Either/OR Book Meme
Jun. 24th, 2012 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatClassic Novel either/or meme - Frustrated English Lit Majors need only apply...
1. Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights?
Jane Eyre. I can't stand Kathy. Jane was more interesting as was Mr. Rochester. Also less spoiled and far more long-suffering. And Heathcliff got on my nerves.
2. Henry James or Edith Wharton
Wharton. She was less flowery and easier to read. Also had less whiny characters. Ethan From and Age of Innocence I remember vividly. I couldn't make it through James' Turn of the Screw. Rather liked the play version though.
3. Fitzgerald or Hemingway
Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby haunts me. So many have tried to do the same thing and failed miserably. Hemingway...I rather liked Old Man and the Sea, but Sun Also Rises bored me.
Too sparse. Too journalistic. While Fitzgerald's words shone.
4. The Girl with Dragoon Tattoo vs. Smila's Sense of Snow
Smila by a landslide. It's a more delicate work, drifting back and forth in time and place and narrative. And the lead character felt more real and got deeper under my skin. Girl just left a bad taste in my mouth.
5. Garcia Marquez vs. James Joyce...vs. William Faulkner
The stream of consciousness writers of a bygone age. Marquez wrote the most beautifully, but both Marquez and Faulkner copied Joyce, which William S. Burroughs did as well.
I'd pick Joyce, whose Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedelus live on...and on and on inside my head, while the others have long since faded.
6. Dickens or Shakespeare...
Shakespeare because he has a better sense of humor.
7. Shakespeare or Christopher Marlow?
See #6
8. Mark Twain or Jonathan Swift - the satirists.
Mark Twain - he's less bitter and liked people. I'm not sure Swift liked anyone.
9. Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie
Prefer Conan Doyle for Sherlock over Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
Sherlock Holmes was just a character that defied description. And sticks in the teeth, the craw and the blood. While Poirot and Miss Marple...felt similar to many that came before and after...such as Edgar Allen Poe's detective in the Murders of Rue Morgue and
Ruth Rendel and PD James. But no writers have created a character like Sherlock Holmes.
10. Stendal vs. Victor Hugo
I like Stendal. I don't know why exactly. Not as long? More twisty and wicked? Julian is not nice in the Red and The Black, while Jean Val JEan is.
11. Victoria Woolfe Vs. Kate Chopin.
Preferred Kate Chopin, less racist and self-absorbed.
12. Dorothy Parker vs. Slyvia Plath
Dorothy Parker had a sense of humor. Probably why she lived.
13. TS Eliot vs. WB Yeats
Prefer Eliot...who was harder to figure out. Although Yeates has his moments.
14. Percy Blyshe Shelley vs. Byron
Shelley - for Ozymandias...although Bryon's Don Juan is hilarious.
15. Arturo Perez Reverte vs. Alexander Dumas
Reverte...for Flanders Panel and Seville Communion, I confess to never making it through Dumas.
16. Dorothy Dunnette vs. Phillipa Gregory
No contest. Dunnett. Gregory annoys me, too romantic.
17. John Jakes vs. Pat Conroy
Pat Conroy - more poetic and more interesting.
18. Richardson's Clarissa vs. Les Liasons Dangereux
Les Liasons - again, sense of humor.
19. John Steinbeck vs. Upton Sinclair.
John Steinbeck - for the beauty of the prose, the sense of humor, and the hope.
20. Checkov vs. Ibsen
Checkov, who I can't spell, but at least I remember his plays.
21. Jane Austen vs. Louisa May Alcott
Austen - again, sense of humor.
22. Ayn Rand vs. George Orwell
Orwell - better at both satire and allegory. Rand preached too much. Both satirized and critiqued communism, but Orwell did it better with a more...deft and subtle hand.
Granted Rand was Russian and from Stalinist Russia, while Orwell was British...that may have had an effect.
23. Ian Fleming vs. John Le Carre...or rather Bond vs. Smiley.
Le Carre for his labrynthine prose...although I've admittedly read more Ian Fleming.
