Who haven't you read?

D

DannyL

Wild Horses
I read The Brothers Karamazov over summer I think two or three years ago and was pleased to learn it's as good as everyone says it is.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
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.
 
D

DannyL

Wild Horses
Reading Orlando Figes' massive tome atm is putting all these people in context for me. it's littered with references to Gogol, Tolstoy etc and what the characters mean in a Russian context.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
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.
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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.
 
version

version

Well-known member
I don't really think there's anything you absolutely need to read but for the sake of discussion I'll say Borges.
 
version

version

Well-known member
I think he's the only writer I've come across where the ideas are so good that the prose almost doesn't matter whereas someone like PKD I find a slog despite finding what he's talking about interesting.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
I think he's the only writer I've come across where the ideas are so good that the prose almost doesn't matter
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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.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
IdleRich said:
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.
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Same. Also it’s recognising that your unconscious bias may have denied you some sources of insight, pleasure whatever.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
19th century France is my blindspot. Proust, Hugo, Baudelaire.
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It wouldn't be my strong suit either for some reason.
Although looking at the list on Wikipedia there are quite a few on there I have read. But yeah there are gaps.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Same. Also it’s recognising that your unconscious bias may have denied you some sources of insight, pleasure whatever
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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.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Also, probably if you were gonna make a list of those that can't be dodged surely Don Quixote would be on there.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Princess of Cleves maybe

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.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Princesse_de_Clèves
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
version said:
It's just serviceable, imo. It reads like an instruction manual which is fine for the stuff he writes.
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Unless you both speak/read Spanish I should imagine neither of you knows what his prose is like? Not to be facetious but talking about a writer's prose style in translation is tricky. (Granted that something of that style is preserved in translation.)
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Imagine having to read Shakespeare in German or whatever. No doubt there are brilliant translations but you could never really replicate that, perhaps only a German genius of the order of Shakespeare could do it.

Which reminds me - never, under any circumstances, read "Wilhelm Meister" by Goethe. Or at least, don't read it in English. It's ted-i-ous.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
It is frustrating, not being able to read these great authors in their native tongue. Particularly someone like Flaubert, where the style is supposedly so much the point.

Not that I think this should stop anyone reading them in translation. So much of style IS "content", after all.
 
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