Name: Rabindranath Tagore
Year Won: 1913
Read: "I Won't Let You Go"
Original Language: Bengali and some English (maybe?)
Reason: "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West"
About: There are a lot of poems. A lot of them. Some felt like the kinds previously goth-me would love (e.g "The Suicide of a Star"...isn't that an amazing name!). Others were more erotic evocative love poetry. A lot were really long, but none were really epic. Mostly it was a lot of well...poetry.
What I Liked: I like poetry and some of the darker ones really made me think, "Oh, yeah, that was me when I was fifteen and hanging out with the people who smoked cloves." (I didn't. I was too much of a nerd.) Then some of the later ones felt so achingly beautiful and real.
What I Disliked: A lot of the later poems struck me as kind of same-ish. Like, I get that there's yet another alluring woman in a sari, but try to mix it up, alright? Rap artists can manage it, so why can't you?
Should it have won a Nobel: Probably? I enjoyed the poems, but I also feel that poetry is inherently more subjective than prose so who knows?
Next up: Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland
Saturday, December 14, 2019
Thursday, December 5, 2019
The Blue Bird
Name: Maurice Maeterlinck
Year Won: 1911
Read: "The Blue Bird"
Original Language: French
Reason: "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations"
About: The Blue Bird is a six act play that involves two children going into a dream world along with their dog, cat, and other inanimate assorted companions (such as sugar, night, light, water, fire, you get the idea...) They learn Valuable Lessons before waking up with their family again on Christmas morning.
What I Liked: It's cute and the scene descriptions are quite amusing. I also really love Dog, who slavishly adores his "little god" and fawns over the humans, sobbing and howling any time he'd not allowed to be with them and defending them to the death. (Honestly, Dog in this is everything!) I also like some of the other characters.
What I Disliked: Does the description scream "Hallmark Movie of the Week" to anyone else? Yeah. It reads like that too. It's very saccharine.
Also, in one case the boy beats up Dog, which is absolutely vile. That's maybe the only part of this play that doesn't read "Hallmark Movie of the Week" to me.
Should it have won a Nobel: It's hard to say. Nobels are awarded for a body of work and Maeterlinck's other work may be brilliant. But this piece just...wasn't.
It almost feels like the Nobel committee was on a fairy tale kick. In the case of Gosta Berling, that seems entirely reasonable. (It's a good book.) In this case, it just felt like someone fell in love with this play as a kid and felt the need to enshrine it. It's hard for me to see that this piece was written by someone who was the greatest living author alive in 1911.
(With that said, seeing as Hallmark was not yet a thing, it is entirely possible that this read far better in 1911 when it was novel. But...I'm doubting it.)
Next up: Poetry by Rabindranath Tagore. (Again, Gerhart Hauptmann is not in my local library) This will also be my first foray into poetry. Whoo! (Maybe.)
Year Won: 1911
Read: "The Blue Bird"
Original Language: French
Reason: "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations"
About: The Blue Bird is a six act play that involves two children going into a dream world along with their dog, cat, and other inanimate assorted companions (such as sugar, night, light, water, fire, you get the idea...) They learn Valuable Lessons before waking up with their family again on Christmas morning.
What I Liked: It's cute and the scene descriptions are quite amusing. I also really love Dog, who slavishly adores his "little god" and fawns over the humans, sobbing and howling any time he'd not allowed to be with them and defending them to the death. (Honestly, Dog in this is everything!) I also like some of the other characters.
What I Disliked: Does the description scream "Hallmark Movie of the Week" to anyone else? Yeah. It reads like that too. It's very saccharine.
Also, in one case the boy beats up Dog, which is absolutely vile. That's maybe the only part of this play that doesn't read "Hallmark Movie of the Week" to me.
Should it have won a Nobel: It's hard to say. Nobels are awarded for a body of work and Maeterlinck's other work may be brilliant. But this piece just...wasn't.
