16:39
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Bilirubin posted:Can't you just incognito your way around the paywall still?  thank you, friend.
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Oct 15, 2019 16:48
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Yeah, but it's a sequel to a book that made for a successful TV show and I wish this was just my sarcasm but it's probably the real reason oh please kill me immediately  or something in that post.
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Oct 15, 2019 16:53
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Jerry Cotton posted:I don't think you've followed the thread title's advice much. yes, i sinned last year and read a supposed classic that everyone was talking about. Everyone talking about it should have been a hint to it's quality, really.
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Oct 15, 2019 17:17
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derp posted:yes, i sinned last year and read a supposed classic that everyone was talking about. Everyone talking about it should have been a hint to it's quality, really. Which?
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Oct 15, 2019 17:54
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the handmaid's tale
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Oct 15, 2019 17:57
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derp posted:the handmaid's tale Oh. Yeah.
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Oct 15, 2019 18:12
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is it any good?
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Oct 15, 2019 18:16
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not really
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Oct 15, 2019 18:34
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Last good book I read was A Reunion of Ghosts, by Judith Claire Mitchell I'm sure it came up years ago in this thread as a recommendation to me directly or someone else.
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Oct 15, 2019 21:01
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Bonaventure posted:say what you will about the late BotL but his critique of Atwood is great quote:In both Atwood relies on a repetitive structure of flowing observation and mysterious, aphoristic halts– “What I coveted was the shears” or “Be thankful for small mercies” – something like the problem-resolution plots of sonnets. We have seen something similar in the works of Guy Gavriel Kay. Atwood’s prose is too self-consciously significant, occupied with symbolism for symbolism’s sake, its language too literary. It is moreover Compu-confusing whenever it is in poetic register. Consider the description of a character’s violent cutting of flowers more closely: “Was it arthritis, creeping up? Or some blitzkrieg, some kamikaze, committed on the swelling genitalia of the flowers? The fruiting body.” The language is near parody. It’s bad poetry, and no-one should be surprised to discover that besides her novels, Atwood has also produced mediocre lyrical works.
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Oct 15, 2019 21:55
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I still don't get why that guy was banned, it seems like all he did was be negative about things, but being negative is fun and I enjoy negative posters. It's not like he was a racist or pedo or anything liket hat
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Oct 15, 2019 21:59
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Shibawanko posted:I still don't get why that guy was banned, it seems like all he did was be negative about things, but being negative is fun and I enjoy negative posters. It's not like he was a racist or pedo or anything liket hat When your taste in media is your entire personality, you react to criticisms of your favorite media as if they were personal attacks.
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Oct 15, 2019 22:43
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Shibawanko posted:I still don't get why that guy was banned, it seems like all he did was be negative about things, but being negative is fun and I enjoy negative posters. It's not like he was a racist or pedo or anything liket hat Goons are mostly babies.
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Oct 15, 2019 22:54
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There was a guy that he may or may not have harassed in a way that nobody in this (or probably any) thread has the ability or inclination to dig up and verify.
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Oct 15, 2019 23:02
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Sham bam bamina! posted:There was a guy that he may or may not have harassed in a way that nobody in this (or probably any) thread has the ability or inclination to dig up and verify. That guy was full of beans
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Oct 15, 2019 23:04
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The appeal of The Handmaid's Tale is that its descriptions of torture and general human physicality are more evocative than your average sci-fi or popular fiction book. That's the main thing I took away from it and the people I've spoken to who like it say pretty much the same thing. As BotL notes, though, sometimes Atwood puts so much effort into this aspect of the book that she can't help but use the obvious or bathetic.
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Oct 15, 2019 23:13
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I liked The Handmaid's Tale reasonably well when I read it in high school, but the sequel sounds like a complete cash-in/fan-bait. MORE WORLDBUILDING, OH BOY
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Oct 15, 2019 23:25
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Dead Goon posted:Last good book I read was A Reunion of Ghosts, by Judith Claire Mitchell Glad you liked it. I found the ending fascinating
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Oct 16, 2019 00:56
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Sham bam bamina! posted:There was a guy that he may or may not have harassed in a way that nobody in this (or probably any) thread has the ability or inclination to dig up and verify. I ended up talking that guy in another thread and he ended up being a douchebag and I am glad BotL harassed him
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Oct 16, 2019 01:01
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Antivehicular posted:I liked The Handmaid's Tale reasonably well when I read it in high school, but the sequel sounds like a complete cash-in/fan-bait. MORE WORLDBUILDING, OH BOY She got basically no money from the tv series so I can understand why she'd do that, but lmao at it winning the booker.
