The Classics Thread

Discussion in 'TMB Book Club' started by RegimentML, May 26, 2016.

  1. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Figured it would be helpful to have a single thread to discuss classics.

    I just downloaded Ethan Frome. I've heard very conflicting things, but it's only a few hours long. I've been listening to Don Quixote, but someone else borrowed it from the library when my file expired (such is the danger of utilizing the local library for audiobooks). Needed something to bridge the gap.

    Anyone read Ethan Frome? It's Goodreads scores are pretty average, but I thought it'd be worth the investment anyways.
     
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  2. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    I have not read Ethan Frome, but have done a couple classics in the past few years (not a list of all classics I've read, just the recent ones)

    • A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (2012)
    • Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (2012)
    • Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (2013)
    • East of Eden - John Steinbeck (2013)
    • Moby Dick - Herman Melville (2014)
    • The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (2014)
    • Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes (2014)
    • The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand (2014)
    • Ulysses - James Joyce (2015)
    • Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand (2015)
    • Middlemarch - George Eliot (2015)
    • War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (2015)
    • Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (2016)
    • The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2016)
    • 1984 - George Orwell (2016)
    • Animal Farm - George Orwell (2016)
     
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  3. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Out of those, I've read:

    A Tale of Two Cities
    The Fountainhead (though this was a while ago; I don't remember much)
    Atlas Shrugged
    War and Peace
    Brave New World
    1984
    Animal Farm

    Classics are kind of subjective, but I'd add these as others I've read (off the top of my head):

    The Invisible Man - H.G Wells
    War of the Worlds - H.G Wells
    To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
    The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
    Grendel - John Gardner
    Watership Down - Richard Adams
    Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
    In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
    Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
    Lord of the Flies - William Golding
    Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conran
    The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
    To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
    Frankenstein - Mary Shelled
    The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
     
    #3 Gonff, May 26, 2016
    Last edited: May 26, 2016
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  4. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    Yeah I've read a good many of those too. I read a lot during school that I would like to re-read now because I think I would enjoy them far more as an adult. Great Expectations comes to mind.

    But yeah I'm glad you started this thread, I've been on a big classics kick lately to supplement all the fantasy I read. Looking at reading Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment in the near future.
     
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  5. TheGrifter

    TheGrifter It's a trick. Get an axe.
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    Lord of the Flies and The Catcher in the Rye are two of my favorite books of all time. Just incredible reads. Especially if you're reading them in a class and take the time to think about and analyze what you are reading.
     
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  6. One Knight

    One Knight https://www.twitch.tv/thatrescueguy
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    Great Expectations is a top 3 classic for me, loved it in HS and when i read it a second time as well. Best Dickens by far for me.
     
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  7. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Ethan Frome was written well. Dark ending, which I liked. But I thought it was too short. Would have liked to develop the story more.

    Listening to As I Lay Dying right now. First time I've dealt with Faulkner. Really like it so far.
     
  8. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Finished As I Lay Dying. Loved it. Going to have to read The Sound and the Fury soon.
     
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  9. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Has anyone read A Confederacy of Dunces before?

    I've started listening to it on audiobook. Won the Pulitzer back in the early '80s.
     
  10. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Just finished it.

    Weird book. Very well written, pretty humorous, but quite odd.
     
  11. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Started Crime and Punishment this morning
     
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  12. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    See you next year
     
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  13. Tangman

    Tangman Well-Known Member
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    Let us know what you think. I have Notes From Underground on hold.
     
  14. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    How's it going. I have this on my shelf
     
  15. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    It’s pretty slow. The main character being unsympathetic doesn’t help. But it’s picking up lately so here’s hoping. I’m about halfway through
     
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  16. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    Slogging my way through "Walden" now. Third time giving it a try
     
  17. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    gross
     
  18. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    I’ve made it 50%. I’m not backing down now
     
  19. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    Kinda want to plant a bean field now tbh
     
  20. Fusiontegra

    Fusiontegra My life is dope and I do dope shit.#SparedByThanos
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    Frankenstein is my favorite novel ever. I read it yearly.

    I’ve tried to read Atlas Shrugged and it just drags soooo fucking much sometimes. Really enjoy Count of Monte Cristo and Quixote.
     
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  21. Tangman

    Tangman Well-Known Member
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    Ayn Rand sucks bad imo
     
  22. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    Her philosophy is,shall we say... misguided, but I still enjoyed the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged :idk:
     
  23. Tangman

    Tangman Well-Known Member
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    To each his own, obviously. I found her to be a below average novelist with unnecessarily wordy prose and boring, static characters. I will admit that my opinion of her philosophy (which sounds like it matches yours) may color my opinions of her writing skills.
     
