Cripes, y'all, when is some plot gonna happen? Two hundred pages down the line (paperback edition, about 400 pages total, if you want to know), and I'm being murdered by inches. Also, what with Sue showing up ever 10 pages to tease Jude, all, "Oh we mustn't. But it would be hot if we did. Did I mention that I hate all the sex I have with your former mentor?" I'm putting her in the same category as Lily Bart: "nominal heroines I would happily reach through the page to dope-slap." Jude is in the male category, just above Newland Archer and slightly below Spineless Marner. You can't really blame the characters, exactly, but there is something ooky about the idea of digging up Hardy and Wharton's moldy bits for a postmortem smackdown.
Oh, but if someone manages to develop a good way to vent on choir-invisible authors, please give me a shot at Tolstoy as well, because I carry a grudge about Anna Karenina. Yes, yes, you-as-Levin think that the serfs haven't thought through their economic system correctly despite their simple gay natural outdoorsy lives, that's 150 pages of my life I will never get back, and by the way, where do you get off, killing Vronsky's mare?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Perhaps you would find it more profitable to read a book on making money.
My first encounter with literary horse abuse was in _Crime and Punishment._
I finished the new Pratchett this weekend, after for-FINALLY getting through Jude. I'm most of the way through that Galaxy collection, which has many fine classics in it.
I made a few abortive attempts at C&P. Right now I am feeling a distinct disinclination for books that involve heavy lifting.
Did you ever come across Silverlock? It's not great lit, but it's fun for playing spot-the-reference.
You are to be commended for your tenacity. I stopped reading books I could not stand to the end several years when I started calculating how many potentially great books there were left to read and how I would never be able to finish even a small portion of them if I read for eight hours a day the rest of my life.
Nope, have not come across _Silverlock_. I shall look for it.
I formed some bad habits last year, when I decided to try to read 100 books in a year (not counting anything I had already read). It could've been easy if I'd stuck to popular novels, but the imp of perversity meant that I wodged several Great Works in there too. By the end of the year, I felt sort of...stuffed.
Post a Comment