The moment you answered your cat with „I know“ I knew I had to subscribe to your channel. Besides being a lover of mammoths myself, obviously. The Miserables is also high on my list. Greetings from Germany!
I've been an avid reader my whole life but you have introduced me to quite a few books I've never heard of and I'm adding a few of them to my ever-growing list of books I want to read. I will also say that there is something so comforting and endearing about your video that I just love. I wish you luck in accomplishing these mammoths!
Thank you! I’m finding mammoths a good vehicle toward building up my reading practice - which traditionally has been lackluster. But - in this uncertain world - a little luck is what we need to complement the best of intentions. 😂
I loved hearing about your experience working at that tax company. So neat! And so lucky you were able to read while getting paid! And I love your plan of making this year the year of the mammoths. I might copy you! 😊 Lastly, your kitty was so precious! 🐈
What a great collection! I'm glad to hear you like Plum in the Golden Vase as it's high on my list to buy. I'll probably get it at the same time as The Ramayana. Nice to find another youtuber who likes big books and also loves asian literature!! Subscribed!
not sure if this is your cup of tea, but maybe check out Sei Shonagon's "The Pillow Book" and Nick Joaquin's "The Woman Who Had Two Navels" edit: i know they're not mammoths, but since you're currently into chinese / asian literature, i'm reminded of these books.
What you are doing here is, you are preventing these books from becoming extinct. By purchasing them you make sure that the legacy of their authors lives on. Thanks for the video man!! Best wishes to you from Ásgeir in Iceland!!
I do sometimes think along those lines. (It feels like the new Dark Ages is nearly upon us. 🤔) Best wishes right back atcha in Ásgeir!! Thanks for visiting.
I saw the title and got excited thinking you would be reading the “Clan of the Cave Bear” series. They are all mammoths, about mammoths and Neanderthals…great read.
I need to read Romance of the 3 Kingdoms at some point. The Dream of Red Mansions look really nice on the spines. That Princeton University Press Sale is really good if you can find stuff, I got a lot of nature books as usual lol. Good luck with your March reading!
So many things to read! Fiction, history, and now I want nature books on my menu also. I’m thinking about funguses a lot, at other times cephalopods, after last year’s reading. Probably I should choose some hardcore book on birds next. I’ll be checking your channel for possibilities. 😂
@@davidnovakreadspoetry For sure lol. Just did my Princeton Press book haul lol with 10 nature books. One of the other books I got was also on Octopuses so it was destined for cephalopods haha. Always love nature reads.
A daunting prospect but I do wish you all the luck you'll need for this project. I admire your enthusiasm. Sixty-two years ago I achieved (seems impossible now!) a degree in French, and I can still read Proust pretty easily in French, as long as a dictionary is at hand. My advice: Put Proust at the very bottom of your list. Heresy, perhaps, but... Well. Enough said, I guess. By the way, I love both the cat and dog. Best to them, too.
Thank you! I read about 2/3rds of _Swann’s Way_ with enjoyment, but set it aside for reasons I can’t identify. Having had a taste, I may heed your ‘heretical’ (😂) advice - it’s a mammoth of mammoths. But I’ve only heard good reports from those who’ve done it.
Those are indeed some big books and equally intimidating. Thank you for introducing me to some of these titles. Ps- I've also failed many a times while reading some big books but I plan on returning to them once more. I recently got done with one having 700+ pages. So, I'm cheering you on!!!
Thanks for the cheering on! I’m beginning to realize that the intimidation factor is a part of the battle. At first I wasn’t sure I would ever tackle _War and Peace_ after failing the first time. I wish you propitious reads. 700pp is indeed good work. 👍
@@davidnovakreadspoetry War and Peace is a beast. So is Les Misérables. I'm going to attempt to finish them this year as well. Congratulations on finishing W&P. :)
There’s something I really like about “aspirations”. More than just wanting, not necessarily as much as a firm external commitment, but significant and meaningful. I’m doing some major whittling back on my UA-cam subscriptions to carve out some more time for physical therapy-related projects, and perhaps some long-stewing fiction. Hoping this current heady-brew subscription works out well. Mammoths really do have a special appeal. At the moment I’m reading some series of shorter volumes I’ve been meaning to get to (for thirty years, in some cases) But I also have my eye on what my younger friends call chonky boiz to swim in for a while. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t expect to read Journey to the West in a month. But then I would also not expect to read it exclusively.
I’ll miss your comments if I see you less frequently but I understand. There’s a genuine satisfaction to getting to a “meaning to” of long standing, even 30 years. (I need to up my PT also, it’s a whole area I prefer not to face and wish things would just resolve magically….) I don’t want to pressure myself on _Journey_ (I’m already “behind” schedule) but I do want to catch _Les Miz_ in April which a group are reading. And then there’s life.
I love a good mammoth, but similar to you I read a lot last year but for some reason they were mostly novellas. I have Anna Karenina on my list, but also Don Quixote, Les Miserables, and a few others. I have actually never gone a year without reading a mammoth, but the last couple of years we had a lot going on and it left me very little space ot either commit to a big read or even to a series. In any case, love your series recommendations, love your views, and your cat.
Thank you! I’m doing my best - trying to squeeze in the reading. Lack of time is not such an issue for me, but I stare into space a lot. I wish I had a better track record with mammoths - they’ve become a highlight of the last two years. So I’m trying to ‘lean in’. 😂😂😂 Thanks for stopping by.
Just wanna say thank you for opening my eyes to New Lit to explore. You might already be aware, but for April ‘Classics & Company’ YT channel is doing a read along of Les Misérables :) I’m here from watching Steve’s input video ‘You Don’t Have to Read Hard Books’ Thanks, again 😻
You’re welcome! I’m hoping to join in with the Classics and Company group read. Then after, one of these other mammoth novels from Asia if I can get my act together. 😂 Thanks for dropping by.
I read and enjoyed the first book in The Cairo Trilogy but never went on. Now I think I’d have to re-read the first to get back into them. I read he first book in my three volume set of Proust and don’t have any motivation for going on.