24. The Brother's Grimm vs. Hans Christian Anderson
Hans Christian Anderson - tougher female heroines with more choices. Hello, Snow Queen vs. Snow White? Which would you pick? A woman who must be saved by her prince, or a prince who must be saved by a woman? Very similar. Evil Queen in both. Character captured and kept in ice. Saved by True Love. Just a gender switch on the whole damsel bit.
25. Margaret Atwood vs. AS Byatt...
Byatt...just because Posession was far more interesting and satisfying than Handmaid's Tale or Robber Bridgegroom.
27. Adoulus Huxely vs. Alfred Bester.
I admittedly liked Demolished Man better than Brave New World. Although perhaps Burgess vs. Bester is a better comparison?
28. Dostevesky vs. Tolstoy
Dostevesky...again wicked sense of humor.
29. Euripides vs. Homer
Euripides...not into Epics. Much perfer Bacchai. Although Euripides vs. Sophocles? Sophocles wins hands down for Oedipus Rex.
30. Luigi Pirandella vs. Gabriel Garcia Lorca
Six Characters in Search of an Author...wins over the House of Bernada Alba...again, he has a sense of humor and I like existentialism better over fatalism.
31. Donna Tartt vs. Pamela Dean vs. Elizabeth Hand vs. Peter Straub vs. Tom Tyron
(All these people wrote more or less the same story about a bunch of college kids or people who get in over their heads regarding a religious rite in the countryside)
Tartt's Secret History is the best and most haunting, with Tom Tyron's out of print Harvest Home a close second. Straub's Dark Matter is silly in comparison to both.
Hand's even sillier. And Dean's Tam Lin feels like Nancy Drew meets Darby O'Gill and the Little People or a weak version of Gaberial Kaverial Kay's Wandering Gyre. Actually should pit Dean against Wandering Gyre, they are more similar and Gyre was more satisfying and less Peyton Place.
32. George RR Martin vs. Terry Brooks and Piers Anthony
George RR Martin for thinking outside the box and taking fantasy outside of the Tolkien and CS Lewis models.
33. Ken Follett vs. Robert Ludlum
Follett - tighter suspense and more interesting female characters. Eye of Rebecca is tauter than Borne Identity.
34. Robert Heinlein vs. Issac Asimov
Heinlein - again for the sense of humor.
35. JK Rowlings vs. Suzanne Collins?
Rowlings...for her sense of humor if nothing else.
36. PG Wodehouse vs. Mark Twain
No idea. I think I liked Wodehouse better, but Twain haunts me and sticks in my teeth.
38. Mary Stewart or Victoria Holt
Mary Stewart for The Crystal Cave and the Moonspinners...and Touch not the Cat
39. Rosemary Rodgers vs. Kathleen Woodwiss
Rodgers for her mystery/romance genre blend The Wildest Heart. And tough women.
40. Anne McCaffrey vs. Andre Norton
McCaffrey for the dragons and ships that sing
42. Connie Willis vs. Octavia Butler on Time Travel
Octavia Butler's Kindred...for an unrelentingly realistic portrayal of slavery that outdid even Toni Morrison. And for depicting the true sacrifice of time travel.
1. Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights?
Jane Eyre. I can't stand Kathy. Jane was more interesting as was Mr. Rochester. Also less spoiled and far more long-suffering. And Heathcliff got on my nerves.
2. Henry James or Edith Wharton
Wharton. She was less flowery and easier to read. Also had less whiny characters. Ethan From and Age of Innocence I remember vividly. I couldn't make it through James' Turn of the Screw. Rather liked the play version though.
3. Fitzgerald or Hemingway
Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby haunts me. So many have tried to do the same thing and failed miserably. Hemingway...I rather liked Old Man and the Sea, but Sun Also Rises bored me.
Too sparse. Too journalistic. While Fitzgerald's words shone.
4. The Girl with Dragoon Tattoo vs. Smila's Sense of Snow
Smila by a landslide. It's a more delicate work, drifting back and forth in time and place and narrative. And the lead character felt more real and got deeper under my skin. Girl just left a bad taste in my mouth.
5. Garcia Marquez vs. James Joyce...vs. William Faulkner
The stream of consciousness writers of a bygone age. Marquez wrote the most beautifully, but both Marquez and Faulkner copied Joyce, which William S. Burroughs did as well.
