@@frankwales I LOVED Catcher in the Rye. I mean I still do, one of my all-time favorites. I've read it probably 20 times(till the book literally fell apart) starting when I was 10. My older sister had it for school, and left it laying on the kitchen table. Ever the book fanatic, I was eating cereal one day and picked it up. It left a huge impression on me. Id never read anything like it before. I read it probably five more times before I finally had it as required reading in 11th grade. Needless to say, I OWNED that book report lol.
Sooo... I love this series about books, because it encourages people to read and share their own thoughts about books, and that's great. Which is why I just want to give a little shout-out here to your local library. Yes, you have one. They're all over the place, and they're great. They're FULL of books! And you can check them out, for ZERO dollars. And they have librarians, who will help you find books. And if your life gets busy, they'll renew your books if you're late to dropping them off. Please support your local library. Thank you!
"they'll renew your books if you're late to dropping them off." Well, they do that now, but before the pandemic they didn't... and I don't know if it's the case everywhere either... but yeah seems like most of them realized it was unnecessary to charge late fees the vast majority of the time
My university library even does _auto-renewal_ on books that aren't in high demand, which feels like a great recipe for making me forget books until I move towns or something lol
Great read, but you can skip the novel and just read the original short story imo. The same impact, or moreso even because it still has all of the story's poignancy and emotional weight, but compressed into just a few pages.
The Twilight Zone is HUGELY influenced by Bradbury. Both are fundamentally about the mid-20th century culture shock visited on a whole generation of farmers who went to war, went to the moon, grew up on farms, lived in cities. It's all about this wistful Americana stuff, often with a dark vibe to it.
That's the only problem with classics sometimes. You need to know the context of not only the time they're written, but the intended audience or at least why the author wrote it.
@@Tolstoy111 I don't know; few authors can actually write a protagonist you're supposed to dislike, and still keep you entertained. So either she was serious... or she failed at writing the bad guy well. Even The Great Gatsby was kind of a failure, and that's a lot better than this. Comparing Age of Innocence to something as awesome as Pride and Prejudice is completely crazy IMO :D
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who likes The Master and Margarita 😞 But it hits different in Russian! My copy also came with A Young Doctor's Notebook, a series of his short stories about working as an inexperienced physician in a remote village. So miserable and surreal, it becomes funny.
@@acollieralso I think it's normal you did not like it because you are not the target audience. The book is very much meant for a soviet block audience and is nonsensical without that cultural background
I quite liked it. Seemed more of a critique of soviet systems and hierarchy than of their atheism specifically; but I'm probably missing something without the cultural context.
I find it strange that Pride and Prejudice seems to get a pass while Age of Innocence doesn't regarding rich people and their petty rich people problems. Pride and Prejudice is also about a bunch of rich people where the main financial insecurity isn't so much in becoming poor as much as it is becoming less rich. Yes, Age of Innocence did satirize Gilded Age culture heavily. The major sticking point of the book isn't really supposed to be that these are all terrible people (they aren't heroes, but I very much don't think they're that horrible), but that the culture in which they live in pressures them to make choices that are terrible for their lives that they can never undo and forever have to live with. I think the issue you might have had with it is that culture has moved so far past the 1870's and 1920's that it might not have resonated. People in 1920 would read it and go "Wow, people 50 years ago were so dumb and stupid and their culture didn't make any sense and was actively detrimental to people's lives." It's not that dissimilar to books now talking about how bad culture was in the 1950's or 60's, it's just that us in the 2020's resonate with that more because it's more relevant to us.
@@Tolstoy111 Mind, those women in particular - many estates had inheritance even through the female line. It's specifically a problem that their property is entailed (i.e. they don't _actually_ own it, it's a sort of free perpetual lease/fief... through the _male_ line exclusively). Most inheritance didn't work like that - if there was no male heir, it would go to the wife or the daughters, and if there was, he was of course required to take care of his sisters (until they were married). And they commented on that quite a bit in the book, which also makes it easy to understand even if you know nothing about the time and situation. Austen is absolutely brilliant.
I only now realized how a lot of Master and Margarita could seem a lot less funny to anyone not from former USSR as a lot of it is satire of USSR things - communism, state-regulated art/religion. Anywhere else writing a strange book about Pontius Pilate would be "whatever, you do you", not an act of rebellion One of my all time favorites
I was not born in the USSR but I thoroughly enjoyed Master and Margarita. Maybe because as European born in the seventies I know more about the history behind it? A true masterpiece humour and defiance. Shame Angela really missed the point about this one.
I was fortunate to have been made aware of the book by a former Soviet citizen that I got to discuss it with as I read it which I do think added to my reading of it.
I was born in 1970 and remember my Saturday morning cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny who had a recurring obstacle character (no name given(*)) whose defining characteristic was that he was huge and strong and dumb and would just grab Bugs and hold him saying , "I will love him and pet him and name him George." Being less than 10 at the time, I had no idea what that was referencing, but I found it amusing later in life. (*) no name given that I remember in the show, but we all know now it would have been Lenny.
I worked in a used/rare bookstore for 20 years or so. I had a lot of time to read and could take any book I wanted as long as I remembered to return it. The classics tended to disappoint me. A common issue was that the problems and concerns discussed in the novel didn't translate very well into contemporary society. So, it wasn't the author's fault that I didn't like it, they apparently succeeded in entertaining their own contemporaries. Of the ones I did like, it wasn't the plot or drama as much as is was getting a real sense for some other place and time. I was also doing research and publishing technical articles at the time and sometimes I wanted to give my brain a rest and found myself enjoying science fiction pulps from the 30s and 40s. The writing, of course, was generally bad, but the authors knew how to pace the story and put in the occasional twist. As a way to pass the time when my brain was on idle, they were fun. Another thing I liked about working in a bookstore was that I could grab a book I had never heard of, sit down and read it. Now and then, it ended up being a pleasant surprise.
I'm having the same problem w Plato's Republic. Too much of it is about the basic assumption that there is a class of men who are above everyone else and how society is supposed to be structured around them and their aspirations. And everyone else are slaves. Fuggem.
Once upon a time in 1973, my mom and I decided that we wanted to go to the movies and relax with a “fun and light” lowbrow western. We chose “High Plains Drifter”.
I love getting to see another woman’s perspective on classic literature. This is the kind of stuff that stands out to me as well, but tends to be minimized or overlooked in discussion/analysis of the work. Like your point about Curley’s wife - I don’t find that that tends to stand out to men, but as a woman it leaps out at me when tacit blame is pushed onto a woman for no good reason at all. It betrays some of the hidden misogyny of the author, of the era. And there are so many great authors/great books which contain elements like this, or of the r/menwritingwomen kind that range from annoying to making it impossible for me to continue..and I just don’t like to read reviews from people who are blind to that all entirely. I just think it deserves to be a part of the conversation. So to that end, I’m so glad you’re doing more of these, I am REALLY enjoying them. And I just became a Patron today, for how much I am loving and watching all of your content!
If you'd like a short Steinbeck palate cleanser I recommend Cannery Row. Fun, good characters and setting (based on real people Steinbeck hung out with in those days, along with Joseph Campbell!)
I would add "The Wayward Bus" and "The Pearl" to your "Cannery Row" list. Those are my 3 favs from Steinbeck. They tell me I'm missing out on "East of Eden" and "The Grapes of Wrath" but oh well.
I’d recommend “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse if you haven’t read it already. Like ”Of Mice and Men,” it’s a short read that does an excellent job of developing interesting characters. I found it to be a really calm and beautiful meditation on finding meaning in life.
I loved all of Hesse's books as a teen/young man, but I revisited them a few years ago as an old fart, and was significantly less impressed. It all seemed overly simplistic, even juvenile to me now.
I was supposed to read Grendel for a college class, but the week before I realized I had to switch to a different class. It's been on my shelf ever since. I'm definitely going to pick it up next
When reading Mark Twain one must remember he was not a novelist, he was really a newspaper reporter. His novels are often kind of disjointed, with plot mechanics that can be a bit weird. Having said that, I enjoyed Puddenhead Wilson very much. Number one, it examined the fact of slave owners using their slaves for sex, an aspect that earned it some very bad reviews at the time. It was a subject that no one wrote of. It may also be the first murder mystery to use fingerprint evidence to convict a killer. Finally, it makes the point that the slaveowners son by his wife, who is raised as a slave, becomes like a slave in behaviour. At the end of the book, he is restored to his position as the plantation owner, but cannot deal with that situation. One bonus. Each chapter in the book is headed with an entry from "Puddenhead Wilson's diary". These chapter heading are pure Mark Twain, and worth the price of the book by themselves. As far as the dialect, there's not a lot of it in the book, and it is not there as a means of disparaging blacks. It is the way they spoke, and Twain would have been remiss if he had given them cultured English. Think of Pygmalion, where George Bermard Shaw gave Eliza a very thick cockney accent and speech. Without that, the play would have made no sense.
You're right about the context and importance of Puddenhead, and I think Angela acknowledge that. It doesn't mean the book is enjoyable to read today, however. As for how people spoke, I wouldn't be so sure. There's a lot of interesting (if you're interested in that sort of thing) historical research on this, and at least to some degree, the black dialog of this time period is only partly based in fact, and is at least to some extent a creation of media and expectations. Look up the history of Truth's "ain't I a woman" speech, for example. Just like with white folks, there were a very wide variety of black dialects depending on where people were from geographically and in social class, and that tended to get flattened to a stereotype in no small part perpetuated by anti-slavery white writers like Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
@@camipco The difference is that Mark Twain was born in Missouri, a slave state, while Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Connecticut. Twain lived with slaves around him as he grew up. He would have been very familiar with the way they spoke. Twain was a person very concerned with that aspect of human speech. Read his "Fenimore Cooper's LIterary Offenses", especially rules 5, 6, and 7. Rule 5 begins: "They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances..." Twain wasn't just making it up. He was born to it, knew it well, and in fact Pudden' Head Wison is set in a slave state town that would have been very similar to where Twain was born and raised.