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Oct 16, 2019 01:13
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Srice posted:She got basically no money from the tv series so I can understand why she'd do that, but lmao at it winning the booker. How the hell does that happen in this day and age? Did she just have a lovely holdover contract with her publisher from when it originally came out?
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Oct 16, 2019 01:23
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Guy A. Person posted:How the hell does that happen in this day and age? Did she just have a lovely holdover contract with her publisher from when it originally came out? Yeah pretty much. She signed away the adaption rights decades ago to MGM and Hulu got it from them so the only money she saw directly from the show was from being a consultant on it.
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Oct 16, 2019 01:30
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Yeah, but it's a sequel to a book that made for a successful TV show and I wish this was just my sarcasm but it's probably the real reason oh please kill me immediately I was in the UK right before The Testaments dropped and it was like a new Harry Potter was coming out, with all the store displays, giant poster ads on the walls of the Underground, and midnight release parties. One bookstore though put up a display of other dystopics so I got a copy of The Road, so not all was bad.
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Oct 16, 2019 01:52
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Srice posted:Yeah pretty much. She signed away the adaption rights decades ago to MGM and Hulu got it from them so the only money she saw directly from the show was from being a consultant on it. Well she also got a role in it too
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Oct 16, 2019 01:56
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If I might be random, why is The Scarlet Letter so detested by people my age? I'm 31 and of all the stuff people had to read in school, it gets savaged more than any other in my experience. I liked it a lot. I like that whole little "movement" of Hawthorne, Poe and Melville. I just bought all of Poe's works on Audible and need to get through that. I've only listened to bits and pieces in my life.
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Oct 16, 2019 02:36
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I saw a scifi reader call Atwood a carpetbagger once.
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Oct 16, 2019 03:26
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NikkolasKing posted:If I might be random, why is The Scarlet Letter so detested by people my age? I'm 31 and of all the stuff people had to read in school, it gets savaged more than any other in my experience. Is it? Never noticed. I liked it, but high school me was a very long time ago
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Oct 16, 2019 04:39
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 Harold Bloomhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...4732_story.html
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Oct 16, 2019 06:21
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NikkolasKing posted:If I might be random, why is The Scarlet Letter so detested by people my age? I'm 31 and of all the stuff people had to read in school, it gets savaged more than any other in my experience. stop reading goodreads reviews
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Oct 16, 2019 08:12
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NikkolasKing posted:If I might be random, why is The Scarlet Letter so detested by people my age? I'm 31 and of all the stuff people had to read in school, it gets savaged more than any other in my experience. I remember thinking it was really dry when I read it as a 16YO in school. I have a hypothesis that living the Bush years exposed a lot of people around our age to the hypocrisy of evangelicals/organized religion (remembering this was also then golden age of edgy internet atheism) which dulled the message of the book. Want to give it another look as an adult now. I’m reading Don Quixote right now and got to the part where Quixote has Sancho look into his mouth to see how hosed up his teeth are and they violently throw up on each other. Now this is what I would have loved to read at 16.
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Oct 16, 2019 11:45
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NikkolasKing posted:If I might be random, why is The Scarlet Letter so detested by people my age? I'm 31 and of all the stuff people had to read in school, it gets savaged more than any other in my experience. It's a pretty commonly assigned highschool book. And I can't speak for how it gets taught generally but my experience back in highschool was that in class the primary focus was on the blatant symbolism present in it, and nothing was said about the religious hypocrisy going on in the book. A joyless way to go about it, plus a lot of people resent books they were forced to read in highschool in general (and heck if you don't have a great teacher I can understand why).