I'd pick Joyce, whose Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedelus live on...and on and on inside my head, while the others have long since faded.
6. Dickens or Shakespeare...
Shakespeare because he has a better sense of humor.
7. Shakespeare or Christopher Marlow?
See #6
8. Mark Twain or Jonathan Swift - the satirists.
Mark Twain - he's less bitter and liked people. I'm not sure Swift liked anyone.
9. Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie
Prefer Conan Doyle for Sherlock over Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
Sherlock Holmes was just a character that defied description. And sticks in the teeth, the craw and the blood. While Poirot and Miss Marple...felt similar to many that came before and after...such as Edgar Allen Poe's detective in the Murders of Rue Morgue and
Ruth Rendel and PD James. But no writers have created a character like Sherlock Holmes.
10. Stendal vs. Victor Hugo
I like Stendal. I don't know why exactly. Not as long? More twisty and wicked? Julian is not nice in the Red and The Black, while Jean Val JEan is.
11. Victoria Woolfe Vs. Kate Chopin.
Preferred Kate Chopin, less racist and self-absorbed.
12. Dorothy Parker vs. Slyvia Plath
Dorothy Parker had a sense of humor. Probably why she lived.
13. TS Eliot vs. WB Yeats
Prefer Eliot...who was harder to figure out. Although Yeates has his moments.
14. Percy Blyshe Shelley vs. Byron
Shelley - for Ozymandias...although Bryon's Don Juan is hilarious.
15. Arturo Perez Reverte vs. Alexander Dumas
Reverte...for Flanders Panel and Seville Communion, I confess to never making it through Dumas.
16. Dorothy Dunnette vs. Phillipa Gregory
No contest. Dunnett. Gregory annoys me, too romantic.
17. John Jakes vs. Pat Conroy
Pat Conroy - more poetic and more interesting.
18. Richardson's Clarissa vs. Les Liasons Dangereux
Les Liasons - again, sense of humor.
19. John Steinbeck vs. Upton Sinclair.
John Steinbeck - for the beauty of the prose, the sense of humor, and the hope.
20. Checkov vs. Ibsen
Checkov, who I can't spell, but at least I remember his plays.
21. Jane Austen vs. Louisa May Alcott
Austen - again, sense of humor.
22. Ayn Rand vs. George Orwell
Orwell - better at both satire and allegory. Rand preached too much. Both satirized and critiqued communism, but Orwell did it better with a more...deft and subtle hand.
Granted Rand was Russian and from Stalinist Russia, while Orwell was British...that may have had an effect.
23. Ian Fleming vs. John Le Carre...or rather Bond vs. Smiley.
Le Carre for his labrynthine prose...although I've admittedly read more Ian Fleming.
24. The Brother's Grimm vs. Hans Christian Anderson
Hans Christian Anderson - tougher female heroines with more choices. Hello, Snow Queen vs. Snow White? Which would you pick? A woman who must be saved by her prince, or a prince who must be saved by a woman? Very similar. Evil Queen in both. Character captured and kept in ice. Saved by True Love. Just a gender switch on the whole damsel bit.
25. Margaret Atwood vs. AS Byatt...
Byatt...just because Posession was far more interesting and satisfying than Handmaid's Tale or Robber Bridgegroom.
27. Adoulus Huxely vs. Alfred Bester.
I admittedly liked Demolished Man better than Brave New World. Although perhaps Burgess vs. Bester is a better comparison?
28. Dostevesky vs. Tolstoy
Dostevesky...again wicked sense of humor.
29. Euripides vs. Homer
Euripides...not into Epics. Much perfer Bacchai. Although Euripides vs. Sophocles? Sophocles wins hands down for Oedipus Rex.
30. Luigi Pirandella vs. Gabriel Garcia Lorca
Six Characters in Search of an Author...wins over the House of Bernada Alba...again, he has a sense of humor and I like existentialism better over fatalism.
31. Donna Tartt vs. Pamela Dean vs. Elizabeth Hand vs. Peter Straub vs. Tom Tyron
(All these people wrote more or less the same story about a bunch of college kids or people who get in over their heads regarding a religious rite in the countryside)
Tartt's Secret History is the best and most haunting, with Tom Tyron's out of print Harvest Home a close second. Straub's Dark Matter is silly in comparison to both.
