Reading One-Star Reviews of My Favourite Books
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- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
- 📚 Read the Great Books with the Hardcore Literature Book Club: / about
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Hardcore Literature Lecture Series
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📔Contents Page: cutt.ly/CmNhRY3
🎖️ War and Peace: cutt.ly/U3nzGma
🎭 Shakespeare Project: cutt.ly/B3nxHH7
🐳 Moby Dick: cutt.ly/K3nzVKf
☄️ Blood Meridian: cutt.ly/P3nz6Qp
🍂 Wuthering Heights: cutt.ly/N3nxxYt
🇮🇪 Ulysses: cutt.ly/x3nxQmN
🚂 Anna Karenina: cutt.ly/vmNhAWv
💀 Crime and Punishment: cutt.ly/rmNhFt5
⚓ Persuasion: cutt.ly/amNhX7b
☕ In Search of Lost Time: cutt.ly/5mNh8oD
⚔️ The Hero’s Journey: cutt.ly/UmNjrE3
🌸 Siddharta: cutt.ly/YmNjuzi
🎠 Don Quixote: cutt.ly/cmNjoK4
❤️Shakespeare’s Sonnets: cutt.ly/nmNlW7V
🇫🇷 Les Misérables: cutt.ly/J3YixoA
🕯️ The Turn of the Screw: cutt.ly/nToAQQ3
🖋️ Dickens Seasonal Read: cutt.ly/9ToAybt
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0:00 one-star reviews of my favourite books
1:58 Moby Dick by Herman Melville
15:08 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
20:10 Persuasion by Jane Austen
26:11 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
29:13 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
38:30 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
43:25 Ulysses by James Joyce
51:52 thank you for being here
Sir, for those of us that never had the opportunity to experience literature, thank you for what you do us. As George Eliot wrote-"its never too late to become the person you always thought you could be."
Thank you so much for such a beautiful comment, Jesse. I really appreciate you and I'm so grateful you're here with me, my friend 🙏❤
Frankenstein is a masterpiece. I didn't understand the book at first reading, and abandoned it mid-way. Years later I gave it another try - and couldn't put it away. Mary Shelley was 19 when she wrote the book. An absolute genius.
I'm so with you there :) Complete masterpiece! And it becomes more profound with every reread and each passing year!
Frankie has always been my favorite monster. I was surprised when I read the book. It is even better than I had hoped.
I can’t say I enjoyed Frankenstein but I agree, it is a masterpiece, a very important book and should be required reading for anyone studying the sciences. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. It is indeed a cautionary tale.
It's really oddly constructed for the modern reader. I mean, I can understand if someone thinks it's going to be like a film they saw and discover instead that it's pretty philosophical in places, and you don't really meet Victor Frankenstein properly until several chapters in.
1818 or 1831 version?
You brought up a great point about how school can negatively impact our approach to literature. My daughter was required to read several books and take corresponding online tests for a course. One of them was on Dostoevsky's "The Idiot." I love that book. I read it seven times and had just finished it again when she had to take a test on it. So I "tested" her test. I went through the questions myself and was shocked. They asked about the most unimportant, esoteric trivia, getting very specific about details you had to remember. None of those details were why I love the book or why anyone would remember the book. And when we reviewed the correct answers after she submitted her responses, I found two of the "correct" answers were absolutely inaccurate. And this was supposed to be a well curated, peer reviewed examination for a reading curriculum! Absolute nonsense.
That is so sad. School can make great books like The Idiot objects for test and grades versus pieces of art. This annoys me to a point ! It's sad for the book that get mis appreciated and it's sad for the young people who might get discouraged
Still I think it is good to make young people read. It'sR the teachers who are incompetent and it is they you should tell what you think And i don't know if your daughter is in high school but if she is, you could also question the choice of book Reading is the greatest gift we can give to our chidren,.
Former English teacher here and I absolutely agree with you. It hurt my heart to have to "test" students on their reading, but it was pretty much required by the curriculum. I know for myself how the thought that I will be quizzed on the contents of that book make me hate the book before I even start it! I tried to foster as much discussion and as little interrogation as I could get away with.
Yes. For the same reason, my first college literature teacher ruined every book of that class for me.
Yes - I met someone at University who had studied "En attendant Godot" (Waiting for Godot) I think actually in the original French for her French A Level. She absolutely hated the play and couldn't understand it at all, and had passed her exam by basically memorising key phrases and pat answers to likely questions. For me, that play is amazing, and incredibly funny too. But that's because I chose to read it, and have read it to understand the characters and Beckett's humour rather then because I had to read it to pass an exam.
Oh my, Persuasion, one of my favorite books of all time.
Such a beautiful work :) Masterpiece!
Same. I related so much to Ann Elliott but then if I was reading it in my teens in high school then that wouldn't have been the case maybe.
wuthering heights is also one of my favourite books! I really related to you when you said that you didn't have friends to share your love for literature, that's why I love this online book community so much!
How wonderful to hear it's one of your favourites too, Julia! Such a special book :) I'm incredibly grateful for this online book community too. Great books are even better when shared 😊
I bought a lovely hard cover collection of all books published by the Bronte family. I started with Jane Eyre, one of my very favorites, and read them back-to-back. I found the others rather depressing and put me in a strange funk. I become too absorbed into the book's world. So I read everything until the last book left was Wuthering Heights. I just couldn't read it at that moment because I heard it was full of angst, abuse, and a killed dog. 😩 I don't know if that's true, but just that thought made me decide that I was not in the right mood to pick that book up.
