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Sep. 11th, 2012 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatBook quotes from Good Reads:
*I had not seen "Pride and Prejudice," till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.”
― Charlotte Brontë
Interesting. But it does make sense that a ponderous, dreary, often flowery Victorian writer would make this sort of comment about Austen. Suffice it to say, I can re-read Austen. I can even watch various versions of Pride and Prejudice. While I read Jane Eyre once, seen three versions, went to sleep during the last one. And each time want to go back in time and hit Charlotte repeatedly over the head with her own book. Lady? Lighten up. And stop pontificating.
*" “I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
― Mark Twain
It should be noted that Twain despised most of the writers of the 18th and 17th Centuries.
He sinks the Henry James in Huck Finn, and the Sir Walter Scott. (As much as I love Twain's wit, I admittedly found everything he wrote but Huck Finn to be maddening. Too much dialect. Too folksy. Innocents Abroad...tended to ramble and lacked momentum. Hate to say it Twain, but in some respects - Austen's Pride and Prejudice's satiric wit was a bit more subtle, and a tad more clever. It also was a lot easier to read.)
*“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Algonquin Wits
I've admittedly felt the same way about a few books. Twilight. Atonement. House of Sand and Fog. But most notably American Psycho...that book I truly wanted to throw aside with great force. (It should be noted that I gave all of them away to people who would adore them, except for Twilight which I never bothered to buy. I treat books like cats, as treasures.) I rather like Parker, she is disarmingly honest and self-deprecating.
When reading reviews of books or anything for that matter - you should check out the reviewer/critic's tastes, what do they consider amazing, what do they hate, and how do they think - before following their recommendation.
For example? When a reviewer tells me that the master of horror and suspense is Stephen King and one of their favorite books is Eat Pray, Love...I think alrighty then. Let's move on. (This reviewer hated "The Thief Book" which I'm considering and "Gone Girl" which I'm wary of.) Granted, if the reviewer has insanely eclectic taste like I do, you may have to dig deeper than that. Particularly if they are moody and have a tendency to change their mind about things in mid-stream.
*I had not seen "Pride and Prejudice," till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.”
― Charlotte Brontë
Interesting. But it does make sense that a ponderous, dreary, often flowery Victorian writer would make this sort of comment about Austen. Suffice it to say, I can re-read Austen. I can even watch various versions of Pride and Prejudice. While I read Jane Eyre once, seen three versions, went to sleep during the last one. And each time want to go back in time and hit Charlotte repeatedly over the head with her own book. Lady? Lighten up. And stop pontificating.
*" “I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
― Mark Twain
It should be noted that Twain despised most of the writers of the 18th and 17th Centuries.
He sinks the Henry James in Huck Finn, and the Sir Walter Scott. (As much as I love Twain's wit, I admittedly found everything he wrote but Huck Finn to be maddening. Too much dialect. Too folksy. Innocents Abroad...tended to ramble and lacked momentum. Hate to say it Twain, but in some respects - Austen's Pride and Prejudice's satiric wit was a bit more subtle, and a tad more clever. It also was a lot easier to read.)
*“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Algonquin Wits
I've admittedly felt the same way about a few books. Twilight. Atonement. House of Sand and Fog. But most notably American Psycho...that book I truly wanted to throw aside with great force. (It should be noted that I gave all of them away to people who would adore them, except for Twilight which I never bothered to buy. I treat books like cats, as treasures.) I rather like Parker, she is disarmingly honest and self-deprecating.
When reading reviews of books or anything for that matter - you should check out the reviewer/critic's tastes, what do they consider amazing, what do they hate, and how do they think - before following their recommendation.
For example? When a reviewer tells me that the master of horror and suspense is Stephen King and one of their favorite books is Eat Pray, Love...I think alrighty then. Let's move on. (This reviewer hated "The Thief Book" which I'm considering and "Gone Girl" which I'm wary of.) Granted, if the reviewer has insanely eclectic taste like I do, you may have to dig deeper than that. Particularly if they are moody and have a tendency to change their mind about things in mid-stream.
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Date: 2012-09-13 11:32 pm (UTC)It is funny about Austen's 'Northanger Abbey': I took it really personally the first time I read it! I was young, and a chronic daydreamer who read too many romances (not Gothic, but lots of suspense... like the early Mary Stewart novels). As Austen poked fun at Catherine Moorehead I felt upset/embarrassed as though I was being ridiculed.
LOL