Between the two, I vote East of Eden - Grapes of Wrath is more of a slog. East of Eden is a masterpiece. It drags every now and then, but the generations of families, the interconnected stories, the moral questions - they're all terrific. It *is* a bit racist and misogynistic in parts, but beyond that, it is incredible.
@@Amira_Phoenix to an extent, perhaps. The more egregious stuff. But we can't ignore that we're all products of our time. Things we class as racist and misogynistic now we're not considered as such then, so, while holding some belief or making some statement in his time may have been seen as being more forward thinking, it may still, by our standards, be racist or misogynistic. A good parallel - plenty of abolitionists, while being 100% against slavery, did not support letting black people (or women) vote, and even vocally considered black people as lesser than white, even if not deserving to be enslaved. Progressive for their time, absolutely, but still incredibly racist by today's terms.
I don't think I've seen anybody recommend Catch-22 yet. It came out just before the US ramped up in Vietnam and the setting is in WWII, so it's usually considered an anti-war novel. It's really much more than that, and is a study of the absurdity of human behavior, particularly when large organizations with power structures are involved.
It's been 50 years since I read "Catch 22", but I still remember it being side-splittingly funny. A much less well-known piece by Heller that I also enjoyed is "Picture This".
Absolute classic. I'll read a 3rd time soon. Great suggestions Angela. I'm trying to read classics because I basically ignored almost all reading assignments in high school and only read the newspaper.
Having read Of Mice and Men many times, I have to disagree with your interpretation of Curly's Wife (though I do find it interesting). Regarding not having a name, I believe that's primarily to display how she's alienated from the men. In a negative way. The whole book is about the loneliness and longing experienced by most of the characters, and her being ostracized and intentionally kept distant from everyone while she is clearly just as lonely and looking for companionship is her own stake in that plight, evidenced by the fact that no one (including the reader) seemingly even knows or uses her name. She's effectively not seen as a real person by the farmhands - which, in alignment with the final line, is I think ultimately meant to be read as tragic. Does Steinbeck intend for us to "blame" her in some way for having caused her own murder? It's been a bit since I read it and so may be short on some of the exact details, but again I don't think so. Lennie yells blame at her after he inadvertently kills her, but he's Lennie. In his mental ineptitude he's at least partially incapable of fully grasping the extent of the situations he finds himself in (/creates), and so not a perfectly reliable source from which to draw conclusions of authorial intent. He's scared, and as always takes the simplest path of understanding (and does take blame on himself eventually, saying "I've done a bad thing...", etc). Afterwards Candy also lays some of the blame onto her, but that's him lashing out at what I might label fate, or inevitability. He's upset that her murder means they'll never be able to have their little stake of land, and doesn't want to admit that perhaps he believed all along it was never going to happen anyway. Ultimately, any blame I can remember being put on Curly's Wife I think can largely be attributed to frustrations over the world/circumstances in general. George's reaction is the one we're finally, most prominently left with, and I think it's the one Steinbeck intends us to take. When George finds out about the killing he's not mad, he's just sad. Despondent and hurt by the painful inevitability he had spent so long avoiding, in trying to protect Lennie in a world from which there is no lasting protection. He knows it means Lennie must die, and in a way so must a part of himself. Now I would agree that there's certainly not much grief shown for the poor dead girl, even from her own shit of a husband - but again I think that speaks largely to her own tragedy of segregation and neglect. Personally I've always read Curly's Wife as a fairly sympathetic character (as is most everyone in Of Mice and Men), but I really appreciate the alternate perspective and excuse to think about/write this up lol, thanks
i understand why people are recommending Cannery Row for your next Steinbeck, but i suspect you will absolutely vibe with Log From the Sea of Cortez. especially since Ed Ricketts is a scientist so ridiculously important to American arts & letters. Between Pacific Tides is amazing too - the only scientific text i've read that accurately describes the grueling slog towards epiphany in fieldwork and research.
At 11:59 you told us not to laugh, and I'm going to respect that. So instead I'll say I'm _so sorry_ for the gut-punch. I read _OM&M_ in high school, and even though I'm pretty sure I knew how it ended, I still felt utterly unprepared for actually reading it. Also: I'm sorry-I don't remember any sort of discussion of agency around Curly's wife, specifically. What I remember the theme being was that, in the dust bowl, there's not really right and wrong or blame or dreams, there's just _stuff that happens_ as people struggle to survive.
I don't know if you did this on purpose, but "here's how I felt and a little bit of why...." before actually talking any details was great. I've never read 'Of Mice and Men' and that pause right after you said "It is NOT about that" was a great opportunity for me to skip a few minutes ahead so I too can pick that one up with a clean slate lol
The Yellow Wallpaper always stuck out to me; it really united my love of psychology and literature and helped me see value in my struggle with mental health.
I was ready to recommend Pale Fire by Nabokov and then noticed you're a fan of his. But yeah, Pale Fire! Fun fact: the coiner of "hypertext," Ted Nelson, gives co-credit to Vladimir Nabokov for Pale Fire's non-linear and hyperlinked narrative structure. The book is wickedly funny, and VN has that wizardly command of English. Thanks for all the great videos!
The Dissertation, by R. M. Koster, has a similar nonlinear structure. I think it must have been inspired by Pale Fire. Both books are funny and excellent.
Angela, I always enjoy your take on everything. You might like Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine” and Theodore Sturgeon’s “More Than Human”. Thank you for reminding me about “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Charlotte Gilman’s beliefs and life were very interesting and impressive especially for the time in which she lived.
I am just starting your video but I wanted to comment before I forget. I appreciate how you separated boring from bad. Not all books that are boring are bad. A simple difference in culture can remove much of what motivates or immerses a reader. Because we don't understand the political, social, or economic environment of the time a reader might not be as connected as we would if we were reading a similar book with a social awareness in today's zeitgeist.
I haven't read Of Mice and Men since high school, but I don't remember Curley's wife being blamed or anyone thinking that she was to blame. I remember the scene and it being extremely tragic, and us discussing the inevitability of George, Candy, and Lennie's fate. Curley's wife was kind of an extension of Curley, but to the extent that they were all in the same planter class and are the cause of the underlying issues that all of the farm hands face as workers (I remember Curley's wife being sympathetic and that played into the tragedy). The end broke me, and it is one of the biggest gut punches I've ever experienced. I guess it's good you didn't have it spoiled? If you liked Pride and Prejudice, I would definitely recommend Sense and Sensibility. It does require a bit more preparation as "sense" and "sensibility" have both changed their meaning since Austen wrote the book. The change in usage isn't too major, but it is enough of a change that I had to keep reminding myself of how the denotation (which the modern forward made me aware of, as well as the surrounding politics it satirizes or appear in the background that would have been obvious to readers back then).
I liked Lolita, I liked Despair even better, but my favorite Nabokov book (and his most inventive, imo) is Pale Fire. I won't say anything more about it because much of the fun is in the discovery. I highly recommend it. I've only read a couple of books by Steinbeck. The Pearl was a high school assignment and I didn't care for it. Cannery Row is an underrated comic gem.
We should do Steinbeck, The Pearl is short. Is it good? Who cares we can fit it in to the time available. and it wont be too far over their heads. There are too many lesser works that survive because of attittudes like that.
Steinbeck often uses women in his stories...awkwardly. A lot of the time they exist largely as objects for the male character's story or as symbols of the innocence or "good" of humanity
This is an important point, that this was a career-long shortcoming of his work. While it's a bit of a copout, I think he's somewhat a product of male narrative conventions of the time which almost always trivialize/instrumentalize women- Steinbeck wasn't exactly doing avante-garde norm-shattering work, his work is fairly straightforward usually, he's mostly an exceptional storyteller and with a commanding sense of how to build emotionally resonate narratives. I think Curly's wife kinda works in some ways being one-dimensional, bc the work is thinner and more fable-like than his more sweeping epics, and she's presented as seen by a milieu of alienated men in a patriarchal society and economy who are denied the opportunity for full rich lives, as an object apart representing temptation, desire, fragility, precariousness, and the consequences of crossing class and social hierarchies.
A book that is an excellent piece of literature is "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. However it is actually based on a horrific true crime and is very disturbing.
My favorite book by Twain is his "Innocents Abroad", a story about a pilgrimage trip he went on, and his story "A Horses Tale", mostly because of the scene with Soldier Boy and the bullfight. "Even if I were dying, I would come"
I just stumbled across your video, and really enjoyed it. Thank you! Two comments: If you dare to try another Willa Cather, try Song of the Lark, which was NOT boring (at least to me). It is about a women in a smaller Colorado town who becomes a famous opera singer. It is a western, at least in part, but it is also a story about the struggles of a strong woman trying to escape the restrictions that she faces. As for Master and Margarita, it is easier to understand knowing that it is at least in part a satirical attack on the Soviet writer's guild that regulated what writers were allowed to publish, and controlled their status. Anyway, I really appreciated your analysis and descriptions of these books, and your honest and thoughtful opinions.
With Nobokov is like a codependent relationship where you keep reading because the writing is amazing but you question the characters so you stay for the ride. You cannot write horrible characters if your writing is "meh". So no. you dont need literary training to "get" Age of innocence. Also pretty sure Pulitzer price winners in that age was because of the world at that time so its hard that a book that old can resonate in 2024
If you haven't read them, I'd highly recommend either The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas. Try to find modern and unabridged translations. I'd say Monte Cristo is the better book, but it's also a bigger time commitment. Three Musketeers is still very good, I remember thinking of it as a popcorn action movie in book form when I was a kid, but that might say more about the pacing of the books I otherwise read at the time.