So it's been 20 years, and I still haven't read it. Maybe it's time to tackle it. 💁
Me too. Have started WHs amid another book by Charlotte Brontë “The Professor” which I wasn’t aware of.
@@user-bv1ss5nj9b
Those things would make me hesitant too.
Yes, 100% agree.
I was dying for some content from this channel and you hit us with 52 minutes of gold AND on a day my Eagles are playing in the Super Bowl!
Thank you, my friend :) I really appreciate you being here!
go birds!
Fly Eagles Fly!
I agree. We need more bejaman McAvoy uploads 😌😊
@@indepthliterature
Totally 👍
I challenged myself to read W&P in January. I did it! Was a huge challenge and I am still processing it. I enjoyed Tolstoys' self-ramblings on religion, history, war etc. Felt like I'd won a battle post reading and am self-satisfied-yes. Would never have expected myself
to finish, so it's a personal victory!!!
Wow! Congratulations on reading War and Peace! That's such a strong start to the year. A huge personal victory for sure!
I wasn't able to even finish two of my favorite novels--The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann and The Magus by John Fowles--on my first attempts. Fortunately, a great book will wait for you to be ready.
You're so right! I love the way you've put that - 'a great book will wait for you to be ready'. So true :)
I was lucky enough to have loved Frankenstein, Moby Dick, and Ulysses the first time I read them.
The same can't be said of Pride and Prejudice (after three pages I threw it across the room with a visceral hate!).
As a teenager, I tried to read Lord of the Rings, and gave up after a chapter or two. Now (40 years later) I'm reading it again, and can't put it down. Utterly brilliant.
Maybe, when I'm 98, I'll try Pride and Prejudice again, and find I like it.
I just realized from the news that today is the Super Bowl. And... I'm going to spend my hours with a book.😌 Cheers! 🇺🇸
That sounds like an amazing day to me!! :)
Lovely to see you here Ben just would like to say that Mary Shelley is an absolute GENIUS to have written Frankenstein that is one of my favorites along with tons of others.
Thank you, Jane :) It's lovely to see you here too! I completely agree with you on Mary Shelley being a genius. Frankenstein is such a masterpiece!
The letters added an interesting layer to the incredible storyline.
I found so much value in both the main plot and all of the questions it leaves you asking after reading it.
being Russian and having read War and Peace at 15 (school program, ha-ha), I can confirm that Tolstoy's mumblings on history are extremely annoying😂 but I am planning to have a second read in the nearest future because I do remember loving the characters and the story itself. I binge-read it in a week! The same goes to Anna Karenina. When it comes to Dostoevsky though... there's a completely another story, he has my heart completely))
Although your boy Dostoevsky did a lot of musings on the human psyche and his books were designed to explore those extremes Tolstoy was the master of the novel as an art form. His prose flows seamlessly incorporating nature,class, society, and of course history. Nothing seems forced or formulaic. When you are young I think Dostoevsky appeals to you more because of those readily cooked emotions in his books but as you grow older you start to appreciate Tolstoy and his genius more. Just an opinion. And maybe that’s the reason why historically Tolstoy is more reputed and Dostoevsky has somewhat of a sensationalist reputation.
@@rishabhaniket1952 I won't deny that Tolstoy has some talents that Dostoevsky does not, but what makes Tolstoy pretty annoying is how much he repeats himself over and over and over when it comes to his opinion on a couple of his favorite subjects - and those are pretty controversial imho. he also reads pretty didactic to me, as if he was a prophet of some sorts. Knowing the life that Dostoevsky experienced, you would expect that from him rather than from Tolstoy, but my man Dostoevsky stays humble. all and all to me it's still a question of personal taste - I'm just a casual reader, not a literature expert. in the Russian speaking world, it's always you are either team Dostoevsky or team Tolstoy)) the dispute never ends😂
Dostoevsky is personally my favorite author, but to be fair I have not read Tolstoy yet, so we will see.
@@Nastya_Suvorova this is a random question, why do Russians always type "))" on their sentences?
@@Ademarr32 hehe it's because we're too lazy to put proper smiley emojis!
Re-reading the classics is one of my favorite past times. I've been pleasantly surprised to find Jack London's Call of the Wild has become one of my favorites. I know it's not a difficult novel, but there is such beauty in the story and point of view. There is such beauty in its simplicity with profound emotion and meaning. Not all great books have to be difficult.
That’s one I was coerced into reading in Junior high and I had zero patience for it at the time! There was no glitter on the cover! Dogs that can’t talk? Shipping in the wilderness? Alsaka??? Why would I, a ten year old, care about any of this?
A decade+ on, I now Jack London and Call of the Wild.
This was so much fun to listen to as I was washing dishes this evening. I hope you cover more of these one-star reviews of your favorite books in the future.
Thank you, Stasia :) I'm happy I could keep you company whilst you were washing the dishes! I'd definitely be up for doing more of these. I loved this discussion!
Mesmerizing passages of Moby Dick shivered me timbers. Best book of its genre.
