I love the opening of One Hundred Years of Solitude! That book is full of inimitable prose. One of my favourite openings is from Lolita: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."
I was just to say the same! 100 Years in Solitude!: "Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo".
@@cerdic6586 ''Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. ''
A couple of humorous opening lines - "In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." (from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams) "It was the day my grandmother exploded." (from The Crow Road by Iain Banks)
Great video! It was great to hear your thoughts on these opening lines. I've been eyeing Samuel Beckett's trilogy recently, and hearing that first line again has made me want to bump it up in priority (although I did promise myself I'd read Don Quixote this year...). Something that only occurred to me after this video was the coincidence of #6 being 'Anna Karenina', and #5 being 'Lolita', because I remember it being quite odd that Nabokov (who is no stranger to writing epic opening lines) decided to start 'Ada, or Ardor' with the opening line of 'Anna Karenina'. If you haven't already read it, 'Ada, or Ardor' might be of interest to your studies because Nabokov had been working on an essay called 'The Texture of Time' that ended up becoming one of the chapters. Keep up the great work!
Your voice is so relaxing! I've always wanted to start a booktube channel myself but never knew the format I preferred but after seeing this you've inspired me!
This is so delightful, I wish you could practice whole chapters of some of your assignments on us with the text next too! This is helping rebalance my brain in these worst of times! I feel you about Jane Austen, my mother in law would travel all over to attend JA society meetings, so this and the fact that I didn’t play bridge were huge demerits! 😅 your voice is lovely,
Do read all of Ulysses if you can. It's challenging, to be sure, but absolutely transporting. And the ending is one of the most satisfying in all literature. I envy you just starting out with Faulkner.
Thank you for the video. My favourite from the list is Charles Dicken's opening! One that I miss in the list is Milan's Kundera Unbearable Lightness of Being: "The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum!"
Two of my favorite opening lines: "A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture." Barbara Kingsolver, "Flight Behavior" "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me." Anthony Burgess, "Earthly Powers". Both of these are excellent novels and I would even say that "Earthly Powers" is one of the great works of the 20th century, although unfortunately much under appreciated.
As a native Spanish speaker, I had never read the first line of Don Quixote in English, and I must say, in comparison to the original, the translation is quite dry. The prose in Spanish is quite rhythmical and lends itself to be read aloud for extra fun. I’m glad to see you got your hands in a Spanish version 😊
"I, Claudius" by Robert Graves: “I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot", or "That Claudius", or "Claudius the Stammerer", or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius"
“…without you have read a book by the name of..” is Huckleberry Finn’s way of saying “UNLESS you have read a book…” The Southern dialect sometimes needs translating. 😄
Dickens’ quote is hands down the best. It reminds us that we are in a permanent state of crisis and possibility as part of the human condition and that we are always faced with making a decision and a judgment. We cannot escape choice and evaluation. We are always faced with a turning point and we must constantly decide which path to follow and how we will judge everything. It is not relativism but highlighting the changing nature of the state of things and difference in perspective and experience. This permeant state of crisis is the ever changing and also unchanging points of meaning and culture as we go through time and place. Crisis is different from emergencies, disasters, and catastrophes. Crisis is simply the turning points of things and new possibilities, whether good or ill.
While 100 Yrs of Solitude is wonderful, I personally found his Autumn of the Patricarch even more compelling... (I'm so relieved that at least one first line is from LatinAm lit!!!) But I think my most fav book of all is Faulkner's Sound and the Fury; I was lost for the first 50 pgs before I figured out "who" was narrating! I look fwd to hearing what you think of it when you read it in class. This was a lovely vid, as usual. Thanx
I hope you give Quixote a chance. It's an amazing novel. On one level, a comedy, but also a harsh criticism of Spain at the time, a great early philosophical work, and the first work of meta fiction. Also, I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a very funny take on the novel, and I thought the whole time how boring the book would be without the zombies. haha!
Thank you. It turned out that I have read the majority of the books mentioned, and recognised about the same number of first lines - but the sets are not identical. In particular I've never read the Bulwer-Lytton nor encountered anyone who has, but "It was a dark and stormy night ..." is a standing joke (in England, at least) and celebrated as probably the worst opening line ever. On Jane Austen, my advice is to cultivate a cynical attitude and keep an eye on the money: most of the events are driven by issues of social mobility, one way or another. She is, I think, almost completely unromantic, contrary to popular perception, and merciless in exposing the shortcomings of her heroines and villains alike. I adore her, obviously. :-)
In the comic strip _Peanuts,_ whenever the beagle Snoopy sat down at his typewriter on top of his doghouse to write a story, it always began "It was a dark and stormy night." I don't think that line is all that bad. However, the rest of the opening is awful, and I think this line gets its bad reputation by being associated with it.
