"Rather dated"

[ImJustMadAboutSaffron]

I just finished reading a book, published in 1977, set either 1975 or 1976. I went on Amazon to look at some reviews (I know these are not worth reading, for the most part; often I have seen "Boring" or "Rubbish" as a "review") because sometimes there are some interesting ones.

Someone has written that the book is "rather dated". What do they expect 45 years later for heavens' sake???

Thanks very much @elkiedee - I follow some of this ideas. What works quite well is reading the book review section then reserving what seems likely from the library. A 75p gamble is not too high a risk, and sometimes works well.

I finally got around to finishing op's book! I'm just a very slow reader who gets easily distracted. I thought it was really good writing, apparently it was nominated for a booker?

Anyway, after I finished it I looked on Good Reads to see other's reviews, I do this quite often and was inspired by op's op. Someone said that they like Penelope Lively but thought everything about this book was bland and that it seemed to say we should only expect life to bland. I get that the reviewer might have just been irritated, but why do we have to read a book and think about ourselves all the time? Why read a book and judge it on how it instructs ourselves and how to live? Just a bizarre concept.

So this thread and reading The Road to Litchfield inspired me to look at the booker shortlists after googling for the early to mud 70s. And I choose a couple to take on holiday next week.

I have just started reading a Barbara Pym novel, 'An Academic Question'. I've not read any of her books before, but saw it it in a charity shop with its rather dated cover and the blurb on the back 'It was the summer of 1970 ...' and thought it looked well worth £1. Only on 1st chapter so far, but looking promising.

This is a great thread.

I'm in a book group and one of my greatest frustrations is the unwillingness of some of the other members to admit that society changes and evolves, and that books written in an earlier era sometimes (shock) don’t reflect life as we know it today. The 'rather dated'-type comments come up with wearying regularity. I feel I’m always trying to murmur diplomatically that, well yes, a girl was terrified of getting pregnant because it meant utter social disgrace and ostracisation - or, yes but they did shut people up in asylums for decades….etc etc etc. It’s what we now see as wrong but sadly it did happen - it’s a matter of history (I tend to come at it from that angle as I started out as a historian).

As @AtomicBlondeRose said, many contemporary novels just don’t have the depth that underpins the so-called 'dated' books. I often feel it’s a bit like the trope of the iceberg that’s 90% underwater. Writers like Elizabeth Taylor, Penelopes Lively and Fitzgerald, Barbara Pym etc etc had a hinterland (and had, pretty much all, been through a war). They knew a lot about a lot of things. I remember reading Barbara Pym's diaries and she mentioned that she was reading a book a day - she had an omnivorous intellect, but is often wrongly dismissed as all curates and tea-parties.

@Antarcticant - I think we were separated at birth! You love all my favourite writers too.

@Terpsichore with regards to those book group members, they're going to get a big shock when they realise, in some decades time, that their current views will seem "rather dated" to the younger generations.

You see it time and again. For example, in comedy, when I was in my teens, all the "alternative comedians" poked fun at/couldn't abide the old club style comic as sexist and racist etc. Now those alternative comedians are often seen as ghastly and out of touch by younger generations. It comes to all most of us.

@Terpsichore It's a shame geographical spread would probably prevent the posters on this thread forming 'The Rather Dated Book Group' as I think it would be brilliant.

I love virtually all the authors mentioned. I suppose it hadn’t really occurred to me that they are ‘ dated’ , because I read several of them when they were newly released (!) , so they just seem, well, normal……to me.

What I do find so difficult about a lot of modern fiction is how it seems to have to go on and on and on. It takes the authors ten pages to say what Lively or Fitzgerald would say in a paragraph or two ( and it makes the books almost impossible to read in bed, just so heavy).

It’s strange, as well, the current insistence for the past to have shared modern ‘values’. Even if some of the social attitudes are different, doesn’t that make it more interesting, opening a window into the past? How far back does the purging go? Is Jude the Obscure ‘dated’ and so unreadable because the protagonist couldn’t get child benefit and a council house? Is Little Dorrit unfathomably dull because her dad didn’t just get a IVA?

Ooh I'd join that.

Someone mentioned Iris Murdoch. I really enjoyed Jackson' Dilemma.

The Summer Bird cage and The Garrick Year are among my favourite Drabble books which are mainly the early ones.

I must try a Penelope Lively.

I'd join the rather dated book club too. I read so many of these authors very young because our local town librarian pointed my mum towards the best books. And I am bookish,

I've got both those Drabbles on my bookshelf, @DorritLittle. She's also a writer who adjusted with time, I think. Her later work is just as strong. The Peppered Moth particularly good in its treatment of time an history (it is an undercurrent in several of my favourite novelists: of course Penelope Lively for one is brilliant on time, history, and archeology; I think that was her husband's profession)

The Rather Dated Bookclub sounds like a splendid idea.

I read The Garrick Year last year. And Injury Time and A Quiet Life by Beryl Bainbridge too.

After my look at the Booker shortlists of the mid 70s I've picked up Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald which I might take on holiday on Saturday. I've also got I'm The King of the Castle by Susan Hill which I remember my dm reading but I'm a bit scared to read it () because I remember her saying it was a disturbing read.

That would be cool!

Maybe we should instigate an online MN Rather Dated Book Group, then, as per the excellent suggestion of@Antarcticant ?

Members could take it in turn to choose a book that we all read. Then we ‘gather’ to discuss at an agreed date.

Readalongs already happen here and work well….just a thought?

I would be up for a 'rather dated' online book club! I haven't been part of an online book club before - what usually works better, read-along or all read and then discuss afterwards?

"Well, I erupt in rage whenever I hear someone condescendingly say that Jane Austen is "rather dated"

Problem with Austen is it is just the same story
Vacuous girls talking about who fancies who like schookids of 13
Asking who has most money
Always a big house somewhere
The guy who seems to be mice ends up being a rotter
The guy we all thought was a rotter is the nice guy
All live happily ever after
Trite
I have heard the argument that that is what life was like
Other Victorian authors did not write the same story many times
And I get that it was like that but i do not read to read the same story all the time

Not sure if you’re on a deliberate windup or not, and fair enough if you don’t like the books, but this does sound rather like the complaint of someone who hasn’t actually read them but has just watched period dramas swooshing by on the tv. And the books are about the people, personalities, constraints of a particular set at the time. Reading them is very different to watching a tv adaptation.

Also, Austen isn’t Victorian. She’s Regency.

I think Austen lies somewhat beyond the 'rather dated' period of literature we're talking about on this thread. We're thinking of books from a more recent era, reflecting the society of our youth or perhaps our parents' times - a society with recognisably modern elements, but a way of life and set of attitudes that have become out of date.

If you don't enjoy Jane Austen's novels, fair enough. I love them. The characters and human behaviour have a timeless quality in my opinion, and the attitudes and conventions of the period are fascinating. There might be valid reasons to dislike them, of course, but to say novels written over 200 years ago are 'dated' is a pointless criticism.

@Antarcticant I’ve only taken part in readalongs here - but I wonder whether the 'all read and then discuss' model might work, more like a RL book club?

Yes, I agree, that would probably work well - it would allow for different reading paces, unlike the read along model.

Do we want a shiny new thread for this?

I'd really be interested but I'm such a slow/easily distracted reader that I've never joined a book club. But I'd love to be able to see the books posters/members talked about and their views. I'm sure id get some great book suggestions. It would be great if I could be a "silent" member!

(Which would be a feat in itself for me as I'm not known for my silence irl)

Whoops I've only just read this!

That's the beauty of a forum - anyone can follow quietly along if they want!

True.