The only channel I religiously follow. Thanks for the treat Ben!! Computer science at Georgia Tech and this is like my spiritual nourishment😮💨
I understand your sentiment around the style and substance point. A story is as much as important as writing and themes. And I also believed that, but until recently, when I started to read the book of disquiet by Fernando pessoa(which I am pretty sure you have read) I am currently 100 pages in and to speak bluntly it doesn't have a story it is an almost anti-novel novel but it still has captured my attention,by it's beautiful writing and musings. So it is a really interesting topic for discussion
Thank you for that lively video. I agree with almost all of your choices. I love Moby Dick and the scene where the narrator wakes up to find Queequeg in the bed beside him still makes me laugh. Persuasion is my favourite Austen and I think it is a brilliant analysis of the suffering and longing caused by deferred love . For those who struggle with Ulysses I recommend they first read Portrait of the artist as a Young Man. This will reveal the formative experiences that shaped Joyce and his long struggle to find his truth. And it’s quite short. Keep up this good work. It’s great to hear the classics still praised and valued.
Absolutely love your channel. Your passion for great literature is contagious. Thank you for all you do.
Thank you so much, Stacy :) I really appreciate that, and am so happy you're here with me🙏
I was so happy to see a new video from you! I recently found your channel - new subscriber here! I've been thoroughly enjoying binge watching your videos. Your love of literature is absolutely infectious! There are so many classics I never read, even having a literature degree. Having gone many years without picking up a single book, you have rekindled a lost love in me to get back to reading - especially the classics. I recently read The Grapes of Wrath and absolutely loved it. I'm currently out to sea with Moby Dick, and find it so enlightening and humorous - something I did not expect given the fear that was instilled about that book back in my college days. And, as an ode to you and your passion, I have Anna Karenina awaiting me on my bedside table. A book I NEVER thought I would consider. Thank you for being here and offering something extraordinary to our days. ~Deborah
Wow! Thank you so much, Deborah :) Your kind words have moved me so deeply, and I'm so incredibly grateful that you're watching and reading with me. I completely relate to your story of going years without reading. I did the very same thing myself after graduating. Returning to the classics, and learning to read deeply and live the great books, was life-changing. Nice one on reading and loving The Grapes of Wrath. I'm reading a lot of Steinbeck at the moment - Travels with Charley and East of Eden are both on my bedside :) I'm yearning to return to Anna Karenina! Please do let me know what you make of it!
Wuthering Heights is a masterpiece! It’s my favorite book of all times - and I’ve just read it now, I honestly don’t know how I could miss it for my entire life.
But, oh, how I am in awe! It’s changed me forever! The rawness of this story, the characters, the tumult and emotion in it, the psychology behind Heathcliff’s behavior… I love everything about it! ❤ It’s heartbreaking and it ripped me in half, I cannot and will not be the same person I was just a few days ago, before reading it!
Such a shame that Emily Brontë didn’t get to write more. Her style is much more deep and visceral than her sister’s. I cannot begin to imagine the works of art that she could have produced, had she lived to be 40 or 50… not to mention 60 or 70 years old.
Definitely one of my favorites. I’ve read it several times. I only wish I could read it for the first time again.
Wuthering Heights is such a special book to me too, Raluca. It's firmly in my 'personal canon' and I carry it around it my heart. It always gives me a new reward each time I reread it. I'm so with you on it being a shame that Emily Brontë didn't get to write more. Can you imagine what her body of work might have looked like if she had reached the age of Thomas Hardy? A novel from Emily Brontë in her later years would have undoubtedly been sublime!
in my high school reading Shakespeare was used as a vehicle for memorizing soliloquies. I loved Shakespeare on a trip to the Old Vic and saw a Midsummers Night Dream. Most definitely, reading changes through life experience and our love of hate of a book is a function of our life experiences.
I have such fantastic memories of the Old Vic too, Tamara :) London is such a magical city for lovers of theatre!
When I was teaching high school, our town was lucky to have Shakespeare in the Park performed outside in a big local park. I made it a point to squeeze a reading and study of the play into my classes and then encouraged students to join me for a picnic and play watching. One of my favorite teaching memories, and I like to think it was special to many students. It always troubled me that I could never interest my colleagues in the English Dept.to even attend the performances, which were actually very well done!
I think that digging deep at books from different genres really useful not only interms of comprehension but also make the process of writing enrich with different pattent of expression so its beneficial in form or another.
I’ve just come across your channel and spent most of the day watching/listening to your videos.
I’m so relieved to finally find someone else passionate about reading classics, as I feel that most of the channels on UA-cam that discuss books all discuss books I’m not interested in.
I also have a degree in English, and this is the kind of discourse I’ve been longing for since I finished school.
Loved your precis, as ever! Very entertaining. Helped explain my feeling towards Wuthering Heights couple decades back. Thank you. You're such a help, or a key to understanding. The other novels need no convincing to me, but was keen to hear how you explained Readers' doubts .
This was excellent. Thank you for making it.
I myself had attempted to read "The Brothers Karamazov" years ago and just couldn't get into it. I finally got back to it last year and it has been one of the most impactful reading experiences of my life. I finally understand why so many people say it's one of the greatest works ever. I also recently re-read "Frankenstein", and it was such a different experience from reading it as a preteen. I was deeply emotionally moved. So, I definitely recommend coming back to books, even ones we didn't like the first time.
