50 Book Challenge 2018 Part Three

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the third thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2018, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it’s not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here and the second one here.

What are you reading?

Austen's are really, really not all pretty much the same. Each one is a final crafted creation of a very particular world, and the worlds are really not all similar, although they might perhaps seem a bit alike on the surface.

But I think you either 'get' her, or you don't. My feeling is very much that one is either an Austen fan or a Dickens fan and never the twain shall meet. Me - I'm on Team Jane.

I have read 15 on that list !!

15 !!

I have added a few of them onto my Amazon list, but a lot of them I had never even heard of, plus I think I recognised a few titles that I might have read but would need to see the cover to know for sure.

Not a huge Dickens fan either if I'm honest!

I don't DISlike JA, I'm just indifferent. I do find bits quite funny but I think they are maybe all a bit lacking in social conscience for me. Sorry satsuki and remus !

I'm Team Hardy if anything.

Very good description remus. That is their brilliance - that the interior lives of the characters are so important. There was a reason Pride and Prejudice was called First Impressions. Team Jane all the way.

In my defence, I did like Mansfield Park! Many years since I read it but I still remember writing a uni essay called 'The Dupery of Mansfield Park' and then my tutor asserting dupery was not a word and then we had a lengthy conversation about hoopooes. And then he looked up dupery and it was a word. He was a bit eccentric.

I've enjoyed all the Austen and Dickens novels I've read, though I totally get the lack of social conscience comment re Austen. There is a lot of posh birds in bonnets worrying about making a good marriage, but that was a primary concern of the day for the middle and upper classes, but she does do it very well, outstanding dialogue.

Thanks, Satsuki. I meant 'finely' not 'final' - am very tired!

Mansfield Park is my least favourite in terms of the 'central lovers and their 'happy ending' but the world Austen creates, and the way that she uses metaphor to say much more than the words on the page is so clever. The antics on the stage and the sexual tensions are a world apart from the froth of Northanger Abbey.

And then the intrigues of the world of Emma where tiny events like posting a letter or having a haircut become something else entirely in retrospect, and where the heroine is about as unlike the heroine of 'Mansfield' as it's possible to get whilst both still being single, white females in small villages in Regency England.

And that's only two of them.

Team Jane too. Dickens bores me and I’ve only finished two Hardy’s.

I think the problem with a lot of Dickens novels (and Victorian novels in general) is that they were commissioned to be 3 volumes (and/or serialised in magazines) for the circulating libraries. It was the norm and it was nigh on impossible to sell a slim tightly edited novel. Writers tended to pad their stories with a plethora of details and character that weren't entirely relevant to the main story to meet deadlines and word count to make a living. The unlikely coincidences in Dickens undermine his stories quite often.

I'm a big Gissing fan and I've read that he felt incredibly frustrated at not being able to edit his work, take his time or be more explicit about sex/prostitution etc and really envied the way in which Zola was able to publish in France.

Another Team Jane member here :)

Can't bear Dickens but did really like the couple of Hardy novels I've read (not in a rush to read more though).

105 for me. The ‘comedy’ section was a poor one for me although I have read The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin, a random pick when I had more time to myself to browse in Waterstones. I’ve read the most from the science fiction and fantasy section. More than a few that I’m planning to read and are on my wish list. Love a good list!

I think I started reading Austen at 16. I reread them now. I still feel irritated by Fanny in Mansfield Park! My favourite is Persuasion, I think it's her most personal novel. I got a lot of points through reading Dickens and I love his "padding", Hardy, on the other hand! I did CSYS English (old Scottish 6th year qualification) and we studied Hardy. How I hated those books. I'm sure they were beautifully written but so trite.

My first Austen was Mansfield Park which I read for A level. I have read the others but not for many years. I can appreciate Austen's skill but I don't love her in the same way I do The Brontes. I often think I need to reread them, to see if I have grown into them. I have Lucy Worsley's biography of Austen to read for book club. It has to be next book if I won't finish it. But it's just not calling to me.

Hardy ...trite??

The thing with the marriages is that yes they were all relatively well off, but they wouldn’t be if they didn’t marry securely - it was a thin veneer of gentility and comfort that could all be taken away by death and a bad decision. It all seems low stakes to us because we are used to a freedom they didn’t have. The whole tension between having to act pragmatically whilst feeling something different, and having no freedom to express it, is so rich in terms of dramatic potential and she exploited it extremely well. The social conscience thing - well perhaps not overtly, but her novels are very concerned with class and the disparity between rich and poor. A large part of Emma’s story pivots on her treatment of those in need, in Persuasion Anne’s friend Mrs Smith provides a counterpoint in social condition and character to her sister’s choice of companion. The commentary is there, but it is subtle. All around the edges are hints of ruin and poverty, loss of fortune and reputation, while the dance continues in the middle.

