Yeeees.... but a few years ago I realised most books I'd read were by men and I was missing out on some perspective so I wanted to change that.I don't feel obliged to read books by women just because they are women. Tokenistic bookshelf. Merit badges. I don't see the point.
I like Borges' prose though. It tends towards the simple but it's precise and clear and has a kind of beauty in that neatness I think.I think he's the only writer I've come across where the ideas are so good that the prose almost doesn't matter
Yeeees.... but a few years ago I realised most books I'd read were by men and I was missing out on some perspective so I wanted to change that.
It wouldn't be my strong suit either for some reason.19th century France is my blindspot. Proust, Hugo, Baudelaire.
Exactly, it's not about quotas but about sometimes thinking "maybe I can gain something from this book" and reading it for that reason. There is nothing wrong with picking the first thing that looks interesting to you or the nearest one on the shelf but maybe doing that absolutely all of the time means that you will miss out. Same for other languages. I know I've read a lot of books that were written in English and quite a few that were translated from French or Russian or even Spanish... but after that the number from other languages goes down and every now and again I make a conscious effort to rectify that and I don't think it's tokenism.Same. Also it’s recognising that your unconscious bias may have denied you some sources of insight, pleasure whatever
La Princesse de Clèves is a French novel which was published anonymously in March 1678. It is regarded by many as the beginning of the modern tradition of the psychological novel, and as a great classic work. Its author is generally held to be Madame de La Fayette.
The action takes place between October 1558 and November 1559 at the royal court of Henry II of France. The novel recreates that era with remarkable precision. Nearly every character—though not the heroine—is a historical figure. Events and intrigues unfold with great faithfulness to documentary record.
With Tolstoy, there are a couple of shorter works by him which are well worth reading: The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Hadjit Murat. Again, this is a good way of understanding why Anna Karenina and even War and Peace might be worth reading.
It's just serviceable, imo. It reads like an instruction manual which is fine for the stuff he writes.