I feel like a lot of people fail to realize that the point of great literature is not to make you feel good. It is the antithesis of it. Great literature is meant to rip you out of your comfort zone. You can’t learn anything in an environment you’re accustomed to.
I've only just started Moby Dick, having read only the first 100+ pages, and I absolutely LOVE IT! It's funny, thought-provoking, mysterious, beautifully written... what's not to love.
Beautifully put!! There really is so much to love about Moby Dick :)
Moby Dick is an education on 19th Century whaling. I remember the documentary type information far more than the story of Ahab and the whale.
Yeah, it's important to remember how generally uneducated the reading public in 1851 was about whales. It justifies a thorough examination. I'm on my second reading of the novel and planning on giving those parts more consideration.
I enjoyed this so much, Ben. I was a lonely 18-year-old the first time I read Marcel Proust, and many more classics besides. Listening to you and other lovers of this channel, I feel less alone.
Thank you so much, Marian :) I think that's a major thing that connects us lovers of literature - that feeling of loneliness! It's rare to have people in our physical lives who want to discuss books, so thank goodness we have such a vibrant community online!
@@BenjaminMcEvoy Someone just posted on another thread she doesn't tell people all the books she's reading because people take it the wrong way - maybe they feel they have to keep up with someone else's idea of what should be read. People react to me sometimes when I talk about Russian composers or anything really. You don't have to censor yourself here. Even those who can't up - I'm barely halfway through War and Peace but it's - I never would have started reading "Natasha's Dance" if I hadn't joined HCLBC. The book is filled with incredible detail about Russia's musical culture.
I recently read . My mother gave me a copy in 1979. I've tried to read it several times but never got very far. I decided I was finally going to read it and, again, was going to put it down 1/3 of the way through. Then I decided to see if I could find a review online. That's when I found this channel. I listened to McEvoy's series on this book and it inspired me to finish. I can't say that I liked the book, but I did appreciate it and am glad that I finished. I am now reading and am loving it.
Do I want more of this? YES ! OH YES I DO! Please do another one or two ,or three! This was great! Love your content, Ben, your the best! Love your channel , love listening to you, and learning from you, thank you Benjamin, keep on!
Thank you so much, Jody :) Your kind words have completely made my day!! We will definitely do a part two :)
Hi Ben what a fun video! One star reviews even of my favorites always give me a good laugh as they can be so biting (like that first one for Moby Dick). I didn't enjoy Persuasion upon my first read, which was such a shame because its themes and preoccupations sounded so much like my cup of tea - will definitely have to give it another try down the road. I am currently reading W&P with the club and having a tremendous time but I still got a chuckle out of the reviews because they are not entirely wrong :D
Also, I didn't realize you have an editor- that's amazing! I have been following your channel for a couple of years now and it's so heartwarming to see the growth and expansion of this community through time. Your hard work is definitely paying off and best wishes for your (and your team's) continued success!! 😃
Definitely needs a part two. The idea and execution are fantastic!
Thank you so much! We'll definitely do a part two :)
I so enjoyed this video. Please do more of these. You comments provide a different perspective on the classics that make someone like me reconsider giving them a chance. It’s refreshing to hear that even someone like you, who now loves these classic works, at one point could not get through some of them. I was never really inclined to read Frankenstein, but your comments really helped give meaning to what Shelley was trying to do with her novel, and I must say that I am a bit intrigued. The Catcher in the Rye is another classic that I could not stand when I read it for high school English, but now in middle age, I am planning a re-read to see if the ensuing decades have made me more sympathetic to Holden😊
Love this video! Moby Dick is my favourite book and the more I read it the more I love it. It has been extremely hard to find a good review about it (let alone have a good discussion with anyone). It definitely is a book for people that have lived a life, as without that life experience, I think it's a hard book to relate to. I feel the same way about Wuthering Heights. It was such a different book when I first read it as a teenager (I overly romanticised it) but reading it in my thirties (and having previously been married to a "Heathcliff" type for ten years), I see it as so toxic now. Still love it as a book, but I see it in such a different light. And that is the beauty of books, as you change they do too. We grow out of some and grow into others.
This is a great video, I really relate to your tangent about intellectual insecurity. I'm 17 and have started Blood Meridian and have only just passed halfway, when others my age have already read all of Dostoevsky, Joyce, etc.. Your bit about no peers being into reading is also very relatable
Thank you! Nice one on riding on through Blood Meridian. That's a book that definitely deserves a slow read! :)
'Blood Meridian' is fantastic! Frankly, I've enjoyed just about everything by Cormac McCarthy. At some point, you might want to check out 'The Stonemason'. It's a play by McCarthy that I think is brilliant.
And don't worry about comparing yourself to what others are reading. Enjoy your own path. Read what you like and continue to challenge yourself.
nobody your age has read all of them, and if they say they have they're lying. you can take your pace kid
@max k You said it more bluntly than I did. Well done. 🤣
But, to your point, even if a 17 year-old has read a bit of Dostoevsky, his age is going to limit what he gets out of it. 'The Brothers Karamazov' and 'Crime & Punishment' are going to hit a lot harder with someone who has a bit of life experience behind them. No offense to teenagers, but most of you (in first world countries, at least) have yet to discover how fucking hopeless life can get sometimes. Don't worry, you've all got that to look forward to. 🤣
@@kevindavis3234 oh exactly! I'm only 20 and I know a lot of literature will probably be more impactful with age.