When I read Austen, I like to think about what kind of social commentary she's making through characterization, or what the characters' "gossip" reveals about how she views society. She frequently makes use of bumbling, silly clergymen (what does that say about how she views religion, when her own father was a clergymen? maybe it's not actually negative at all, but endearing?). What I love about Austen is that her novels are so formulaic in broad strokes: you know it's going to end in a marriage between the main character and one of the male characters, but somehow we keep coming back for more in spite of knowing how things will probably end up. I think the cinematic adaptations tend to me more efficient storytelling (Emma Thompson's adaptation of Sense & Sensibility preserved Austen's humor but edited out scenes and tightened things up in ways I think Austen would have approved of), but the books are a delight to read if you sort of view them as satirical representations of English society.
For Pride & Prejudice, watching the BBC 6 hour miniseries first and then reading the book makes the book flash by because you have voices and faces to put to almost every character. It's a faithful adaptation in the best way!
When I’ve heard some authors speak about Jane Austen, they all highlight her exceptional ability to structure a novel. I’m sure that’s true. I enjoyed them as a young adult but don’t think I would have patience with them now.
I know this is off your radar, but machado de Assis' posthume memoirs of Brás cubas "To the worm who first gnawed on the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with fond remembrance these Posthumous Memoirs" he's the most celebrated Brazilian writer, you should check him someday
I'm surprised the top 30 didn't include: "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." -from The Go-Between, by L P Hartley. (I looked at the original list -and it comes in at no. 78.)
I agree, particularly when some of the preferred examples are over-wieldy. A good opening line should be pithy and memorable and not a long ramble. That does not mean, I hasten to add that I think much of their number one choice, which is certainly pithy but is attached to a novel that is anything but, being overly verbose and baggy with far more information about whales or whaling than we need to know, written as a sort of nineteenth century whaling manual. Whether that is the character Ishmael or Melville in those sections its almost like being accosted at a party by a bore who backs you into a corner and then proceeds to ear bash you on his pet subject. The Go-Between underrated, Moby Dick overrated.
The opening line for Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton I suspect was included just because it's become really iconic, because Bulwer-Lytton has become infamous for being one of the most notoriously over-wordy and purple prose-esque writers to ever live. He was hailed as a genius in his day and nowadays people don't even find him readable let alone great literature. The "dark and stormy night" opening has become a bit of a tagline for awful pretentious purple writing, so I suspect it was simply included for how famous it's become. In fact, there's even a contest called something like "The Bulwer-Lytton Prize for Fiction" dedicated to coming up with the worst opening sentence for a novel. Check it out, it's tremendous fun.
"Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself but mankind wasn't always so lucky." Who could resist the first line of "The Sirens Of Titan" by Kurt Vonnegut?
Jane Austen's books are mainly about how we are as people and interact day to day. She highlights the awkwardness of conversation and manages to keep it relatable to the reader. This certainly isn't for everyone of course because it probably does seem boring if you aren't interested in the characters themselves. I'm an avid Austen fan just because she has a remarkable way of writing in a very realistic sense. It feels quite modern at times and I'm always fascinated by it. I'm a huge history nerd and the regency era is one of my favorites to study so its no shock that I prefer her to more modern literature at times. And honestly Pride and Prejudice isn't considered her best by all fans its definitely her most popular but she had other books I prefer like Persuasion or Emma. Hope you give her another try one day but if you don't I don't blame you! Also, I find listening to an audiobook along with it very helpful because sometimes in older literature it's hard for me at least to hear tone lol
Some favourite first lines here. My favourite of the bunch was Kafka's "The Trial". But I do have one little gripe. Not sure if it's a translation issue but the Camus quote is "Aujourd'hui Mama est morte (mother died today)." So please no "my" in there. This is important because the speaker actually has no real relationship to to his mother and always refers to his as just mother.