  24. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    I don't really know why I enjoyed them. The characters are hilarious. Her capitalists are all 6'5 beautiful geniuses and her communists are all 5'0 deformed squeaky voiced losers.
     
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  25. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    Update on Walden: currently on a 15 page description of ponds. One of the better sections so far
     
  26. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    I’m also not a fan of Rand, but I haven’t read her since high school. That probably is as big a factor as any.
     
  27. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Finished Crime and Punishment. I'm glad I read it, but I could never get completely into it. It finished fairly strong but I found it pretty slow and I detested the main character. I'd be curious to read another book by Dostoevsky and see how it compares.
     
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  28. Tangman

    Tangman Well-Known Member
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    Which translation did you read? People have strong opinions on FD translations on the book-related subreddits.
     
  29. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Constance Garnett, revised by Juliya Salkovskaya and Nicholas Rice. Barnes and Noble Classics series, 2007.
     
  30. Tangman

    Tangman Well-Known Member
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    Try a Pevear/Volokhonsky translation next time. Garnett is the classic but I've seen a lot of people say that her translations don't flow well and aren't especially true to the original Russian.
     
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  31. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    Only on TMB can someone read Crime and Punishment and someone else get cunty because they read the Salkovskaya translation like a peasant instead of the Pevear/Volohonsky
     
  32. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    I finished Walden. It's a very quotable book. Here are some of my favs

    "Men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost....Making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day..."

    "It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots."

    "The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle."

    "While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them."

    "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."

    "Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive."

    "Men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries."

    "My greatest skill has been to want but little."

    "To maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely."

    "The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait til that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off."

    "If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them...Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it."

    "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."

    "To a philosopher, all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea." (wonder how that one would play in the polotics thread :awesomeface:)

    "In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer...Sky water."

    "As I did not work hard, I did not have to eat hard."

    "The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer."
     
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  33. Tangman

    Tangman Well-Known Member
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    R/books posters get really defensive about their favorite FD translations. Can be insane to watch. It usually ends with one poster calling another poster an idiot.
     
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  34. Fusiontegra

    Fusiontegra My life is dope and I do dope shit.#SparedByThanos
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    Just restarted Picture of Dorian Gray. It’s one of my absolute favorites.
     
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  35. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    Haven't read any James Joyce. Have "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" on my shelf. That a good one to start with?
     
  36. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    I've only read Ulysses and while I appreciated it, I needed a reading guide. I haven't read Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man yet. I started listening the Ulysses and realized quickly that wasn't going to work. Switched to the actual book and was able to follow a lot better. Its pretty much all stream of consciousness.
     
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  37. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Started The Scarlet Letter today
     
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  38. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    Have read it since HS but remember hating it
     
  39. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Yeah not sure what to expect but figured I’d give it a whirl
     
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  40. Fusiontegra

    Fusiontegra My life is dope and I do dope shit.#SparedByThanos
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    I'm not a huge Faulkner fan, but As I Lay Dying was a pretty good read. Haven't read it in quite a few years but I remember enjoying it.
     
  41. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    Anybody ever fw Walt Whitman? Today's his 200th bday
     
  42. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    I prefer the other W.W.
     
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  43. Truman

    Truman Well-Known Member
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    [​IMG]
     
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  44. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    [​IMG]
    Willy Wonka?
     
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  45. Gonff

    Gonff Prince of Mousethieves
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    Has anyone read The Quiet American by Graham Greene? I picked it up yesterday for a couple bucks and plan on starting next week.
     
  46. Cornelius Suttree

    Cornelius Suttree the smallest crumb can devour us
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    good book. Kinda sad

    haven't read Graham Greene in a few years but I'm a huge fan. I have most of his novels
     
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  47. rcragg82

    rcragg82 Well-Known Member
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    Currently reading Count of Monte Cristo which I'm reading for the first time.

    I am enjoying it but also realizing that I don't love books that stretch into the 1000 page+ length. Nothing against the story but I'm also getting the itch to start a new book even though I haven't finished this one which I try not to read 2 different at the same time.
     
  48. The Blackfish

    The Blackfish The Fish in Black
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    It’s an amazing book. Finish it if you can
     
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  49. TC

    TC Peter, 53, from Toxteth
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    There used to be a lot less on tv
     
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  50. Dildo Dawgins

    Dildo Dawgins Well-Known Member
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    This a top 5 all timer for me. The story is just so wild, and I loved every second of it.
     
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