Brilliant talk as always....I really believe this needs part 2 ....or a whole series of videos ....that way we can know about some more great books .... thank you for this 💕
Moby Dick is one of my personal favourits. It is one of the greatest books ever written. ( need to reread it )
I also love Frankenstein. It is a great book. A work of genius. ( reread needed)
Have read Wuthering Heights twice. May be I will read it one more time. It is a masterpiece.
Ulysses and War and Peace are on my TBR. Hope to read them this year.
Your passion for literature is refreshing and contagious. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much, Emma :) I appreciate you watching!
This video was great! What a fantastic idea and I hope you do more like it 😄
I enjoyed the comments and your thoughts. It’s nice to hear “both sides of the record”. It gives good insight on the books I haven’t read yet and your thoughts prepare me more to enjoy the future reading. Play it again Sam (Ben)!
Thank you for such an interesting video! I've been following your channel for a while and your passion, insight and commentary on classics have encouraged me to pick up books I'd probably have procrastinated longer on reading. I would love a part 2! And 3..., and 4... and many more! LOL
Thank you so much, Grace :) I really appreciate that so deeply, and am grateful for you being here :) We will definitely do a part two!
I'm watching you on television as I enjoy having you as a guest in the living room. So glad for another new presentation I can watch and rewatch. I'm commenting aloud "but I love that book!" and more as you read and respond to these reviews.
Thank you so much for having me as a guest, Marna :) I'm happy to hear that you and I both love these great books!
It's great when you upload! My day just got so better! BTW I recently read the road and then listened to your podcast about it which was fantastic (I still have a bit I need to listen to).
Thank you, Arunjyoti :) That really means a lot to me! Nice one on reading 'The Road'. Such a devastating book..
@@BenjaminMcEvoy But still a very beautiful book
Immediately clicked when I saw the new video was out. Yay more literature book content. I'm in a reading slump right now but praying for a day where it feels right and I have more mental energy to go back to reading more old books.
Thank you, Emilyn :) Ah, reading slumps.. We've definitely all been there! It will run its course and you'll be back into reading with great love again soon!
You've been missed around here!
Very interesting video. Thank you, as always!
Aw, thank you, Adriana :) I really appreciate that!
Wonderful video. What a treat! I am reading " War and Peace" at the moment, inspired by your reccomendations from another video and I simply love it.
Thank you, Tess :) I'm so thrilled that you're enjoying War and Peace! Such an incredible work of literature!
I had wuthering heights in my shelf for quite some years and after stumbling across ur channel, I picked it yesterday and almost finished a quarter of it and I could understand and enjoy it now.
Thank you for uploading these videos. As a teenager mostly interested in sci-fi these videos really help me broaden my horizons. While I adore sci-fi and fantasy, I want to be able to enjoy other works as well, and these videos are a valuable resource.
This was a great video. I'd love to see a part two. After all, when I'm interested in a book and want to read reviews, I find I spend more time going over the three star and under reviews than the four or five star ones. And quite often it succeeds it making me want to read the book for myself.
Thank you so much! I'm definitely going to make a part two now :) This was so much fun! I must say that I also find a lot of low star reviews to be quite convincing (even more so than the five-star ones) when it comes to these books!
My experience with Brothers Karamozov was initial intense irritation. Other readers described initial dislike but encouraged persistence. That helped me to continue. Now I am fascinated and excited and can not put it down. Thank you and them for this delicious treat.
I think it's true to say that the first half of the book operates as a mouthpiece for Dostoyevsky's internal debates, so even though the main characters are established they remain like ciphers until the halfway mark when they begin to come alive, and the rest of the book speeds by.
Great video! I couldn’t help but smile when you mentioned Dead Poets Society. That movie has its flaws, but it’s what motivated me to get back into reading after I had lost interest in virtually everything during the lockdown
And of course we want a Part 2. We still have Don Quixote, Great Expectations, Clarissa, Shakespeare’s plays, and many more
Thank you! Dead Poets Society is definitely an incredibly motivating film. I love Robin Williams' Mr Keating. 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may' :) I would love to do a part two. This was a lot of fun. Cervantes, Dickens, Richardson, and Shakespeare should definitely all be in there!
@@BenjaminMcEvoy
Miss Robin Williams. 😢
Great video, heard every minute and would love to see any Part II
Thank you, Kevin! I'll definitely do a part two :)
What a great video Ben! Some of the reviews were incredibly funny. I’ve just picked up a copy of Ulysses and although it is intimidating, you’ve definitely made me want to start it sooner than later. :)
Thank you, Mary! I really appreciate that :) I totally agree. Many of them gave me a good chuckle. I'm thrilled to hear you've picked up Ulysses. Please do let me know how you get on with one of my favourite books of all time!
This video was great fun. I was cracking up as you read some of those reviews. Maybe it wasn’t the reviews themselves, but how endearing people can be as we grow and change and sometimes deepen our understanding of these great books, and sometimes wing them across the room. Please do more one star reviews. Loved it!
Thank you so much, Jan. I'm so happy you enjoyed this one! I loved making this video :) I'm definitely already planning to do more of these!