Monte Cristo is great, highly recommended. Although I haven't read it since my teens, I read it twice back then and it's not a short read, some 1300 pages. It truly is the quintessential revenge and forgiveness story.
I have a sci-fi recommendation that's a bit introspective: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's the story of a woman who takes a long drive and reflects on the nature of her life and her past. I can't say much more, because that would spoil the sci-fi element of the book, but seriously I think about that book all the time it's really beautiful. There's also a movie adaptation, but I haven't seen it.
Thanks for your reviews! It made me really happy to listen to them on an otherwise pretty gray day. I think you said you liked F.D’s Crime and Punishment, so my suggestions for more Russians are FDs Brothers Karamazov, (or if your in a hurry just the Grand Inquisitor story) Tolstoy’s Anna Karinina, Gogol’s the Overcoat short and Dead Souls. Chekovs the Seagull and Uncle Vanya are great plays. Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is a great character. Wilde’s importance of being earnest is my vote for most hilarious play ever. Camus the Stranger is great, as is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. St Exupery’s Wind, Sand and Stars has some really pretty writing. You’ve probably read Kafkas The Trial already but it may be worth a read if you haven’t. Erica Jongs Fear of Flying is pretty old school feminism but I enjoyed it.
i liked the movie of age of innocence. O think the whole plot is how the young wife is actually not innocent she knows what she has to do to survive. She's actually the most savy of the three.
Great as always. RE: Steinbeck -- I highly recommend =reading= East of Eden (great retelling of the Cain Abel story, intertwined with California and Steinbeck family history; one of my favorites), and =watching= Cannery Row (quirky and funny, but has a bit of depth/philosophy). I'd be curious to hear your take on male vs female characters/roles in both. Grapes of Wrath is a powerful book, but a definite downer, man's inhumanity to man type stuff set in California Dust Bowl/migrant worker settings.
I own the Cannery Row movie and re-watch it every few years, so I did so again this evening: I still enjoyed it quite a bit, but it had a couple scenes that were a bit longer, slower, and darker than I remembered and definitely contains scenes that are dated either by the sensibilities baked into the 40 year age of the movie or the 80 year age of the novel. It's 75/72 on rotten tomatoes, which feels about right. I also sampled the Audible version and as I remembered, found it a more difficult listen. Meanwhile, it's time for a re-engagement with East of Eden, and I think the Audible version of that =will= work for me based on its sample -- but it's a pretty long book, so that will take time to complete.
If you like tight, short Sci-Fi and Fantasy books you'll love everything Roger Zelazny especially his earlier stuff like Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, and Eye of Cat. He wrote during the New Wave era (1960s-70s) that included Ursula K. Le Guin, Harland Elison and Michael Moorcock though Zelazny denounced the term for himself. It was a similar movement to the New Journalism of Hunter S. Thompson and Truman Capote but in non-fiction. It was this 60s-70s counterculture blended with the hope of the American space programs successes that led these authors to explore concepts like race, gender, religion, mythology, and technology in new ways being a bit more inclusive than the mostly male writers of the Golden Era.
My degrees are in philosophy, so I mostly read nonfiction. Here are the fiction authors/playwrights who have never fallen off my "Someday Reread" and "Always Watch" lists: Edward Albee, Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, Albert Camus, Lewis Carroll, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, James Joyce, Arthur Kopit, Carson McCullers, Vladimir Nabokov, George Orwell, Harold Pinter, J.D. Salinger, Jean-Paul Sartre, William Shakespeare, Stephen Sondheim, Tom Stoppard, Mark Twain, M. de Voltaire. Hopefully you'll be inspired to share more on these!
Thank you for the reviews. I loved Gardner when I was in my 20's and your review has prompted me to read Grendel again. I tried some of his other books unsuccessfully but I did really like The Wreckage of Agathon. Even as a young adult, it seems, I was drawn to books that poke fun at philosophy.
They tried to make us read *Grendel* in 5th grade. *FIFTH GRADE!!* I don't think any of us really got it. Only thing I remember is Grendel flipping off the sky in the first chapter. (I guess 11 year old me thought that was pretty funny lol)
Have you read any Italo Calvino? He is absoluty brilliant! I recommend Cosmicomics, a collection of short stories where a single physics or astronomical fact is stretched to its most ridiculous conclusion. I also really enjoyed If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler in which you, Dr. Collier, are trying to settle down with the newest Italo Calvino novel but keep running up against obstacles.
The opening sentence of The Light Years from Cosmicomics: One night I was, as usual, observing the sky with my telescope. I noticed that a sign was hanging from a galaxy a hundred million light years away. On it was written: I SAW YOU.
Of mice and men was a tale of a way of life ending badly for everybody. The world was gearing up into an age where engine power would replace horse power and man power. The men were a multitude of ag workers chasing fewer oportunites, as the technologies made them redundant. As trucks replaced horses, fewer acres were planted in horse fodder. Fewer men needed at harvest. The poor girl was roadkill in a race to the bottom.
Never read anything by Steinbeck that I didn't enjoy but 'Grapes of Wrath' was definitely the favorite. If you haven't, check out 'Catch 22' by Joseph Heller. You and Yossarian kind of strike me as kindred spirits.
There's a problem with reading classic books. I read Moby Dick twice. Once at the age of nineteen and then again later in life. When I read it the first time, I thought it was really great and, because it was a classic, I thought that I would talk about it with people for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, even though it's widely regarded as a classic, no one has read it. So no one wants to talk about it. So I didn't convince anyone that I was smart. If you want to talk about books, read DaVinci Code or something. They won't think you're smart, but they might still like you. Good video, though! 👍
Lol, the horror of reading a classic and being excited to talk about it with everyone, only to realize people only talk about what they've heard about the book, because no one's actually read it, but everyone has an opinion on it
I tried reading Moby Dick multiple times between high school and middle age, but gave up repeatedly. Finally, about my 5th or 6th attempt, I managed to properly engage and was able to then read/finish it. So I now understand why it is considered a great book .. but it is/was/remains a difficult read.
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off-then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can." Or, perhaps, high time to re-read Moby Dick!!
Before I read _Orlando_ I had seen the film, with Tilda Swinton, and I thought that was pretty cool. The film focuses a bit more on just gender than the book does. The book is as much about art and history and biography as it is about gender. It is pretty slow, and has some bloody long paragraphs for such a short book, but there really isn't a lot of plot, so it doesn't matter so much if you skip some of those. I still like it though. It's all about that feeling you get when you're so bored of society you want to shut yourself away in your stately home and write poetry and then, whoops! two hundred years have gone by. We've all been there, haven't we?
The trial, notes from underground, down and out in Paris and London, people of the abyss, road to wygan pier, the road(by Jack London), the road (by Cormac mcarthy), crime and punishment, metamorphosis, homage to catalonia, ...1984 ... coming up for air, house of the dead, brothers Karamazov, roadside picnic, left hand of darkness, confederacy of dunces
And Mark Twain's feels really racist. I mean, I get by the standards of his time he is radically anti-racist. And the fact he's writing black characters who have any depth at all is remarkable for a white dude at the time. But also, like, his blaccent is super uncomfortable to read.
I feel the same way about written dialect. I’m currently reading Wuthering Heights, and the dialect passages are often incomprehensible. The combination of phonetic writing and mid-19th century northern English vocabulary is really hard to get through. The book is great, though, and some parts are a lot more fun than I expected!
Recommendation: If you want to give Mark Twain another shot I would recommend Roughing It. It's autobiographical, it starts from when he deserts the Confederate army and heads out West, and ends with him becoming a successful author in San Francisco. It has the usual Twain hijinks plus a lot of interesting first-hand historical depictions of the Old West. It's low on dialog/dialect, mostly expository. Innocents Abroad is similar., but in Europe. Another Western recc is The Shootist. Non-traditional western, but really well written. Also a John Wayne movie, but book is better, yada yada. Thanks for the videos!
interesting video as always and I can't stop myself from responding to a few things. 1. Curly's wife - I never felt like she *deserved* to die, but the whole story felt *inevitable* in the tragic sense that all the characters are doomed. She at worst didn't take seriously how dangerous Lenny was but no one adequately warned her. The other characters are cold people and react coldly, but also, it was originally written to be a stage play. 2. Nabokov is the best! Other great ones are The Gift, the Luzhin Defense (about chess), Ada or Ardor and Pale Fire. 3. If you want to read a 'romance story between the 3 or 4 worst people you've ever met,' but really good and interesting, try The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. happy reading!
My favorite book in high school was the Things They Carried by Tim O'brien. If you see it in a thrift store, I usually do. I think about it often. My mom says coming out in 1990 is too early for literature, tho lol.
I wonder if you would like Haroun & the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. I never see it recommended, it’s such an unusual book, an adventure fantasy that he wrote for his children. But something about it really stuck with me in the way that some children’s books do, like Watership Down by Richard Adams. Both of those I didn’t read until I was an adult, and I think about them fairly often.
I started this video intending to be outraged by the classic novels you were no doubt going to dismiss but I ended up respecting your opinions even if they don't always gibe with my own - for instance, I really enjoyed The Master and Margarita but that's probably because I studied it at uni so I understood its background and allegorical nature a little better than a casual reader - you're not wrong about it being a bit of a slog though. Anyway, it's always useful to have one's own prejudices confronted with a contrary opinion, and I had to chuckle when you called "Mrs Dalloway" boring - at first I was a little stung at this verdict but then admitted to myself, yup, actually I did find it dull and shouldn't deny that just because smarter people than me consider it a timeless classic. Great video!
@@Tolstoy111 You're right, there are some very entertaining sections, and I actually really liked the first half, the Pontius Pilate chapters, the magic show and especially the witches ball but for me the Master sections were the weakest part - however, I'm glad to know that there are other big fans of TMAM out there still :)
Hooting and hollering at seeing Grendel show up in the good category (same cover as the one I found in a used book store back during undergrad, too). Reread it recently and the beautiful parts held up.