Not "My mother died..." but "Mother (proper pronoun) died today." The latter, as Camus wrote it, despite its specificity seems somehow less intimate to me than the former. Here I go editing: David Copperfield is a book so good that I read only a little at a time (like taking sips of water crossing the desert). Faulkner is perhaps the most profound novelist I've read but this opinion is based on having read almost everything by him. As with Proust it's the ouevre complète that counts with WF, like looking at the world through God's eyes-or maybe Satan's.... Nudder edit: Murphy is a great introduction to Samuel Beckett, perhaps his most decadent prose, all of which is GREAT, and which I much prefer to his theater albeit which is also really good. Kafka is without peer. Huckleberry Finn is also one of the greatest books in American vernacular, exciting and full of pathos. Miss Lonelyharts, which I have right here, is devastatingly sad and pathetic (it's only 50 pages). Finnegan's Wake, if you read it...well, its not a story, poem or novel in any conventional sense, truly unique, shamanic, panlingual.
I can't help you with Jane Austen; I find her over-esteemed. I think her books are very reassuring to people because of their wit and intelligence, and because there's no apocalyptic suffering to be seen. One can't of course discount the very many literary authorities who rate Austen very highly, so in all probably you and I are both missing something. I've read only two (P & P and S & S), but they haven't left me keen to read more, except perhaps for Persuasion, generally held to be something a little different, a little deeper.
It's a shame Henry Miller is considered too controversial or something to ever show up on any literary lists but his writing is beautiful and humorous and engaging. The opening lines to Tropic of Cancer are great: "I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead."
I felt the same way reading Northanger Abbey. The characters were too immature for my taste and as you said gossipy. It's not quite the drama that subdues my attention and locks me in to a novel.
"Call me Ishmael." is just so powerful once you get why Melville opens Moby-Dick with just these three little words. After I finished the novel, I finally understood how much meaning there is within that short sentence. When it comes to Austen, I did have a hard time getting into her too. I read her Persuasion recently, and that's supposed to be her most mature and reflective work, and it comes off that way. Her style is often very dry and about implication and irony rather than direct emotions. With her work, I almost have more fun thinking about the subtleties and intricacies rather than actually reading it. It can be quite dull at times, especially when there's lots of exposition about characters you simply do not care about, but her craft is undeniably quite good.
Agree ❤ but just a note on the one with Keira knightly in it for pride and prejudice some scenes differ from the book or are left out entirely . I’ve heard if you want a more true to story version the bbc television series is meant to be the closest but I haven’t managed to get my hands on it . Maybe you will have better luck . It will be hard not to fall in love with Mr Darcy by the end so definitely stick with it . Ps love your videos and your voice is like ASMR 😂❤
Who said they are best and why. For instance 'The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed' Stephen Kings Gunslinger is better than most of them on there to me, certainly half.
I feel Austen generally to be a representative comment on the constrained, almost rebellious yet tamed by family in society, feminist outpourings of a Woman within the context of her time.
We must look beyond, into the subtext, to see what her characters cannot say but are saying mutely so loudly. Her Women can appear to be free and easy whilst being still tempered by expectation, and for the subtext to this read : I am doing what I can, not what I am expected to do, while also even that which I am expected to be or do is all that I can be. The characters are very locked into the mores which govern and surround in their context in time.
I, personally at least, reckon we get lost with Austen because everything that could be Feminist about her reduces itself, within these constraints of time and fashionable society context, to become the merely Feminine?
![“อาร์ต พศุตม์” เกือบเอี่ยวทุกคดีดัง เอ๊ะไว้ก่อน ไม่มีอะไรได้มาง่ายๆ | แฉ 16 ต.ค. 67 [2/3] | GMM25](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0Gx-0-kUBv8/mqdefault.jpg)
I love the opening of One Hundred Years of Solitude! That book is full of inimitable prose. One of my favourite openings is from Lolita: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."
I was just to say the same! 100 Years in Solitude!: "Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo".
@@holyfreak8 Nice. I hope to someday be able to know enough Spanish to properly understand that.
@@cerdic6586 ''Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. ''
You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
A couple of humorous opening lines -
"In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
(from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams)
"It was the day my grandmother exploded."
(from The Crow Road by Iain Banks)
Fantastic!
Great video! It was great to hear your thoughts on these opening lines. I've been eyeing Samuel Beckett's trilogy recently, and hearing that first line again has made me want to bump it up in priority (although I did promise myself I'd read Don Quixote this year...).
Something that only occurred to me after this video was the coincidence of #6 being 'Anna Karenina', and #5 being 'Lolita', because I remember it being quite odd that Nabokov (who is no stranger to writing epic opening lines) decided to start 'Ada, or Ardor' with the opening line of 'Anna Karenina'. If you haven't already read it, 'Ada, or Ardor' might be of interest to your studies because Nabokov had been working on an essay called 'The Texture of Time' that ended up becoming one of the chapters.
