Honestly when reading it at school aged 14 my sympathies were entirely with Edgar. But then as a bespectacled nerd I probably saw the world in a rather similar way.
Me too. To adapt what was said of Thomas and Jane Carlyle, it is a pity Catherine did not marry Heathcliff as then only two people would have been miserable.
I couldn't stand Heathcliff. No redeeming qualities at all. In fact I don't remember any really sympathetic characters in the whole book. Admittedly it's a long time since I read it.
Welp. Slogged through Fraser's Golden Bough for probably the last time in this incarnation and moved on to more entertaining fare - Jan Comenius' Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.
Oh, God bless. You actually made it through Golden Bough? What crime did you commit that that was your sentence?
I mentioned on the other thread that I got the 8-volume set of the complete Scarlet Pimpernel stories of Baroness Orczy. I am up to volume 3, which starts with Lord Tony's Wife, which is the fifth novel to feature the SP. I may be reading it for a while because it is in my "occasional" pile. I have a pile of books I read practically every day (my bedtime reading). I have a pile of weekday reading (my lunchtime reading during the work week). And then there is the third set that just get read on occasion when there is nothing on TV I want to watch or I am in a doctor's waiting room or whatever.
Fortunately, the Baroness' plots are never so convoluted that pauses in reading hurt. I believe they were originally written in magazine installments, so she frequently will reiterate the plot for the reader, and you generally can count on her, right about the three-quarter mark, to take a chapter to go over everything that has happened up to that point before we launch into the climax chapters. They are perfectly designed for occasional reading!
I mentioned on the other thread that I got the 8-volume set of the complete Scarlet Pimpernel stories of Baroness Orczy. I am up to volume 3, which starts with Lord Tony's Wife, which is the fifth novel to feature the SP. I may be reading it for a while because it is in my "occasional" pile. I have a pile of books I read practically every day (my bedtime reading). I have a pile of weekday reading (my lunchtime reading during the work week). And then there is the third set that just get read on occasion when there is nothing on TV I want to watch or I am in a doctor's waiting room or whatever.
Fortunately, the Baroness' plots are never so convoluted that pauses in reading hurt. I believe they were originally written in magazine installments, so she frequently will reiterate the plot for the reader, and you generally can count on her, right about the three-quarter mark, to take a chapter to go over everything that has happened up to that point before we launch into the climax chapters. They are perfectly designed for occasional reading!
I loved TSP when I was a child. I think I had two books, never knew there were more. Rollicking reads, highly entertaining.
I first read Fraser in university, very tedious as course material but it gave me the taste for exploring every type of folklore and religious thought/observance. Just as tedious on the re-read four and a half decades later, but still so rich in detailing the common narratives we construct while here in our human suits.
Have you come across Genevieve Cogman's Scarlet Pimpernel series? The first two books of three are out. The lead is a servant girl with an uncanny resemblance to Marie Antoinette who starts working with the Scarlet Pimpernel and his gang. Many aristocrats are vampires.
In the last few years I have made my way through Ovid's Metamorphoses (in English translation), the Meditations of Aurelius (ditto) and Pilgrim's Progress. I would like to find the time to reread The Prince (seem apropos for modern politics).
I was visiting a friend who moved to the US in 2003 and we were off to some California skifield [Lake Tahoe?] His friend, who became my friend, played the audio version of The Prince on the drive -- it didn't last long before he was howled down and asked to put on some music! Ha ha. It did sound very interesting from the little I heard.
* as an aside, he was an interesting driver. He got pulled over and responded, "Sorry...I was talking to my friends and didn't pay attention." [! - honesty if nothing else!]
I mentioned on the other thread that I got the 8-volume set of the complete Scarlet Pimpernel stories of Baroness Orczy. I am up to volume 3, which starts with Lord Tony's Wife, which is the fifth novel to feature the SP. I may be reading it for a while because it is in my "occasional" pile. I have a pile of books I read practically every day (my bedtime reading). I have a pile of weekday reading (my lunchtime reading during the work week). And then there is the third set that just get read on occasion when there is nothing on TV I want to watch or I am in a doctor's waiting room or whatever.
