Saturday, December 10, 2005
Books Books Books
I'm finishing up Tess of the D'ubervilles which Dr. Sexson loaned me. MMM... it's nice and sad. Perfect for the holidays. I'll post about it once I'm finished(it's my study break).
I'm here in the library looking for a book I need to write a scary paper and something which Valerie mentioned to me surfaced from my subconcious. She said "did you know the library only has one copy of Paradise Lost?" Well, here's a link to that. Look at how many books exist discussing Paradise Lost and compare that to the the number of actual copies. Does this reflect our culture? How nice and sad...
Click This
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
I understand why this book is found on the MSU top 100. I also see that anyone who rewrites this story with modern context will find their book replacing this one. It is outdated, out of fassion, antiqueted. I find most of the language difficult, repellent and gangly. For several characters, this difficult language was intended as a mark against their intellegence. But the severity of the interference with my reading was so great I cannot excuse the language barrier. There are a few good quotes and several nice parallels among the themes. I imagine it would be a good book for group discussion.
The themes about love and loss, life and sin, have unexpected depth. I enjoyed those. I think men especially must read this book as it gives several perspectives on sex which, today, are not commonly discussed. Skip the first 80 or 90 pages as needed or read only the first sentence of each paragraph until you find the book interesting. It will probably become interesting once Angel shows up(that's when i found it interesting). After reading the book, look at how the text is ballanced. I found it quite interesting to compare in the sense of Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 and see how much emphasis is put into each of them. Is this called the mathematics of a novel? Anyway, I thought it nice.
I'm here in the library looking for a book I need to write a scary paper and something which Valerie mentioned to me surfaced from my subconcious. She said "did you know the library only has one copy of Paradise Lost?" Well, here's a link to that. Look at how many books exist discussing Paradise Lost and compare that to the the number of actual copies. Does this reflect our culture? How nice and sad...
Click This
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
I understand why this book is found on the MSU top 100. I also see that anyone who rewrites this story with modern context will find their book replacing this one. It is outdated, out of fassion, antiqueted. I find most of the language difficult, repellent and gangly. For several characters, this difficult language was intended as a mark against their intellegence. But the severity of the interference with my reading was so great I cannot excuse the language barrier. There are a few good quotes and several nice parallels among the themes. I imagine it would be a good book for group discussion.
The themes about love and loss, life and sin, have unexpected depth. I enjoyed those. I think men especially must read this book as it gives several perspectives on sex which, today, are not commonly discussed. Skip the first 80 or 90 pages as needed or read only the first sentence of each paragraph until you find the book interesting. It will probably become interesting once Angel shows up(that's when i found it interesting). After reading the book, look at how the text is ballanced. I found it quite interesting to compare in the sense of Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 and see how much emphasis is put into each of them. Is this called the mathematics of a novel? Anyway, I thought it nice.
# posted by Mick @ 4:01 PM 
