Shall we read "Great Expectations"?

[vison]

The answer is, Yes. He meant that he looked at Pip attentively.

[Cerin]

You're on chapter 23? How many chapters are there?

I'll go look for a copy tomorrow, I was going to the bookstore anyway.

[truehobbit]

Thanks, vison!

Cerin, it's 59 chapters, so I'm not quite half through. Would be great to have someone else chime in and kick this group read off again.

[Cerin]

I decided -- since it's hard for me to read paperbacks (due to the pressure needed to keep the book open) and a new hardback might be a bit expensive -- to buy a used hardback copy on eBay. So I think I should have it in about a week.

[truehobbit]

w00t!

I agree about this problem with paperbacks - but it depends on the quality of the binding. You can get paperbacks that stay open as nicely as hardcovers, even better.
But the ones that don't - yes, it's annoying. Esp as I can't find it in my heart to force them open, unless I don't like the book much. (Once you've really broken the back, they'll stay open quite easily... )

So, in many cases you can see how much I liked a book, by looking at the state of its back...

(Of course, some are that cheap, they'll look ravished even if you were quite careful. )

[truehobbit]

Bumping this to say I'm still reading, and to ask Cerin how she's proceeding.

I'm up to chapter 34 now, enjoying it very much, but wishing the writing style were more elegant, or at least more simple at times! Lots of sentences a poor hobbit has to read twice, and still going after that.

Before I comment, to avoid spoilers - I've heard from Cerin that she got a copy of the book now and is reading - so, how much have you read, Cerin?

Mmmh, remember when we started this thread, how I thought I had a copy of this book and couldn't find it?
Well, it's happened again!
I've just thought that I'd start a new book (I'm only reading three at a time right now, so surely there's room for one more... ), and as we've been talking about children's lit in the Parlour I wanted to start Otfried Preußler's Krabat, which has been on my 'to read' list for ages.
I know I own this book. I can still see it on its place on the shelf in my old apartment, and how I looked into it a few times, thinking I should read it, but deterred by the old-fashioned language (embarrassing to admit though that is). And now it's gone. ARGH!
Don't panic!


(Not that there aren't around 370 other books that I could read because I haven't yet, but I wanted this one... )

[vison]

So maybe my missing copy of "Lark Rise to Candleford" is in your bookcase?

[truehobbit]

*goes to check*

Unfortunately, no. Though it would be lovely if it was, because ages and ages ago I had that out from the library and loved it!
It was in German, though, and, because it was published for the anniverary of a dairy factory that markets itself as good, old, homemade, traditional and whatnot (their stuff may not be homemade, but it is good! ), it was also illustrated with lovely drawings of rustic life etc. - I'd love to read it in English, but I'd also love to see that edition again.

Sooo - any chance you have my Krabat? It's in German, it's a paperback and in large print (I remember because large print is a bit annoying, but I wanted the book and it was quite cheap).
You should read it, if you find it - it's probably a bit spooky (at least the movie I've seen made from it was), but it's a classic.

[Primula Baggins]

Wouldn't it be great if we could just "beam" interesting books around to each other?

[truehobbit]

Oooh yes!
And they'd arrive in sterling translation, if the original was in a foreign language. Or the recipient would be instantly enabled to read the original.

[Primula Baggins]

Oooh, I'd vote for the second. The discussion in your German poetry thread has helped me realize how hard even prose translation must be, if you're trying not just to convey information but also to preserve the "feel" and artistic impact of the original.

[truehobbit]

Hehe, that would be my vote, too!
Yes, translating literature is a particular responsibility, I think - most of the money is in technical translation, of course, but all the fun and creativity, I think, is in getting the "feel" of a text across, all the ideas between the lines, whether it's prose or poetry.

[Primula Baggins]

I once translated a couple of long medical–scientific articles from German to English for my boss, a neurologist who couldn't wait for the regular translation to come out.

It was fun, but there was definitely no art to it.

[Cerin]

*briefly considers pretending she didn't stop into the thread and see hobby's question*





hobby, please don't wait for me to catch up, but continue posting your comments and questions while they're fresh in your mind.

[truehobbit]

I'm kind of relieved you didn't overtake me in the meantime, Cerin, as I'd feared.

Well, instead of a detail observation maybe a general comment: isn't it amazing that Dickens created a main character who starts out as being such a complete failure, humanly? I'm hoping he'll change at the end - in fact, I trust that this is what the book is about. But I still think it's interesting that a Dickens novel should have such a hero.
The worst in terms of personal qualities I'd read so far was David Copperfield - he's such an annoying idiot through most of the book.
Interestingly, I've not found Pip so annoying yet, but he's definitely a still greater idiot.


In other news, I've found my book (the one I was looking for yesterday) - the spine is yellow, not white as I'd thought, so I'd be looking in vain. Busy reading it now.

It was fun, but there was definitely no art to it.

Oh, yes, it is fun, even if it's not art! That is, as long as it's not so far removed from one's own sphere of knowledge as to make it incomprehensible. I guess medical articles were ok for you, Prim. If on looking up the unfamiliar words you get words that you understand it's ok - it's just when the words you get from the dictionary are just as alien as the original that it becomes frustrating.