Fortunately, the Baroness' plots are never so convoluted that pauses in reading hurt. I believe they were originally written in magazine installments, so she frequently will reiterate the plot for the reader, and you generally can count on her, right about the three-quarter mark, to take a chapter to go over everything that has happened up to that point before we launch into the climax chapters. They are perfectly designed for occasional reading!
I loved TSP when I was a child. I think I had two books, never knew there were more. Rollicking reads, highly entertaining.
I enjoyed the first two Scarlet Pimpernel books as a child (all the school library had), then found a couple more in the county library system. Back in lockdown I had a look on Gutenberg and downloaded them to my kobo. Still got them on there, as something light to read when I need to unwind. I put the first few Oz books, Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass on it as well for much the same reason.
@Dafyd Genevieve Cogman was at EasterCon last year, and she was such an interesting speaker that I went out and binged on her Invisible Library series. Then I came up for air, and got the first of her Scarlet Pimpernel books, but I haven't read it yet - it's coming very close to the front of the queue, so I may pick that one up next. I adored the Baroness Orczy books, and the films, and even the 1950s TV series, but recently I came across an old paperback of Lord Tony's wife, and really couldn't settle to the archaic language.
Honestly when reading it at school aged 14 my sympathies were entirely with Edgar. But then as a bespectacled nerd I probably saw the world in a rather similar way.
Me too. To adapt what was said of Thomas and Jane Carlyle, it is a pity Catherine did not marry Heathcliff as then only two people would have been miserable.
I couldn't stand Heathcliff. No redeeming qualities at all. In fact I don't remember any really sympathetic characters in the whole book. Admittedly it's a long time since I read it.
In the last few years I have made my way through Ovid's Metamorphoses (in English translation), the Meditations of Aurelius (ditto) and Pilgrim's Progress. I would like to find the time to reread The Prince (seem apropos for modern politics).
I have never read Pilgrim's Progress. I feel like I should... I do love Lewis' Pilgrim's Regress, though.
Good to hear that people enjoy Guineveve Cogman's books. She was in the year above me at secondary school and seemed to have read *every* book in the school library ( back in the day when you literally "signed" books out of the library, so you could see who had them previously). So glad , and not surprised, that she managed to make a career from books.
Anne and Wentworth are favourites of mine; Persuasion is the best Jane Austen novel, imo.
I totally agree.
@Lamb Chopped There is a lovely Australian picture book about a nativity play called Wombat Divine. Wombat is determined to have a part in the nativity play, but for various reasons, too heavy, not big enough he isn't suitable and is really distressed, finally he gets to play the baby Jesus. When he asks how well he acted (he slept right through it) one of the other animals says, "You were divine, wombat. Simply divine."
Honestly when reading it at school aged 14 my sympathies were entirely with Edgar. But then as a bespectacled nerd I probably saw the world in a rather similar way.
Me too. To adapt what was said of Thomas and Jane Carlyle, it is a pity Catherine did not marry Heathcliff as then only two people would have been miserable.
I couldn't stand Heathcliff. No redeeming qualities at all. In fact I don't remember any really sympathetic characters in the whole book. Admittedly it's a long time since I read it.
In the last few years I have made my way through Ovid's Metamorphoses (in English translation), the Meditations of Aurelius (ditto) and Pilgrim's Progress. I would like to find the time to reread The Prince (seem apropos for modern politics).
I have never read Pilgrim's Progress. I feel like I should... I do love Lewis' Pilgrim's Regress, though.
I first read PP aged about 9 in a simplified version from the class bookshelf (minus all the Biblical citations and the sermonic discourses beginning 'Firstly, thou must abhor his turning thee out of the way because...') and found it so gripping I was reading it under the desk during lessons. I've read the full version - both parts - since of course. It has an irresistible mythic pull to it.
