The Once and Future King (Book Club)

[dwndrgn]

Go ahead, say what's on your mind!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, I'll begin since nobody else seems to want to.

I absolutely love this book, and have ever since I first discovered it in my High School library thirty years ago. White does a lot of things that usually don't work for me (like mixing modern sensibilities with medieval characters) and somehow he makes them work. I also love his quirky style and the way he sometimes goes off on bizarre little tangents. He also humanizes the whole Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot triangle.

If I have any complaint, it's that (like Tolkien) he doesn't always do full justice to his female characters.

 

[dwndrgn]

Sadly, I couldn't find a cheap or free copy so wasn't able to read it. Even more sad is I haven't read it yet at all...someday I'll remedy that though.

 

[Estelthea]

I read it years ago, I did not get through the whole series though becasue I remember being very confused and forgetting who all the characters were once the well know part with Arthur was done. I was only ten or so and I did not know much about Arthurian stories at the time! It is on my list of things to read again when I can track down a copy.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I'm not the only person who voted for this book, so where are the others now the discussion has begun?

(Feeling very lonely.)

 

[hodor]

I loved this book... sorry I haven't posted before as it was my suggestiong. I loved this book because I love the arthurian legends and TH White's imagination with it. Brings me back to when I was young and was watching Disney's Sword in the Stone.

 

[Winters_Sorrow]

This is the first time I've read this book. I like it, but (as with Lord of the Rings for me) I find the detail gets oppresive. I love detail in books but it's something you can over-do.
I want to have the option to "paint a picture" with my own imagination. Too much information denies me this and makes me feel like I'm reading a manual! (I'm over-stating this for effect)
I will no doubt receive many vitrolic responses to this but, as much as I am enjoying the story so far (and I'm still wading through it!), I'm not finding anything new about the Arthur story that I didn't know before - sorry!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

There is no doubt that White's style is not for everyone. When the book was written, readers were, by and large, less impatient, and willing to read stories that went along at a much more leisurely pace.

And since The Once and Future King was published in 1958 (and the first three parts of it originally published much earlier) giving plenty of people ample time to be influenced by White's interpretation -- not to mention time for two movies and a highly successful musical stage play based on the book to appear -- I'm not sure that anything =new= is really to be expected.

All I can say is that when I first read it, back in the sixties, it struck me as very fresh and original.

 

[Tsujigiri]

I loved this book, but I read it when I was about 12. It was very enchanting and I will no doubt intorduce my children to it in the fullness of time.