I didn’t finish _Swann’s Way_ but I suspect Proust at least is more even; with _Cairo_ I felt each volume fell further down, and I liked the first best. Proust? Maybe I’ll pick it up again sometime, but first I may need to run out of other things. 🤔
I'm very fond of the two books The Plum in the Golden Vase and Dream of the Red Chamber(or The Story of the Stone). In my opinion, although they were developed independently of the development of modern Western fiction, in terms of their creative concepts, they share startling similarities: a restrained and objective tone, and a deliberate, meticulous organization and revision of the overall structure of the text, which makes the plot more expressive at a local level. Which is why I couldn't resist also reading the English translations of these two books, to see what the reading experience would be like in an English-language setting. To me, the work done in the English translations is outstandingly good; it even made me wonder if I was reading a masterpiece of Western literature. Yes, although the translation makes every effort to preserve all the information of the original text, in practice the experience of reading it in Chinese is completely different from reading it in English, although both experiences are very good. But in order to explore the reasons why classical Chinese fiction was able to produce works like The Plum in the Golden Vase and Dream of the Red Chamber, I have also read many relatively unknown works that nevertheless reflect the historical development of Chinese fiction; especially works from the period between The Plum in the Golden Vase and Dream of the Red Chamber. In the historical development of classical Chinese fiction, the early period was marked by works such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin and Journey to the West, which depicted heroic and legendary stories. The Plum in the Golden Vase captured the gradually developing creative techniques and literary aesthetics of these stories, especially in Water Margin, which unconsciously included a mass of realistic detail - just as Don Quixote, although it tells the story of an adventure, includes a mass of realistic detail. The Plum in the Golden Vase, which was expanded from a minor plot of Water Margin, initiated the writing of ordinary secular lives in classical Chinese fiction. The Plum in the Golden Vase is a complex work. It is both erotic - because it was also affected by the mass of vulgar, erotic fiction which proliferated in early Chinese fiction (or perhaps The Plum in the Golden Vase was written precisely to criticize and satirize this kind of vulgar writing) - and at the same time critical, and then secular. Later, many works of classical Chinese fiction appeared which inherited part of the DNA of The Plum in the Golden Vase. On the one hand - and ironically ,the writing of Don Quixote fatally wounded the writing of chivalric romance, but the writing of The Plum in the Golden Vase led to a further flourishing of erotic fiction because The Plum in the Golden Vase was welcomed by both intellectuals and the urban classes, so many inept imitations quickly sprang up, further intensifying the erotic and violent elements and finally resorting to a tragic ending to express a critical attitude. So, out of revulsion towards works of this kind, works like appeared; it also borrowed from The Plum in the Golden Vase the framework of one male protagonist and his five wives, but gave up the erotic elements and used extremely elegant, highly poetic writing to tell the story of how even if the women were not, as in The Plum in the Golden Vase, evil, cunning, treacherous and vicious, but on the contrary possessed talent and high moral character, they also met a tragic end; the novel is simple and elegant, extremely rich in female consciousness and is suffused with an air of melancholy nostalgia. Of course, because this novel only focuses on the description of the interior of a household, while The Plum in the Golden Vase also includes a depiction of the different classes of society, Lin Lanxiang seems quite thin: it is only a little longer than Madame Bovary. Moreover, because it uses an extremely elegant literary style, the plot is just a series of trivia about the daily lives of noble people and "civilized" arguments, which makes the novel quite boring to read. Add to that the fact that Dream of the Red Chamber inherited from it and comprehensively surpassed it, so this novel has almost no fame at all. On the other hand, as an example of the critical novel, The Plum in the Golden Vase quickly aroused many critical works in different styles which targeted different social phenomena. For example, , which focuses on fierce women, telling the story of a woman (or several) who, driven mad by past karma or present oppression, take revenge on their husbands; at the same time, it also describes more broadly the injustice, corruption and depravity at every level of society. The literary style is rich but strong, and the plot is exaggerated to the point of bias.And then there's , which one might call China's 120 Days of Sodom (it was also lost for a long time; it was only rediscovered towards the end of the last century); it covers all the modes of sexuality of erotic fiction, from the perspective of a society in which everyone is sexually incontinent, describing the absurdity and ridiculousness of different social groups. One difference is that this book is nearly a million characters long, but the reading experience is anything but disgustingly difficult, on the contrary it is extremely concise and smooth, witty and humorous, sometimes like reading a joke book, sometimes like reading a richly meaningful symbolic parable. The author excels at describing marginal social groups or people with bizarre characters or habits, such as unemployed rogues, gamblers, swindlers, misers, and so on. And the central clue which links these absurd characters and events in this long and complex novel is a simple or even naive love story - a blind prostitute and a poor intellectual fall in love and finally escape from the brothel to live together; this main plotline appears and disappears, and all around it is chaos and depravity, like the calm center of a storm. The novel ends with the fall of the Ming dynasty and the world descending into even greater chaos. The reason that these two books have been intentionally ignored is very simple: because their plots involve a mass of violence and pornography. On the other hand, the novels themselves have fatal defects: their thinking is relatively backward, and they frequently try to preach, making the work rather bloated and even affecting the shaping of the characters and the plausibility of the plot; in particular, they also have a strong misogynistic tendency. And, there is , a work that was produced in the same period as The Scholars; this book mainly describes the son of a wealthy and noble family who is gradually corrupted by the temptations of the world, whores and gambling, and finally loses all his family fortune, before suddenly having an epiphany and repenting; it is a didactic novel. Unlike most of the works mentioned above, which mostly took Buddhist philosophy as the background of their literary aesthetics, this novel is guided by Confucian thought, and explores questions of humanity and education. Of course, there are many other such works. These works were all produced after the birth of The Plum in the Golden Vase and clearly show the influence of The Plum in the Golden Vase at the same time, they were produced before Dream of the Red Chamber. Although it is impossible to know for sure whether the author of Dream of the Red Chamber read any of these works, it is an interesting thing to compare the merits of Dream of the Red Chamber with these works and see how Dream of the Red Chamber overcame their defects. After the birth of Dream of the Red Chamber, it quickly inspired the birth of a mass of works, especially stimulating literature by women. For example, the earliest extant vernacular novel written by women in China is a sequel to Dream of the Red Chamber. Of course, there are also women's long narrative ballad novels, such as Chen Duansheng's Resurrection as a Couple, which is a long poem novel, the whole text being 800,000 characters, written in seven-character a line stanzas with rhyme; the author was a seventeen-year-old girl when she began to write it. It tells the story of how the two noble families of the Huangfu and Meng families agree to marry, which arouses the hatred of another family, the Liu family, so the Huangfu family is framed and only the son of the Huangfu family, Huangfu Shaohua, escapes, while Meng Lijun, the daughter of the Meng family, refuses to marry the son of the Liu family and escapes disguised as a man.She then uses her male identity to pass the imperial examination and enter government service, and finally rises to be the highest official, vindicating the Huangfu family ; but at this time Meng Lijun is unwilling to give up her male identity and power and return to her status as a wife, and begins to struggle with the emperor, her husband's family, and her own family, until finally her female identity is exposed and betrayed to the world, Meng Lijun vomits blood, and the story stops.It seems that none of these long novels have English translations.