It almost feels like the Nobel committee was on a fairy tale kick. In the case of Gosta Berling, that seems entirely reasonable. (It's a good book.) In this case, it just felt like someone fell in love with this play as a kid and felt the need to enshrine it. It's hard for me to see that this piece was written by someone who was the greatest living author alive in 1911.
(With that said, seeing as Hallmark was not yet a thing, it is entirely possible that this read far better in 1911 when it was novel. But...I'm doubting it.)
Next up: Poetry by Rabindranath Tagore. (Again, Gerhart Hauptmann is not in my local library) This will also be my first foray into poetry. Whoo! (Maybe.)
Monday, November 25, 2019
The Saga of Gosta Berling
Name: Selma Lagerlof
Year Won: 1909
Read: "The Saga of Gosta Berling"
Original Language: Swedish
Reason: "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings"
About: The Saga of Gosta Berling follows Gosta Berling, a defrocked (for drinking, mostly) minister throughout the small Swedish town of Ekeby as he falls in love with random women (including a countess), and has adventures.
It's beautifully written, with wonderful turns of phrases. Also, while it's set in more or less modern times (for Lagerlof), there's a lot of magic in it. It's borderline magical realism and feels almost like one stepped into another world. It's lovely and intriguing and it's not hard to see how it became wildly popular.
It also won Lagerlof the first Nobel literature laureate awarded to a woman.
What I Liked: It's fun. There are a lot of adventures in the town, lots of wonderfully colorful characters, and tons of great descriptions. This is one of those reads that's just enjoyable, with rarely a chapter that isn't deeply entertaining.
What I Disliked: There's not a lot of plot to this book, other than "Gosta comes into town, has affairs with a few women, and eventually gets married". This isn't a terrible thing, but it also kept me from being glued to the book, eager to see what happens next. (Because in most cases, it doesn't much matter.) Certain scenes would grip me, but then they'd be over and, while the next one would also grip me, I didn't desperately want to make it to the next bit.
Should it have won a Nobel: Probably. It's a beautifully written book and is well worth reading. It holds up well even today.
Next up: The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck (Again, Paul von Heyse isn't in my local library)
Year Won: 1909
Read: "The Saga of Gosta Berling"
Original Language: Swedish
Reason: "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings"
About: The Saga of Gosta Berling follows Gosta Berling, a defrocked (for drinking, mostly) minister throughout the small Swedish town of Ekeby as he falls in love with random women (including a countess), and has adventures.
It's beautifully written, with wonderful turns of phrases. Also, while it's set in more or less modern times (for Lagerlof), there's a lot of magic in it. It's borderline magical realism and feels almost like one stepped into another world. It's lovely and intriguing and it's not hard to see how it became wildly popular.
It also won Lagerlof the first Nobel literature laureate awarded to a woman.
What I Liked: It's fun. There are a lot of adventures in the town, lots of wonderfully colorful characters, and tons of great descriptions. This is one of those reads that's just enjoyable, with rarely a chapter that isn't deeply entertaining.
What I Disliked: There's not a lot of plot to this book, other than "Gosta comes into town, has affairs with a few women, and eventually gets married". This isn't a terrible thing, but it also kept me from being glued to the book, eager to see what happens next. (Because in most cases, it doesn't much matter.) Certain scenes would grip me, but then they'd be over and, while the next one would also grip me, I didn't desperately want to make it to the next bit.
Should it have won a Nobel: Probably. It's a beautifully written book and is well worth reading. It holds up well even today.
Next up: The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck (Again, Paul von Heyse isn't in my local library)
Monday, November 18, 2019
Kim
So...with Kipling I feel a lot of things. His politics aren't popular today for good reason. He was an unabashed imperialist and a lot of his work is pretty...odd to read in the modern era, to put it lightly. He's also the first Nobel Laureate on this list that I'd heard of prior to beginning this project. Who hasn't heard of "The Jungle Book", "If", "Gunga Din", "The White Man's Burden", "Just So Stories", etc. etc. Kipling is a legend. He's just...a highly problematic legend.
