Big Read Poll Results

[altariel]

Wow, you really got into my Big Read Poll! Anyone would think you all liked books or something. I read The Color Purple while you were making up your minds, and I thought it was terrific. Thank you everyone who recommended that one. Does the film do the book justice?

I'm surprised nobody wanted to inflict the last six-sevenths of Ulysses on me. I'm fairly sure I'll get round to that in my own time, though, as I like what I've read of Joyce. Well done for not voting for Kerouac!

Currently Catch-22 and Vanity Fair are slogging it out for my hand, nine votes each. Celebrity Death-Match! uitlander struck what I thought was the winning blow for Vanity Fair ("So good not even studying it for A-level could ruin it!"), but then The Last Bassist shamelessly deployed nostalgia in support of Catch-22. What's a girl to do? Perhaps I should just read both.

Special shout-out to gareth_rees for what I thought was a particularly eloquent case for Moby-Dick ("It's all sperm and flensing!"). It does sound the most magnificent head-fuck.

Apparatus: LJ, friends.
Method: Poll.
Results: Undecided.
Conclusion: You all read a lot, and rock.

Comments

[gair.livejournal.com]

Oh, The Color Purple is just fantastic, isn't it? I would have ticked it on the poll, but I did think you probably wouldn't need a poll to tell you to read it as it is much more rip-roaring a read than anything else you listed.

The only thing I remember about the film is that it's terribly terribly coy about teh sexxing (girls' trembling fingers touch and they swoon down out of shot, while camera looks away at some symbolic thing or other). Don't see how it could possibly be a patch on the book, though.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It was brilliant. My copy has her collected short stories bundled with it too, so I'll press on with those.

I did wonder how Spielberg was going to handle teh sexxing without frightening the audience. (I must confess I'm a bit of a sucker for Spielberg's brand of sentimentality.)

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

One of my literature lecturers at university recommended that one read Ulysses by being awake for far too long, ingesting a near-overdose of caffeine and then read it all in one go.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Ideally, a group of you should then read it out to each other.

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

Doing funny voices?

[gfk88.livejournal.com]

I hope these numbers you're quoting are after reallocation of everyone's first pref. votes for other books not involved in the run-off.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Pshaw to proportional representation. It's all about enlightened despotism on this journal. ("Who's Queen?")

[gfk88.livejournal.com]

Tsk - I'm Disappointed. Anyway, STV is nothing to do with enhancing democracy and all that bollocks. It's so you can have a system so arcane and impenetrable that you have to rely on mathematicians to run it.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

And engineers to build the Speshul Voting Machines.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Oh, all right then. I thought about it, but couldn't decide between several choices; I'd have preferred square boxes on this one.

cdybedahl's lecturer is on the right lines. I might not go to that extreme, since I don't like caffeine much, but the thing to do is to plunge in and keep going and suddenly it starts making sense and you think should I go back and start again at the beginning but no you shouldn't because you need to keep going and not stop for anything and anyway you can always read it again in a few years which reminds me it's four years since last time because I did it for the centenary of Bloomsday when I was in France and it's got cricket in it at least twice and um yes you should read it all yes.

Actually, I liked the Kerouac too. Crikey, I used to read once upon a time. How did I fit it in?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I thought about doing check boxes but decided it might get too complex.

I started Ulysses not long before we went over to the States and read that great chunk of it then went away and didn't pick it up again when I got back and of course I have been distracted with all sorts of other books and projects since then but I do intend to read and now I have such good advice on how to go about reading it I will go back and read it all yes I will Yes.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I think for me it started to click when they were in the library discussing Hamlet, which is appropriate in a way, because it's like the way you arrive at a Shakespearean play and it can take a scene or so to tune into the language, but then it begins to seem natural. Only more so, because Joyce keeps switching styles to keep you off-balance, but eventually you tune into that too.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I was actually fine tuning into the language: I was surprised when I picked it up to find how naturally it read. I think it reminded me of my mother's speech patterns, inherited from her father. (And of course Scouse has a lot in common with the Dublin accent.) This could all be fancy on my part of course.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

You're well-positioned then!

It's occurred to me that you could read the Odyssey first. Not to mention the Iliad.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I've been reading the Odyssey recently, for a project. Have you read Margaret Atwood's recent retelling, The Penelopiad?

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I thought that was a bit patchy. A short story idea stretched into a novel.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was patchy. I got the feeling she was only interested half of the time.

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

I adore the Odyssey, but I disliked the Penelopiad, I thought it was boring and a bit forced. I found that I enjoyed the Iliad much more in the Greek, strangely, and got massively emotionally involved. I don't know what it was, whether it was being forced to read it so slowly, or appreciating much more the beauty of the way it all falls together. In English, it's just a bunch of people hitting each other.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

In English, it's just a bunch of people hitting each other.

:-D

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

Celebrity Death-Match!

T.S. Eliot joke for the win!

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

Gawd, I got seven chapters into Catch 22 and had no desire to read any further. Nearly as bad as the Iliad!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Catch 22 was one of the other ones I wanted to be able to tick; I find it exhilarating, and I can't really remember anything else I finished on such a high.

Of course, I think the Iliad is the best thing ever.

[mraltariel.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on both of those; Catch 22 was my other rec. after Anna K.

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

I sense we have differing expectations from literature! Strangely enough, I find repetition and prolixity in other forms pretty entertaining at times, but these just don't do it for me.

I like Key Lime pie as an alternative

[scribal1.livejournal.com]

Personally, I don't dive into deep water unless I have to. (If bottomless lakes are a metphor for more serious reading material...I like Kiddy pools.) So you would never get a rec from me on Tolstoy. But I might give you the job of tackling Truman Capote. Breakfast at Tiffany's is short, funny, insightful in a round about way... And really... if you take on Ulysses, you may need it.

Re: I like Key Lime pie as an alternative

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I love the film of Breakfast at Tiffany's, but I gather the book is darker. One day I'll get round to it!

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

I think I've just thrown in another vote for "Vanity Fair". It's so fantastic that university reading lists can't ruin it, either!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

And an eleventh vote seems to have secured its victory!

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

Yay!

Um, now that Thackeray seems to have won the day, I think I might also recommend Gone with the Wind. I always feel uncomfortable telling anyone to read this because there's no denying that it's utter bullshit from a historian's point of view and horribly racist to boot, but I do have a huge soft spot for the character of Scarlett O'Hara and her relationship with Melanie Wilkes.

(And I don't even have the excuse of coming across the novel as an impressionable teenager; I read it first when I was twenty and already had one year of American Cultural Studies under my belt.)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes, Vanity Fair shot ahead at the last minute! I do intend to read Gone With the Wind at some point, because I want to read The Wind Done Gone.

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

The Wind Done Gone

I've meant to read this for ages. Thanks for reminding me!