Keep up the great work!
Your voice is so relaxing! I've always wanted to start a booktube channel myself but never knew the format I preferred but after seeing this you've inspired me!
I'm so glad to hear it. Do it! :-)
This is so delightful, I wish you could practice whole chapters of some of your assignments on us with the text next too! This is helping rebalance my brain in these worst of times! I feel you about Jane Austen, my mother in law would travel all over to attend JA society meetings, so this and the fact that I didn’t play bridge were huge demerits! 😅 your voice is lovely,
Do read all of Ulysses if you can. It's challenging, to be sure, but absolutely transporting. And the ending is one of the most satisfying in all literature. I envy you just starting out with Faulkner.
I will have to as I'm studying literature. It's only a matter of time :D
Thank you for the video.
My favourite from the list is Charles Dicken's opening! One that I miss in the list is Milan's Kundera Unbearable Lightness of Being:
"The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum!"
Two of my favorite opening lines:
"A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture." Barbara Kingsolver, "Flight Behavior"
"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me." Anthony Burgess, "Earthly Powers".
Both of these are excellent novels and I would even say that "Earthly Powers" is one of the great works of the 20th century, although unfortunately much under appreciated.
Heres mine “today father died or is it tomorrow?” Cheers Albert Catmouse from the Mercians.
As a native Spanish speaker, I had never read the first line of Don Quixote in English, and I must say, in comparison to the original, the translation is quite dry. The prose in Spanish is quite rhythmical and lends itself to be read aloud for extra fun. I’m glad to see you got your hands in a Spanish version 😊
"I, Claudius" by Robert Graves: “I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot", or "That Claudius", or "Claudius the Stammerer", or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius"
"It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future."
“…without you have read a book by the name of..” is Huckleberry Finn’s way of saying “UNLESS you have read a book…” The Southern dialect sometimes needs translating. 😄
Dickens’ quote is hands down the best. It reminds us that we are in a permanent state of crisis and possibility as part of the human condition and that we are always faced with making a decision and a judgment. We cannot escape choice and evaluation. We are always faced with a turning point and we must constantly decide which path to follow and how we will judge everything. It is not relativism but highlighting the changing nature of the state of things and difference in perspective and experience. This permeant state of crisis is the ever changing and also unchanging points of meaning and culture as we go through time and place. Crisis is different from emergencies, disasters, and catastrophes. Crisis is simply the turning points of things and new possibilities, whether good or ill.
While 100 Yrs of Solitude is wonderful, I personally found his Autumn of the Patricarch even more compelling... (I'm so relieved that at least one first line is from LatinAm lit!!!)
But I think my most fav book of all is Faulkner's Sound and the Fury; I was lost for the first 50 pgs before I figured out "who" was narrating! I look fwd to hearing what you think of it when you read it in class.
This was a lovely vid, as usual. Thanx
One of my favourite first lines is from The Shining: “Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.”
:D Love it
This reminds me of the first chapter of Franz Werfel's Stern des Ungeborenen, which you might find amusing.
I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte.
I hope you give Quixote a chance. It's an amazing novel. On one level, a comedy, but also a harsh criticism of Spain at the time, a great early philosophical work, and the first work of meta fiction. Also, I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a very funny take on the novel, and I thought the whole time how boring the book would be without the zombies. haha!
Just commenting to say that I am not a Jane Austin fan either. I have tried many many many times. I quite enjoyed Persuasion but not hugely.
Thank you. It turned out that I have read the majority of the books mentioned, and recognised about the same number of first lines - but the sets are not identical. In particular I've never read the Bulwer-Lytton nor encountered anyone who has, but "It was a dark and stormy night ..." is a standing joke (in England, at least) and celebrated as probably the worst opening line ever.
On Jane Austen, my advice is to cultivate a cynical attitude and keep an eye on the money: most of the events are driven by issues of social mobility, one way or another. She is, I think, almost completely unromantic, contrary to popular perception, and merciless in exposing the shortcomings of her heroines and villains alike. I adore her, obviously. :-)
Thank you 🙏
In the comic strip _Peanuts,_ whenever the beagle Snoopy sat down at his typewriter on top of his doghouse to write a story, it always began "It was a dark and stormy night."
I don't think that line is all that bad. However, the rest of the opening is awful, and I think this line gets its bad reputation by being associated with it.