Hand's even sillier. And Dean's Tam Lin feels like Nancy Drew meets Darby O'Gill and the Little People or a weak version of Gaberial Kaverial Kay's Wandering Gyre. Actually should pit Dean against Wandering Gyre, they are more similar and Gyre was more satisfying and less Peyton Place.
32. George RR Martin vs. Terry Brooks and Piers Anthony
George RR Martin for thinking outside the box and taking fantasy outside of the Tolkien and CS Lewis models.
33. Ken Follett vs. Robert Ludlum
Follett - tighter suspense and more interesting female characters. Eye of Rebecca is tauter than Borne Identity.
34. Robert Heinlein vs. Issac Asimov
Heinlein - again for the sense of humor.
35. JK Rowlings vs. Suzanne Collins?
Rowlings...for her sense of humor if nothing else.
36. PG Wodehouse vs. Mark Twain
No idea. I think I liked Wodehouse better, but Twain haunts me and sticks in my teeth.
38. Mary Stewart or Victoria Holt
Mary Stewart for The Crystal Cave and the Moonspinners...and Touch not the Cat
39. Rosemary Rodgers vs. Kathleen Woodwiss
Rodgers for her mystery/romance genre blend The Wildest Heart. And tough women.
40. Anne McCaffrey vs. Andre Norton
McCaffrey for the dragons and ships that sing
42. Connie Willis vs. Octavia Butler on Time Travel
Octavia Butler's Kindred...for an unrelentingly realistic portrayal of slavery that outdid even Toni Morrison. And for depicting the true sacrifice of time travel.
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 03:46 am (UTC)1. Jane Eyre definitely better (and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall... not a chance)
3. Neither Hemmingway nor Fitzgerald. Both were awfully full of themselves. The Old Man and the Sea is pretty good, For Whom the Bell Tolls like The Sun Also Rises gets tedious.
6. Dickens is nice enough, but hardly comparable to Shakespeare.
7. Christopher Marlowe obviously did not write the plays of Shakespeare. Enough said about him.
8. Twain over Swift easily.
9. I'll go with Agatha Christie over Doyle. Christie wasn't the greatest writer, but she thought about what the people involved in her crimes might be thinking. Doyle just worried about what would make Holmes look clever.
16. The real rival of Phillipa Gregory is Alison Weir, and no I wouldn't read either's novels.
20. I'd take Ibsen over Chekhov for plays. But as a writer of pot-boiler short stories, nobody beats Chekhov.
21. Jane Austen was a horrible writer, but a much better story teller than LMA.
24 Grimm and Andersen I'd call it a dead heat. Andersen hated children if that matters.
25. Haven't read anything of Bester's that I liked at all, so Huxley.
28. Tolstoy for me. But kudos to you for seeing the humor in Dostoevsky. A lot of people don't!
29 Euripides and Homer is kind of apples and bananas. I read Euripedes, Arisophanes, Aeschylus and Sophocles once upon a time. But it seems like that was before the discovery of fire. The Illiad and Odyssey are better than The Lay of Igor's Tale if that's any consolation.
34. I'll pick Asimov over Heinlein
36. Wodehouse or Twain? Not quite as obvious as Dickens or Shakespeare, but pretty close.
42. I haven't read Butler, but Willis has been making me more unhappy as she writes more on time travel.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 09:28 pm (UTC)And yet, Hansel and Gretle is a Grimm's Fairy Tale.
Not that matters. I can see Anderson's point. I (generally speaking) despise children that aren't my neice too - despised them when I was a child. Nasty Little bullies. There's a reason I never become a teacher. (Guessing Christian Anderson was stuck on public transportation for hours with the little monsters too. ;-) )
no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 02:25 pm (UTC)But I do love Wuthering Heights more than Jane Eyre. Although I agree with you about both Kathy and Heathcliff. I just don't see Wuthering Heights as a romance so much as a tale of obsession and revenge and the way that two incredibly selfish people taint everything around them, locked in a struggle with each other that takes down everyone else. Plus, I find the language quite lovely. Spare and lovely.
Jane is a bit too long suffering, I guess, for me.