Name: Rudyard Kipling
Year Won: 1907
Read: "Kim"
Original Language: English
Reason: "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration that characterize the creations of this world-famous author"
About: Let me start with the very important proviso that Kipling wrote a *lot* and a *lot* what he wrote is good. I've read a number of his works that aren't Kim because it's hard to escape Kipling in the modern, English speaking world. He's foundational. But Kim is considered his masterpiece, so there we go.
Kim follows Kimball O'Hara, a poor Irish orphan (queue some not particularly PC bits about his mother dying in birth with him and his father dying of drink) who runs around India. At some point, he decides to become a chela (disciple) to a lama who is searching for nirvana and follows him happily. Everyone assumes that he's Indian because he speaks the language natively (note that Kipling's first language was an Indian language) and dresses and acts locally, until he finds the goal he's been seeking - the Red Bull - aka his father's regiment.
At this point, everyone wants to treat him like a white boy and he's sent off to school. Kim does not much like school, but eventually leaves and becomes useful for foreign intelligence as he can pass as Indian. (FWIW, while modern readers seem to find this preposterous, I don't. Language, dress and behavior is generally a far greater signal to ethnicity and race than physical looks are.) Anyway, Kim travels with the lama some more, and eventually enlightenment is reached. It's quite...meaningful.
What I Liked: It's a great novel. It's short, it's fun, and it describes a vibrant India that you want to dig your toes in and exist in far beyond the 300 pages that it fills up. Also, this is only *one* of Kipling's works. As noted above, he's created a plethora of classics.
What I Disliked: It is hard to avoid the colonialism. One could argue "oh, but that was a different time" except that Kipling was criticized for it during his time, so...it really is an issue. There are stereotypes all over, some positive, some negative, but...they're all there. some probably were even created due to this book. Yay.
Should it have won a Nobel: Probably. I feel that in this case, a lot depends on what someone wants a Nobel to mean. If the goal is to be, "an upcoming author who espouses ideas we want perpetuated" then hell, no. Kipling shouldn't have gotten one. If it's more for great writing that will continued to be read (and have movies made of it) a hundred years from now, Kipling is perpetual. It's a bit sad that it's the most nationalistic, imperialist author on this list who is the best remembered, but history is rarely socially correct.
Next up: The Saga of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf (Again, Rudolf Christoph Eucken isn't in my local library)
Name: Rudyard Kipling
Year Won: 1907
Read: "Kim"
Original Language: English
Reason: "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration that characterize the creations of this world-famous author"
About: Let me start with the very important proviso that Kipling wrote a *lot* and a *lot* what he wrote is good. I've read a number of his works that aren't Kim because it's hard to escape Kipling in the modern, English speaking world. He's foundational. But Kim is considered his masterpiece, so there we go.
Kim follows Kimball O'Hara, a poor Irish orphan (queue some not particularly PC bits about his mother dying in birth with him and his father dying of drink) who runs around India. At some point, he decides to become a chela (disciple) to a lama who is searching for nirvana and follows him happily. Everyone assumes that he's Indian because he speaks the language natively (note that Kipling's first language was an Indian language) and dresses and acts locally, until he finds the goal he's been seeking - the Red Bull - aka his father's regiment.
At this point, everyone wants to treat him like a white boy and he's sent off to school. Kim does not much like school, but eventually leaves and becomes useful for foreign intelligence as he can pass as Indian. (FWIW, while modern readers seem to find this preposterous, I don't. Language, dress and behavior is generally a far greater signal to ethnicity and race than physical looks are.) Anyway, Kim travels with the lama some more, and eventually enlightenment is reached. It's quite...meaningful.
What I Liked: It's a great novel. It's short, it's fun, and it describes a vibrant India that you want to dig your toes in and exist in far beyond the 300 pages that it fills up. Also, this is only *one* of Kipling's works. As noted above, he's created a plethora of classics.
What I Disliked: It is hard to avoid the colonialism. One could argue "oh, but that was a different time" except that Kipling was criticized for it during his time, so...it really is an issue. There are stereotypes all over, some positive, some negative, but...they're all there. some probably were even created due to this book. Yay.