@@兴许 This is an education! When I was reading _Plum_ I tried _The Classic Chinese Novel_ by C.T. Hsia - it was a smelly copy and I just didn’t like his writing so I chucked it. But even more recently, looking for stuff, it feels like no one since has written about Chinese novels for the English market. I love this bit of context you’re giving me, even though my Chinese’ll never be at a level to enable me to read either the wealth of criticism that exists or any of the novels you’ve talked about. I think I’ll shoot for _Dream of Red Chamber_ for January reading then (my time before then may be hectic), as it deserves priority - _Plum_ was such a grand reading experience, and the maturity and subtlety of the text makes many Western books pale by comparison. I’m lucky in that even though I must rely on the English version I’ve had enough exposure to Chinese culture to not make the texts alien to me, and I can probably catch some of the overtones. There will be more translations coming along I’m sure - though I’m beginning to see why translators would rather do a new version of some major work (say _The Brothers Karamazov)_ that already exists multiply than tackling some more obscure work that may not have a ready market. Thanks for sharing this.
@@davidnovakreadspoetry About the dream of red chamber,I read the translation by David Hawkes called The story of the stone,I like it.But I don`t know about the translation in your video. The phenomenon you describe is very normal, even in China. I can easily find at least six different versions of four different translations of _The Brothers Karamazov_ on the market, while the classical Chinese novels I mentioned can only be found in libraries, or by buying them from websites that sell second-hand books. Furthermore, I don't like the work of Hsia C.T.; he's like many other people of his generation who studied Western literary theory and then used that knowledge to study Chinese literature, which is like a student who learns a formula and then applies it everywhere. In fact, classical Chinese novels have their own unique theories of fiction, which often exist in the form of annotations (there are also summaries at the beginning or end of each chapter, of course). In the early days, booksellers would annotate the words and allusions used in novels, taking into consideration the cultural level of the urban population. This was a commercial practice intended to increase book sales.Later, due to fierce competition, this developed into analyzing the arrangement of the plot and the techniques used.The analysis greater, the more books would sell. During this process, the theoretical and aesthetic standards of fiction were also established and developed. For example, the most famous annotator of _Romance of the Three Kingdoms_ is Mao Zonggang; the most famous annotator of _Water Margin_ is Jin Shengtan; the most famous annotator of _The Plum in the Golden Vase_ is Zhang Zhupo; and although _Gu Wang Yan_ was lost for a long time, when it was rediscovered, it had annotations by a person named Ling Tonweng - some scholars believe that this was the author annotating his own novel as he wrote it. The annotator of _Dream of the Red Chamber_, Zhiyanzhai, has a great deal of information about the creation and author of the novel, and is an important source of information for studying _Dream of the Red Chamber_. In the process of translation, these annotations are all deleted, perhaps because this kind of text with comments inserted into the main body does not conform to the reading habits of Western readers. However, for me, reading the annotations while reading the novel can be a lot of fun, because these annotations not only point out which details are important clues, what is the significance of the special way in which a character appears on the scene, how the structure of the entire book is arranged, and from what points one can enter to understand the complex plot, but also include a lot of very interesting and incisive comments, which makes it feel like one is reading the book with a literature professor, and a friend who shares the same love of reading. For example, in _The Plum in the Golden Vase_, after the death of Li Ping'er, there are several chapters describing Ximen Qing's various social activities. This part of the plot is both the last moment of glory when Ximen Qing reaches the peak of his personal prestige and power, and also foreshadowing of the undercurrents in the Ximen family, and of the rapid dissipation of Ximen Qing's power and wealth after his sudden death.Therefore, this part of the plot involves many people and events, and is also very chaotic. Without annotations to help identify and sort out the key people and events, it is very easy to get lost, and then to get the mistaken impression that it is bloated and repetitive.
@@兴许 My translation of _Dream of Red Chamber_ is by the Yangs. I know nothing at all about how posterity has treated their work, they being pioneers, but I always found them eminently readable which for me counts for a lot. I used to have the Penguin version (I suppose what you read) and couldn’t stand it. Viscerally. 😂 What you say about annotations doesn’t surprise me - all the other classics have their annotators. It’s hard to imagine approaching something like the _I-ching_ without them. But I can see also how readers might find them annoying. The only book of mine that I can think of with that kind of interlinear notation is my _Bhagavad Gita_ in which case all the interpositions seemed practically superfluous or at least of uninterest to me at that time. I had no trouble with the end of _Plum_ but it really breaks my heart about those missing chapters from somewhere in the middle. It’s great to hear what you say on Hsia C.T. - confirming my bias perhaps though he remains highly regarded and his name crops up all these years later, as one who has no rival.
I ordered one series and saved the rest for later. Thank you so much for this video. I've not heard of any of these books aside from "The Tale of Genji" to which I had purchased previously. I would also like to respond with a new favorite of mine that I had just finished reading two days ago called "1Q84" by Murakami. It is a trilogy, yet my copy is contained within a singular binding. Over a thousand pages in total. Give your pups head pats from me tell them I said they're good dogs. Thank you.
Which did you order? I was just thinking about Murakami and wondering if I should add him to the list. (I’ve only read his nonfiction on the Tokyo subway attacks.) Thanks for the vicarious head pats and good words; if they could the dogs would sit imploringly and expectantly. 😂
This is an incredible project David! My experience with Anna Karenina is also making me think to tackle more mammoths … but I might feel tooconfident right now 😅
Thank you! I’m trying to build myself up. At any other time in my life I couldn’t have contemplated back-to-back mammoths. You did _Anna,_ a break might be in order. 🤣
Kitty, kitty, kitty♥ I'm Japanese and yet, I've never read the whole Tale of Genji. It's written in old Japanese, so it's quite challenging to read the entire work, even for a native reader. We read some in school, of course, but it's rare that people read the whole original work. We have lots of related books: modern-translated version, manga versions, shorter versions, how-to-read-The Tale-Of-Genji versions, etc. Hopefully, I can read the whole work someday with the help of different versions.
