Classics for Pleasure

Astro Pen -- I have a copy of Wild Wales I haven't quite finished. But how interesting, to meet someone else here who has read Borrow. (It's Lavengro and The Romany Rye that I've finished.)
 
Extollager said:
Astro Pen -- I have a copy of Wild Wales I haven't quite finished. But how interesting, to meet someone else here who has read Borrow. (It's Lavengro and The Romany Rye that I've finished.)
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I remember I struggled a bit with Lavengro. Though it was many years ago. It seemed to focus on his troublesome relationship with his father in the early part which didn't capture me.
Wild Wales by contrast, twelve years on, is much more a travelogue. While slightly patronising in his attitude, the times being what they were, he still paints a rich picture of the country.

A related tale. About 1970 I was touring with a friend on a motorcycle and we thought we would have a pint at the George Borrow Hotel.
I was refused service for wearing a leather jacket. :confused:
 
Also under classical music

Piano Concert number 2 in C Minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff My favorite Piano piece :cool:
Night at Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky Brilliant stuff and I love the way that Disney utilized his music in the movie Fantasia .:cool:
 
Ive been getting Ito poetry bit myself Alexander Pope , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , W.B Yeats , T S Elliot, Previously , id never read any of them. Knew little if anything about them. Based in the small sampling that ive so far read by them. All of very different in terms theme and style and everything else . I find I will need to read what ive already read. I find them fascinating and well worth reading but, not simple to understand. :unsure::(
 
Baylor, if you are interested in Coleridge, I recommend very highly Malcolm Guite's book Mariner, which is a very readable combination of biography and unpacking of the poem. If I had to shed most of my library, I would certainly still keep that one, which I have already read twice.
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Extollager said:
Baylor, if you are interested in Coleridge, I recommend very highly Malcolm Guite's book Mariner, which is a very readable combination of biography and unpacking of the poem. If I had to shed most of my library, I would certainly still keep that one, which I have already read twice.
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This gets 5 stars on Goodreads. Their synopsis reads:

In this Studies in Theology and the Arts volume, poet and theologian Malcolm Guite leads readers on a journey with Coleridge, whose own life paralleled the experience of the mariner. On this theological voyage, Guite draws out the continuing relevance of this work and the ability of poetry to communicate the truths of humanity's fallenness, our need for grace, and the possibility of redemption.

The ... series encourages Christians to thoughtfully engage with the relationship between their faith and artistic expression, with contributions from both theologians and artists on a range of artistic media including visual art, music, poetry, literature, film, and more.
 
Astro Pen said:
I remember I struggled a bit with Lavengro. Though it was many years ago. It seemed to focus on his troublesome relationship with his father in the early part which didn't capture me.
Wild Wales by contrast, twelve years on, is much more a travelogue. While slightly patronising in his attitude, the times being what they were, he still paints a rich picture of the country.

A related tale. About 1970 I was touring with a friend on a motorcycle and we thought we would have a pint at the George Borrow Hotel.
I was refused service for wearing a leather jacket. :confused:
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Nuh uh, leather. Some people can’t hack it. I can’t ether. Gotta be tuff.
Where ig George Borrow hotel?

George Borrow​

English writer of fiction and travel, 1803–1881

George Henry Borrow (5 July 1803 – 26 July 1881) was an English writer of novels and of travel based on personal experiences in Europe. His travels gave him a close affinity with the Romani people of Europe, who figure strongly in his work. His best-known books are The Bible in Spain and the novels Lavengro and The Romany Rye, set in his time with the English Romanichal(Gypsies).
 
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Accommodation in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion Wales.

The George Borrow B&B Hotel is a famous and renowned 17th century family ran hotel set in the stunning Cambrian Mountains of Mid Wales. The Hotel is perched on the edge of the Rheidol Gorge, with mountain views from most of its rooms. We offer a wide selection of home made traditional food in our restaurant or bars, serving Carvery on Sundays.
 
Heh, that hotel is on the A44, a road I know quite well. Truly in the middle of nowhere.
 
I've always loved reading the classics, since a young teen. In terms of re-reading, there are a few. I will echo Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and add Kafka's The Castle, The Trial and pretty much all his shorter works. I also own several copies of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Then there is Nikolai Gogol and Chekhov. And I've always been partial to the Victorians, so Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, the Americans Melville, Poe and Hawthorne. Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield are amazing. I can keep going...
 
Bick said:
I find this hard to answer with just one or two things because I get genuine pleasure from a huge number of classic books that I’ll happily re-read: Dickens, Doyle, Balzac, Hardy (I recently re-read three Hardy novels and absolutely loved them again), Twain, Stevenson, and Jerome come to mind. Musically, I would say the list is shorter, but I love the less well known Vivaldi concertos, such as La Stravanganza and L’Estro Armonico. Quite a bit of Bach too (I prefer baroque to classical period).
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Which Hardys?
 
Extollager said:
Does any novel in the world begin better than Dickens's Great Expectations
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Better? Perhaps not. It is very evocative, and of course sets up so many things for later, without actually giving anything away. Yes, it is a marvelous scene. Others may equal it, but few if any are better.

But one that is equally good, in my opinion, and for similar reasons, is the scene in Our Mutual Friend: Lizzie and Gaffer Hexham rowing on the river, looking for corpses.
 
Extollager said:
Does any novel in the world begin better than Dickens's Great Expectations? — nor does the rest fail to live up to that opening.
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Possibly not, as I’ve given it some thought and not come up with anything that’s clearly better. Hardy starts books with very striking and evocative scenes, but Great Expectations* is brilliant for the first few whole chapters.

* I will re-read it soon, I think.
 
Not to subvert to best first lines, but I always loved, (as a stand alone line), the first sentence of The Go-Between

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
 
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