When I read Austen, I like to think about what kind of social commentary she's making through characterization, or what the characters' "gossip" reveals about how she views society. She frequently makes use of bumbling, silly clergymen (what does that say about how she views religion, when her own father was a clergymen? maybe it's not actually negative at all, but endearing?). What I love about Austen is that her novels are so formulaic in broad strokes: you know it's going to end in a marriage between the main character and one of the male characters, but somehow we keep coming back for more in spite of knowing how things will probably end up. I think the cinematic adaptations tend to me more efficient storytelling (Emma Thompson's adaptation of Sense & Sensibility preserved Austen's humor but edited out scenes and tightened things up in ways I think Austen would have approved of), but the books are a delight to read if you sort of view them as satirical representations of English society.
For Pride & Prejudice, watching the BBC 6 hour miniseries first and then reading the book makes the book flash by because you have voices and faces to put to almost every character. It's a faithful adaptation in the best way!
Thank you for this ❤
When I’ve heard some authors speak about Jane Austen, they all highlight her exceptional ability to structure a novel. I’m sure that’s true. I enjoyed them as a young adult but don’t think I would have patience with them now.
I know this is off your radar, but machado de Assis' posthume memoirs of Brás cubas "To the worm who first gnawed on the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with fond remembrance these Posthumous Memoirs" he's the most celebrated Brazilian writer, you should check him someday
I'm surprised the top 30 didn't include: "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." -from The Go-Between, by L P Hartley. (I looked at the original list -and it comes in at no. 78.)
I agree, particularly when some of the preferred examples are over-wieldy. A good opening line should be pithy and memorable and not a long ramble. That does not mean, I hasten to add that I think much of their number one choice, which is certainly pithy but is attached to a novel that is anything but, being overly verbose and baggy with far more information about whales or whaling than we need to know, written as a sort of nineteenth century whaling manual. Whether that is the character Ishmael or Melville in those sections its almost like being accosted at a party by a bore who backs you into a corner and then proceeds to ear bash you on his pet subject. The Go-Between underrated, Moby Dick overrated.
Wonderful one! ❤
The opening line for Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton I suspect was included just because it's become really iconic, because Bulwer-Lytton has become infamous for being one of the most notoriously over-wordy and purple prose-esque writers to ever live. He was hailed as a genius in his day and nowadays people don't even find him readable let alone great literature. The "dark and stormy night" opening has become a bit of a tagline for awful pretentious purple writing, so I suspect it was simply included for how famous it's become.
In fact, there's even a contest called something like "The Bulwer-Lytton Prize for Fiction" dedicated to coming up with the worst opening sentence for a novel. Check it out, it's tremendous fun.
"Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself but mankind wasn't always so lucky." Who could resist the first line of "The Sirens Of Titan" by Kurt Vonnegut?
This is great!!
Jane Austen's books are mainly about how we are as people and interact day to day. She highlights the awkwardness of conversation and manages to keep it relatable to the reader. This certainly isn't for everyone of course because it probably does seem boring if you aren't interested in the characters themselves. I'm an avid Austen fan just because she has a remarkable way of writing in a very realistic sense. It feels quite modern at times and I'm always fascinated by it. I'm a huge history nerd and the regency era is one of my favorites to study so its no shock that I prefer her to more modern literature at times. And honestly Pride and Prejudice isn't considered her best by all fans its definitely her most popular but she had other books I prefer like Persuasion or Emma. Hope you give her another try one day but if you don't I don't blame you!
Also, I find listening to an audiobook along with it very helpful because sometimes in older literature it's hard for me at least to hear tone lol
Thank you for this thoughtful comment ❤ Really lovely to hear your thoughts on all that. Much appreciated!
No, her books are really just bad and you're projecting.
Some favourite first lines here. My favourite of the bunch was Kafka's "The Trial". But I do have one little gripe. Not sure if it's a translation issue but the Camus quote is "Aujourd'hui Mama est morte (mother died today)." So please no "my" in there. This is important because the speaker actually has no real relationship to to his mother and always refers to his as just mother.
Yes! My mistake... Thanks for pointing it out!
Might have been interesting to compare the opening in the version you have with that of the version nominated.
True!!