Reading a translation into contemporary Japanese sounds doable - but as for tackling the original, even in a dual-page edition with translation or glosses, makes me tremble just thinking of. 😂 I’m sure it’s worthwhile though.
Nice video! Excellent-looking Princeton complete Ramayana...may have to cop one for myself. "Marienbad My Love", at almost 18 million words, may claim the title of longest novel, although given its unusual structure and manner of composition some people might not consider it to truly be a novel. Great interjections from the animals -- would like to hear their thoughts specifically on mammoth novels in the sequel.
Thank you. _Ramayana_ may be a far-off venture for me - if I get to it - but _Marienbad_ even farther. 😂 Believe me the animals have their own agendas… on everything. Thanks for dropping in.
Proust was mind numbing. I highly recommend the duology 'Stalingrad' and 'Life and Fate' by Grossman, combined just under 2000 pages. You will have guessed that it revolves around characters, both Russian and German, involved in the Battle of Stalingrad in WW2. Totally absorbing. My favourite mammoths are War and Peace (I have read it three times over the years), and Quiet Flows the Don by Sholokhov . Enjoy your reading everyone.
I don’t think _Quiet Flows_ can be gotten affordably (I’ve looked, but not lately). I read _Life and Fate_ before _Stalingrad_ became available in English and have hesitated to go back. I liked it, but missing the first chunk made it more difficult. I didn’t expect to give _War and Peace_ a second try but am glad that I did. Who knows about Proust? Thanks for sharing.
@@davidnovakreadspoetry I was the same Life and Fate first then Stalingrad finally turned up in the UK. Reading them in sequence obviously made more sense. As I am in my 8th decade, I go for slightly shorter novels(for obvious reasons). Grossman's The People Immortal, is a fine read, at under 300 pages, I suppose could be regarded as a novella by his standards. Enjoy your reading.
dalkey archive press are about to release the first english translation of "marshland" by otohiko kaga, a big sweeping japanese novel that has been compared to tolstoy. thought it would fit well with your mammoths of asian literature.
I have just finished my mammoth "The Eighth Life" by Nino Haratischwili (944 pages in Hardback, 1258 pages on Kindle), described as a "Georgian War and Peace" I am still processing my thoughts, I think March of the Mammoths is a great event to encourage us to read such behemoths. The actual War and Peace has defeated me twice, although I did read Anna Karenina a couple of years ago.
Ah, _War and Peace_ tends to defeat readers (even multiple times) before they conquer it! I’ve seen mention of _Eighth Life_ on BookTube without getting much of a sense of it. I’ve subscribed so I can see your video when it comes out.
@@davidnovakreadspoetry The Eighth Life is a family saga that goes through the 20th Century in Georgia following 8 characters in a family starting just before the October revolution and finishing in the early 2000s, where Georgia has independence but still had plenty of problems. Thanks for subscribing. There are many Booktube videos about The Eighth Life including one where Karl Eric Anderson interviews the author and her English translators.
18 in a year?!?! 😬 That’s impossible for me, but I wish I could. Right now I’m scrambling on _Journey to the West_ because I want to catch a group read of _Les Mis_ starting in April. It’s pushing a little too hard and I fear cracking. 😂 Now I’m going to follow that tag #migrationofthemammoths to see where it leads to. Maybe I can add to my Pile of Possibilities! 😂😂😂🤣
That’s a hard question. It may come down to, how interested are you in Japanese aesthetics, or the traditional Japanese aesthetic. The description is right on. Last month I finished _War and Peace._ Some people have said that they DNFed it early on, because they couldn’t stand the idle rich, with their entertainments. If they had persisted, the plot and the war theme might have relieved them. _Genji_ offers none of that respite. That said, it presents a compelling picture of Heian Japan. Morris’s _The World of the Shining Prince_ helped me enter that world, and I found it rewarding. It may be like a thin broth that you have to cultivate a taste for; I suspect I would get more out of it on a reread.
i've not heard of A Dream of Red Mansions! and have not read enough Chinese lit! thank you for sharing your mammoths! as a side note, love your Yoshitomo Nara prints!
IF I read the _Ramayana_ then I will certainly allow myself to consider it. The first is uncertain, though I would like to. I have read the _Gita_ so that only encourages me to read the full work. Thanks for coming by.
When the TV show was on I got sick of it (I never watched, but it was on) though I believe the books are different. _Journey to the West_ is my first foray into fantasy and I’m loving it!
Love the Yoshitomo Nara prints in the back! So tasteful
Those pictures on the wall are cool! 💞
The moment you answered your cat with „I know“ I knew I had to subscribe to your channel. Besides being a lover of mammoths myself, obviously. The Miserables is also high on my list. Greetings from Germany!
Glad to have you on board! This mammoth thing is new to me, we’ll see how it goes. Have you any favorites?
I've been an avid reader my whole life but you have introduced me to quite a few books I've never heard of and I'm adding a few of them to my ever-growing list of books I want to read. I will also say that there is something so comforting and endearing about your video that I just love. I wish you luck in accomplishing these mammoths!
Thank you! I’m finding mammoths a good vehicle toward building up my reading practice - which traditionally has been lackluster. But - in this uncertain world - a little luck is what we need to complement the best of intentions. 😂
Mammoth’s are fun! I just started reading some of the biggest books on my shelves, and it’s been such an enriching experience.
I agree - though I’m not sure I have the words to say why.
I loved hearing about your experience working at that tax company. So neat! And so lucky you were able to read while getting paid! And I love your plan of making this year the year of the mammoths. I might copy you! 😊 Lastly, your kitty was so precious! 🐈
Kitty says thank you!
What a great collection! I'm glad to hear you like Plum in the Golden Vase as it's high on my list to buy. I'll probably get it at the same time as The Ramayana. Nice to find another youtuber who likes big books and also loves asian literature!! Subscribed!
Wow! I just watched your alphabet mammoth video - I’m subscribed back.
@@davidnovakreadspoetry lol. Hello new bookish friend!
I’m extremely envious of your sets of books. Not gonna lie. 😂
I think you have an eye for books. 😂
not sure if this is your cup of tea, but maybe check out Sei Shonagon's "The Pillow Book" and Nick Joaquin's "The Woman Who Had Two Navels"
edit:
i know they're not mammoths, but since you're currently into chinese / asian literature, i'm reminded of these books.
