What is your current "read"?

Duck59 good luck. I tried to read the 1st book of the Rabbit series and I don't think I made it past page 20 and that was with a lot of sacrifice. I don't enjoy highly descriptive writers, that surely is part of the reason why, but I thought some of Updike's descriptions were downright odd. The plot had so much potential but I feel another author (say Philip Roth or Jonathan Franzen) would have done a better job with it.
 
Finished "Frankenstein". Didn't love it but I like to make myself read some of the classics so there it was. Starting this one now
1601229174381.png
 
LissaC said:
Finished "Frankenstein". Didn't love it but I like to make myself read some of the classics so there it was. Starting this one now
View attachment 47157
Click to expand...
I think that Frankenstein is a good story, but it reminds me a bit of reading Dracula - another good story that isn't told very well. I always felt that the narrators of Dracula sound too similar, apart from van Helsing's irritating comedy Dutch accent. Multiple narrators are good as long as they sound distinctive.

A good example is Wilkie Collins. In The Woman in White, you could open at a random page and know who the narrator is. assuming of course that you already know the characters. Irving Welsh is a modern writer who uses multiple narrators well - the characters are distinctive. Similarly, Niall Griffiths uses various characters to narrate his novel Grits. Like Welsh, he uses dialect and in the case of Grits, has people from a lot of different places. I "tuned" my mind to read each character's narration in the accent of the narrator. Quite hard work, but worthwhile, I think.
 
Duck59 I have both Dracula and The Woman in White at home, waiting to be read. The way Frankenstein was written bored me a bit and yes, you can't tell Walton's voice from Frankenstein's. But it was good to understand how our popular idea of Frankenstein is so different from the original story. Most people (myself included) think Frankenstein was the name of the monster and that he's just a horrible creature.

I have to admit I like these "classic" gothic novels, and it's kind of fun to see how our perception of horror has changed. The Castle of Otranto was supposedly very scary at the time, but modern readers (once again myself included) find it entertaining and exaggerated.
 
I studied 19th-century literature and my tutor was an American woman who was a gothic novel obsessive. I quite like them as well, which was handy. The Woman in White and Dracula were part of the course, along with Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, which is essentially a spoof on the gothic genre. If you enjoy that sort of thing - and I do - have a read of Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock. It's very short, a novella really, but I thought it hilarious.
 
Duck59 said:
I studied 19th-century literature and my tutor was an American woman who was a gothic novel obsessive. I quite like them as well, which was handy. The Woman in White and Dracula were part of the course, along with Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, which is essentially a spoof on the gothic genre. If you enjoy that sort of thing - and I do - have a read of Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock. It's very short, a novella really, but I thought it hilarious.
Click to expand...

The copy of The Castle of Otranto I have came with The Castle of Otranto, Vathek and Nightmare Abbey. The Castle of Otranto and Vathek were great on their own, Nightmare Abbey made me want to read Northanger Abbey which is a book I also own but didn't read yet (I have a big book with all Jane Austen novels that cost me 6,5€). Maybe because I haven't read Northanger Abbey, I felt like Nightmare Abbey was the least entertaining of the three novellas on the book.
 
Northanger Abbey is largely a spoof on The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, a book that the heroine Catherine Morland reads during her time in Bath. Since I'd read Northanger Abbey, I thought I should read Ann Radcliffe's work. One of the amusing things about reading this novel is spotting the anachronisms (and there are plenty). I won't go into detail just in case anyone wants to read this book and shouts at me!
 
Apparently this is "Banned books week". We're supposed to read books that are or have been banned. I don't think I currently have any. But it's amazing how many books are still banned in 2019. Argentina is still banning my favorite book. Malaysia had the sense to ban Fifty Shades of Grey. So many Islamic countries still ban The Satanic Verses which has been on my to read list for a while. (image from here)
1601387622777.png
 
Finished The Silent Patient. Implausible characters, a far fetched plot and simplistic writing, welcome to the modern day thriller.

Really unsure about what to read next but I've settled for Dickens.
1601626655308.png
 
LissaC said:
Finished The Silent Patient. Implausible characters, a far fetched plot and simplistic writing, welcome to the modern day thriller.

Really unsure about what to read next but I've settled for Dickens.
View attachment 47433
Click to expand...
I read that every few years. For my tastes, Dickens is just about the best there is, so well-crafted. The myriad TV/film adaptions of this can't come close to capturing the beauty of the prose.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom