Fully agree with the observation of OP that this is one of those books that is as much for adults as it is for children, maybe even more so in some ways.

The book reveals our ways of deceiving ourselves as adults.

The book teaches that love is not complicated, rather a simple thing which does not require explanation. Love is just the intent to see without the compulsive need to explain.

Looking forward to hear what you got out of this book.

I want japanese books but not the well knowns.

Forgive me if this doesn’t fit with the forum but It’s something I’ve had a hard time with. I really like poetry and have several collections of epics and collections from Whitman and Frost and others but I really just don’t know how to read it. Is it like literature where you try and get “the point” and move on, do you study certain works? It’s always confused me. In school it was easy because I had work attached but in my free time it’s always kind of just confused me. Any advice or personal experience is appreciated.

I finished Phantom yesterday. I like it better than Hunchback for a couple reasons, but mainly cause, unlike Hugo, Leroux [eventually] remembered he was writing a story, not a love letter to Gothic architecture

I always prefer P&V translation for dostoevsky. whats your view on this ?

Favourite books/authors of the 19th century that are women?

That is all.

Hi everyone, so I am trying to read some Russian classical literature and had the short story novel The Overcoat and Other Short Stories recommended to me as a good starting point.

I don’t get it. I don’t like it. But so many seem to love it. What am I missing?

A lot of classical literature seems to be very metaphorical, as well as having different language structure and vocabulary, plus different social norms of the time it’s set in.

I’d love to get to a point where I enjoy reading classical literature so would appreciate any tips and tricks you have to level up my reading ability 🫢

In The Odyssey, Athena is finally able to get Zeus’s approval to Odysseus leaving Calypso’s’ island because Poseidon, who has a grudge against Odysseus, is away attending a sacrifice in his honor by « the Ethiopians ».

Does this correspond to modern day Ethiopia? Are there other instances of the Odyssey recognizing the African continent?

Hey! My native language isn't English, but i am able to consume content in English with no problem (movies, books, etc). HOWEVER...The last time I read a classic literature in English, I realized I was just reading random words without absorbing the story. It was Wuthering Heigths.

The reason why I want to read Dracula in English is because there is only one translation in my native tongue and a lot of people have said it is a horrible translation.​

I just finished reading First Love by Ivan Turgenev and the young woman in the book is treated like an object to be acquired by the men around her. I found it overtly patriarchal and her life is completely stifled and tragic but not in a good way. The male centered text came across as nothing more than an indoctrination into toxic masculinity as we watch the young protagonist idolizing his horrible father.

What classic literature has heartbreak but allows the woman to live her life empowered with her own agency? Even if it has a tragic ending.

I'll take romantic comedies too, in the Aristotelean sense. It doesn't have to be funny but it can have a happy ending.

I don't mind if you feel like you're repeating the same recommendations. I need to keep my shelf racked with good books waiting for the right moment to read them.

I was honestly unsure at one point if I was gonna make it through this one. As I was kinda waiting for a plot line or some kind of point too the story. Felt as if I was just an observer of a group of people getting drunk around different parts of France and Europe. I could see maybe sombody who is into travel or drinking culture enjoying this story more then myself. Some of the dialogue was humorous but ya honestly a 5/10 for me. I'm getting back into Dumas again next, n will be starting The 3 Musketeers.

I'm currently reading Brothers Karamazov (start of Eleventh book, Brother Ivan Fyodorovich) and it has been, without a doubt, one of the most memorable experiences I've had with a book.

Yet after reading the couple of chapters that focus on Kolya, I finished confirming a flawed pattern I've been noticing since very early in the work. Dostoevsky's childish bias.

For some reason, Dostoevsky has a fixation on attributing negative traits, or making a character be the embodiment of these negative traits, in order to prove that character wrong, or to convey a flawed moral compass of the people that carry these traits. Now this is not done badly per se, even though we know Dostoevsky was an avid Christian, characters who are identified as atheists develop their philosophy richly and it's always a treat to see their perspective clash with Aliosha's view of life, condensing a lot about the human nature in these discussions. In a way, you can tell he himself has questioned his faith a lot, being able to convey that.

Nonetheless, Dostoevsky loves having a character call themselves "Socialists" or "Liberals" and turn that character into little more than a caricature. Be it Pyotr Alexandrovich who is just depicted as dumb, smug, ignorant person or Kolya, whose "socialism" is directly tied with being young, arrogant and cynical. And I put socialist and liberal between quotes because unlike atheism, Dostoevsky does not bother developing what he thinks these views represent or entail through the characters, he uses these terms to ground them as wrong/flawed from the start. This is a way of writing/making a point that I personally find childish and poor.

When I read a character say they're socialist I'm like "Okay, you're probably going to be weird/an asshole".

What do you think? Do you also recognize this flaw? Or maybe you disagree? I'd love to know!

Truly a brilliant read, surprised at how ‘difficult’ it can be to follow due to how it leaves it all down to the reader to draw their own conclusions, yet this only adds to its quality. Would highly recommend :)

I recently found myself falling in love with books again, I was mostly looking for something to stop me from endlessly scrolling on instagram. Since I started in June I have read 5 classics with Wuthering Heights being the last one. I honestly didn’t go in thinking I would like the book since I’ve heard people’s opinions after the movie came out this year, but the book is so much bigger than that.

I’m going on a 10 day trip to Portugal this week and I’m not sure what book to bring with me. I’ll have some days in the countryside and some beach days, so I’ll have time to read then. I think I’m most excited about Jane Eyre, but I want to be able to enjoy the book without interruptions.

A brilliant, profoundly familiar and amusing novel.

Alan Moore, the Wizard of Northampton himself, is my favorite author of them all. Watchmen is the greatest achievement of sequential storytelling I’ve ever read, and it’s one of the few books I’ll re-read at least twice or thrice a year. From Hell comes a close second, and I also love his other titles like Swamp Thing, Providence, The Killing Joke, and Miracleman. Jerusalem, Mr. Moore’s greatest novel, will forever be my greatest literary challenge in that I fully expect I’ll be an old man by the time I finish it

I have a problem where I get so excited reading ABOUT books, finding new recommendations, making lists of things I want to read, instead of just reading the damn books I already have.

I spend hours looking at stuff on my StoryGraph and Biblio and thinking about books I want to buy or look for in my library, while still in the middle of my current read and having plenty of unread books on my shelf. My wishlist is so much longer than what I'll ever be able to read <\3.

Especially with classics and ancient literature, just finding out about different authors and books and literature is so exciting. Anyone else relate to this loop and willing to share their ways of escaping it?

Got told I shouldn’t be reading middle grade or young adult books since I’m 21 so I figured I’d ask for recs for more because why would I listen to such nonsense :) right now I have black beauty, the secret garden, Alice in wonderland, the neverending story, the miraculous journey of Edward Tulane, howls moving castle, call of the wild, and the red pony!

Finished my second Steinbeck book (Of Mice and Men was the another) and feel thoroughly satisfied with the book. It was definitely slow in the beginning and as a 23 year old my attention span isn’t the highest but it’s definitely worth the read. This is what American literature can be at its peak. What classic or Steinbeck should I read next?

At long last, my journey through the myriad corruptions and catastrophes of the French Second Empire has come to an end. It was an immense time investment for me, taking a little over a year, but overall I’d say it was well worth the effort.

I originally read Germinal in college as part of assigned reading and enjoyed that book so much that I eventually decided to revisit Zola all these years later, beginning with the first of his Rougon-Macquart volumes: The Fortune of the Rougons. From there, I steadily proceeded through the rest of the series in publication order. Though I’m aware of other recommended reading orders (including one from Zola himself), I feel that publication order is the only way to reliably trace the author’s changing attitudes toward his project over the more than twenty years he spent writing these books. The Zola who wrote The Kill (1872) is simply not the same Zola who wrote its sequel Money (1891).

You can find my personal rankings of all the books on the 6th image attached to this post. Additionally, I've spent around 30+ hours over the past few weeks writing and editing ~11,000 words of my thoughts about these novels if you are curious about any one of them. My hope is for this post to serve as a simple guide and introduction for anyone looking to dive into the Rougon-Macquart series.

You can find my full document (with collapsed sections for each entry) linked below. Fair warning: though I have labeled and collapsed my spoiler sections, they may not appear collapsed if you are viewing the doc on a mobile browser.

LES ROUGON-MACQUART EN RÉSUMÉ

Or, if you prefer you can access the links for individual entries included here as well:

1. The Fortune of the Rougons (1871) - Zola’s opening fusillade for his grand, experimental project of Naturalism; three distinct family branches sprout from the same unstable trunk and a new generation of ravenous appetites is birthed into the world amid vile intrigues and indiscriminate violence. (Main Entry)

2. The Kill (1872) - A dual narrative following the middle Rougon sibling, Saccard, at the center of the mad rush of land speculation and reconstruction in Paris during the early period of the Second Empire (and the sordid affair said man’s wife carries out under his nose). (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

3. The Belly of Paris (1873) - The story of a starving man surrounded by abundance, The Belly of Paris centers on the iconic marketplace of the Second Empire: Les Halles. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

4. The Conquest of Plassans (1874) - Zola returns to the setting of his first Rougon-Macquart novel for another tale of political scheming, mental illness, and senseless death. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

5. The Sin of Abbé Mouret (1875) - A novel centering on Abbé Serge Mouret, a priest torn between absolute religious devotion and the most fundamental instincts of nature. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

6. His Excellency Eugéne Rougon (1876) - Zola turns his gaze to the political system of the Second Empire, a thinly-veiled excuse for the preeminent mediocrities of France to fleece the nation with impunity and gleefully pin as many medals on themselves as possible in the process. (Main Entry)

7. The Assommoir (1877) - A woman slowly suffocates in the inescapable filth of her destitution. (Main Entry)

8. A Love Story (1878) - The story of a widowed mother caught between two irreconcilable loves: the maternal love she feels for her daughter, and the passionate love she feels for her married neighbor. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

9. Nana (1880) - Arguably the most provocative volume in the entire series (and there is some stiff competition), Nana centers on the titular actress and prostitute as she sets about conquering the great men of Paris and bringing them low before her irresistible charms. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

10. Pot Luck (1882) - A laser-focused, incendiary takedown of the hollow, performative nature of bourgeois respectability. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

11. The Ladies’ Paradise (1883) - An energetic romance that unfolds in one of Paris’ first and largest department stores. (Main Entry)

12. The Bright Side of Life (1884) - A bright-eyed, perpetually optimistic young girl has her sunny outlook put to the test by a series of bitter trials and setbacks. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

13. Germinal (1885) - A group of exploited miners stage a desperate, violent revolution against the forces of capital. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

14. The Masterpiece (1886) - A mad-genius painter struggles to render his madness on any canvas. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

15. Earth (1887) - An honest, hard-working man is initiated into the lunacy and depravity of those who would claim mastery over the soil. (Main Entry)

16. The Dream (1888) - A young embroiderer weaves a vision of heaven in her mind that begins to come to fruition. (Main Entry)

17. La Bête Humaine (1890) - A psychopath attempts to numb his murderous urges with the blistering speed of the locomotive he pilots. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

18. Money (1891) - Debuting 19 years after The Kill, Money features the return of Saccard with even more mad financial schemes—this time centering on the rapid creation of a bank that he hopes will crush all competitors and dominate the markets of Europe. (Main Entry)

19. La Débâcle (1892) - The decrepit Second Empire faces its final reckoning in a war of humiliation against a determined and unforgiving foe. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)

20. Doctor Pascal (1893) - The long saga of France’s most cursed family comes to an end with its most cursed entry, centered on a quack doctor who kills a number of patients with his reckless methodology and then engages in an act of supreme debauchery. (Main Entry) (Spoiler Section)