I have read Sei Shonagon, had not heard of Joaquin - absolutely right up my alley! Thanks for the suggestions.
What you are doing here is, you are preventing these books from becoming extinct. By purchasing them you make sure that the legacy of their authors lives on. Thanks for the video man!! Best wishes to you from Ásgeir in Iceland!!
I do sometimes think along those lines. (It feels like the new Dark Ages is nearly upon us. 🤔) Best wishes right back atcha in Ásgeir!! Thanks for visiting.
Good luck with your challenge!
Thank you!
I saw the title and got excited thinking you would be reading the “Clan of the Cave Bear” series. They are all mammoths, about mammoths and Neanderthals…great read.
Another one for the to-be-read list. 😂😂😂😭
I need to read Romance of the 3 Kingdoms at some point. The Dream of Red Mansions look really nice on the spines. That Princeton University Press Sale is really good if you can find stuff, I got a lot of nature books as usual lol. Good luck with your March reading!
So many things to read! Fiction, history, and now I want nature books on my menu also. I’m thinking about funguses a lot, at other times cephalopods, after last year’s reading. Probably I should choose some hardcore book on birds next. I’ll be checking your channel for possibilities. 😂
@@davidnovakreadspoetry For sure lol. Just did my Princeton Press book haul lol with 10 nature books. One of the other books I got was also on Octopuses so it was destined for cephalopods haha. Always love nature reads.
A daunting prospect but I do wish you all the luck you'll need for this project. I admire your enthusiasm. Sixty-two years ago I achieved (seems impossible now!) a degree in French, and I can still read Proust pretty easily in French, as long as a dictionary is at hand. My advice: Put Proust at the very bottom of your list. Heresy, perhaps, but... Well. Enough said, I guess. By the way, I love both the cat and dog. Best to them, too.
Thank you! I read about 2/3rds of _Swann’s Way_ with enjoyment, but set it aside for reasons I can’t identify. Having had a taste, I may heed your ‘heretical’ (😂) advice - it’s a mammoth of mammoths. But I’ve only heard good reports from those who’ve done it.
Those are indeed some big books and equally intimidating. Thank you for introducing me to some of these titles.
Ps- I've also failed many a times while reading some big books but I plan on returning to them once more. I recently got done with one having 700+ pages. So, I'm cheering you on!!!
Thanks for the cheering on! I’m beginning to realize that the intimidation factor is a part of the battle. At first I wasn’t sure I would ever tackle _War and Peace_ after failing the first time. I wish you propitious reads. 700pp is indeed good work. 👍
@@davidnovakreadspoetry War and Peace is a beast. So is Les Misérables. I'm going to attempt to finish them this year as well. Congratulations on finishing W&P. :)
Don’t forget about C.P. Snow’s “Strangers and Brothers” series of connected novels. Wonderful.
I vaguely believe I must’ve heard about it - I’ll have to add it to my prospectus.
There’s something I really like about “aspirations”. More than just wanting, not necessarily as much as a firm external commitment, but significant and meaningful.
I’m doing some major whittling back on my UA-cam subscriptions to carve out some more time for physical therapy-related projects, and perhaps some long-stewing fiction. Hoping this current heady-brew subscription works out well.
Mammoths really do have a special appeal. At the moment I’m reading some series of shorter volumes I’ve been meaning to get to (for thirty years, in some cases) But I also have my eye on what my younger friends call chonky boiz to swim in for a while.
For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t expect to read Journey to the West in a month. But then I would also not expect to read it exclusively.
I’ll miss your comments if I see you less frequently but I understand.
There’s a genuine satisfaction to getting to a “meaning to” of long standing, even 30 years. (I need to up my PT also, it’s a whole area I prefer not to face and wish things would just resolve magically….)
I don’t want to pressure myself on _Journey_ (I’m already “behind” schedule) but I do want to catch _Les Miz_ in April which a group are reading. And then there’s life.
@@davidnovakreadspoetry It’s always something! :)
I have read all or most of an abridged children's version of 'Black Beauty' by Anna Sewell.
That was demanding enough for me.
For first person narratives told by a horse you’re way ahead of me. 👍😂
@@davidnovakreadspoetry
Lol! Better written than Mr Ed too?
I love a good mammoth, but similar to you I read a lot last year but for some reason they were mostly novellas. I have Anna Karenina on my list, but also Don Quixote, Les Miserables, and a few others. I have actually never gone a year without reading a mammoth, but the last couple of years we had a lot going on and it left me very little space ot either commit to a big read or even to a series. In any case, love your series recommendations, love your views, and your cat.
Thank you! I’m doing my best - trying to squeeze in the reading. Lack of time is not such an issue for me, but I stare into space a lot. I wish I had a better track record with mammoths - they’ve become a highlight of the last two years.
So I’m trying to ‘lean in’. 😂😂😂
Thanks for stopping by.
Just wanna say thank you for opening my eyes to New Lit to explore. You might already be aware, but for April ‘Classics & Company’ YT channel is doing a read along of Les Misérables :) I’m here from watching Steve’s input video ‘You Don’t Have to Read Hard Books’ Thanks, again 😻
You’re welcome! I’m hoping to join in with the Classics and Company group read. Then after, one of these other mammoth novels from Asia if I can get my act together. 😂 Thanks for dropping by.
I read and enjoyed the first book in The Cairo Trilogy but never went on. Now I think I’d have to re-read the first to get back into them. I read he first book in my three volume set of Proust and don’t have any motivation for going on.
I didn’t finish _Swann’s Way_ but I suspect Proust at least is more even; with _Cairo_ I felt each volume fell further down, and I liked the first best. Proust? Maybe I’ll pick it up again sometime, but first I may need to run out of other things. 🤔
The Everyman's Library edition is fantastic.
