post your unpopular literature opinions?

Agree. Plus, if you are marrying for pragmatic reasons in the 1800s,, there is a lot to be said for an older husband: stable, well-established, probably less likely to foist 20 children and syphilis on you than a younger man. And, as the only way a Regency woman could live independently was as a widow, you could always hope that he'd drop off the perch.

I also didn’t finish “All The Light We Cannot See”. I didn’t hate it exactly, I just felt like nothing was really happening.

Ooh could you please recommend some of the Norwegian authors?

Yes, I think modern readers fail to realise how shocking Marianne's behaviour was with Willoughby. She was very lucky that a man from her own class was prepared to marry her at all. Marianne could so easily have followed in the footsteps of poor Eliza.

Agree that Dickens is hugely overrated. Great stories but the writing does nothing for me.

The only way the film could have worked for a modern audience was by tweaking the casting to make sensible, flannel-waistcoated Brandon vaguely smouldering and less of a consolation prize

I’m sure you’re right but it’s a shame in a way as it removes the subtlety.
Was Greg Wise a convincing Willoughby?

The only way the film could have worked for a modern audience was by tweaking the casting to make sensible, flannel-waistcoated Brandon vaguely smouldering and less of a consolation prize and to turn dull, unappealing Edmund Ferrars into a shy, sensitive, adorably self-deprecating Hugh Grant.

I agree, @TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross — I don’t care for Thackeray or Trollope, personally, but nor do I think anyone who likes them is fundamentally wrongheaded. I don’t find Wodehouse funny, but I recognise this is my personal taste. Many Booker-winning novels are wonderful. I adore Great Expectations, Bleak House and Little Dorrit, but find Dickens’ female characters insufferable and have always disliked the more cartoonish bits of his novels. I like some Shakespeare plays more than others, and a bad production of any makes me want to punch walls. I love Austen AND the Brontes. And Joyce. And Woolf.

VeryQuaintIrene · Today 18:02

Lucky Jim. I was so disappointed when it read it, given that it's supposed to be so funny. It wasn't. Kingsley Amis in general seems unbelievably overrated, even as a stylist

I agree about Lucky Jim - I didn’t find it remotely funny.
Apparently it was considered innovative (shocking even) when it first came out but it’s dated badly.

Lucky Jim. I was so disappointed when it read it, given that it's supposed to be so funny. It wasn't. Kingsley Amis in general seems unbelievably overrated, even as a stylist.

I just watched a piece on the news where a charity shop worker was saying they keep getting donated too many copies of Richard Osman books!

Doesn't necessarily mean that people didn't enjoy reading them though - just that they don't keep old paperbacks once read .

My unpopular literary opinion is that we should stop trying to get children to appreciate Dickens, Shakespeare, Hardy et al. They don't have the life experience to understand, let alone appreciate. Do in depth examination and analyses of books actually written for teenagers, and teach them to appreciate literature, description and characterisation from things they can identify with.

Then hopefully they will make good reading decisions in their adult lives.

Ha maybe the Rickman issue is blurring things! I think he was about 50 in that too which makes it weirder.

I haven’t seen the film but Alan Rickman is not my idea of Col. Brandon!

Yes, there’s an odd tone to some elements of this thread, basically sneering at anything which is classic literature in such a way that it suggests that the literature is somehow badly written and anyone who likes it is too stupid to realise that, rather than it just being something that that particular poster doesn’t get along with for whatever reason.

I love Shakespeare but am not so fond of the history plays, love Wodehouse, love a lot of Ishiguro but didn’t finish The Buried Giant, love Austen but especially Emma. But I’m not going to dismiss an entire genre of literature just because there’s some of it I don’t like 🤷🏼‍♀️

Yes, its an advantageous match for a well-born but genteelly-impoverished girl, and one who, let’s not forget, has pretty much tarnished her own reputation irreparably by rocketing around publicly with Willoughby (even leaving aside the double standards that mean he’s a notorious rake who nonetheless bags a rich wife).

I think modern readers tend to forget, because Marianne means well, and is innocently romantic and heartbroken after Willoughby, that her behaviour, though she falls short of actually eloping with W and sleeping with him without being married, isn’t actually that un-Lydia-like.

She is seriously damaged goods on the Regency marriage market.

I'm sure it would, but still IMO gross. Actually to me as an adult the thing that grosses me out even more is how he has this real thing for young women who've been through a hard time. I know a guy like that - it's ... not great in terms of a power dynamic.

Emma and Mr Knightley have a similar age gap which is grosser in some ways (e.g. that he's known her since she was a baby!) but the power dynamic thing is much more even.

Ha maybe the Rickman issue is blurring things! I think he was about 50 in that too which makes it weirder.

I’m feeling very basic because I love both Shakespeare and Dickens 😂

No sorry, I don’t mean like, it’s not high brow or not fancy writing or anything. I mean the way he writes, with 95 words in every sentence, is just really hard to read!

But in Georgian times it would have been considered perfectly acceptable, and even aspirational, for a girl in her late teens to marry a wealthy older man in his thirties. Or forties. Or even fifties.

Shakespeare really isn't all that.

Thomas hardy however....😍😍

Yeah maybe people don’t care about the age difference since the film came out. I would have been straight in there with Alan Rickman 👌

I agree with all this …. However I still love reading it! But yes it gives me the rage 😂

One of the best books I have ever read was The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Simply could not put it down and cancelled a date with a friend to finish it.

And, I speak as an English Literature graduate who has read an awful lot of 'good' literature.

I would love this. Do it.

Heathcliffe is a violent, wife beater. Nothing romantic about that. Also, I firmly believe that Heathcliffe and Catherine were actually half brother and sister.

*Flashheart, but Flashhard suits too.