What's good about these books?

londonfields - if you don't like a story, it's best not to have your undergraduate mates make a play of it and then go and watch it and then not be able to say "I was utterly underwhelmed, what were you all thinking?"... I wish someone had said that to me 15 years ago!

yyyy - loved midnight's children. you do have to just go with it and not worry tooo much about following a thread.

Loved Midnight's Children. In fact all of Rushdie's apart from the one whose name I can't think of.... Don't worry too much about the chacracters. Just persist and it will make sense in the end.

I crashed and burned with Midnights Children although I really really wanted to read it. So many characters I kept forgetting who was who. Any tips for that one?

Isn't Vilette based on what really happened to Charlotte Bronte? As are most of her novels, she was originally identified because a) everyone knew which school was the basis for Lowood in JE and b) the dialect made it obvious which part of Yorkshire she was from.

I really didn't like Brick Lane, the central character seemed so pathetic. And I have a hatred of novels that try and be too contemporary, they have a tendency to be very very dated after five years or so.

Middlemarch I loved when I read it (about 20 years ago), also love Persuasion but think Pride and Prejudice is spoilt by all the chicklit that copies the plot and makes it feel cliched.

Pennie I liked London Fields for a little while but I fear that this may have been because I was quite shallow and insubstantial myself.

Metamorphosis would appear to be about man's inhumanity to man in which the beetle is just a device to express Gregor's otherness. I think.

I have failed so many times to get into Middlemarch. I just can't get past what seem to be 300 pages of people sitting in a drawing room boring one another. I have a sneaking feeling that my mate who says it's her favourite book only picked it because she knows I'm not quite bright enough for it.

Persuasion on the other hand is marvellous. And the BBC adaptation is brilliant too.

And incidentally, Wuthering Heights is an earth-shatteringly tremendous read. It has made me what I still am to this day - a hopelessly romantic drama queen who can't quite cope with grown-up (boring) relationships.

Does anyone like anything about any book by Martin Amis? Can't bear self-important 'look at me manipulating you the lowly reader cos I'm so clever' literature.

I keep failing horribly with Madame Bovary. I just can't get on with it. To my deep shame, 15 year old dd has read and loved it but I Just Can't Do It.

Officially less intelligent than one's child emoticon.

Villette is interesting - I always reckoned it was a nudge to the reader not to be so trusting of the narrative voice. If you go back over certain bits of the book she lies, and adapts the memory of certain things to suit her current needs or did she tell the truth in the first place?....Rather as some people tend to in real life so should we be so trusting of a narrator, just because they are "in charge" of the story?

On my bookshelf, I may read it again but equally likely not as there's only so much enjoyment to be got from the "sneaky little cow!" type revalations, unfortunatley I can't think of any....

Never got past go with Metamorph, I'm with you on the WHY??? Suspect drugs must have been involved, surely?

Lawrence deserved to buggered with a poker. But that is just my opinion.

Like EM Forster. Like George Eliot. Can't remember much about the Magus.... was a loong time ago.

Iam McEwan - nope! I tried to like him but can't. Saturday made me want to poke my eyes out. DH loves him.

Madame Bovary - dull.
Time Travellers Wife - irritating.

Loved Villette. In fact all of Charlotte Bronte but struggled with Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Wuthering heights a bit meh but I think perhaps it strikes more chords as a teenager when you beleive life should be dramatic and wild

I also hated the Magus, especially after french Leuitenants woman being such a fab book. I thought perhaps they were all on drugs?

Persuasion is wonderful - Anne Eliot is destined to a life of being the gofer for her appalling family, she realises she has played her hand badly and she does something about it. I think, in the context of her character, she behaves with real courage and it pays off for her - she has a much greater chance of happiness with Captain Wentworth than being at the beck and call of her ghastly sisters and father.

Madame Bovary is also a fantastically nuanced study of the ennui of frustrated middle-class women. It's so funny and scathing. Even the end is completely out of all proportion to what has actually happened - a result of Emma's need to have a passionate life.

Persuasion is the most enjoyable Austen, but I agree that MP is the most sophisticated of her novels. Hated studying it at a-level - fanny and Edmund (Edgar?) really are prigs, the crawfords really are much more attractive characters, but one seminar on it at uni turned my ideas on their head. The crawfords have to be attractive - that's what makes them so dangerous, and that's why it makes their danger so difficult to perceive.
Persuasion is so satisfying - what's not to like?!
And am very surprised that Owen meany is so unpopular. I thought he was a great character and could have read more about him.
As for life of pi. I heard the author on r4 a couple of weeks ago and it seems I interpreted the text far too literally. Like, whatever.

What about Madame Bovary? That one did my head in!

30, is it time I read it again perhaps?

OMG - how old are you, Eric? Persuasion gets better and better the older you get! :)

Life of Pi = quite entertaining until the end where you just go WTF? Confusing and unsatisfying.

I loved Thomas Hardy as a teen, couldn't read them now. Was never able to read Middlemarch.

EM Forster = well I loved a room with a view as a teen, but with an adult eye, Lucy seems like a bit of a twat. A passage to India has a little bit more to say about racism and...panic attacks? who knows. It's still pretty plodding and dull.

I love Jane austen but found Persuasion to be quite dull

I like this thread. Frankenstein is a great collection of ideas and explorations and its impact is huge but I don't think it's a great novel.

I LOVED Villette but everyone in it is annoying. It is very funny though especially when she talks about the paintings.

I would add The Old Man and The Sea. Love some Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls mainly as I am a Spanish Civil War geek). My friend and I were once discussing TOMATS and she said:
"So is it about a bloke trying to catch a fish OR WHAT?"

I think that it is the problem with a lot of these books here - the symbolism is just either crude or badly communicated or totally irrelevant (same with that sodding balloon in Enduring Love or the animals in Life of Pi)

That said, I will defend Kafka and Metamorphosis with my life. I cry every time I read it. Poor Gregor Samsa.

Yes metaphor is the word I was looking for :) All the scenes when they're 'rehearsing' the play as well.

MP is amazig for its use of metaphor to make social comments. I love the way she uses the game of Speculation to imply comment on character.

I loved Mansfield Park but know a lot of people don't 'get' it, even if they like Jane Austen's other work. I didn't think the point of it was that Austen thought women should be like Fanny Price, she was pointing out that that was how women had to be to avoid the sort of punishment meted out to women like Maria who transgressed traditional boundaries. That as a woman you were not 'allowed' to have a strong personality or behave as you wished, it's grimly realistic rather than the nice fantasy of women like Elizabeth Bennett or Emma living as they choose. I feel it's Austen really stripped back to the scathing social commentary and satire. There's a lot of stuff in there on class and motherhood and family relationships as well.

And very vivid imagery as well, like Maria 'escaping' from the park grounds after the men, and her dress tearing and ruined on the (phallic) iron spikes of the fence while Fanny watches horrified but half wishing she could follow, which is not the sort of thing you saw in earlier Austen.

Just spotted error in my post yesterday.Shelley was only 19 when she 1st wrote Frankenstein.