I'm very fond of the two books The Plum in the Golden Vase and Dream of the Red Chamber(or The Story of the Stone). In my opinion, although they were developed independently of the development of modern Western fiction, in terms of their creative concepts, they share startling similarities: a restrained and objective tone, and a deliberate, meticulous organization and revision of the overall structure of the text, which makes the plot more expressive at a local level. Which is why I couldn't resist also reading the English translations of these two books, to see what the reading experience would be like in an English-language setting. To me, the work done in the English translations is outstandingly good; it even made me wonder if I was reading a masterpiece of Western literature. Yes, although the translation makes every effort to preserve all the information of the original text, in practice the experience of reading it in Chinese is completely different from reading it in English, although both experiences are very good. But in order to explore the reasons why classical Chinese fiction was able to produce works like The Plum in the Golden Vase and Dream of the Red Chamber, I have also read many relatively unknown works that nevertheless reflect the historical development of Chinese fiction; especially works from the period between The Plum in the Golden Vase and Dream of the Red Chamber. In the historical development of classical Chinese fiction, the early period was marked by works such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin and Journey to the West, which depicted heroic and legendary stories. The Plum in the Golden Vase captured the gradually developing creative techniques and literary aesthetics of these stories, especially in Water Margin, which unconsciously included a mass of realistic detail - just as Don Quixote, although it tells the story of an adventure, includes a mass of realistic detail. The Plum in the Golden Vase, which was expanded from a minor plot of Water Margin, initiated the writing of ordinary secular lives in classical Chinese fiction. The Plum in the Golden Vase is a complex work. It is both erotic - because it was also affected by the mass of vulgar, erotic fiction which proliferated in early Chinese fiction (or perhaps The Plum in the Golden Vase was written precisely to criticize and satirize this kind of vulgar writing) - and at the same time critical, and then secular. Later, many works of classical Chinese fiction appeared which inherited part of the DNA of The Plum in the Golden Vase. On the one hand - and ironically ,the writing of Don Quixote fatally wounded the writing of chivalric romance, but the writing of The Plum in the Golden Vase led to a further flourishing of erotic fiction because The Plum in the Golden Vase was welcomed by both intellectuals and the urban classes, so many inept imitations quickly sprang up, further intensifying the erotic and violent elements and finally resorting to a tragic ending to express a critical attitude.
So, out of revulsion towards works of this kind, works like appeared; it also borrowed from The Plum in the Golden Vase the framework of one male protagonist and his five wives, but gave up the erotic elements and used extremely elegant, highly poetic writing to tell the story of how even if the women were not, as in The Plum in the Golden Vase, evil, cunning, treacherous and vicious, but on the contrary possessed talent and high moral character, they also met a tragic end; the novel is simple and elegant, extremely rich in female consciousness and is suffused with an air of melancholy nostalgia. Of course, because this novel only focuses on the description of the interior of a household, while The Plum in the Golden Vase also includes a depiction of the different classes of society, Lin Lanxiang seems quite thin: it is only a little longer than Madame Bovary. Moreover, because it uses an extremely elegant literary style, the plot is just a series of trivia about the daily lives of noble people and "civilized" arguments, which makes the novel quite boring to read. Add to that the fact that Dream of the Red Chamber inherited from it and comprehensively surpassed it, so this novel has almost no fame at all.
On the other hand, as an example of the critical novel, The Plum in the Golden Vase quickly aroused many critical works in different styles which targeted different social phenomena. For example, , which focuses on fierce women, telling the story of a woman (or several) who, driven mad by past karma or present oppression, take revenge on their husbands; at the same time, it also describes more broadly the injustice, corruption and depravity at every level of society. The literary style is rich but strong, and the plot is exaggerated to the point of bias.And then there's , which one might call China's 120 Days of Sodom (it was also lost for a long time; it was only rediscovered towards the end of the last century); it covers all the modes of sexuality of erotic fiction, from the perspective of a society in which everyone is sexually incontinent, describing the absurdity and ridiculousness of different social groups. One difference is that this book is nearly a million characters long, but the reading experience is anything but disgustingly difficult, on the contrary it is extremely concise and smooth, witty and humorous, sometimes like reading a joke book, sometimes like reading a richly meaningful symbolic parable. The author excels at describing marginal social groups or people with bizarre characters or habits, such as unemployed rogues, gamblers, swindlers, misers, and so on. And the central clue which links these absurd characters and events in this long and complex novel is a simple or even naive love story - a blind prostitute and a poor intellectual fall in love and finally escape from the brothel to live together; this main plotline appears and disappears, and all around it is chaos and depravity, like the calm center of a storm. The novel ends with the fall of the Ming dynasty and the world descending into even greater chaos. The reason that these two books have been intentionally ignored is very simple: because their plots involve a mass of violence and pornography. On the other hand, the novels themselves have fatal defects: their thinking is relatively backward, and they frequently try to preach, making the work rather bloated and even affecting the shaping of the characters and the plausibility of the plot; in particular, they also have a strong misogynistic tendency.
And, there is , a work that was produced in the same period as The Scholars; this book mainly describes the son of a wealthy and noble family who is gradually corrupted by the temptations of the world, whores and gambling, and finally loses all his family fortune, before suddenly having an epiphany and repenting; it is a didactic novel. Unlike most of the works mentioned above, which mostly took Buddhist philosophy as the background of their literary aesthetics, this novel is guided by Confucian thought, and explores questions of humanity and education. Of course, there are many other such works.
These works were all produced after the birth of The Plum in the Golden Vase and clearly show the influence of The Plum in the Golden Vase at the same time, they were produced before Dream of the Red Chamber. Although it is impossible to know for sure whether the author of Dream of the Red Chamber read any of these works, it is an interesting thing to compare the merits of Dream of the Red Chamber with these works and see how Dream of the Red Chamber overcame their defects. After the birth of Dream of the Red Chamber, it quickly inspired the birth of a mass of works, especially stimulating literature by women. For example, the earliest extant vernacular novel written by women in China is a sequel to Dream of the Red Chamber. Of course, there are also women's long narrative ballad novels, such as Chen Duansheng's Resurrection as a Couple, which is a long poem novel, the whole text being 800,000 characters, written in seven-character a line stanzas with rhyme; the author was a seventeen-year-old girl when she began to write it. It tells the story of how the two noble families of the Huangfu and Meng families agree to marry, which arouses the hatred of another family, the Liu family, so the Huangfu family is framed and only the son of the Huangfu family, Huangfu Shaohua, escapes, while Meng Lijun, the daughter of the Meng family, refuses to marry the son of the Liu family and escapes disguised as a man.She then uses her male identity to pass the imperial examination and enter government service, and finally rises to be the highest official, vindicating the Huangfu family ; but at this time Meng Lijun is unwilling to give up her male identity and power and return to her status as a wife, and begins to struggle with the emperor, her husband's family, and her own family, until finally her female identity is exposed and betrayed to the world, Meng Lijun vomits blood, and the story stops.It seems that none of these long novels have English translations.
