Today ends the first #NaNoReMo. This month we congregated on Twitter and blogs to read those classic books we’ve been putting off. If you’re like me then you’re perpetually discovering additional vacancies in your canon. My entry was the suitably famous Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.
My reading is a tale of hubris. It began with me asking a ladyfriend if I should, and her saying I’d hate it, and me saying I was more open-minded than that. So I asked my readers if I should read this or Mikhael Bulgakov’s Master & Margarita. They responded, generally, that Pride & Prejudice was great but that I’d hate it, and I responded that I was more open-minded than that.
Three hundred pages of telling an English classic to “Shut up” later, I’m still trying to blame others. I’ve been told that this is great literature and that I’m crass; that this is ChickLit and I’m unfair; that Austen was a rebel and that I’m a chauvinist; and that I can sleep on the sofa. If you’re clever enough, you can still troll me on Twitter about this book. Theresa Sanchez, I’m looking at you.
In part I read it to prove that I can enjoy Romances. There are even photos somewhere of me getting very emotional at the end of a movie that I’m not going to publicly admit I watched. Mark Twain’s Adam and Eve, Jonathan Swift’s Celia, and my disturbing soft spot for Joker and Harley. The point is, I’m not made of stone. Jane Austen’s narrative progress was. I even made up for the incident by jumping through Ursula K. LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea last week, which is an utter delight.
So what did you learn from your classic? Did you finish it? You’ve still got a few hours.
Edit: and fine, if you guess the movie in the Comments, I’ll admit it.
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If it makes you feel any better, i've never been accused of being a chauvinist, crass or a man and I still had serious issues with it (I don't want to say I hated it, but I certainly didn't enjoy it).
ReplyDeleteAnd I think Joker and Harley's romance is far more fulfilling. (BTW, did you get the visual history of the Joker? I got that for Dave for his birthday, he was pretty excited about it.)
No, though that book sounds much more in my comfort zone. How sizable was it?
DeleteI loved "Pride and Prejudice", and plan to re-read it again soon to renew that love.
ReplyDeleteStill working on Gravity's Rainbow. It's marvelous, a fantastically funny and inventive book, but it's 700 pages of high-density prose. Some books you can hoover down a paragraph or even a page at a time. This one forces you to consider every single line, even word by word. It's like climbing a really rough trail - exhilarating, but you can only do a mile at a time before having to stop and rest.
That makes my eventual reading more intimidating, as The Crying of Lot 49 was so compulsive a read and Gravity's Rainbow is so much longer. Still looking forward to this.
DeleteI enjoyed P&P also, but I liked 'Persuasion' by Austen better. I think examining every line is the point. AFter all, the society is so stiffled (by today's standards anyway) that the heroine's spend most of their time doing exactly that- trying to find the meaning in every look and offhand remark.
DeleteA couple friends have told me Austen began to master her craft in Persuasion. I'm looking at it as the second book of hers I might try.
DeleteHi. I just popped in from Theresa's blog.
DeleteGravity's Rainbow is well worth reading (and it is better than The Crying of Lot 49, IMHO), but I've never held it in as high esteem as some do. I think Mason & Dixon is his masterpiece (it's certainly his most virtuosic use of the English language), and I'm crazy about Inherent Vice (probably literally: I read it over and over for about five months, posted endlessly about it on my blog, etc.). If you can't get through GR (and most people have to try a few times before they get momentum going), try Inherent Vice.
You should've read the zombie version.
ReplyDeleteAnd the movie you are embarrassed you cried at is:
Titanic. Bride Wars. Twilight. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
Top movie that makes me cry: The Cure (1995)
Nice tries, Matt, but I haven't even sat through any of those flicks in their entirety. What made you cry about The Cure?
DeleteHa... yeah, I bet you'd enjoy the zombie version. Almost same text in many areas with strikingly different situations! It was hilarious.
DeleteI kept telling him to read the zombie one! It was hilarious and the characters had much more deserving ends.
DeleteI read Jane Eyre and enjoyed it. It's not on my list of favorite classics (like Pride & Prejudice is), but I'd likely reread it at some point in the future and I'm glad I finally took the time to read it in the first place.
ReplyDeleteMy guess on the movie: The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, Message in a Bottle, or any other Nicholas Sparks novel turned movie...I know he's secretly your favorite writer ever.
I don't know if I've ever read Sparks. Lucky me, none of these movies made me weepy.
DeleteI really enjoyed 'Hound of the Baskervilles' - my first intro to Sherlock Holmes lit. Now that I know I like Doyle's style, I'm sure I'll read more of it in the future.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for the great idea of reading a classic this month. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
Oh what's a little teasing between friends? :D The closest I got to a classic was watching Jane Eyre on TV the other night. I think I'd like to give the book a try now.
ReplyDeleteAlso out of curiosity. Are there any books featuring a love story you particularly enjoyed, that were written by women?
That's an interesting question, TS. I don't tend to compartmentalize books that way, so it's difficult to think of more than one immediately. Gail Simone's Secret Six had a surprising and excellent love plotline (actually two of them, though the latter was demented) - though since it's sequential art, some readers might dismiss it.
DeleteI agree completely about Simone's Secret Six. I'm still angry that it was cancelled (though she probably couldn't have got away with a three-way lesbian marriage if the book hadn't been over).
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