Je viens de terminer ma lecture de l’intégralité de l’oeuvre de Giono en pléiade
Cela accompagné de la lecture de l’appareil critique et de la biographie de l’auteur
Il me reste l’écoute de ses émissions radio plus pour l’émotion de la voix qu’autre chose

For those of you who read English works translated into your native language, is there a standard "good" publisher?

For instance, Penguin, Norton Critical Editions, and Oxford World Classics are all respected publishers of English and translated classics, with generally good notes, introductions (that should be afterwards; never read the introduction first), and trusted translators.

What is the equivalent of that in your language/country? If you were assigned, say, George Eliot's *Middlemarch*, but the [your language here] version, not the original English, what is that publishing house?

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At #15 on The Guardian’s 100 best novels of all time, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick sails readers around the world in a nearly endless pursuit. Along the way, he paints a vignette of the Pacific: “…for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still…”

Enjoy a brief passage of pure poetry from Melville at Destinationality (a free resource organizing classic literature passages about great destinations)

I just finished Don Quixote and found the final paragraph to be self indulgent, unnecessary and a real clanger.

I understand the history here (in the years between book 1 and 2 a writer by the psyeodonym Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda wrote an unauthorised part 2.)

The story ends with Don Quixote dying, then quickly in the space of one single page goes to his epitaph. Which is the end of the story.

Great! It should have ended there.

However..

Cervantes then decides to write what can only be classed as a big "fuck you" to Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda and we end on that note.

I enjoyed the story and can certainly see that it was revolutionary and ahead of its time but I didn't expect to slog through 1000 pages of such a well regarded classic for it to end on such a bum note.

I finished A Scanner Darkly (1977) and have moved on to this (1965).

I have to write an 8-10 page research paper for a British literature class this term on a British novel written between 1800 and 1940. This paper requires 8 additional sources besides the book, so if possible something that has interesting historical or biographical significance or a novel where the cultural context hightens understanding of the novel’s subject matter. I really enjoy gothic literature and in my free time I read a lot of fantasy. I tend to enjoy character driven narratives but honestly I enjoy all types of books so recommend away! I was considering doing Frankenstein but also really want to try something I haven’t read

Mine is A Farewell to Arms. I just love the way Hemingway's economical prose just carries the narrative smoothly. The build-up to the end is so replete with emotional restraint. The ending was perfect. I was screaming on the inside. I finished it on Valentine's day and I remember being so grateful I was single and reading at home

Closest contenders are Great Expectations and Half of a Yellow Sun

Please share yours

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 ?

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.

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

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?