Re: Got to vent

on 30/08/2006 4:52 pm, Richard Robinson wrote:

amgine said:

Sounds like Madame Bovary is a lot like Anna Karenina, which is like
those dreadful Thomas Hardy novels: Depressing, dreary and full of
obvious clichéd links to fate and death and characters who need a good
....

[ sorry. I'm a sucker for the cheap jokes ] [ in case you hadn't noticed
already ]

They probably need one of those too.


Every now and then I read a "classic" book and almost always feel
incredibly disappointed by the end. Not that the wonderful experience is
over but that I wasted a small part of my life reading it in the first
place.

I think perhaps it's a shame it all got turned into such an industry. Hooter
the self-importance. There's only one reason for turning a page over, and
that's because you _want to know_ what's on it.

It seems a bit wussy to give up on reading something simply because it's too
boring to plough through. Sometimes the only reason to turn the page over is
sheer bloody-minded hope that it has to get better soon. It would be good if
it were acceptable to make the point in essays and exams that you didn't
bother to read the whole of [eg] Wuthering Heights simply because it wasn't
a "page turner".


But I think disappointment's a mistake, too. After all, you only looked at
it because you wondered what it was like, and whetever you think of it, you
got that much. Curiosity is not wasted by deciding you don't want to take it
any further. You wondered, you found out, that's fine.

Except I could have spent the time more enjoyably: watching Third Rock From
the Sun or playing Roller Coaster Tycoon ferinstance.


Apart, likeIsaid, from
the industry. Having to take exams in what happens next and what it all Means
regardless of whether you've decided it's not worth it, and having people
think they can look down on you because you haven't read the right things,
and all that. A vague consensus list of things that might be worth a look
is nice (and probably unavoidable), but that's all it is.

But it's the industry that pushes their "100 books to read before you die"
agenda! How can I face the end of my life if I haven't read The Horse and
His Boy, The Great Gatsby or Cider With Rosie? How can I say I'm educated if
I don't know who was on the English throne between 1453 and 1586? Is life
worth living when one isn't sure if one is standing on chalk laid down in
the metaprosaic era or shale with a clay substrate laid down during the
second ice age of the voltaic level in Myst3?

Well anyway. I don't have to pass exams anymore and I didn't die in the
attempt when I did have to, so I'll read Pratchett even if he does become
part of the GCSE syllabus. [But don't expect me to write an essay on the
socio-political dynamics in Ankh-Morpork under Queen Coanna].


.

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