Kevin's Watch

ussusimiel wrote:With Joyce this means that all of his work is full of Irish-English that accurately reflects much of the way we still speak today. Joyce is also inclined to include and play on Gaelic words and as Gaelic is still compulsory in school, most Irish people will get at least some of that wordplay. There are also the placenames (which are always important in Ireland), the names of places in Dublin and around the country turn up consistently throughout Finnegan's Wake especially.

With Yeats much the same applies, he invokes placenames regularly and he also uses Celtic myths and stories that again are regularly taught as part of our schooling. It's not necessarily the understanding of these things as the immersion and the feeling of ownership of them that is a part of being Irish. I have no doubt it is the same experience for an English person reading Larkin or Betjeman.

u.

I think I found Yeats harder to read than Joyce though (quick background, I grew up in southern England with an English mother and Northern Irish father and have never spent any extended time either north or south of the border in Ireland), and that's probably because there are some assumptions in Yeats that the reader has at least some understanding of the myths.

With Joyce there is less of that, but his works are certainly steeped in the culture of the Ireland of his day.

Were you 12 yo as well Av?

Orlion, could you explain what you mean by 'form' in the sense you use it above. [I need all the help I can get in this area! .]

Le Pétermane wrote:
Orlion, could you explain what you mean by 'form' in the sense you use it above. [I need all the help I can get in this area! .]

I could.

But apparently, he won't.

Orlion wrote:Life of Pi was pure, idiotic dribble. It seems I am usually pretty good at finding stuff I like to read, but when I decide to check what others like or do something like a book club, it's garbage! All garbage!

Av wrote:Haha, I thought it sucked too.

It's unanimous, then.

Le Pétermane wrote:Were you 12 yo as well Av?

When I read Portrait of the Artist? I think I was about 13 as it happens. (I wasn't referring to it when I said it sucked though.) I struggled with it, but it did give me an idea for a series of poems, and for several years following I wrote a few, all titled "Portrait of a..." something.

--A

Orlion wrote:

Le Pétermane wrote:
Orlion, could you explain what you mean by 'form' in the sense you use it above. [I need all the help I can get in this area! .]

I could.

.....have danced all night?.........have been a contender?

Ahhh, have cared less!

IDK, lucked out and pretty much have never read a book I didn't like enough. Except... maybe that's not how I'm seeing the question...

There was one book, I got really angry about it for some reason and refused to continue it, or the series it was in. I don't think it was necessarily terribly written or anything, just, it made me mad, and other books have too, probably, but this one I stopped reading anyway.

... Somewhat tongue-in-cheek: I recently had to go through the IRS booklet about the Shared Responsibility Payment, and maybe I was too blazed or something but it felt like some stupid Choose-Your-Own-Adventure thing, like you seemingly had to jump back and forth between these steps and tables and subtables or whatever. Took me forever to figure out how to come up with a number for the SRP. So, maybe the "worst booklet" I've read haha.

For some reason The Vorhh(sp.?) is like the Tom Bombadil sections of TFOTR, for me, I've tried twice to read it and just can't get anywhere. It seems like the opening involves someone jerking off right before he dies, but IDK.

I feel like if I read Mein Kampf, I'd find something about it, stylistically as well as content-wise, to be among the worst of any book I'd read. But who knows, IDK, I feel sorta the same about "Worlds In Collision" or w/e by Velitovsky(?), the book about the fringe pseudo-theory or something about Earth colliding with other planets in the distant past (I believe was the thesis). And that's a book I've actually read parts of, IIRC.

Speaking of pseudoscience, there was one YE-creationist "school textbook" a coworker at a junior college had me read one time, and the quote-manipulation in it right p**sed me off, I don't think I finished that one, either.

Any book I started reading that I found to be lousy was quickly forgotten, including the title.

aliantha wrote:But apparently, he won't.

Orlion wrote:Life of Pi was pure, idiotic dribble. It seems I am usually pretty good at finding stuff I like to read, but when I decide to check what others like or do something like a book club, it's garbage! All garbage!

Av wrote:Haha, I thought it sucked too.

It's unanimous, then.

Question: Do you think you would have hated it if it hadn't been so vaunted as the Most Amazing Book Ever?

I was unimpressed, although I liked the tone of the writing and the aspect that you weren't entirely sure what was real and what was hallucination... other than that it was just fairly forgettable.

I thought it won an award or something?

So did The English Patient and Last Orders...

deer of the dawn wrote:Question: Do you think you would have hated it if it hadn't been so vaunted as the Most Amazing Book Ever?

I dunno, it probably contributed to my dislike, but I would have preferred the real story of being shipwrecked and having to eat people etc. than the hallucination that made it all "Disney."

--A

Damn Nanothnir, your description of Soul of Lilith has almost got me hooked! I want to read that book!

Nanothnir wrote: George Orwell's 1984 was also a book I would never read again. While it was well-written and served to make a political point (communism sucks), it was so damn depressing (and not in a particularly "good" way). I am pretty sure I needed therapy after reading that book as a teen.

I've read it many times...one of the scariest horror stories ever.

--A

We did a joint read of it back to back with Brave New World Av. That was a good juxtaposition!

Now I love that Victorian essence that pervades writing of the period - it's probably why steampunk hit a ready made spot in me as well.

Don't worry, a quick reading of Animal Farm will fix you right up after finishing 1984.

Wait...

Last read it when I was 14 in English class at school; fair to say that I wasn't at my most receptive age for literature,but even then could see something in the book worth pursuing. Needless to say I never did!

Horrim Carabal wrote:Don't worry, a quick reading of Animal Farm will fix you right up after finishing 1984.

Wait...

1984 was worse though. (I mean more horrifying anyway.)

I found the end of Animal Farm more ironic than frightening.

--A

ewwww Animal Farm .. just disturbing

I don't disagree, but that's what made it so powerful to me. It was a horror story. And real life doesn't always have a happy ending. Sometimes (often) the bad guys win.

--A

Avatar wrote:I don't disagree, but that's what made it so powerful to me. It was a horror story. And real life doesn't always have a happy ending. Sometimes (often) the bad guys win.

--A

Yup. Besides, I hear life is quite good in Eurasia. I mean Eastasia.