You my sir, might be my fave UA-camr, the way you speak is both passionate and understanding. I don’t know why I had to shed a tear when you said “it’s ok not to understand everything”, it was like a weight was lifted off my mind to process every single word and be forced to making meaningful conclusions, instead to just enjoy, and let my mind make the connections at its leisure…which weirdly, in the end…is when you understand and contemplate at peak speed anyway.
I'm fairly new to reading classic fiction and just finished reading Frankenstein yesterday. It's the best novel I've ever read.
That's so awesome! It's a masterpiece, isn't it? I'm so happy you love it so much :)
Moby Dick was required reading in my American Literature course during my time at University. I struggled & struggled to get through it at 20 years old. That has been so many years ago. I think that I read differently now than I did when I was younger. Thank you for this reminder that I should pick this classic up & begin to read again. I keep hesitating to do this as I fear that I will not enjoy now, as then. Thanks for validating that this is just ok to not like a book. I do enjoy your videos & look forward to your next.
Hi Benjamin! I recently discovered your work and I love your enthusiasm and positivity for all things literary. It's especially helpful to me as a newly retired person who's looking for things to do. But I also have a healthy respect for negativity (no need to recommend counseling) and I'd love to hear about any authors, books, or genres you truly cannot stand. How 'bout it for a future episode? Be as malicious as you want; it'll be fun.
This was a great video, Ben. One of the great things about the book club is the time we spend on these works. I think one of the main things for me in enjoying these classic works of literature is to slow down and not try to read them at the speed of contemporary literature. It’s helped so much with my appreciation and enjoyment.
Thank you so much, Gemma :) I really appreciate that, and thank you so much for reading this great literature so deeply and with so much love with us. The slower pace and the community engagement has really taken Tolstoy's masterpiece to a new level of appreciation for me too!
You're definitely very good at this. Thank you
I appreciate that, Emma! Thank you :)
That Frankenstein review cracked me up 😂 I was reading Crime and Punishment but found it difficult to continue since book II because I had a few things on my mind, I thought I couldn't care about any of that at the moment, so I took a week off, and then I picked up Frankenstein thinking it could do me good. And it did!!! I wanted to wait until my birthday to read it but it's like fate I had to get into it immediately. I am also glad I came to the book not influenced by any movie or any "school of thought", the only thing I knew was "Frankenstein and his monster", and my imagination had a chance to run. To me the book is amazing and I absolutely love it. I'm copying down every passage that I like, and it's the first time I've done this. Love your video as always, Ben.
I happen to love Moby Dick and will be rereading it soon. I love the lyricism, the story, and the ‘biological entries’. I can’t quite remember the details at the moment, but there are some of those entries that after going into detail loop back and connect them to another idea. Those are some of my favorite parts of the book. And it makes the world of Moby Dick so rich and detailed, you can almost smell the ocean
This is such a beautiful appreciation of Moby Dick, Hazel. You've sent me straight back to my copy yet again, to those extraordinary biological entries. You're right - you can almost smell the ocean!
I've just discovered Benjamin McEvoy for myself. Brilliant thoughts. I really needed this in my life right now.
This is your funniest video so far, those goodreads reviews are hilarious. You could do video about books that make you laugh. I admire your compassion for all kind of readers and their problems. You are really nice person. Happy birthday, dear Ben, I wish all the best to you. I wish you to write a book Art of Deep Reading(or something like that) and to be a bestseler. Please make video or podcast on reading some of your own work.
Lot of love from Bosnia!
So happy to experience some new content from you, Benjamin! I found the one-star review idea very interesting, and am a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to these novels. Les Miserables, Frankenstein, and Wuthering Heights (plus anything written by Tolstoy, though I haven't actually read War and Peace yet) are all favorites of mine because they speak so heartbreakingly clearly to the human condition and longing, as well as questions of love and identity. I haven't found that to be true of the famous modernists (e.g. Melville, Joyce, Dalloway), whose styles I've found to be too experimental. It feels as though the "warmth" and meaning are missing from books such as Ulysses and Moby Dick! That said, I tackled these in college, so maybe it's time to revisit.
Enjoying your podcast as well these days. The Rumi episode is particularly fantastic (I'm reading his collection of poetry as we speak)! Thanks for all of the great bookish thoughts you put out into the world :)
This was another great vid Ben! I can see some people not enjoying Pride and Prejudice in particular due to its heavy focus on Victorian-style courtship, especially in the opening 10 chapters or so. If that's not your thing then you might be dissuaded early on, but it's a classic nonetheless. We just can't all have the same tastes in reading!
Yay!! Time to watch your new vid! (Listen mode on)
Thank you, Vanessa :)
This was great, Moby Dick is one of my favorites, read it as an adult a little more than 5 years ago and I’m itching to read it again now
Thank you, David :) I'd love to know what resonates with you when you return to this great book again!
I admire how understanding you are about even the most terrible reviews of your favorite books, how you empathically you recall similar experiences. This is the quality of an excellent listener and teacher, hard to cultivate and endlessly rewarding for the people around you. I saved this video to remind myself of a great practice.
Endless thank-you's dear Gentleman.
I find if I don't like something at first, then learn to love it- I find my love is deeper for it, than upon liking something from the start.
