Bitching about books
15/07/2003 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaThere has been some fascinating reviews of the Preciousssss. Some by die hard fans who would never criticize the Great White Witch no matter what she wrote, others not so impressed
http://books.guardian.co.uk/harrypotter/story/0,10761,986971,00.html (for some strange reason the link will not work with all the funny brackets and stuff)
or downright dismissive. Izzie does not care what people think, assuming of course they have actually READ the Potter stuff. But exceptionally annoying are the smug snooty snobs like A S Byatt who seems to consider such stuff beneath
her
And of course the usual comments, oh they are fun or popular or ...but are they really literature?
So Iz has been thinking... what does a book need to get on my reserve list
1 - Firstly there must be a damn good unputdownable story. A book that makes you stay up past midnight, that tempts you to ring in sick at work in order to find precious reading time. Lord of the Rings has a wonderful story...especially the BBC Radio version, but I literally had to force myself to read it. I never did get past the first two chapters. "You should read it because it is 'good for you'" is simply not enough justification for ickle Izzie to waste valuable reading time. So many books out there and so little reading time. Charles Dickens has some wonderful stories but his writing style annoys me to such an extent that I never got past the first page of anything except "Great Expectations" and only because it was required reading for an English exam. One day I will try read " A Christmas Carol" as it sounds like it has all Izzie's favorite story ingredients.
2 - The story requires convincing characters that you can actually care about. Characters that get up to stuff when you have finished the last page. Characters that make you grab for the box of Kleenex.
3 - It is not essential but highly desirable that the story is funny. That gets lots of Roald Dahl books on the list.
4 - It must change your life or the way you look at the world (of course doing both gets triple brownie points) Once I read "Animal Farm" and "1984" the world never quite looked the same again. D R Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach" and "Metamagical Themas" also introduced Iz into a most amazing magical world (and towards the path of the Green Spiral)
5 - It must be a story that you can read again and more importantly that you would want to read again. And each time you read it you find something that you did not see before. Most detective and mystery novels usually have little left after finding out who done it and how the author managed to lead you totally up the wrong path. In other words, I rarely read Agatha Christie's and similar genre books more than twice. Mr Hofstadter's short story
Contracrostipunctus
has to be number one on this criteria.
6 - Poetical language and imagery are also a desirable feature. Some things are meant to be heard not seen... Particularly the likes of James Joyce, W B Yeats and T S Elliot.(and dare I speak its name? Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf) However while I remain incredibly impressed by the beauty of their language and imagery,I still hardly had a clue what they were talking about. Shakespeare is somewhat more accessible if performed by good actors. Once went to see "Merchant of Venice" knowing nothing but the general plot. I was astonished and amazed how funny it was.
And a wonderful story too. Same too for Ian McKellar's amazingly wicked Richard the Third.
There are some books that Izzie gives a score of 5/6....only a very small handful. And none of them are written by A S Byatt or Harold Bloom. One of my all time favorites is "The man born to be king" by Dorothy L Sayers and the other five...well 30 silver sickles for the best guess ;)
http://books.guardian.co.uk/harrypotter/story/0,10761,986971,00.html (for some strange reason the link will not work with all the funny brackets and stuff)
or downright dismissive. Izzie does not care what people think, assuming of course they have actually READ the Potter stuff. But exceptionally annoying are the smug snooty snobs like A S Byatt who seems to consider such stuff beneath
her
And of course the usual comments, oh they are fun or popular or ...but are they really literature?
So Iz has been thinking... what does a book need to get on my reserve list
1 - Firstly there must be a damn good unputdownable story. A book that makes you stay up past midnight, that tempts you to ring in sick at work in order to find precious reading time. Lord of the Rings has a wonderful story...especially the BBC Radio version, but I literally had to force myself to read it. I never did get past the first two chapters. "You should read it because it is 'good for you'" is simply not enough justification for ickle Izzie to waste valuable reading time. So many books out there and so little reading time. Charles Dickens has some wonderful stories but his writing style annoys me to such an extent that I never got past the first page of anything except "Great Expectations" and only because it was required reading for an English exam. One day I will try read " A Christmas Carol" as it sounds like it has all Izzie's favorite story ingredients.
2 - The story requires convincing characters that you can actually care about. Characters that get up to stuff when you have finished the last page. Characters that make you grab for the box of Kleenex.
3 - It is not essential but highly desirable that the story is funny. That gets lots of Roald Dahl books on the list.
4 - It must change your life or the way you look at the world (of course doing both gets triple brownie points) Once I read "Animal Farm" and "1984" the world never quite looked the same again. D R Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach" and "Metamagical Themas" also introduced Iz into a most amazing magical world (and towards the path of the Green Spiral)
5 - It must be a story that you can read again and more importantly that you would want to read again. And each time you read it you find something that you did not see before. Most detective and mystery novels usually have little left after finding out who done it and how the author managed to lead you totally up the wrong path. In other words, I rarely read Agatha Christie's and similar genre books more than twice. Mr Hofstadter's short story
Contracrostipunctus
has to be number one on this criteria.
6 - Poetical language and imagery are also a desirable feature. Some things are meant to be heard not seen... Particularly the likes of James Joyce, W B Yeats and T S Elliot.(and dare I speak its name? Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf) However while I remain incredibly impressed by the beauty of their language and imagery,I still hardly had a clue what they were talking about. Shakespeare is somewhat more accessible if performed by good actors. Once went to see "Merchant of Venice" knowing nothing but the general plot. I was astonished and amazed how funny it was.
And a wonderful story too. Same too for Ian McKellar's amazingly wicked Richard the Third.
There are some books that Izzie gives a score of 5/6....only a very small handful. And none of them are written by A S Byatt or Harold Bloom. One of my all time favorites is "The man born to be king" by Dorothy L Sayers and the other five...well 30 silver sickles for the best guess ;)
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-15 10:32 am (UTC)Books I like tend to have these characteristics :
1. Intellectual
2. Liberal doses of humour (even if in the form of nasty intellectual and obscure puns)
3. Beautiful passages of writing
4. They reveal something about yourself - whether it is capturing the way you think (Ulysses), the way you perceive things, or simply facts of life....
But most of all, they make you think.