" Bend Sinister" by Nabokov. The most beautifully written book I've read. Not the best, plot, characters, and so on. But the most artistically written. Beautiful use of language.
If you haven’t read them already an interesting pair of books to read is first “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac about the Beat counterculture that began in the late 40s and then follow it up with “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” by Tom Wolfe about the hippie counterculture that came afterwards in the late 60s.
the thing about Master and Margarita is, going in the reader needs to be aware of the context. Bulgakov was from a religious family, his father was a scholar, a professor in Kiev Theological Academy, his grandfather was a priest, so was one of his brothers, IIRC. he knew the Bible, the history of Christianity, the history of religion - all very well, and this book is his summary of all that knowledge after he had distanced himself from the Russian Orthodox Church. the gist of it is, Satan comes to Moscow because he's conceived a new evangel for the Bible but he cannot write it because he's not human, so he needs someone to do it for him, he seeks out the Russian Faust and sets him up with the reincarnation of queen Margot, but as powerful as he is, his attempts are ultimately thwarted by the Soviet machine and its relentlessness. we have this book taught in schools (at high-school level in US terms), so it's required reading, but I can tell you from experience, for school kids it's just a well-written book about magic in 1920s Moscow. I straight up skipped the Judea chapters when I read it. so I feel you, this book was written with certain intentions, and modern readers have to be aware of that.
Thanks a lot for this. I have skipped over it, but have been to a play reenactment. While it was genuinely one of the best theater performances I've ever been to, the story itself didn't really click before I dove into comments under this video. That plotline makes so much more sense now, and perhaps I should've contacted a doc about my inability to sleep at night properly leading to falling asleep on lessons like literature back in the day. Some of those I remember really well, like Zamyatin's We discussed in previous video, and some, like this one - much less. Though I should admit I have a more scifi-esque taste.
I was going to angry post about you hating age of innocence but then you figured out why :) Whoever told you it was like P&P was sooooo off the mark. the only similarity is that in both books, the women wear dresses.
I highly recommend Pnin if you haven't read it! it's funny short and clearly inspired by Nabokov's own experiences. I also can't believe you find most of this stuff at thrift stores all I see is twilight and tom clancy.
I've tried to read Mark Twain and his dialect puts me off. I love Dickens who uses dialect but does it better. I've read Mark Twain's autobiographical writings. There is a 3 vol version that can be gotten cheaply. Read bits and pieces from it. Read 'Grapes of Wrath' next.
So having read neither of the books, but also loving Lolita, the thing that works about Lolita is that Nabokov is interested in understanding how the self-delusion of these horrible people works. The thing that is revealed isn't that HH's actions are evil, of course they are, we already know that (or should, terrifyingly there are people who read Lolita who seem to lack that knowledge), it's that HH's thought process behind those actions is rotten. And we see how it connects to the other ways he thinks. Like for example, feels very relevant now, this veneration of Classic Western European Civilization, which HH reveres and Nabokov reveals how the revering of that culture fuels that feeling of superiority that is partly driving HH. So yeah, maybe that's the difference between the two books I haven't read.
On Bulgakov: I am from Russia and Master and Margarita is one of the favourite books of mine, I've read it several times at different ages. But I agree with you - it's not a good book. To proper enjoy it you need to be subjected to the centuries of the russian.... ernnn... I guess 'culture code' and historical contexr of early soviet days, and obviously it shouldn't be a prerequisite to enjoy a good book. Without this context it's just biblical-ish fantasy story. Most of my foreign acquittances just don't get this book and it's fine. Sometimes it's not easy for me to fully understand historical context of some US classics.
My favorite Virginia Woolf novel is her first novel, A Voyage Out. No one ever talks about it but its fantastic. Its about a couple that travel to South American on vacation, and they are not the best people on the planet, but there are some really amazing parts to this novel some involving religion that i think you'd enjoy.
I really like Les Miserables. Like, if you've seen the musical, I enjoy the musical, but there's so much more depth, and variety in the book. I also feel like you can really *feel* victor hugo in the book. Like, the first fifth of the book is about the priest that gives val jean the candlesticks. He's just like a random bit player in the musical, but like, It just starts with a bunch of this priest. And it's this interesting study of goodness. When val jean is trying to do various kinds of good, you don't just see him as trying to fulfil the promise he made, but almost as like a faint echo of the priest. You also have this really cool debate between the priest and and one of the guys who killed the king of france. The debate is cool, but part of why it's cool is he's bringing this character who hugo's like "this is good, he's pure goodness" and he's bringing them down, and introducing this deep sense of conflict that you can sense hugo also has about the affair. The story of fantine starts with her with these fancy pants jerks, and the story of how these aristocrats toy around and then leave is so heartbreaking. You have Javert as a much more complicated, I think interesting character. You have hugo just blisteringly mad at the thenardiers. If you watched the movie, you'd think javert is evil, but if you read the book you can tell the depth of hugo's ire is toward the thenardiers. There's a lot more interplay between all the abc folks, including the like, bar owner. A lot of tiny players get actual stories in the book. You have these giant historical essays where hugo complains about convents and how they've oppressed women throughout the ages, and about the sewer system. He occasionally has these really evocative "tracking shots" where he describes city surroundings to you like he's wistfully remembering it, but also sets up the scene. Oh, and also its super bizzare and weird, but you'd think having more time would make marius's and cosette's love story less abrupt and sudden, but instead of becoming a sweet love story it becomes the most bizzare and creepy thing imaginable. I'm in the midst of trying to read through Notre dame(not the book per say, I think it's me that's having trouble focusing) right now. Edit: sorry if I've already brought this up in some form. Big fan tho
I recommend The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg. It's about poor peasants in 19th century Sweden who emigrates to the US because everything sucks. It's a Swedish classic so I don't know how easy it is to find in an American thrift store (unless you live in like Minnesota), but you can probably get it from a library.
![Method Writing: The First Four Concepts - Jack Grapes [FULL INTERVIEW]](/img/n.gif)
"...I'm gonna pick up something fun and light, and I picked up 'Of Mice and Men'..."
And my immediate reaction was: "oh no"
I nearly buckled over laughing at that
@@frankwales did you read it in high school as well?
@@GSBarlev No, later -- we did 'Catcher in the Rye' as a contemporary novel in English class. But still...
We did this book in the equivalent of 8th grade, talk about traumatizing.
@@frankwales I LOVED Catcher in the Rye. I mean I still do, one of my all-time favorites. I've read it probably 20 times(till the book literally fell apart) starting when I was 10. My older sister had it for school, and left it laying on the kitchen table. Ever the book fanatic, I was eating cereal one day and picked it up. It left a huge impression on me. Id never read anything like it before. I read it probably five more times before I finally had it as required reading in 11th grade. Needless to say, I OWNED that book report lol.
Sooo... I love this series about books, because it encourages people to read and share their own thoughts about books, and that's great. Which is why I just want to give a little shout-out here to your local library. Yes, you have one. They're all over the place, and they're great. They're FULL of books! And you can check them out, for ZERO dollars. And they have librarians, who will help you find books. And if your life gets busy, they'll renew your books if you're late to dropping them off. Please support your local library. Thank you!
"they'll renew your books if you're late to dropping them off."
Well, they do that now, but before the pandemic they didn't... and I don't know if it's the case everywhere either... but yeah seems like most of them realized it was unnecessary to charge late fees the vast majority of the time
I don't have a local library. It sucks - not just no library, but no inter-library loans. That's what you get with living in nowhereland.
@@JH-pt6ih you have internet archive tho, which is sort of like a library. I feel u tho.
My university library even does _auto-renewal_ on books that aren't in high demand, which feels like a great recipe for making me forget books until I move towns or something lol
Sometimes I keep books late on purpose just to pay the fee because I want to contribute to the library 😅
"Flowers for Algernon" A mouse and a dumb boy become smart through a new drug. It is written from the POV of the 'Forrest Gump' character.
Yes. That's a terrific book.
Terribly sad.
Great read, but you can skip the novel and just read the original short story imo. The same impact, or moreso even because it still has all of the story's poignancy and emotional weight, but compressed into just a few pages.
Having fun isn't hard--when you've got a library card!
The Twilight Zone is HUGELY influenced by Bradbury. Both are fundamentally about the mid-20th century culture shock visited on a whole generation of farmers who went to war, went to the moon, grew up on farms, lived in cities.
It's all about this wistful Americana stuff, often with a dark vibe to it.
oh.
The fact that Matt Colville is an Angela Collier fan feels very extremely correct.
"Two dudes who have rabbits." Oh, Angela. Yeah I bet that would have been a surprise.
funniest description of that book, evar.
@@chrisl6546 perfect answer to one of those describe a book incorrectly prompts
Re: Age of Innocence. I think I'd be nostalgic for the Gilded Age too, if I'd just lived through WWI and the 1918 pandemic.
That's the only problem with classics sometimes. You need to know the context of not only the time they're written, but the intended audience or at least why the author wrote it.
@@Tolstoy111 I don't know; few authors can actually write a protagonist you're supposed to dislike, and still keep you entertained. So either she was serious... or she failed at writing the bad guy well. Even The Great Gatsby was kind of a failure, and that's a lot better than this. Comparing Age of Innocence to something as awesome as Pride and Prejudice is completely crazy IMO :D
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who likes The Master and Margarita 😞 But it hits different in Russian! My copy also came with A Young Doctor's Notebook, a series of his short stories about working as an inexperienced physician in a remote village. So miserable and surreal, it becomes funny.
Based on the comments here I am the only one who didn't like it.
@@acollieralso I think it's normal you did not like it because you are not the target audience. The book is very much meant for a soviet block audience and is nonsensical without that cultural background
I quite liked it. Seemed more of a critique of soviet systems and hierarchy than of their atheism specifically; but I'm probably missing something without the cultural context.
I just found out Bulgakov had worked as a gynecologist at some point, which gives another dimension to Preobrazhensky in The Heart of a Dog
It's a great book !
"Cannery Row" is a really gorgeous Steinbeck book that is a lot less tragic! He describes the community of Monterey like critters in a tidal pool
I find it strange that Pride and Prejudice seems to get a pass while Age of Innocence doesn't regarding rich people and their petty rich people problems. Pride and Prejudice is also about a bunch of rich people where the main financial insecurity isn't so much in becoming poor as much as it is becoming less rich.
Yes, Age of Innocence did satirize Gilded Age culture heavily. The major sticking point of the book isn't really supposed to be that these are all terrible people (they aren't heroes, but I very much don't think they're that horrible), but that the culture in which they live in pressures them to make choices that are terrible for their lives that they can never undo and forever have to live with. I think the issue you might have had with it is that culture has moved so far past the 1870's and 1920's that it might not have resonated. People in 1920 would read it and go "Wow, people 50 years ago were so dumb and stupid and their culture didn't make any sense and was actively detrimental to people's lives." It's not that dissimilar to books now talking about how bad culture was in the 1950's or 60's, it's just that us in the 2020's resonate with that more because it's more relevant to us.
I hated both.
@@Tolstoy111 Mind, those women in particular - many estates had inheritance even through the female line. It's specifically a problem that their property is entailed (i.e. they don't _actually_ own it, it's a sort of free perpetual lease/fief... through the _male_ line exclusively). Most inheritance didn't work like that - if there was no male heir, it would go to the wife or the daughters, and if there was, he was of course required to take care of his sisters (until they were married). And they commented on that quite a bit in the book, which also makes it easy to understand even if you know nothing about the time and situation. Austen is absolutely brilliant.
I only now realized how a lot of Master and Margarita could seem a lot less funny to anyone not from former USSR as a lot of it is satire of USSR things - communism, state-regulated art/religion.
Anywhere else writing a strange book about Pontius Pilate would be "whatever, you do you", not an act of rebellion
One of my all time favorites
I was not born in the USSR but I thoroughly enjoyed Master and Margarita. Maybe because as European born in the seventies I know more about the history behind it? A true masterpiece humour and defiance. Shame Angela really missed the point about this one.
I was fortunate to have been made aware of the book by a former Soviet citizen that I got to discuss it with as I read it which I do think added to my reading of it.
Not solely in the Soviet Union but everywhere behind the Iron Curtain.
By far the best book here… imo
I love Master and Margarita so much! I'm from California, not the former USSR
When you start reading in that accent.... GOLD!
I'm English and it made me feel very strange, in maybe a good way?
I would pay money for an audio book read in that accent.
I'm just going to assume that was Dr Collier 's own Kentucky accent. Apologies if I'm wrong.
@@rfreamon I didn't notice she has an accent. Of course I'm from Kentucky myself...
Oof East of Eden fucked me up.
Me too, buddy. Me too. It's my favorite book now.
Yah Rocky go
I loved it enormously, especially the ending. Also, there's a line about Chinese ink paintings, and the white dude doesn't believe those exist 😂😂😂😂😂
Just the name east of Eden gives me PTSD
I read a dozen 50 Shades books + The Iliad, so they all were like 300 years old, on average.
I was born in 1970 and remember my Saturday morning cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny who had a recurring obstacle character (no name given(*)) whose defining characteristic was that he was huge and strong and dumb and would just grab Bugs and hold him saying , "I will love him and pet him and name him George." Being less than 10 at the time, I had no idea what that was referencing, but I found it amusing later in life.
(*) no name given that I remember in the show, but we all know now it would have been Lenny.
Ohhhhhhh that's what that's referencing?! Haha I never realized
I think it was the abominable snowman. ua-cam.com/video/jPdHaNr0OAY/v-deo.html
Abominable Snowman is the character. You know... the Yeti.
The episode is The Abominable Snow Rabbit.
WHAT! WOW! Damn, thank you! I never read Steinbeck in highschool but I watch a ton of Bugs Bunny and you have opened my eyes.
I worked in a used/rare bookstore for 20 years or so. I had a lot of time to read and could take any book I wanted as long as I remembered to return it. The classics tended to disappoint me. A common issue was that the problems and concerns discussed in the novel didn't translate very well into contemporary society. So, it wasn't the author's fault that I didn't like it, they apparently succeeded in entertaining their own contemporaries. Of the ones I did like, it wasn't the plot or drama as much as is was getting a real sense for some other place and time. I was also doing research and publishing technical articles at the time and sometimes I wanted to give my brain a rest and found myself enjoying science fiction pulps from the 30s and 40s. The writing, of course, was generally bad, but the authors knew how to pace the story and put in the occasional twist. As a way to pass the time when my brain was on idle, they were fun. Another thing I liked about working in a bookstore was that I could grab a book I had never heard of, sit down and read it. Now and then, it ended up being a pleasant surprise.
I'm having the same problem w Plato's Republic. Too much of it is about the basic assumption that there is a class of men who are above everyone else and how society is supposed to be structured around them and their aspirations. And everyone else are slaves. Fuggem.
Once upon a time in 1973, my mom and I decided that we wanted to go to the movies and relax with a “fun and light” lowbrow western. We chose “High Plains Drifter”.
Oh yikes
My favorite ghost story!
I want to see it now. Was born in 73.
check out the beastie boys cover 🎉
Great movie for what it is. Hardly light fare, though.
I love getting to see another woman’s perspective on classic literature. This is the kind of stuff that stands out to me as well, but tends to be minimized or overlooked in discussion/analysis of the work.
Like your point about Curley’s wife - I don’t find that that tends to stand out to men, but as a woman it leaps out at me when tacit blame is pushed onto a woman for no good reason at all. It betrays some of the hidden misogyny of the author, of the era.
And there are so many great authors/great books which contain elements like this, or of the r/menwritingwomen kind that range from annoying to making it impossible for me to continue..and I just don’t like to read reviews from people who are blind to that all entirely.
I just think it deserves to be a part of the conversation.
So to that end, I’m so glad you’re doing more of these, I am REALLY enjoying them. And I just became a Patron today, for how much I am loving and watching all of your content!
If you'd like a short Steinbeck palate cleanser I recommend Cannery Row. Fun, good characters and setting (based on real people Steinbeck hung out with in those days, along with Joseph Campbell!)
My thoughts as well! Mack and the boys will forever live rent-free in my head
I would add "The Wayward Bus" and "The Pearl" to your "Cannery Row" list. Those are my 3 favs from Steinbeck. They tell me I'm missing out on "East of Eden" and "The Grapes of Wrath" but oh well.
@@tarico4436yeah to the pearl 🎉
Cannery Row needs to be followed by Sweet Thursday. The film conflated the two books badly, but they are such a beautiful pair.
"I was like, 'Virginia Wolfe, those aren't the same *things* '" crrracked me up
I’d recommend “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse if you haven’t read it already. Like ”Of Mice and Men,” it’s a short read that does an excellent job of developing interesting characters. I found it to be a really calm and beautiful meditation on finding meaning in life.
Siddhartha is indeed a classic. Got me to read a lot of Herman Hesse in the early ’70s
_Demian._
can’t love that one enough 🎉
I loved all of Hesse's books as a teen/young man, but I revisited them a few years ago as an old fart, and was significantly less impressed. It all seemed overly simplistic, even juvenile to me now.
I was supposed to read Grendel for a college class, but the week before I realized I had to switch to a different class. It's been on my shelf ever since. I'm definitely going to pick it up next
When reading Mark Twain one must remember he was not a novelist, he was really a newspaper reporter. His novels are often kind of disjointed, with plot mechanics that can be a bit weird. Having said that, I enjoyed Puddenhead Wilson very much. Number one, it examined the fact of slave owners using their slaves for sex, an aspect that earned it some very bad reviews at the time. It was a subject that no one wrote of. It may also be the first murder mystery to use fingerprint evidence to convict a killer. Finally, it makes the point that the slaveowners son by his wife, who is raised as a slave, becomes like a slave in behaviour. At the end of the book, he is restored to his position as the plantation owner, but cannot deal with that situation. One bonus. Each chapter in the book is headed with an entry from "Puddenhead Wilson's diary". These chapter heading are pure Mark Twain, and worth the price of the book by themselves. As far as the dialect, there's not a lot of it in the book, and it is not there as a means of disparaging blacks. It is the way they spoke, and Twain would have been remiss if he had given them cultured English. Think of Pygmalion, where George Bermard Shaw gave Eliza a very thick cockney accent and speech. Without that, the play would have made no sense.
You're right about the context and importance of Puddenhead, and I think Angela acknowledge that. It doesn't mean the book is enjoyable to read today, however.
As for how people spoke, I wouldn't be so sure. There's a lot of interesting (if you're interested in that sort of thing) historical research on this, and at least to some degree, the black dialog of this time period is only partly based in fact, and is at least to some extent a creation of media and expectations. Look up the history of Truth's "ain't I a woman" speech, for example. Just like with white folks, there were a very wide variety of black dialects depending on where people were from geographically and in social class, and that tended to get flattened to a stereotype in no small part perpetuated by anti-slavery white writers like Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
@@camipco The difference is that Mark Twain was born in Missouri, a slave state, while Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Connecticut. Twain lived with slaves around him as he grew up. He would have been very familiar with the way they spoke. Twain was a person very concerned with that aspect of human speech. Read his "Fenimore Cooper's LIterary Offenses", especially rules 5, 6, and 7. Rule 5 begins: "They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances..." Twain wasn't just making it up. He was born to it, knew it well, and in fact Pudden' Head Wison is set in a slave state town that would have been very similar to where Twain was born and raised.
Between the two, I vote East of Eden - Grapes of Wrath is more of a slog. East of Eden is a masterpiece. It drags every now and then, but the generations of families, the interconnected stories, the moral questions - they're all terrific. It *is* a bit racist and misogynistic in parts, but beyond that, it is incredible.
Both racism and misogyny there are a satire
@@Amira_Phoenix to an extent, perhaps. The more egregious stuff. But we can't ignore that we're all products of our time. Things we class as racist and misogynistic now we're not considered as such then, so, while holding some belief or making some statement in his time may have been seen as being more forward thinking, it may still, by our standards, be racist or misogynistic.
A good parallel - plenty of abolitionists, while being 100% against slavery, did not support letting black people (or women) vote, and even vocally considered black people as lesser than white, even if not deserving to be enslaved. Progressive for their time, absolutely, but still incredibly racist by today's terms.
I don't think I've seen anybody recommend Catch-22 yet. It came out just before the US ramped up in Vietnam and the setting is in WWII, so it's usually considered an anti-war novel. It's really much more than that, and is a study of the absurdity of human behavior, particularly when large organizations with power structures are involved.
Huge +1 to this. Catch-22 is an absolute masterpiece and I recommend it to absolutely anyone. I can’t imagine someone not enjoying it
Great and important book, and also one of those extremely rare cases where I would also recommend the movie.
It's been 50 years since I read "Catch 22", but I still remember it being side-splittingly funny. A much less well-known piece by Heller that I also enjoyed is "Picture This".
Absolute classic. I'll read a 3rd time soon. Great suggestions Angela. I'm trying to read classics because I basically ignored almost all reading assignments in high school and only read the newspaper.
@@brendansullivan3408 I keep extra copies around to give away.
Having read Of Mice and Men many times, I have to disagree with your interpretation of Curly's Wife (though I do find it interesting).
Regarding not having a name, I believe that's primarily to display how she's alienated from the men. In a negative way. The whole book is about the loneliness and longing experienced by most of the characters, and her being ostracized and intentionally kept distant from everyone while she is clearly just as lonely and looking for companionship is her own stake in that plight, evidenced by the fact that no one (including the reader) seemingly even knows or uses her name. She's effectively not seen as a real person by the farmhands - which, in alignment with the final line, is I think ultimately meant to be read as tragic.
Does Steinbeck intend for us to "blame" her in some way for having caused her own murder? It's been a bit since I read it and so may be short on some of the exact details, but again I don't think so. Lennie yells blame at her after he inadvertently kills her, but he's Lennie. In his mental ineptitude he's at least partially incapable of fully grasping the extent of the situations he finds himself in (/creates), and so not a perfectly reliable source from which to draw conclusions of authorial intent. He's scared, and as always takes the simplest path of understanding (and does take blame on himself eventually, saying "I've done a bad thing...", etc). Afterwards Candy also lays some of the blame onto her, but that's him lashing out at what I might label fate, or inevitability. He's upset that her murder means they'll never be able to have their little stake of land, and doesn't want to admit that perhaps he believed all along it was never going to happen anyway.
Ultimately, any blame I can remember being put on Curly's Wife I think can largely be attributed to frustrations over the world/circumstances in general. George's reaction is the one we're finally, most prominently left with, and I think it's the one Steinbeck intends us to take. When George finds out about the killing he's not mad, he's just sad. Despondent and hurt by the painful inevitability he had spent so long avoiding, in trying to protect Lennie in a world from which there is no lasting protection. He knows it means Lennie must die, and in a way so must a part of himself.
Now I would agree that there's certainly not much grief shown for the poor dead girl, even from her own shit of a husband - but again I think that speaks largely to her own tragedy of segregation and neglect.
Personally I've always read Curly's Wife as a fairly sympathetic character (as is most everyone in Of Mice and Men), but I really appreciate the alternate perspective and excuse to think about/write this up lol, thanks
i understand why people are recommending Cannery Row for your next Steinbeck, but i suspect you will absolutely vibe with Log From the Sea of Cortez. especially since Ed Ricketts is a scientist so ridiculously important to American arts & letters. Between Pacific Tides is amazing too - the only scientific text i've read that accurately describes the grueling slog towards epiphany in fieldwork and research.
If you haven’t read Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights know going it is like Despair not Pride & Prejudice. A great book about terrible people.
At 11:59 you told us not to laugh, and I'm going to respect that. So instead I'll say I'm _so sorry_ for the gut-punch. I read _OM&M_ in high school, and even though I'm pretty sure I knew how it ended, I still felt utterly unprepared for actually reading it.
Also: I'm sorry-I don't remember any sort of discussion of agency around Curly's wife, specifically. What I remember the theme being was that, in the dust bowl, there's not really right and wrong or blame or dreams, there's just _stuff that happens_ as people struggle to survive.
I don't know if you did this on purpose, but "here's how I felt and a little bit of why...." before actually talking any details was great. I've never read 'Of Mice and Men' and that pause right after you said "It is NOT about that" was a great opportunity for me to skip a few minutes ahead so I too can pick that one up with a clean slate lol
The Yellow Wallpaper is just spectacular. I read it in college (thirty years ago) and it made me a Charlotte Perkins Gillman fan for life.
The Yellow Wallpaper always stuck out to me; it really united my love of psychology and literature and helped me see value in my struggle with mental health.
I agree. Fascinating story, albeit terrifying.
I was ready to recommend Pale Fire by Nabokov and then noticed you're a fan of his. But yeah, Pale Fire! Fun fact: the coiner of "hypertext," Ted Nelson, gives co-credit to Vladimir Nabokov for Pale Fire's non-linear and hyperlinked narrative structure. The book is wickedly funny, and VN has that wizardly command of English.
Thanks for all the great videos!
The Dissertation, by R. M. Koster, has a similar nonlinear structure. I think it must have been inspired by Pale Fire. Both books are funny and excellent.
Angela, I always enjoy your take on everything. You might like Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine” and Theodore Sturgeon’s “More Than Human”. Thank you for reminding me about “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Charlotte Gilman’s beliefs and life were very interesting and impressive especially for the time in which she lived.
I am just starting your video but I wanted to comment before I forget. I appreciate how you separated boring from bad. Not all books that are boring are bad. A simple difference in culture can remove much of what motivates or immerses a reader. Because we don't understand the political, social, or economic environment of the time a reader might not be as connected as we would if we were reading a similar book with a social awareness in today's zeitgeist.
Just choked on my coffee over the Mice and Men selection. That’s honestly hilarious. 😂
I’d recommend the Pearl.
Travels with Charley was my favorite Steinbeck if you want to read even more of him :)
I haven't read Of Mice and Men since high school, but I don't remember Curley's wife being blamed or anyone thinking that she was to blame. I remember the scene and it being extremely tragic, and us discussing the inevitability of George, Candy, and Lennie's fate. Curley's wife was kind of an extension of Curley, but to the extent that they were all in the same planter class and are the cause of the underlying issues that all of the farm hands face as workers (I remember Curley's wife being sympathetic and that played into the tragedy).
The end broke me, and it is one of the biggest gut punches I've ever experienced. I guess it's good you didn't have it spoiled?
If you liked Pride and Prejudice, I would definitely recommend Sense and Sensibility. It does require a bit more preparation as "sense" and "sensibility" have both changed their meaning since Austen wrote the book. The change in usage isn't too major, but it is enough of a change that I had to keep reminding myself of how the denotation (which the modern forward made me aware of, as well as the surrounding politics it satirizes or appear in the background that would have been obvious to readers back then).
I liked Lolita, I liked Despair even better, but my favorite Nabokov book (and his most inventive, imo) is Pale Fire. I won't say anything more about it because much of the fun is in the discovery. I highly recommend it.
I've only read a couple of books by Steinbeck. The Pearl was a high school assignment and I didn't care for it. Cannery Row is an underrated comic gem.
PALE FIRE!!!
What an amazing book.
We should do Steinbeck, The Pearl is short. Is it good? Who cares we can fit it in to the time available. and it wont be too far over their heads. There are too many lesser works that survive because of attittudes like that.
Steinbeck often uses women in his stories...awkwardly. A lot of the time they exist largely as objects for the male character's story or as symbols of the innocence or "good" of humanity
This is an important point, that this was a career-long shortcoming of his work. While it's a bit of a copout, I think he's somewhat a product of male narrative conventions of the time which almost always trivialize/instrumentalize women- Steinbeck wasn't exactly doing avante-garde norm-shattering work, his work is fairly straightforward usually, he's mostly an exceptional storyteller and with a commanding sense of how to build emotionally resonate narratives.
I think Curly's wife kinda works in some ways being one-dimensional, bc the work is thinner and more fable-like than his more sweeping epics, and she's presented as seen by a milieu of alienated men in a patriarchal society and economy who are denied the opportunity for full rich lives, as an object apart representing temptation, desire, fragility, precariousness, and the consequences of crossing class and social hierarchies.
I agree-I never thought that Steinbeck (along with Hemingway) created believable female characters.
I hear men all the time refer to their wives as "their better half". Kinda the same thing I think.
Well, he wrote Of Mice and Men in 1937. Women were not really seen as human beings by most people back then.
"Grendel" is great. One of the benefits of having English Lit nerd friends in college was getting introduced to stuff like that.
A book that is an excellent piece of literature is "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. However it is actually based on a horrific true crime and is very disturbing.
My favorite book by Twain is his "Innocents Abroad", a story about a pilgrimage trip he went on, and his story "A Horses Tale", mostly because of the scene with Soldier Boy and the bullfight. "Even if I were dying, I would come"
Grendel is one of my all-time favorites, glad to find a fellow person of culture and taste.
I just stumbled across your video, and really enjoyed it. Thank you! Two comments: If you dare to try another Willa Cather, try Song of the Lark, which was NOT boring (at least to me). It is about a women in a smaller Colorado town who becomes a famous opera singer. It is a western, at least in part, but it is also a story about the struggles of a strong woman trying to escape the restrictions that she faces. As for Master and Margarita, it is easier to understand knowing that it is at least in part a satirical attack on the Soviet writer's guild that regulated what writers were allowed to publish, and controlled their status. Anyway, I really appreciated your analysis and descriptions of these books, and your honest and thoughtful opinions.
With Nobokov is like a codependent relationship where you keep reading because the writing is amazing but you question the characters so you stay for the ride. You cannot write horrible characters if your writing is "meh". So no. you dont need literary training to "get" Age of innocence. Also pretty sure Pulitzer price winners in that age was because of the world at that time so its hard that a book that old can resonate in 2024
"The Legend of Curly's Wife"
Sounds like the third City Slickers movie.
That's a start
If you haven't read them, I'd highly recommend either The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas. Try to find modern and unabridged translations. I'd say Monte Cristo is the better book, but it's also a bigger time commitment. Three Musketeers is still very good, I remember thinking of it as a popcorn action movie in book form when I was a kid, but that might say more about the pacing of the books I otherwise read at the time.
Monte Cristo is great, highly recommended. Although I haven't read it since my teens, I read it twice back then and it's not a short read, some 1300 pages. It truly is the quintessential revenge and forgiveness story.
Those are actually good and classic books, yes.
Those books are good but the OG versions are so long
I have a sci-fi recommendation that's a bit introspective: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's the story of a woman who takes a long drive and reflects on the nature of her life and her past. I can't say much more, because that would spoil the sci-fi element of the book, but seriously I think about that book all the time it's really beautiful. There's also a movie adaptation, but I haven't seen it.
I have tried to read "Mrs. Dalloway" three times. I cannot get through it. You are the only other person who has ever admitted to not liking it.
Thanks for your reviews! It made me really happy to listen to them on an otherwise pretty gray day.
I think you said you liked F.D’s Crime and Punishment, so my suggestions for more Russians are
FDs Brothers Karamazov, (or if your in a hurry just the Grand Inquisitor story)
Tolstoy’s Anna Karinina, Gogol’s the Overcoat short and Dead Souls.
Chekovs the Seagull and Uncle Vanya are great plays.
Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is a great character.
Wilde’s importance of being earnest is my vote for most hilarious play ever.
Camus the Stranger is great, as is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
St Exupery’s Wind, Sand and Stars has some really pretty writing.
You’ve probably read Kafkas The Trial already but it may be worth a read if you haven’t.
Erica Jongs Fear of Flying is pretty old school feminism but I enjoyed it.
I loved Grendel! What a great book!
East of Eden is fantastic (highly recommended). But so is Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row and the list goes on. Loved this capsule review episode btw.
i liked the movie of age of innocence. O think the whole plot is how the young wife is actually not innocent she knows what she has to do to survive. She's actually the most savy of the three.
Scorsese make good movie? Shockin.
WHAT! I didn't know you had a book channel. I'm so excited. Really loved this
Great as always. RE: Steinbeck -- I highly recommend =reading= East of Eden (great retelling of the Cain Abel story, intertwined with California and Steinbeck family history; one of my favorites), and =watching= Cannery Row (quirky and funny, but has a bit of depth/philosophy). I'd be curious to hear your take on male vs female characters/roles in both. Grapes of Wrath is a powerful book, but a definite downer, man's inhumanity to man type stuff set in California Dust Bowl/migrant worker settings.
I own the Cannery Row movie and re-watch it every few years, so I did so again this evening: I still enjoyed it quite a bit, but it had a couple scenes that were a bit longer, slower, and darker than I remembered and definitely contains scenes that are dated either by the sensibilities baked into the 40 year age of the movie or the 80 year age of the novel. It's 75/72 on rotten tomatoes, which feels about right. I also sampled the Audible version and as I remembered, found it a more difficult listen. Meanwhile, it's time for a re-engagement with East of Eden, and I think the Audible version of that =will= work for me based on its sample -- but it's a pretty long book, so that will take time to complete.
If you like tight, short Sci-Fi and Fantasy books you'll love everything Roger Zelazny especially his earlier stuff like Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, and Eye of Cat. He wrote during the New Wave era (1960s-70s) that included Ursula K. Le Guin, Harland Elison and Michael Moorcock though Zelazny denounced the term for himself. It was a similar movement to the New Journalism of Hunter S. Thompson and Truman Capote but in non-fiction. It was this 60s-70s counterculture blended with the hope of the American space programs successes that led these authors to explore concepts like race, gender, religion, mythology, and technology in new ways being a bit more inclusive than the mostly male writers of the Golden Era.
i'm going to convince people i'm smart by listening to you talk about reading 12 classic books. thanks.
My degrees are in philosophy, so I mostly read nonfiction. Here are the fiction authors/playwrights who have never fallen off my "Someday Reread" and "Always Watch" lists: Edward Albee, Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, Albert Camus, Lewis Carroll, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, James Joyce, Arthur Kopit, Carson McCullers, Vladimir Nabokov, George Orwell, Harold Pinter, J.D. Salinger, Jean-Paul Sartre, William Shakespeare, Stephen Sondheim, Tom Stoppard, Mark Twain, M. de Voltaire. Hopefully you'll be inspired to share more on these!
Thank you for the reviews. I loved Gardner when I was in my 20's and your review has prompted me to read Grendel again. I tried some of his other books unsuccessfully but I did really like The Wreckage of Agathon. Even as a young adult, it seems, I was drawn to books that poke fun at philosophy.
They tried to make us read *Grendel* in 5th grade. *FIFTH GRADE!!* I don't think any of us really got it. Only thing I remember is Grendel flipping off the sky in the first chapter. (I guess 11 year old me thought that was pretty funny lol)
Have you read any Italo Calvino? He is absoluty brilliant! I recommend Cosmicomics, a collection of short stories where a single physics or astronomical fact is stretched to its most ridiculous conclusion. I also really enjoyed If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler in which you, Dr. Collier, are trying to settle down with the newest Italo Calvino novel but keep running up against obstacles.
The opening sentence of The Light Years from Cosmicomics:
One night I was, as usual, observing the sky with my telescope. I noticed that a sign was hanging from a galaxy a hundred million light years away. On it was written: I SAW YOU.
Of mice and men was a tale of a way of life ending badly for everybody.
The world was gearing up into an age where engine power would replace horse power and man power.
The men were a multitude of ag workers chasing fewer oportunites, as the technologies made them redundant. As trucks replaced horses, fewer acres were planted in horse fodder. Fewer men needed at harvest.
The poor girl was roadkill in a race to the bottom.
This year I've read Dracula and Frankenstein and DAMN they are both SO GOOD. No wonder they have been popular for decades.
Never read anything by Steinbeck that I didn't enjoy but 'Grapes of Wrath' was definitely the favorite.
If you haven't, check out 'Catch 22' by Joseph Heller. You and Yossarian kind of strike me as kindred spirits.
"I need to convince people I'm smart" - average Phys PhD
Anyways, imo East of Eden > Grapes of Wrath, though both are still great.
There's a problem with reading classic books. I read Moby Dick twice. Once at the age of nineteen and then again later in life. When I read it the first time, I thought it was really great and, because it was a classic, I thought that I would talk about it with people for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, even though it's widely regarded as a classic, no one has read it. So no one wants to talk about it. So I didn't convince anyone that I was smart. If you want to talk about books, read DaVinci Code or something. They won't think you're smart, but they might still like you. Good video, though! 👍
Lol, the horror of reading a classic and being excited to talk about it with everyone, only to realize people only talk about what they've heard about the book, because no one's actually read it, but everyone has an opinion on it
I tried reading Moby Dick multiple times between high school and middle age, but gave up repeatedly. Finally, about my 5th or 6th attempt, I managed to properly engage and was able to then read/finish it. So I now understand why it is considered a great book .. but it is/was/remains a difficult read.
For the love of everything read something else, anything else then the da Vinci code. It is one of the stupidest books ever written
i’m a nuisance and reference moby dick with my coworkers all the time. nobody has quit yet over it!
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off-then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can." Or, perhaps, high time to re-read Moby Dick!!
Before I read _Orlando_ I had seen the film, with Tilda Swinton, and I thought that was pretty cool. The film focuses a bit more on just gender than the book does. The book is as much about art and history and biography as it is about gender. It is pretty slow, and has some bloody long paragraphs for such a short book, but there really isn't a lot of plot, so it doesn't matter so much if you skip some of those. I still like it though. It's all about that feeling you get when you're so bored of society you want to shut yourself away in your stately home and write poetry and then, whoops! two hundred years have gone by. We've all been there, haven't we?
"Good ahmens" - Sometimes she just throws something out like that and it blows my mind.
Accents are cool
Is that how they say it in Eastern Kentucky?
I thought she’d said “Good Almonds” for a hot second before my brain caught up. Pronunciation is an amazing and diverse thing!
It's so wrong. 😅
Grapes of Raffth 🙂
The trial, notes from underground, down and out in Paris and London, people of the abyss, road to wygan pier, the road(by Jack London), the road (by Cormac mcarthy), crime and punishment, metamorphosis, homage to catalonia, ...1984 ... coming up for air, house of the dead, brothers Karamazov, roadside picnic, left hand of darkness, confederacy of dunces
huh, did I write this comment and then forget about it?
9:38 ME TOO! Trying to decipher phonetic dialect when reading a book is the best way to break the suspension of disbelief and ruin the whole thing :(
And Mark Twain's feels really racist. I mean, I get by the standards of his time he is radically anti-racist. And the fact he's writing black characters who have any depth at all is remarkable for a white dude at the time. But also, like, his blaccent is super uncomfortable to read.