Not "My mother died..." but "Mother (proper pronoun) died today." The latter, as Camus wrote it, despite its specificity seems somehow less intimate to me than the former. Here I go editing: David Copperfield is a book so good that I read only a little at a time (like taking sips of water crossing the desert). Faulkner is perhaps the most profound novelist I've read but this opinion is based on having read almost everything by him. As with Proust it's the ouevre complète that counts with WF, like looking at the world through God's eyes-or maybe Satan's.... Nudder edit: Murphy is a great introduction to Samuel Beckett, perhaps his most decadent prose, all of which is GREAT, and which I much prefer to his theater albeit which is also really good. Kafka is without peer. Huckleberry Finn is also one of the greatest books in American vernacular, exciting and full of pathos. Miss Lonelyharts, which I have right here, is devastatingly sad and pathetic (it's only 50 pages). Finnegan's Wake, if you read it...well, its not a story, poem or novel in any conventional sense, truly unique, shamanic, panlingual.
Thanks for pointing it out, my mistake!
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
Unfortunately it's all downhill from there
I can't help you with Jane Austen; I find her over-esteemed. I think her books are very reassuring to people because of their wit and intelligence, and because there's no apocalyptic suffering to be seen. One can't of course discount the very many literary authorities who rate Austen very highly, so in all probably you and I are both missing something. I've read only two (P & P and S & S), but they haven't left me keen to read more, except perhaps for Persuasion, generally held to be something a little different, a little deeper.
Alussa olivat suo, kuokka - ja Jussi.
Täällä pohjantähden alla by Väinö Linna
It's a shame Henry Miller is considered too controversial or something to ever show up on any literary lists but his writing is beautiful and humorous and engaging. The opening lines to Tropic of Cancer are great: "I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead."
When did you start wearing glasses and what's your prescription?😢
I felt the same way reading Northanger Abbey. The characters were too immature for my taste and as you said gossipy. It's not quite the drama that subdues my attention and locks me in to a novel.
"Call me Ishmael." is just so powerful once you get why Melville opens Moby-Dick with just these three little words. After I finished the novel, I finally understood how much meaning there is within that short sentence.
When it comes to Austen, I did have a hard time getting into her too. I read her Persuasion recently, and that's supposed to be her most mature and reflective work, and it comes off that way. Her style is often very dry and about implication and irony rather than direct emotions. With her work, I almost have more fun thinking about the subtleties and intricacies rather than actually reading it. It can be quite dull at times, especially when there's lots of exposition about characters you simply do not care about, but her craft is undeniably quite good.
watching adaptations of Jane Austen first really helped me to get into her books ☺️
This is good advice. Also, Benjamin McEvoy has a good video called ‘How to read Jane Austen’. It touches on your ‘gossipy’ comment.
Agree ❤ but just a note on the one with Keira knightly in it for pride and prejudice some scenes differ from the book or are left out entirely . I’ve heard if you want a more true to story version the bbc television series is meant to be the closest but I haven’t managed to get my hands on it . Maybe you will have better luck . It will be hard not to fall in love with Mr Darcy by the end so definitely stick with it .
Ps love your videos and your voice is like ASMR 😂❤
Thank you! All these comments are really helpful ❤ Much appreciate it!
"It was the day my grandmother exploded." The opening line from Iain Banks "The Crow Road" has to be a contender!
No thats just attention seeking. Anybody can write something like that, some extreme nonsense
Who said they are best and why. For instance 'The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed' Stephen Kings Gunslinger is better than most of them on there to me, certainly half.
Halfway through watching this. Number one better be One Hundred Years Of Solitude, otherwise this list is wrong :)
EDIT: Ok, i can accept that
thank you
Jane Austin does make for a slamming BBC telenovela though, also Clueless was loosely based on one her dramas!
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I feel Austen generally to be a representative comment on the constrained, almost rebellious yet tamed by family in society, feminist outpourings of a Woman within the context of her time.
We must look beyond, into the subtext, to see what her characters cannot say but are saying mutely so loudly. Her Women can appear to be free and easy whilst being still tempered by expectation, and for the subtext to this read : I am doing what I can, not what I am expected to do, while also even that which I am expected to be or do is all that I can be. The characters are very locked into the mores which govern and surround in their context in time.
Hope one of your English speaking friends goes over some of the words you had trouble with: including "moo cow"!
That'd be kind, but I reckon her linguistic spread over three or four languages competes well or most likely conquers most of us?
I, personally at least, reckon we get lost with Austen because everything that could be Feminist about her reduces itself, within these constraints of time and fashionable society context, to become the merely Feminine?
I read Persuasion to get in to Jane Austen world and I love it so much.🥹❤
Thank you!!