The following is a list of the novels that I had read in 2015 that impressed me the most among all the others I had read.
NEW READS
Anthony Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time (twelve novels)
Sarah Orne Jewett: The Country of Pointed Firs and Other Stories
Harper Lee: Go Set a Watchman
Tsao Hsueh-chin: Dream of the Red Chamber (aka The Story of the Stone)
REREADS
Dostoyevsky: The Gambler, The Double, Notes from Underground
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
Balzac: The Black Sheep
Mikhail Bulgakov: Heart of a Dog
It doesn't appear to be a long list, but Anthony Powell's series consists of twelve novels.
I saw the mini-series of the Anthony A Dance to the Music of Time, and bought the first novel, but never got around to reading it. I guess I should. I was also very impressed with Go Set A Watchman
ReplyDeleteJim,
DeleteI also saw the mini-series and was so impressed I decided to read the novels. The library didn't have the first volume, so I bought a beat-up copy from a used book store. I hadn't even finished it when I decided to get them all. I never regretted it.
I was a bit leery of GSaW because of the controversy surrounding it. I'm usually disappointed by controversial books since they seldom live up to the hype. But GSaW did not disappoint me.
i read "dream of the red chamber several years ago but didn't get much out of it. lots of intrafamilial politicking and arguing is about what i remember. should try it again, i guess. i've been thinking about "dance" for some time; the reviews i've read have been positive. what do you think?
ReplyDeleteMudpuddle,
Delete_Dream..._ is about the dissolution of a once powerful family and does involve much about the internal affairs of the family. It reminds me a bit of Thomas Mann's _Buddenbrooks_, which was about the slow fall of a German family.
Powell's _Dance, the 12 novel series, was one of my reading highlights of last year. I thought it well worth the time spent on it and will read it again sometime in the not too distant future.
Oooh so you've read Dream of the Red Chamber. 1 of the 4 great classical works of Chinese literature.
ReplyDeleteDi,
DeleteIt was an edited edition, and I guess it wasn't the complete novel. What are the other three?
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West and Water Margin.
DeleteDi,
DeleteThanks for the information.
R.T.,
ReplyDeleteThere is so much going on in _Notes from Underground_ that it's almost overwhelming. I've read it numerous times and each time find something new (or perhaps something I found before but have forgotten it).
I read The Country of Pointed Firs several years ago and really enjoyed it too. I downloaded Jewett's A Country Doctor on a recommendation some months ago but haven't gotten around to it yet.
ReplyDeleteThe Black Sheep - one of my favorite Balzacs!
madamevauquer,
ReplyDeleteI liked Balzac's The Black Sheep and see it as a companion work to his Pere Goriot.
A Country Doctor--I shall have to check around for it.
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ReplyDeleteMudpuddle,
DeleteScholarly expositions involving deconstruction and other literary criticism theories are highly specialized and would make as much sense to the general reader as would papers in astrophysics, chemistry, quantum mechanics, etc.
I doubt that any of them, including literary critical works would create "depression and anomie" in anybody unless they get that way from realizing there are areas in which they are ignorant.
Moreover, we were talking about novels and fiction and not about lit/crit works.
While tastes do differ, I would still like to see the titles of those "hard" works (novels please, since that was what we were discussing on the other blog), that have a detrimental effect on readers and those easy (that is the opposite of hard) works that are beneficial for the reader and for the world in general as you suggested.