I have decided to revive my languishing Goodreads page and have connected it to the blog. It’s under the recent comments on the right-hand panel. Enjoy!
Goodreads
Opinions, art, debate
Opinions, art, debate
I have decided to revive my languishing Goodreads page and have connected it to the blog. It’s under the recent comments on the right-hand panel. Enjoy!
Clarissa's Blog 
Waitwaitwait, only two stars to “Frankenstein” and “Romeo and Juliet”? Blasphemy! I require an explanation! 😀
Jokes aside, why didn’t you like these classics?
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I’m resentful on behalf of our Calderón and Lope de Vega who are so much better than Shakespeare and not as well-known. Romeo and Juliet I always found to be particularly silly. It’s so hyped up.
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“Romeo and Juliet I always found to be particularly silly. It’s so hyped up.”
-I liked coming across this story in Ovid’s Metamorphosis (can’t remember the translator, but it was a good version). It was a fun passage because it was so melodramatic.
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“so much better than Shakespeare”
Shakespeare kind of sucks for americans (who cannot understand the original texts without some degree of specialist study – the language is not only archaic it’s all but incomprehensible).
This is why British actors are better at Shakespeare – they have a flatter, faster delivery and only work at projecting generalized emotional states.
American actors seem to try to search for meaning in the individual lines and words and the result is horrible beyond belief.
As for Romeo and Juliet, I think the real message is on the destructive power of obsessive juvenile romantic infatuation (it’s hard to take the story literally as a love story because the characters are too young and unformed, they have crushes on each other, big messy and dangerous crushes).
I sometimes think the play was meant to be a warning for adults to supervise the burgeoning romantic feelings of teenagers better….
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I love Goodreads (not for the social part, just to track my reading and read others’ reviews) and always enjoy learning about books from you.
I think these are all the books I’ve read based on your recommendations or mentions here and there, with many more in the to-read pile: No Name, The Affair, The Gadfly, Contempt.
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It always makes me happy when my recommendations bring people together with good books. 😀
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Am I right that the only info on that site is about number of stars and when you added the book? Without you writing something about the books, which one should seek on your blog?
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I haven’t done much with the Goodreads account but maybe now I will. I feel like I’m not reading enough.
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I read “Lolita” very long ago in Russian, but remember that haven’t “got” the book at all and was disturbed and alienated by the subject matter. Is it considered great because of some innovative literary techniques Nabokov used? Technical brilliance of writing?
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Yes, the book conceals so much fascinating stuff. Every name, every location are meaningful. It’s like a novel written in code. The real meaning is hidden behind the pornographic stuff. The first layer will attract readers who are on the search of sex stuff but only the very few would dig any deeper. The best edition of the book is the one that has extensive notes by a literary critic. I had such an edition once (in Russian), and it was fascinating. It’s like two novels in one. Nabokov was a very brilliant fellow and this is a game he chose to play with the readers.
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