@@兴许 This is an education! When I was reading _Plum_ I tried _The Classic Chinese Novel_ by C.T. Hsia - it was a smelly copy and I just didn’t like his writing so I chucked it. But even more recently, looking for stuff, it feels like no one since has written about Chinese novels for the English market. I love this bit of context you’re giving me, even though my Chinese’ll never be at a level to enable me to read either the wealth of criticism that exists or any of the novels you’ve talked about.
I think I’ll shoot for _Dream of Red Chamber_ for January reading then (my time before then may be hectic), as it deserves priority - _Plum_ was such a grand reading experience, and the maturity and subtlety of the text makes many Western books pale by comparison. I’m lucky in that even though I must rely on the English version I’ve had enough exposure to Chinese culture to not make the texts alien to me, and I can probably catch some of the overtones. There will be more translations coming along I’m sure - though I’m beginning to see why translators would rather do a new version of some major work (say _The Brothers Karamazov)_ that already exists multiply than tackling some more obscure work that may not have a ready market.
Thanks for sharing this.
@@davidnovakreadspoetry About the dream of red chamber,I read the translation by David Hawkes called The story of the stone,I like it.But I don`t know about the translation in your video.
The phenomenon you describe is very normal, even in China. I can easily find at least six different versions of four different translations of _The Brothers Karamazov_ on the market, while the classical Chinese novels I mentioned can only be found in libraries, or by buying them from websites that sell second-hand books. Furthermore, I don't like the work of Hsia C.T.; he's like many other people of his generation who studied Western literary theory and then used that knowledge to study Chinese literature, which is like a student who learns a formula and then applies it everywhere.
In fact, classical Chinese novels have their own unique theories of fiction, which often exist in the form of annotations (there are also summaries at the beginning or end of each chapter, of course). In the early days, booksellers would annotate the words and allusions used in novels, taking into consideration the cultural level of the urban population. This was a commercial practice intended to increase book sales.Later, due to fierce competition, this developed into analyzing the arrangement of the plot and the techniques used.The analysis greater, the more books would sell.
During this process, the theoretical and aesthetic standards of fiction were also established and developed. For example, the most famous annotator of _Romance of the Three Kingdoms_ is Mao Zonggang; the most famous annotator of _Water Margin_ is Jin Shengtan; the most famous annotator of _The Plum in the Golden Vase_ is Zhang Zhupo; and although _Gu Wang Yan_ was lost for a long time, when it was rediscovered, it had annotations by a person named Ling Tonweng - some scholars believe that this was the author annotating his own novel as he wrote it. The annotator of _Dream of the Red Chamber_, Zhiyanzhai, has a great deal of information about the creation and author of the novel, and is an important source of information for studying _Dream of the Red Chamber_. In the process of translation, these annotations are all deleted, perhaps because this kind of text with comments inserted into the main body does not conform to the reading habits of Western readers.
However, for me, reading the annotations while reading the novel can be a lot of fun, because these annotations not only point out which details are important clues, what is the significance of the special way in which a character appears on the scene, how the structure of the entire book is arranged, and from what points one can enter to understand the complex plot, but also include a lot of very interesting and incisive comments, which makes it feel like one is reading the book with a literature professor, and a friend who shares the same love of reading.
For example, in _The Plum in the Golden Vase_, after the death of Li Ping'er, there are several chapters describing Ximen Qing's various social activities. This part of the plot is both the last moment of glory when Ximen Qing reaches the peak of his personal prestige and power, and also foreshadowing of the undercurrents in the Ximen family, and of the rapid dissipation of Ximen Qing's power and wealth after his sudden death.Therefore, this part of the plot involves many people and events, and is also very chaotic. Without annotations to help identify and sort out the key people and events, it is very easy to get lost, and then to get the mistaken impression that it is bloated and repetitive.
@@兴许 My translation of _Dream of Red Chamber_ is by the Yangs. I know nothing at all about how posterity has treated their work, they being pioneers, but I always found them eminently readable which for me counts for a lot. I used to have the Penguin version (I suppose what you read) and couldn’t stand it. Viscerally. 😂
What you say about annotations doesn’t surprise me - all the other classics have their annotators. It’s hard to imagine approaching something like the _I-ching_ without them. But I can see also how readers might find them annoying. The only book of mine that I can think of with that kind of interlinear notation is my _Bhagavad Gita_ in which case all the interpositions seemed practically superfluous or at least of uninterest to me at that time. I had no trouble with the end of _Plum_ but it really breaks my heart about those missing chapters from somewhere in the middle.
It’s great to hear what you say on Hsia C.T. - confirming my bias perhaps though he remains highly regarded and his name crops up all these years later, as one who has no rival.
I ordered one series and saved the rest for later. Thank you so much for this video. I've not heard of any of these books aside from "The Tale of Genji" to which I had purchased previously. I would also like to respond with a new favorite of mine that I had just finished reading two days ago called "1Q84" by Murakami. It is a trilogy, yet my copy is contained within a singular binding. Over a thousand pages in total. Give your pups head pats from me tell them I said they're good dogs. Thank you.
Which did you order?
I was just thinking about Murakami and wondering if I should add him to the list. (I’ve only read his nonfiction on the Tokyo subway attacks.)
Thanks for the vicarious head pats and good words; if they could the dogs would sit imploringly and expectantly. 😂
This is an incredible project David!
My experience with Anna Karenina is also making me think to tackle more mammoths … but I might feel tooconfident right now 😅
Thank you! I’m trying to build myself up. At any other time in my life I couldn’t have contemplated back-to-back mammoths. You did _Anna,_ a break might be in order. 🤣
Kitty, kitty, kitty♥ I'm Japanese and yet, I've never read the whole Tale of Genji. It's written in old Japanese, so it's quite challenging to read the entire work, even for a native reader. We read some in school, of course, but it's rare that people read the whole original work. We have lots of related books: modern-translated version, manga versions, shorter versions, how-to-read-The Tale-Of-Genji versions, etc. Hopefully, I can read the whole work someday with the help of different versions.
Reading a translation into contemporary Japanese sounds doable - but as for tackling the original, even in a dual-page edition with translation or glosses, makes me tremble just thinking of. 😂
I’m sure it’s worthwhile though.