I feel the same way about written dialect. I’m currently reading Wuthering Heights, and the dialect passages are often incomprehensible. The combination of phonetic writing and mid-19th century northern English vocabulary is really hard to get through. The book is great, though, and some parts are a lot more fun than I expected!
Recommendation: If you want to give Mark Twain another shot I would recommend Roughing It. It's autobiographical, it starts from when he deserts the Confederate army and heads out West, and ends with him becoming a successful author in San Francisco. It has the usual Twain hijinks plus a lot of interesting first-hand historical depictions of the Old West. It's low on dialog/dialect, mostly expository. Innocents Abroad is similar., but in Europe.
Another Western recc is The Shootist. Non-traditional western, but really well written. Also a John Wayne movie, but book is better, yada yada.
Thanks for the videos!
I was so happy to see another video about books from you :D The Orlando review was funny and true
Wow it took me an unreasonable amount of time to realize that this is a secondary channel called acollier *also* instead of astro
Older than 20 years, 2004, I feel so old.
John Gardner is delightful. I encourage you to look into his other works, especially The Sunlight Dialogues.
interesting video as always and I can't stop myself from responding to a few things. 1. Curly's wife - I never felt like she *deserved* to die, but the whole story felt *inevitable* in the tragic sense that all the characters are doomed. She at worst didn't take seriously how dangerous Lenny was but no one adequately warned her. The other characters are cold people and react coldly, but also, it was originally written to be a stage play. 2. Nabokov is the best! Other great ones are The Gift, the Luzhin Defense (about chess), Ada or Ardor and Pale Fire. 3. If you want to read a 'romance story between the 3 or 4 worst people you've ever met,' but really good and interesting, try The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. happy reading!
Another couple of titles by John Gardner that I really liked: "October Light" and "Freddy's Book"
My favorite book in high school was the Things They Carried by Tim O'brien. If you see it in a thrift store, I usually do. I think about it often. My mom says coming out in 1990 is too early for literature, tho lol.
I wonder if you would like Haroun & the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie.
I never see it recommended, it’s such an unusual book, an adventure fantasy that he wrote for his children. But something about it really stuck with me in the way that some children’s books do, like Watership Down by Richard Adams.
Both of those I didn’t read until I was an adult, and I think about them fairly often.
I wasn't expecting to see "Numerical Recipes" on your bookshelf. I learned a lot from it and used its code examples many times over the decades.
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I started this video intending to be outraged by the classic novels you were no doubt going to dismiss but I ended up respecting your opinions even if they don't always gibe with my own - for instance, I really enjoyed The Master and Margarita but that's probably because I studied it at uni so I understood its background and allegorical nature a little better than a casual reader - you're not wrong about it being a bit of a slog though. Anyway, it's always useful to have one's own prejudices confronted with a contrary opinion, and I had to chuckle when you called "Mrs Dalloway" boring - at first I was a little stung at this verdict but then admitted to myself, yup, actually I did find it dull and shouldn't deny that just because smarter people than me consider it a timeless classic. Great video!
@@Tolstoy111 You're right, there are some very entertaining sections, and I actually really liked the first half, the Pontius Pilate chapters, the magic show and especially the witches ball but for me the Master sections were the weakest part - however, I'm glad to know that there are other big fans of TMAM out there still :)
Hooting and hollering at seeing Grendel show up in the good category (same cover as the one I found in a used book store back during undergrad, too). Reread it recently and the beautiful parts held up.
Here are a couple more I think you would like: Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
" Bend Sinister" by Nabokov. The most beautifully written book I've read. Not the best, plot, characters, and so on. But the most artistically written. Beautiful use of language.
If you haven’t read them already an interesting pair of books to read is first “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac about the Beat counterculture that began in the late 40s and then follow it up with “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” by Tom Wolfe about the hippie counterculture that came afterwards in the late 60s.
the thing about Master and Margarita is, going in the reader needs to be aware of the context. Bulgakov was from a religious family, his father was a scholar, a professor in Kiev Theological Academy, his grandfather was a priest, so was one of his brothers, IIRC. he knew the Bible, the history of Christianity, the history of religion - all very well, and this book is his summary of all that knowledge after he had distanced himself from the Russian Orthodox Church.
the gist of it is, Satan comes to Moscow because he's conceived a new evangel for the Bible but he cannot write it because he's not human, so he needs someone to do it for him, he seeks out the Russian Faust and sets him up with the reincarnation of queen Margot, but as powerful as he is, his attempts are ultimately thwarted by the Soviet machine and its relentlessness.
we have this book taught in schools (at high-school level in US terms), so it's required reading, but I can tell you from experience, for school kids it's just a well-written book about magic in 1920s Moscow. I straight up skipped the Judea chapters when I read it. so I feel you, this book was written with certain intentions, and modern readers have to be aware of that.
And it's got a giant homicidal pyromaniac black cat running around setting things on fire with a primus stove!
Thanks a lot for this. I have skipped over it, but have been to a play reenactment. While it was genuinely one of the best theater performances I've ever been to, the story itself didn't really click before I dove into comments under this video. That plotline makes so much more sense now, and perhaps I should've contacted a doc about my inability to sleep at night properly leading to falling asleep on lessons like literature back in the day. Some of those I remember really well, like Zamyatin's We discussed in previous video, and some, like this one - much less. Though I should admit I have a more scifi-esque taste.
the grapes of wrath is so so good, i think you will love it and i think that it may change the way you feel about steinbeck and women.
My "finally got around to reading it" book was Lonesome Dove. I loved it, highly recommended!
I remember being blown away by how readable and engrossing Grapes of Wrath was. I should peep Mice and Men.
I was going to angry post about you hating age of innocence but then you figured out why :) Whoever told you it was like P&P was sooooo off the mark. the only similarity is that in both books, the women wear dresses.
I bought Grendel and Despair on thriftbooks thanks to this video!!
If you like entertainingly dumb characters I highly recommend P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories.
I highly recommend Pnin if you haven't read it! it's funny short and clearly inspired by Nabokov's own experiences. I also can't believe you find most of this stuff at thrift stores all I see is twilight and tom clancy.
I've tried to read Mark Twain and his dialect puts me off. I love Dickens who uses dialect but does it better. I've read Mark Twain's autobiographical writings. There is a 3 vol version that can be gotten cheaply. Read bits and pieces from it. Read 'Grapes of Wrath' next.
So having read neither of the books, but also loving Lolita, the thing that works about Lolita is that Nabokov is interested in understanding how the self-delusion of these horrible people works. The thing that is revealed isn't that HH's actions are evil, of course they are, we already know that (or should, terrifyingly there are people who read Lolita who seem to lack that knowledge), it's that HH's thought process behind those actions is rotten. And we see how it connects to the other ways he thinks. Like for example, feels very relevant now, this veneration of Classic Western European Civilization, which HH reveres and Nabokov reveals how the revering of that culture fuels that feeling of superiority that is partly driving HH. So yeah, maybe that's the difference between the two books I haven't read.
I forgot about Grendel, and I do have to read it.
On Bulgakov: I am from Russia and Master and Margarita is one of the favourite books of mine, I've read it several times at different ages. But I agree with you - it's not a good book.
To proper enjoy it you need to be subjected to the centuries of the russian.... ernnn... I guess 'culture code' and historical contexr of early soviet days, and obviously it shouldn't be a prerequisite to enjoy a good book. Without this context it's just biblical-ish fantasy story.
Most of my foreign acquittances just don't get this book and it's fine. Sometimes it's not easy for me to fully understand historical context of some US classics.
My favorite Virginia Woolf novel is her first novel, A Voyage Out. No one ever talks about it but its fantastic. Its about a couple that travel to South American on vacation, and they are not the best people on the planet, but there are some really amazing parts to this novel some involving religion that i think you'd enjoy.
I really like Les Miserables. Like, if you've seen the musical, I enjoy the musical, but there's so much more depth, and variety in the book. I also feel like you can really *feel* victor hugo in the book.
Like, the first fifth of the book is about the priest that gives val jean the candlesticks. He's just like a random bit player in the musical, but like, It just starts with a bunch of this priest. And it's this interesting study of goodness. When val jean is trying to do various kinds of good, you don't just see him as trying to fulfil the promise he made, but almost as like a faint echo of the priest. You also have this really cool debate between the priest and and one of the guys who killed the king of france. The debate is cool, but part of why it's cool is he's bringing this character who hugo's like "this is good, he's pure goodness" and he's bringing them down, and introducing this deep sense of conflict that you can sense hugo also has about the affair.
The story of fantine starts with her with these fancy pants jerks, and the story of how these aristocrats toy around and then leave is so heartbreaking. You have Javert as a much more complicated, I think interesting character. You have hugo just blisteringly mad at the thenardiers. If you watched the movie, you'd think javert is evil, but if you read the book you can tell the depth of hugo's ire is toward the thenardiers. There's a lot more interplay between all the abc folks, including the like, bar owner. A lot of tiny players get actual stories in the book. You have these giant historical essays where hugo complains about convents and how they've oppressed women throughout the ages, and about the sewer system. He occasionally has these really evocative "tracking shots" where he describes city surroundings to you like he's wistfully remembering it, but also sets up the scene. Oh, and also its super bizzare and weird, but you'd think having more time would make marius's and cosette's love story less abrupt and sudden, but instead of becoming a sweet love story it becomes the most bizzare and creepy thing imaginable.
I'm in the midst of trying to read through Notre dame(not the book per say, I think it's me that's having trouble focusing) right now.
Edit: sorry if I've already brought this up in some form. Big fan tho
I recommend The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg. It's about poor peasants in 19th century Sweden who emigrates to the US because everything sucks. It's a Swedish classic so I don't know how easy it is to find in an American thrift store (unless you live in like Minnesota), but you can probably get it from a library.