The absolute best stage direction ever, however, is still that one from The Winter’s Tale. You all know which one.
(the one time I’ve seen it live, it was accomplished very well, with nothing but sound effects and the actor’s reactions)
Odd. At my all-boys school, Catcher in the Rye was probably one of the few books we all read and didn’t just Cliffs Note it. I liked it then. I liked it a few years later when I re-read it; I’d be curious how I’d find it now, 25 years later. I suspect I’d still like it.
But, yeah, like Seinfeld is to TV shows, Catcher is to literature in terms of its polarization. I like reading and watching misanthropic characters. They’re more interesting to me. And I like naive youthful cynicism and idealism.
I agree!
In the two Shakespeare classes took in college, I went to the a-v library and listened to the Royal Shakespeare Company tapes as I read each play for the first time. Hearing the dialog spoken helped to make sense of the more archaic parts of the prose … without having to resort to footnotes constantly as I did when just straight reading. Then, I could go back and read for more detail.
My brother-in-law and his wife are massive theater nerds. They got married in a rooftop ceremony. At the end of the ceremony, one of their friends donned a bear mask, roared, and chased the screaming couple to the elevator.
It was glorious.
Actually, I liked Tolstoy’s lectures. They made the book bearable, between bouts of soap opera.
His “people as differentials in the world of human calculus” viewpoint is interesting (and ties in nicely with Asimov’s suggestion of “human history as human statistical mechanics” in the Foundation series), but I don’t buy his implication that no human can influence history. His choice of Napoleon as the example to prove his point falls pretty flat – Napoleon was one of the individuals who had a disproportionately high influence on history, and no amount of hand-waving will get rid of that.
On the other hand, I love the way he’ll take some well-attested moment of history and reinterpret everyone’s motives, so that what was really happening, according to his fiction, was completely different from what everyone thought was happening.
I just finished watching the epic BBC 20-episode adaptation of War and Peace, so it’s on my mind.
I decided to read “To Kill a Mocking” for the first time. I realized it was a great book about four chapters in.
I’m going to suggest some novels by Anthony Trollope, not as great everlasting literature, but as excellent windows on their time (mid-Victorian England and Ireland). The Palliser novels had a basis in Parliamentary politics but touched on every aspect of Victorian life, especially including the place of women in society and politics. And his standalone book The Way We Live Now is a delicious satire, more serious but no less cutting than Oscar Wilde’s play An Ideal Husband.
Which one is this? I saw their six episode adaptation and it was only OK.
It’s from 192 and starred Anthony Hopkins as Pierre. As I say, twenty episodes. Evidently they’re somewhat less than an hour each, because the whole is less than 20 hours, but it’s still more than twice as long as the 1966-7 Russian version (which is plenty long enough itself).
The six-episode BBC version is from 2016. I wasn’t aware of it until I started watching the older one. It runs 6 hours and 22 minutes (all 60 minute episodes except the last), making it only slightly shorter than the Russian version (about 7 hours and ten minutes)
6 posts were split to a new topic: Sex Roles in other Animals
The digression I enjoyed most listening to in the unabridged version last summer was (paraphrasing) “there is no need for me to detail the great battle at Waterloo, for are not ‘Waterloo’ by M Benoit or ‘The Great Battle’ by M Bertillon far greater tellings of that momentous event than I could manage?” - followed by a 4 hour detailing of the battle of Waterloo.
I really loved the book though - was surprised by how satirical it was.
MiM
I loved the Palliser series done on the books. I always meant to read them.
The Way We Live Now is a good book, but I personally prefer Thackeray’s The Newcomes which has a similar scope (but is funnier, IMO).
I’m sorry, remind me again what the hunting habits of lions have to do with “Classic Books Which Live Up To Their Reputation”?
This is the one I read, and I agree. I did read the other two volumes, but I think anyone who doesn’t love Inferno won’t like them very much.
I read this while socially isolated during our late plague. It’s a fascinating view of how they thought. And oh so dirty.
My new (I think) contribution is Tristram Shandy by Sterne. As the movie (nice try) said “the post-modern novel before there was a modern to be post from.” The origin of “this page left intentionally blank.” And the section on Sterne’s travel writing is good also.
Not much. I have just moved a bunch of posts to a new thread.
Reported.