Thoughts on Pamela by Samuel Richardson?
By CocoaNotices
Not sure if this is gonna be blatant sexist stuff or some really forward-thinking feminist take on sexual harassment—I'm genuinely unsure, lol.
Reader discussion: Clarissa
Public reader discussion about Clarissa in the WeRead Catalog by Samuel Richardson.
Have anyone here actually finished any of the REALLY gigantic books that are out there?
By DragonHorse
I definitely like really big books (my history probably shows that), but I’m also trying to figure out my taste a bit better, so I don’t just want something that’s huge for the sake of it. I want books that are actually great/amazing and worth going through, not just long. I saw a Wikipedia list of the biggest books ever and it made me wonder—do people actually read and finish any of those, or is it mostly just interesting trivia? I’m especially curious if any of the ones on the list are even readable, and whether getting sucked into 500k+ words is truly worth it. Also, a few of the titles don’t seem to have clear word counts, so I might be slightly off on those. Bottoms Dream – Arno Schmidt The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil Joseph and his brothers – Thomas Mann Clarissa (or the history of young Lady) – Samuel Richardson Sir Charles Grandison – Samuel Richardson Poor Fellow My Country – Xavier Herbert Women and Men! – Joseph McElroy Dream of a red chamber – Xao Xueqin The plum in a golden vase – apparently some scholar Water Margin – Luo Guanzhong Romance of three kingdoms – Luo Guanzhong Sironia, Texas – Madison Cooper Miss Macintosh my darling – Marguerite Young A bunch of the stuff on the wiki list is super well known, so I left those out. These ones are more obscure (or at least not talked about much online), so I figured I’d ask. Thanks a lot for any answers—hopefully there will be a few—and hope you have a good rest of your day :)
I have Clarissa in my cart
By amber-fish
The book looks super long and I’m kind of nervous to start—should I just commit and jump in? I keep hearing it’s a really good psychological story, so I’m unsure but curious.
Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
By snow-story5
Ooh, could you send me an invite to this blog if it’s still running?
Welcome to Jurassic book porn: excerpts from the bizarre world of dinosaur erotica
By stone-coral57
Honestly, I feel like a lot of these stories are pretty short and don’t really develop the characters much. Like “Taken by the pterodactyl”—why does Dianne get taken in the first place, why is the pterodactyl keeping her, and how is she even supposed to survive in the nest? It just kinda left me hanging with a bunch of questions, and I doubt there’s going to be a sequel.
If you keep a list of the books you read, post all the ones you've read this year so far.
By VolumeCricket1990
I’m mostly just curious what everyone’s gotten through this year. Could you throw up a quick list (like bullet points or whatever) of the books you’ve read? Feel free to add a few thoughts on each one, or don’t—I just want to see what your 2016 reading has looked like so far.
What is your favourite award-winning novel?
By ivyBookish
It doesn’t even have to be the one absolute best thing you’ve read (hard to know for sure anyway). You can just pick a really solid novel you enjoyed that also got a Pulitzer or something like that. For me it’d be *The Corrections* by Jonathan Franzen. It’s basically become one of my all-time favorites. It won the National Book Award in 2001, which is funny because that’s also the year I was born. The book centers on a pretty messed-up family and all the issues everyone else in the family has to deal with. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to be so entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny—there’s a kind of specific humor in how Franzen writes that makes it work. But the thing I liked most is that it really digs into how people relate to each other and the whole bigger human stuff. It gave me a lot to think about, and I love finding books with this much depth.
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
By rhymechapter1973
Has anyone actually read this? I’m kind of scared to start it. Not really from the subject matter, but because it’s epistolary and so long. If I stop liking a book, I usually just quit right away—like I did with *Charterhouse of Parma*, I had about 50 pages left and I just couldn’t do it anymore. So the thought that this huge English novel might beat me down is honestly making me feel pretty discouraged.
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By field-chance8064
Belinda Washington — I’m not totally sure what to make of it, but it stood out.
Literature vs. Classics
By CarrotHollow
Wait—are “classics” even part of “literature,” or is it the other way around? I keep getting stuck on how people use those words like they mean different things, but they never really explain it. Like, Kafka gets labeled a “classic” a lot, but then some folks act like his writing should be sorted under literature instead. Honestly I can’t tell why there would be a real difference, if there is one at all.
Have you read 2 (or more) books that complement each other really well?
By gladPlate43
I’ll jump in. I just read Don DeLillo’s *Libra* and James Ellroy’s *American Tabloid* not too long ago. From the outside they sound like they’d cover a bunch of the same stuff, but they honestly don’t really overlap much at all. The weird thing is, *American Tabloid* is really good for laying out the whole setup around how Oswald ends up getting the role he’s claimed to have, but I don’t think Oswald himself is mentioned at all in it. What about you guys?
Epistolary titles that should be on my list?
By WildHeron1980
I’m really into the epistolary style—stuff told through letters, diary entries, news clippings, that kind of thing. I’ve already read The Color Purple, Dracula, Frankenstein, Up the Down Staircase, Thursdays ’til 9, Carrie, and Jerusalem’s Lot, and I loved all of them. Any suggestions for more to add to my summer list? Fiction or non-fiction, whatever—genre doesn’t really matter. I just need something that grabs me pretty early. Appreciate it!
What books can you judge by their cover?