I'm loving these videos. I've rewatched several over the past few days. I am here now to tell you I used my bimonthly audible credit on 'Finnegan's Wake'. (It is the only version I could find, as there was not one on Scribd. It sounds great on the sample). I am looking forward to listening and reading along with this one.
You have a very vibrant , mature delivery; well- balanced especially towards Wuthering Heights. I will try to sink into, finally, Frankenstein for my birthday, only as you've given impetus .
Thank you so much, Mary :) Frankenstein sounds like a real treat to celebrate your birthday!
Just a couple quotables from you that I wrote in my reading journal:
"So much of great literature, the story is between the lines."
"With great writers, you need to pick the right entrance work."
It took me so many tries to get into the rhythm and subtlety Jane Austen, but I had the same realization that she was FUNNY and sarcastic and an observer of human behaviour and folly. I LOVED Persuasion. I cannot say the same thing of Wuthering Heights, tho!
P.S. In all the "petticoats in an uproar" of the recent Netflix "Persuasion," it would be great to get a dude's opinion of it. Ellie Dashwood said that she thought it was probably for all the people who gave the book a one-star review. It definitely wasn't for Jane Austen fans!
I will put Frankenstein on my list. I get that you often appreciate books when you're ready for them. One of my favorites for years was Thomas Wolfe, whose language is gorgeous. I tried "You Can't Go Home Again" the first time and didn't get it. I tried it again and resonated completely with its theme of your life changing, and you can never return to that world again. The ending blew me away.
When will the next podcast episode be?
Also, love these types of videos!
I have read and loved all your favorite books except for Ulysses! We have very similar tastes apparently haha, I love your content! 😀
Thank you, my friend. It definitely sounds like we have very similar tastes! :)
I also found that Persuasion only truly resonated with me as it neared the end. Have only read it once-so probably need to reread!
I'm glad I found your channel! I think you highlighted the key reasons why people don't like classics and literary fiction in general. People either don't understand it or have the wrong expectations. It's all about the prose and/or the ideas the book is trying to convey. People who give low reviews generally miss both points.
Appreciate this video so much!! ❤
Hi, Benjamin. First I would like to thank you for the beautiful work you do, I'm not the first to say this for sure, but your work is inspiring. You convey a lot of calm, confidence and an air of intelligence and culture, which inspires me to always read and consume more art every day. I would also like to praise the video, I really liked the content, we have a very similar literary taste, so some of the works that will appear in the video are on my list of favorites in life. Kisses from São Paulo, Brasil❤
Thank you so much, Leticia :) That is so incredibly kind of you! Your beautiful message has truly moved me. I'm grateful for you being here, watching, and reading along with me. Happy reading over in beautiful Brazil! Obrigado :) ❤
This was really a great video. Thanks so much for posting this. I really admired how you analyzed so positively the negative reviews. The one thing that struck me was how personal most of the reviews were. It was not just enough for the writers of the negative to say that they did not like the books but had to take it to another level. That the book was at some level a personal affront to them.
I was glad that you included both Frankenstein and Persuasion in the list. Not just that they were by woman writers but because of how I feel about both these books. Persuasion is my favorite book not just by Jane Austen but my favorite book of all time. You really summed it up perfectly by saying this is a quiet book and that is its glory. I feel a great serenity each time I read this book. And Anne Elliot is one of my favorite female characters in fiction. Even though I am a man I find her to be a role model. One of the great treats for me when I went to Bath was seeing the different places that Austen described in Persuasion. In fact, seeing these places made me appreciate the book so much more upon a re-read.
Frankenstein was more problematic for me. I read it for the first time in 2022. I started to read it with great anticipation not only from what you had said about the work but also the number of other reviews of the work on Book Tube. I was disappointed. There were parts of the book that I found implausible. But I am still curious about it. There must be something that I have missed. I will have to revisit it.
Your perspective here and on other videos you have done have made me very interested in Moby Dick. I do have two copies of it and want to read it but have to admit that I am a bit afraid of it. My plan is to read it before the end of the year. However, my reading plan the first half the first half this year is to read as many of the works as I can by Thomas Hardy in preparation for a hiking trip I will be doing in mid-May in Dorset.
I do agree with you that high school has ruined a number of works for me. As much as I like Dickens I have shied away from one of his greatest works, Great Expectations, because of my experience with it in middle school English.
Thanks for the insights in this and in all of your videos.
I just want to say that while I appreciate your insights, I appreciate how transparent and clearly you convey everything. no way to feel stupid in this channel :)
Thank you so much, Gaby. I really appreciate that so much :) I'm so grateful for you being here with me 😊 🙏
I´m from Argentina and I love to hear you, it´s a great way to practice listening english. English, books and great autors LOVE THIS VIDEO. And didn´t read "War and Peace" and "Ulysses" yeat, so it was usefull to hear the 1 star opinions and your.
I've always wanted to visit Argentina! I've heard so many wonderful things about your country 🇦🇷 Thank you so much for being here :)
@@BenjaminMcEvoy you will love it. If you come, you can count with a future History professor recomendations .
Ah! I've been planning to read Ulysses later this year after reading Portrait this past December and currently reading Dubliners - thank you for your insight! I'm nervous but grateful for your words in regards to it! I'll try to rewatch this once I've read it, curious what side of the coin I'll be on 😂
I love Persuasion & Wuthering Heights, and so excited to read Moby Dick, it's been calling me from the shelves... read 7 pages when it did and I loved it so far!