Hardy too melodramatic for me and long winded (I’m thinking mainly of Tess) I used to like Jude but can’t bear the misery now “because we are too many” - I mean what a dick move, Hardy!! Don’t mind some of his poetry.

154 from that list, though hardly any from the sci-fi/ fantasy section. Agree that the categories were rather odd.

I’ve finished another to add to my slowly-growing tally; 16: A Life of my Own - Claire Tomalin

Pleasingly apposite given the last few posts, as of course she’s written superb biographies of Austen, Dickens and Hardy, so covers all bases . I’m a great fan of her writing but I have to agree with some of the reviews I’ve read of this, her own autobiography: it’s oddly evasive in places, and just peters out rather vaguely at times into platitudes when you feel you want a bit more detail. But she’s had much tragedy in her life (amongst other awful things, the traumatic death of children, and marriage to a serially-unfaithful husband who was killed on a reporting assignment, leaving her alone as a young widow with a family to support) and I can't help but admire her dauntless spirit. Not a soul-baring read but an interesting insight into the life of a writer who's moved in impressive literary circles and written many books I rate highly. Her biography of Ellen Ternan (Dickens's secret, younger, lover) is one of my favourite books of all time.

Satsuki I agree. I loved Hardy novels, especially Jude when I was in 6th form and Uni but read Jude and Return of the Native again recently and thought them quite poorly written, people behaving in unrealistic and very stupid ways and overly melodramatic and bleak.

Terpsichore thanks for your thoughts on the Clare Tomalin biography - I've had it on my "maybe" list for a while. The Ellen Ternan book might be a better bet.

Oh and I am Team Dickens - sorry Remus et al - agree that I found Austen, though well crafted, lacking in conscience.

I did really enjoy Claire Tomalin's book, Kikashi, and I feel a bit mean about carping because she’s searingly honest about many aspects of her life, and that really does her credit. But the overall feeling I’m left with is that, in the later part of the book, it starts to become a bit 'and then this happened, and then that happened, and then....' Which I suppose is fair enough over a long and very full life - she’s in her 80's now.

I’d heartily recommend 'The Invisible Woman', her Ellen Ternan book. It’s a cracking piece of detective work as well as an extraordinary story. Dickens doesn’t come out of it well for his appalling behaviour to his wife and family.

I haven't read any Austen, Hardy or Dickens since school/university but this thread is really inspiring me to revisit them, these many years later.

At the time I loved Austen, found Hardy to be wildly overcooked and couldn't get on at all with Dickens. I was supposed to read Bleak House for A-Level but never managed to actually finish it, let alone properly study it. Hmmm, I think I'm beginning to see why I didn't do better at my A-Level English

I was a sem-lover of the Claire Tomalin. I thought it was flawed which was interesting for such an accomplished teller of other people's stories but it did skip along and she clearly has huge warmth towards and love for the people in her life.

I've read 196 off that rather odd list. Three Ian Flemings - and those three at that - seemed a strange addition. And lots of nineteenth century and early twentieth century French novels (probably why I've read so many of books on the list) but not much else in translation beyond the obvious.

106, but any list that classes 41 Discworld novels as a single work gets the eyebrow from me. Far better to have listed Small Gods [contraversial] to demonstrate that the list creators had read Pratchett's books.
Dh and I decided last year to start chipping away at the literary canon so it’s interesting to see on lists like that which books come up repeatedly. I can see that for a start Don Quixote and I will have to rendezvous some time in the near future.

I mentioned on the books you are ashamed to never have read thread that I'm going to do a Dickens readalong starting next month, of Bleak House but read in the time line that it was published. Starts March 2018, ends Sept 2019. I’ve not any Dickens (although does Muppet Christmas Carol combined with sections from a Prayer for Owen Meany not count?) I'm quite looking forward to reading it in this way. Dh and I are doing it with some friends and going to have a Bleak House party when we finish. Gonna get myself a bonnet, oh yes.

That's an interesting way of doing it scribbly is there an online guide available?
I have the complete works of Dickens and would like to do a structured study.
I've only read three Dickens : Christmas Carol, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. Am part way through Tale of Two Cities.
I've enjoyed them all but am finding Tale of two cities hard going at the moment.
Took me a few goes to read great expectations.
The characters are so good and are so well known even when we haven't read the books but his writing style is quite hard work I find.

scribbly - that sounds fabulous! Also would be interested if there was any online resources, might get a splinter group from my book club on it!