About nine I was, full of the teacher in Sunday School saying that the boy David was lucky in that his name had a story about it in the Bible. And my mother said that my name had a story in a book, too, older than the Bible, and she told me the name of it, and I went to the library and got a children's Odyssey out. Since when I have been reading many versions. I was shocked though, still in the children's library, when I came to find the awful truth about Odysseus' behaviour. There's my namesake getting the meaning of faithful wife, and there's him, bedhopping over the Mediterranean. From which I first deduced that men are weaker than women, and then that they could not refuse goddesses. (An Indian friend has told me that Arjun did, and was only punished by going around in women's clothes for year.)
I read the Iliad, but I never really enjoyed the Aeneid, which my mother directed me to. I felt Virgil didn't enjoy writing it. (Someone told me he didn't.) That's as old as I get. Bits of Gilgamesh, the Mahabharat on TV, and the odd Victorian children's books with morals at my grandparent's house.
(Currently waiting for a cinema in reach to show The Return. Looking forward to seeing what some reviewer said was the suitors being portrayed as "frat boys".
Comments
I couldn't stand Heathcliff. No redeeming qualities at all. In fact I don't remember any really sympathetic characters in the whole book. Admittedly it's a long time since I read it.
Oh, God bless. You actually made it through Golden Bough? What crime did you commit that that was your sentence?
I mentioned on the other thread that I got the 8-volume set of the complete Scarlet Pimpernel stories of Baroness Orczy. I am up to volume 3, which starts with Lord Tony's Wife, which is the fifth novel to feature the SP. I may be reading it for a while because it is in my "occasional" pile. I have a pile of books I read practically every day (my bedtime reading). I have a pile of weekday reading (my lunchtime reading during the work week). And then there is the third set that just get read on occasion when there is nothing on TV I want to watch or I am in a doctor's waiting room or whatever.
Fortunately, the Baroness' plots are never so convoluted that pauses in reading hurt. I believe they were originally written in magazine installments, so she frequently will reiterate the plot for the reader, and you generally can count on her, right about the three-quarter mark, to take a chapter to go over everything that has happened up to that point before we launch into the climax chapters. They are perfectly designed for occasional reading!
I loved TSP when I was a child. I think I had two books, never knew there were more. Rollicking reads, highly entertaining.
I first read Fraser in university, very tedious as course material but it gave me the taste for exploring every type of folklore and religious thought/observance. Just as tedious on the re-read four and a half decades later, but still so rich in detailing the common narratives we construct while here in our human suits.
AFF
* as an aside, he was an interesting driver. He got pulled over and responded, "Sorry...I was talking to my friends and didn't pay attention." [! - honesty if nothing else!]
I enjoyed the first two Scarlet Pimpernel books as a child (all the school library had), then found a couple more in the county library system. Back in lockdown I had a look on Gutenberg and downloaded them to my kobo. Still got them on there, as something light to read when I need to unwind. I put the first few Oz books, Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass on it as well for much the same reason.
Aw, but I like cats!
Oh, wrong Heathcliff... never mind!
I have never read Pilgrim's Progress. I feel like I should... I do love Lewis' Pilgrim's Regress, though.
I totally agree.
@Lamb Chopped There is a lovely Australian picture book about a nativity play called Wombat Divine. Wombat is determined to have a part in the nativity play, but for various reasons, too heavy, not big enough he isn't suitable and is really distressed, finally he gets to play the baby Jesus. When he asks how well he acted (he slept right through it) one of the other animals says, "You were divine, wombat. Simply divine."
It's one of my favourite Christmas stories.
I first read PP aged about 9 in a simplified version from the class bookshelf (minus all the Biblical citations and the sermonic discourses beginning 'Firstly, thou must abhor his turning thee out of the way because...') and found it so gripping I was reading it under the desk during lessons. I've read the full version - both parts - since of course. It has an irresistible mythic pull to it.
I read the Iliad, but I never really enjoyed the Aeneid, which my mother directed me to. I felt Virgil didn't enjoy writing it. (Someone told me he didn't.) That's as old as I get. Bits of Gilgamesh, the Mahabharat on TV, and the odd Victorian children's books with morals at my grandparent's house.
(Currently waiting for a cinema in reach to show The Return. Looking forward to seeing what some reviewer said was the suitors being portrayed as "frat boys".