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Oct 16, 2019 12:16
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NikkolasKing posted:If I might be random, why is The Scarlet Letter so detested by people my age? I'm 31 and of all the stuff people had to read in school, it gets savaged more than any other in my experience. I think it is probably absolutely necessary, in the service of producing strong readers, that certain books will be sacrificed at the altar of children too young to really understand or appreciate them. Because The Scarlet Letter not only provides clear examples of an important literary technique (symbolism) but also provides a wealth of well-organized detail about an important period in American history while focusing on a woman's experience, it is an especially useful teaching text. Like you said, this means most people encounter it in high school when they are not ready for it; it is a deeply human book which resonates more and more as one experiences the kind of painful complexities it carefully illuminates. Not that every high school student doesn't get it, but a lot of them (myself included) just need to Live a Little before it'll really start to hit home. All of the fireworks are in Hawthorne's expositions of subtle mental and emotional states. In the absence of a central sympathy based on lived experience, The Scarlet Letter is incredibly dull; very little happens, what happens, happens very slowly, and on its face the tragedy appears incredibly dumb and totally avoidable.
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Oct 16, 2019 12:33
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IDK how it works in other countries, but in mine you are forced to read stuff in chronological order. So in first year of high school you read Gilgamesh, Homer, Aeneid, Greek tragedy and comedy. In the second year it’s medieval literature, Dante, Petrarch and later Shakespeare. The entire Romaticism and Realism are dumped on year three, preceded by possibly some Voltaire. The fourth year is dedicated mostly to modernism and later. I remember reading Kafka, Sartre, Camus, Joyce. I didn’t get anything at the time because I wasn’t mature or erudite enough to get it. It’s a terrible system. My daughter is in high school now so I help her with book reports - I just kind of entice her into discovering themes or whatever else would seem appropriate to her teacher who hates literature as much as her students do.
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Oct 16, 2019 12:34
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in Norway the whole history of literature bit is reserved for the final two years, but I think we might speed through a bit more with 2nd year spanning from 500-1850s (basically stop right between romanticism and realism) and 3rd is realism up to postmodern and contemporary lit. there’s a small spot called something like “texts in past and present” but that’s more about how myths and folklore from old times are still alive and kicking through intertextuality and remediation and stuff like that
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Oct 16, 2019 12:53
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the baroque loving sucks because it’s just psalms, at least here in the north
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Oct 16, 2019 12:57
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We had basically zero compulsory books here. If you were a reader like I was you could basically pick whatever as long as it was a legitimate book, and then you had to analyse it in terms of whatever the course's theme was. Instead we read a ton of short stories and poems and essays and stuff that wasn't too long for the stupid kids
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Oct 16, 2019 13:03
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Ras Het posted:We had basically zero compulsory books here. If you were a reader like I was you could basically pick whatever as long as it was a legitimate book, and then you had to analyse it in terms of whatever the course's theme was. Instead we read a ton of short stories and poems and essays and stuff that wasn't too long for the stupid kids What kinds of themes did the courses have? Where do you live?
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Oct 16, 2019 13:33
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ulvir posted:the baroque loving sucks because it’s just psalms, at least here in the north Here in Croatia we have a redeeming baroque work, an epic poem composed by one of the most renowned poets. Here's a quick attempt at translation: O Muse, prepare to sing about a huge poo poo. Worry not about staining y'rself for the stinky deed covers everything under the sun. You're full of poo poo, lovely prince! lovely are your words, lovely are your deeds, your nose is full of poo poo, poo poo assaults you from all sides, feeding your lovely mouth. You're full of poo poo, lovely prince! Your entire body made of poo poo, what you do described as poo poo, in your pants a stinky poo poo hangin' instead of the little bell, you odorous expression of the tail. You're full of poo poo, lovely prince! So infamous your vapours, so fetid your behind, like a Župa donkey full of fresh grass farting... This goes on for another several dozen stanzas. It is awesome and my bad translation can't do it justice.
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Oct 16, 2019 13:55
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cda posted:What kinds of themes did the courses have? Where do you live? I'm from Finland and I can't remember any real details because I have poor memory and no lingering high school traumas
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Oct 16, 2019 13:56
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