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Joined: May 2005
Posts: 456
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addict
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 456 |
Quote:
...I don't read books in which I don't like the characters...
Don't bother with [A?] Catcher in the Rye by Salinger then. It is unnerving to read a story that creates the hope that the protagonist will be killed. 
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
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Well, I didn't hope he'd be killed, but I sure didn't like that book: if I want to be depressed I'll watch the news.
Based on the rx. above, I checked Cryptonomicon out of the library. I am on page 103 out of, I think, 916. I am having to force myself to keep going back to it. Maybe eventually something will happen; or maybe at least the story lines will converge somehow...
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Posts: 2,154
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,154 |
My Mom has vision problems so when I visit I often listen to books on tape with her. They are also great for long car rides or ironing. The odd thing is there are some authors that I like on tape but don't read in print though that is often dependant on the skill of the reader.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
Quote:
Books are different. You read them and you learn...or you don't learn. The learning, you see, is all that books contain.
I disagree. Literature is an art form with many facets, one of which is the simple pleasure of receiving a tale well-told. It need not justify itself with some practical or moral lesson, any more than Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" need impart some didactic lesson.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 427
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Posts: 427 |
Quote:
I don't read books in which I don't like the characters,
Hear hear... about fifteen years ago I had to stop myself from flinging Madame Bovary at the wall... I know you're thinking "Heresy!", but at that time I felt I could not put up with her whining and self-centredness any longer.
I have had the opportunity to read it again since and enjoyed it moderately with no flinging.
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Joined: May 2002
Posts: 1,529
veteran
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veteran
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 1,529 |
Quote:
Quote:
Books are different. You read them and you learn...or you don't learn. The learning, you see, is all that books contain.
I disagree. Literature is an art form with many facets, one of which is the simple pleasure of receiving a tale well-told. It need not justify itself with some practical or moral lesson, any more than Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" need impart some didactic lesson.
How superbly you spread the conventional wisdom, Alex Williams. Even I wish your nice romantic sentiment to be bounded by hard fact. But alas, Alex, you lose. Two minutes and sixteen seconds from now you will experience a beautiful moment of "Ah HA!". You can't help it; you are intellecually honest. My own joy, which is even greater, is in the teaching of a fundamental truth to a young grasshopper (so to speak) by a "koan" of my own invention which I call "concept grouping". Ready?
Look at the children playing, how they laugh and giggle. They are having fun. Like in all animals, play is serious business. Evolution has insured that children play in imitation of the tasks they will proform later by making learning pleasurable.
Living vicariously is learning. Each romantic novel is different from its ten thousand brothers.
If your eyes are open if your ears are working if your nose smells if your touch touches...you are learning.
Now say "Ah Ha!"
See, I told you that learning was fun. 
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
It's the tasks they will proform later that got me.
Aha! indeed.
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Joined: May 2002
Posts: 1,529
veteran
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veteran
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 1,529 |
Quote:
It's the tasks they will proform later that got me.
Aha! indeed.
Don't look Ethyl!
Faldage in his dotage is not a pretty sight
The man who once could plot great topos of human psychos now spots typos to get his petty "ah ha's".
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
Quote:
How superbly you spread the conventional wisdom, Alex Williams. Even I wish your nice romantic sentiment to be bounded by hard fact. But alas, Alex, you lose. Two minutes and sixteen seconds from now you will experience a beautiful moment of "Ah HA!". You can't help it; you are intellecually honest.
...Living vicariously is learning. Each romantic novel is different from its ten thousand brothers.
How nice of you to indulge my quaint, conventional thinking so patiently.
You have presented an argument that learning is one component of literature, even in the broader form of living vicariously through a novel's characters. You support your argument by making a comparison to children at play. However you do not successfully show that learning is all that a book contains.
I'm not saying that learning has no place in the appeal of books, and in fact I agree wholeheartedly that one learns a lot by living vicariously through fictional characters, but I don't think that is the only source of pleasure or quality in a book. There are elements of style (to borrow a phrase) that are particular to the art itself that may not convey any bit of information. A writer who has mastered the technical aspects of writing so they can write with a strong, clear voice is superior to one who has not. A piece of writing may convey the same information as another, but it is typically much more of a pleasure to read one written by Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain or Jane Austen than one written by Tom Clancy, Jeff Foxworthy or Jessica Trapp.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
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Quote:
Faldage in his dotage
But "proform"" is such an interesting word. I'm still grappling with its meaning.
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