By FABLEAPRON9
For me, the big one is *The Great Gatsby* (1925). I swear the gorgeous dust jacket—“Celestial Eyes,” by Francis Cugat—had a huge effect on how Fitzgerald ended up writing it. And if you’re talking collecting, the jacket is way more valuable than the first-edition book itself. Like, a first edition without the dust jacket is usually around $5k–$10k, but if it has the jacket, it can easily push past $100k.
Need a suggestion on the best edition of Clarissa by Richardson
By tenderharbor
Not sure if I’m allowed to ask this, but I guess I’m looking for a recommendation on the best way to read it. I know an ebook would probably work, but I really prefer having a physical book in my hands. I’m specifically trying to get the full unabridged version, so the Penguin one doesn’t seem like it would be enough. Does anyone know how I can read the complete unabridged text? I’ve seen “volumes 1–9” listed as print-on-demand—are those the full thing?
Clarissa?
By prologue_chaffer1978
Hey! I’ve been wanting to read Clarissa for a long time since someone told me about it, and I finally have enough free time to actually start Richardson’s novel. But I’m a bit confused about the layout—since it was originally released in nine volumes, is that nine separate parts, or is it grouped into three bigger books with three volumes each? I usually go with audiobooks, and I feel like that might work well because the physical book is probably huge, but I don’t want to accidentally miss anything. Any advice on the best way to read the full story?
Samuel Richardson's Clarissa — A Toweringly Great Novel
By field-chance8064
I just found this place and I’ve been wandering through older threads. One thing I keep seeing is that Clarissa by Samuel Richardson almost never makes the “best novels” lists people put together, so I figured I’d throw my hat in and actually argue for it. Yeah, the big thing is the length. It’s close to a million words (it honestly feels like you’re reading a whole brick), and the Penguin Classics edition looks less like a normal book and more like a phone book. Still, I really do think it deserves to be considered one of the greatest novels ever written. If you like serious literature, and especially tragic stories, this one feels worth the hype. At the core, it’s basically the template for those psychological three-act tragedies: a smart, stubborn young woman stuck in an unhappy engagement, Clarissa runs off with Lovelace, who starts out as that “sexually liberated” type but turns out to be genuinely creepy and dangerous. He keeps trying to wear her down, but she won’t fold. Then it turns into this slow, awful back-and-forth that ends with Clarissa dying painfully and Lovelace being driven mad. After she’s gone, he somehow reforms and converts… not really to Christianity, more like “to Clarissa,” and then he dies too, like it’s supposed to be penance. I don’t have religion (and I’m guessing a lot of people here don’t), but I found the whole tragedy vibe kind of thrilling in a pagan-ish way, especially since the author’s view of religion feels sort of off or shallow, especially about women and “purity.” He’s also very big on moralizing, but at the same time, Richardson somehow writes characters who are actually alive and constantly pulling the story forward. It’s wild to think this was written when the English novel was still getting started, because it somehow takes the form and launches it into something new. Without Richardson, who knows what Austen or Eliot would’ve been doing, since they definitely wouldn’t be building on the same foundation. Anyway, for me Clarissa is a real page-turner and one of the most complete novels I’ve read. It’s not a light weekend thing—you’ve gotta commit—but it feels like you get a lot back. TL;DR: It’s a masterpiece. If you can stick it out, it’s worth it. (If you need a TL;DR, you might not be able to get through Clarissa.)
Stormlight 5: Wind and Truth is listed as 1344 pages - is that the longest fantasy novel bound in a single volume ever?
By YellowCricket1993
Do you happen to know any longer books—like, ones with more pages in hardcover?
Most Experimental Novels of All-time
By curiousBookmark
I’ve been reading up a lot lately and I’m really into experimental novels. The ones that have stood out to me so far are: - Bottom’s Dream (Arno Schmidt) - Darconville’s Cat (Alexander Theroux) - Women and Men (Joseph McElroy) Those three are the most appealing to me at the moment. I know I’m supposed to also mention the usual names like Joyce, David Markson, and other postmodern writers, but I kind of gravitate more toward the weird, rare, more obscure stuff. Are there any other experimental novels that hit that same level (or even go crazier than these)? Also, what do you all think about super experimental lit in general—are you into it, or does it not really work for you? And do you feel like there’s some point where experimental novels can’t (or shouldn’t) go any further?
What is a classic that has admittedly aged badly, but you still like?
By ion
Honestly, for me it’s Samuel Richardson’s *Pamela*. I know it’s pretty messed up and sometimes just in really bad taste, but I still ended up enjoying it—the writing style, the main character, and how the story kept moving. I’m studying English Literature and Language right now, so I’m running into a lot of books that are… problematic, to put it mildly. But I still feel like I can judge them by their time, and *Pamela* is one of those I managed to do that with. Same goes for stuff like *Moll Flanders*, *The Rape of the Lock*, and *Tristram Shandy*.
Which forgotten books deserve to be remembered?
By fern_hardcover75
It feels like every time new books get released, the older ones just keep piling up dust. Not the lucky classics that everyone praises, but the tons of unread, forgotten books that end up sitting in antique shops, getting tossed in landfills, or hanging out in someone’s basement. Every now and then though, you find a gem. I just read *Ralph Herne* by W.H. Hudson (1888), and it’s a really solid novel—also weirdly relevant, since it’s about a deadly pandemic that spreads through Argentina and it gets pretty vivid about it. Still, I can’t help wondering: who else read it last year? Like, maybe one person? Maybe two? Or probably nobody? So what are some really good older books (30+ years) that basically nobody ever mentions—no book clubs, no bookstore display, no Netflix adaptation—but that you genuinely liked and think should get remembered?