Nice to see you again, Ben. I´ve read Frankenstein and I´ve loved it from the very beginning. Now I´ve been reading Moby Dick ( still about 200 pages to finish it, started in November) and I am enjoying it. I like the style, humour and irony. Yesterday I read a chapter and I was like "Wait, is this all chapter just a pure irony?" .... And I remembered Harold Bloom talking about importance of sense of irony and what disastrous impact it would have been for literature if people lost this sense.... I admit and I get it that some parts of the book may be a bit tedious, but I still am able to enjoy it, because I am curious person and I like to learn new information (why not about whales and whaling).... Every book is a journey for me and I like challenging tasks, because I can feel the growth and expansion... I also started reading Divine Comedy and I am quite surprised I am able to read it and enjoy it....
I love your mind, dude. this channel inspires me to read!!
P.S. curious what you do for work (if anything outside of UA-cam).
Javert’s realisation that he’s the bad guy is one of the most impactful scenes in theatre.
Next year I will have a go at this. I have a few big reads planned for this year.
Frankenstein is my favorite book, but I read it while I was going through a difficult time in my life. I am definitely reading it again this year! Tears came to my eyes when you said these 19:12. We were "created" and here we are in this world... that's why I believe people's own perception of life can too influence their opinion about Frankenstein.
Also very important points about school. We had to read our Brazilian classics in high school and they were an absolute nightmare. Many of my peers don't read books AT ALL nowadays. It has been long 20 years, but I finally feel motivated to read - and hopefully enjoy - Machado de Assis and many others.
Thank you for your videos!
Thank you Ben for the new upload. It's like a special treat when you pop in! In the last 3 years, I started reading the classics (thanking you from the bottom of my heart else it would be a terrain I doubt I would tread on) and loving these great books. I am struggling with Virginia Woolf. I started with A Room of One's Own and To the Lighthouse but didn't find much pleasure in them; then moved on to The Waves but drowned in it even on my 2nd attempt. I had an intuition that I would love this book and am willing to persevere. I adore poetic prose which brought me to her works but can't seem to feel the magic. Just wondering if you could put her in your Part 2 as I would gift her a little twinkle star but feeling guilty about it.
I had the same experience but I loved Mrs. Dalloway and Orlando.
@@yvonnekoopman8598 thanks for the tip!
No pressure, Benjamin, but please please upload more content!!🙏
New Ben upload, it's a good day
Thank you, my friend :)
I appreciate your sensitive responses to the ratings. To answer a view opposed to the own deep conviction without being antagonistic is an art and a challenge. Masterfully presented here I would like to send a salute and my respect.
As I myself work some of the challenges that can pose some of the extensive and lengthy literary books I definitely have heard an inner voice with similar judgements towards the writers. Like when engaged in a long run… At some point your mind will start working against you and giving you every reason why you should stop running. Some of these works will challenge you and it will be up to the reader how to engage. Or fight back.
Excellent! Very interesting. And great job honoring the negative comments while expressing the positive point of view on each book.
Thank you, Mike! I really appreciate that, my friend :)
@@BenjaminMcEvoy I think your assistant(s) also did a great job of choosing "serious" one-star reviews.
A very unusual channel, I dare say (although I've seen book review channels and videos, of course). Really nice work.
I really appreciate your candor and kindness with this video. With these "one star review" videos, the commentary often turns into roasting the reviewer, which is fun in its way but begins to feel demeaning after a while.
I genuinely keep trying to read Moby Dick. The wreck of the Essex, which is one historical event that inspired the novel, is fascinating. But maybe I'm just not quite there yet.
Thank you, Anna. That is so lovely of you to say :) I completely agree with you on the wreck of the Essex being fascinating. Have you read Nathaniel Philbrick's 'In the Heart of the Sea'? You'll really love this book given your interest in the Essex. Highly recommended!
@@BenjaminMcEvoy I have read In the Heart of the Sea! I enjoyed it. I also enjoy Ask a Mortician's video on the event.
This was fun! Do this again sometime.
You make a fantastic point about the school system’s uninspiring treatment of literature. Perhaps they should instead have weekly class watches of your videos, because truly your enthusiasm and eloquence is infectious and motivational. No-one makes me want to read quite so much as you, good Sir! 👏
Hi Ben I hope you’re doing well!
I don’t know if you have read it but could you have a go at Joseph Eichendorff’s Memoirs of a Good for Nothing. It’s a beautiful book and a foundation for German Romanticism and culture. It would great to see that book on this channel.
Interesting discussion on War and Peace. Just wanted to comment because I’m reading a book with a completely opposite problem. I am reading Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees, and I have to look up or research so many war related words to understand and sympathize with the protagonist. Once I know the reference, the weight of the words become real to me, and it’s been really a sad and heavy story to read. Luckily enough, I don’t mind studying history along novels, but it will be difficult to attract people who don’t, or who are not a fan of his writing to begin with. It’s just amazing how much Hemingway trusted the readers and didn’t explain things, where as Tolstoy went the complete opposite and explained to the point of ‘rumblings’. And both are my favorite writers😊
Best content and pronunciation ever! 👌🏻🌷
Thank you so much :)