Your cat is so cute!
Thank you! 😊
Nice video! Excellent-looking Princeton complete Ramayana...may have to cop one for myself. "Marienbad My Love", at almost 18 million words, may claim the title of longest novel, although given its unusual structure and manner of composition some people might not consider it to truly be a novel. Great interjections from the animals -- would like to hear their thoughts specifically on mammoth novels in the sequel.
Thank you. _Ramayana_ may be a far-off venture for me - if I get to it - but _Marienbad_ even farther. 😂
Believe me the animals have their own agendas… on everything. Thanks for dropping in.
I just finished Lonesome Dove, a great read. More casual and written in the 80s it’s not too complicated either.
Good job! 👍 I hope to get there one day.
Proust was mind numbing. I highly recommend the duology 'Stalingrad' and 'Life and Fate' by Grossman, combined just under 2000 pages. You will have guessed that it revolves around characters, both Russian and German, involved in the Battle of Stalingrad in WW2. Totally absorbing. My favourite mammoths are War and Peace (I have read it three times over the years), and Quiet Flows the Don by Sholokhov . Enjoy your reading everyone.
I don’t think _Quiet Flows_ can be gotten affordably (I’ve looked, but not lately). I read _Life and Fate_ before _Stalingrad_ became available in English and have hesitated to go back. I liked it, but missing the first chunk made it more difficult. I didn’t expect to give _War and Peace_ a second try but am glad that I did. Who knows about Proust? Thanks for sharing.
@@davidnovakreadspoetry I was the same Life and Fate first then Stalingrad finally turned up in the UK. Reading them in sequence obviously made more sense. As I am in my 8th decade, I go for slightly shorter novels(for obvious reasons). Grossman's The People Immortal, is a fine read, at under 300 pages, I suppose could be regarded as a novella by his standards. Enjoy your reading.
I'd like to reread _Don Quixote,_ amongst others, someday.
Dear lord, I must not watch videos like this ... too many books already waiting to be read, dang.
Oops! 😂
dalkey archive press are about to release the first english translation of "marshland" by otohiko kaga, a big sweeping japanese novel that has been compared to tolstoy. thought it would fit well with your mammoths of asian literature.
I never heard of it. I must look into it. Thanks for letting me know.
I have just finished my mammoth "The Eighth Life" by Nino Haratischwili (944 pages in Hardback, 1258 pages on Kindle), described as a "Georgian War and Peace" I am still processing my thoughts, I think March of the Mammoths is a great event to encourage us to read such behemoths. The actual War and Peace has defeated me twice, although I did read Anna Karenina a couple of years ago.
Ah, _War and Peace_ tends to defeat readers (even multiple times) before they conquer it! I’ve seen mention of _Eighth Life_ on BookTube without getting much of a sense of it. I’ve subscribed so I can see your video when it comes out.
@@davidnovakreadspoetry The Eighth Life is a family saga that goes through the 20th Century in Georgia following 8 characters in a family starting just before the October revolution and finishing in the early 2000s, where Georgia has independence but still had plenty of problems. Thanks for subscribing. There are many Booktube videos about The Eighth Life including one where Karl Eric Anderson interviews the author and her English translators.
A Dance to The Music of Time by Anthony Powell.
12 Volumes - I really enjoyed reading it.
Ha! If I see _A Question of Upbringing_ I’ll pick it up.
The Recognitions of Dhalgren by Richard S. Prolegemon
That’s a troubling book.
Proud owner here of volume one of Plum in the Golden Vase
I owned only Vol. 1 for years without reading it, but immediately upon starting knew I had to snap up the rest.
do a pet intro!!
Wow. Crazy, man.
A year of reading mammoths is called #migrationofthemammoths; reading 18 mammoths of at least 800 pages in a year or 6 minimum.
18 in a year?!?! 😬
That’s impossible for me, but I wish I could. Right now I’m scrambling on _Journey to the West_ because I want to catch a group read of _Les Mis_ starting in April. It’s pushing a little too hard and I fear cracking. 😂 Now I’m going to follow that tag #migrationofthemammoths to see where it leads to. Maybe I can add to my Pile of Possibilities! 😂😂😂🤣
@@davidnovakreadspoetry That's only 40 pages a day (minimum), my brother.😊
@@davidnovakreadspoetry The minimum to read is six mammoths to complete the challenge.
@@UhuruFrontier I will do my best. 😂
Is the Tale of Genji worth the commitment? My edition is 1300 pages and I'm told it is largely without a plot.
That’s a hard question. It may come down to, how interested are you in Japanese aesthetics, or the traditional Japanese aesthetic. The description is right on.
Last month I finished _War and Peace._ Some people have said that they DNFed it early on, because they couldn’t stand the idle rich, with their entertainments. If they had persisted, the plot and the war theme might have relieved them. _Genji_ offers none of that respite.
That said, it presents a compelling picture of Heian Japan. Morris’s _The World of the Shining Prince_ helped me enter that world, and I found it rewarding. It may be like a thin broth that you have to cultivate a taste for; I suspect I would get more out of it on a reread.
i've not heard of A Dream of Red Mansions! and have not read enough Chinese lit! thank you for sharing your mammoths!
as a side note, love your Yoshitomo Nara prints!
Thank you! I, too, have not read enough Chinese lit. Or Korean lit. Or Vietnamese lit. Working to correct that. 🤣
Subscribed. Read the Mahabharata too.
IF I read the _Ramayana_ then I will certainly allow myself to consider it. The first is uncertain, though I would like to. I have read the _Gita_ so that only encourages me to read the full work.
Thanks for coming by.
Amother Chinese mammoth is The Three Kingdoms.
I’d swear that’s in there but I’m not going to rewatch the video to find it. 😉
You are correct. You did mention it.😂 I think I missed it because your edition is only two books. My edition is three.
@@UhuruFrontier Have you read a lot of these?
Tell me about those paintings
Cheap prints from online by Yoshitomo Nara
He must have a lot of spare time.
Game of Thrones reads as one novel.
When the TV show was on I got sick of it (I never watched, but it was on) though I believe the books are different. _Journey to the West_ is my first foray into fantasy and I’m loving it!
The rocking back and forth is dizzying for me. Sorry.
No need to apologize. You might try the UA-cam channels of “Steve Donoghue” or “Bookish” for less rocking. Thanks for giving it a try.