[vison]

Well, instead of a detail observation maybe a general comment: isn't it amazing that Dickens created a main character who starts out as being such a complete failure, humanly? I'm hoping he'll change at the end - in fact, I trust that this is what the book is about. But I still think it's interesting that a Dickens novel should have such a hero.
The worst in terms of personal qualities I'd read so far was David Copperfield - he's such an annoying idiot through most of the book.
Interestingly, I've not found Pip so annoying yet, but he's definitely a still greater idiot.

????

Pip starts out as a complete failure? Pip starts out as a little boy. He undergoes a rather severe maturing process and ends up a pretty wise and mature man.

On another thread we are discussing "heroes". Well, the protagonist of a novel is often called "the hero", but in general all it means is "main character". Anthony Trollope often began his books by mentioning that his "hero" was not going to exhibit much heroism, but was, in fact, going to exhibit a lot of ordinary human frailties and flaws and that the interest of the thing for him as a writer (and hopefully for us as readers) was to see how the "hero" endured his trials. Did he come out tempered by the fire? Or melted into a useless blob?

I don't see Pip as an annoying idiot any more than I saw David Copperfield as an annoying idiot: the point of the books is to show their characters develop. I don't think, myself, that it would be very interesting to read about a guy who started out "mature" and "heroic" and see him carry on to the end, unaltered. What would be the point?

Even Frodo was changed by what he had to suffer.

And I recall many readers commenting that they could never love Aragorn because Aragorn was a virtuous stick throughout . . . .

[Primula Baggins]

<slips vison a twenty>

[truehobbit]

Yes, he starts out as a little boy, and of excellent promise - but I'm currently in chapter 34 and commenting on that.

True, considering that he's currently a teen, I think the particular failings he shows are not uncommon - although they are particularly marked, and, for a Dickens book (I think) surprising.
I've never taken Dickens as particularly interested in character development. His characters tend to be either virtuous or evil from beginning to end, and normally you can even see it in their looks or read it in their names.
For a character to start out as a selfish weakling is, I think, remarkable.

I don't know yet into what he'll change - and I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your comments to what I've read so far! - but there's no doubt that he's a selfish, nasty little blob at the moment.

David Copperfield, IIRC, was never selfish, just foolish, and that made him annoying to my taste. He did end up learning better at the very end, thanks to the help and support of those people who'd been good throughout.

Other Dickens characters I've met did indeed set out one way and ended up that same way.
The whole thing about character development, and that people are only interesting if they change, is simply not true for me.

Frodo was changed, but his character didn't change. He learnt and was destroyed - but he was the same person from beginning to end.

Personally, to be frank, I don't believe that people's characters can change in the first place, so that's probably why I find most modern novels so uncompelling.

I like Aragorn, but I like Faramir even more.
Because he's, you know, a "virtuous stick" throughout.

[vison]

David Copperfield and Great Expectations are Dickens' greatest novels, IMHO, because he wrote novels when he wrote them, not tracts against particular social evils. "Bleak House", magnificent though it is, is a tract.

Pip and David are both fundamentally "good" boys. But both could end up on the gallows, though, if they made the wrong choices. "Selfish weakling" pretty well fits any child, doesn't it? Can't, offhand, think of any exceptions, except for literary characters such as Esther Summerson (Bleak House), who, as you say, begin good and boringly go on being good.

English literature, when you stop to think about it, is largely about "selfish weaklings" who grow up. So is the human race.

I saw Frodo as a "selfish weakling" in the beginning, but certainly his innate goodness and purity was developed as the story went on: in tandem with his growing lust for the Ring.

We only saw Aragorn and Faramir as "finished products", we did not see them grow up. And I, just by the way, never saw Aragorn as a virtuous stick and spent a lot of time on another forum defending my Favourite Ranger.

[Primula Baggins]

Maybe the problem is the definition of "character." Because I certainly do believe people's characters can change, in real life and in literature.

If by character you mean only, whether someone will make a good moral choice or a bad one—not how he does it, or why he does it, or how he feels about it—even then, characters change. Criminals do genuinely reform, some of them, and go on to lead useful lives. Good people in positions of trust give in to temptation and fall. People who start life with every advantage of love and care can end up ruining their lives; people who barely survive their own childhoods and suffer terrible abuse and neglect can become great.

My complaint about Faramir and to some extent about Aragorn was, we did not know what made these men the people they were. I wanted an explanation, some explanation, of how Faramir could casually push away the temptation of the Ring, just as I would have wanted an explanation of why he could fly, or turn into a petunia and back.

I enjoy stories of people doing extraordinary deeds, but I want more from those stories than just an exciting description of the deeds. I want some way to relate the heroes to people I actually know, and to myself. It's not that I want to drag them down to my level; it's that I want to know why they are the people they are—how they arrived at who they are (because they weren't born heroes; no one is).

It's something I'm incurably curious about. I know some others simply aren't.