Should it have won a Nobel: Probably. I feel that in this case, a lot depends on what someone wants a Nobel to mean. If the goal is to be, "an upcoming author who espouses ideas we want perpetuated" then hell, no. Kipling shouldn't have gotten one. If it's more for great writing that will continued to be read (and have movies made of it) a hundred years from now, Kipling is perpetual. It's a bit sad that it's the most nationalistic, imperialist author on this list who is the best remembered, but history is rarely socially correct.
Next up: The Saga of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf (Again, Rudolf Christoph Eucken isn't in my local library)
Sunday, November 3, 2019
With Fire and Sword
I feel like with this novel, I finally found the book I was searching for with this project, which is to say a book that I never would have thought to read had it not won a Nobel prize but which ended up being really, really good.
Name: Henryk Sienkiewicz
Year Won: 1905
Read: "With Fire and Sword"
Original Language: Polish
Reason: "because of his outstanding merits as an epic writer"
About: "With Fire and Sword" is (an approximately 1200 page) the first of three books that form a trilogy set in the Khmelnytsky Uprising. It follows a number of characters, notably Pan Yan (a great hero who ends up married to a beautiful princess who seems to be kidnapped a lot by nefarious characters) through wars, heroics, and adventures. There's adventure. There are heroics. There are dark, miserable scenes (such as the one in which peasants are freed, but refuse to flee, instead kneeling while waiting for the executioner's blow). There's humor (especially from the giant who wishes to behead three men in a blow, but can only get two at a time as they won't line up right). There's romance. There's politics. This epic has it all.
What I Liked: The ability of Sienkiewicz to create a scene is unparalleled. The opening list a number of omens that make the spine tingle. Some of the war scenes make me feel like I was right there. The humor makes me smile. There's so much in this novel that's vivid, brilliant, and creative that I can't recount it all. I'm writing this as I finish the first book, but could easily see reading more. This is the work of a master author.
What I Disliked: There's not much of a plot, per se, at least a plot that goes from point A to B to C. This makes it sometimes a bit hard to follow and to feel more like reading a number of brilliant interrelated scenes than following a story that makes me eager to read onto the next page.
Should it have won a Nobel: Yes. Many times yes. This deserves to be in the epic cannon along with "War and Peace". It's a really, really good book. In many ways, I liked this better than "War and Peace" (as it's funnier and has more light hearted moments - as well as Sienkiewicz does a better job describing things than Tolstoy does). The only way I can fault it is that there isn't a hugely coherent through plot the way there is in the best of novels.
Next up: Rudyard Kipling (as before, Giosuè Carducci isn't in my local library)
Name: Henryk Sienkiewicz
Year Won: 1905
Read: "With Fire and Sword"
Original Language: Polish
Reason: "because of his outstanding merits as an epic writer"
About: "With Fire and Sword" is (an approximately 1200 page) the first of three books that form a trilogy set in the Khmelnytsky Uprising. It follows a number of characters, notably Pan Yan (a great hero who ends up married to a beautiful princess who seems to be kidnapped a lot by nefarious characters) through wars, heroics, and adventures. There's adventure. There are heroics. There are dark, miserable scenes (such as the one in which peasants are freed, but refuse to flee, instead kneeling while waiting for the executioner's blow). There's humor (especially from the giant who wishes to behead three men in a blow, but can only get two at a time as they won't line up right). There's romance. There's politics. This epic has it all.
What I Liked: The ability of Sienkiewicz to create a scene is unparalleled. The opening list a number of omens that make the spine tingle. Some of the war scenes make me feel like I was right there. The humor makes me smile. There's so much in this novel that's vivid, brilliant, and creative that I can't recount it all. I'm writing this as I finish the first book, but could easily see reading more. This is the work of a master author.
What I Disliked: There's not much of a plot, per se, at least a plot that goes from point A to B to C. This makes it sometimes a bit hard to follow and to feel more like reading a number of brilliant interrelated scenes than following a story that makes me eager to read onto the next page.
Should it have won a Nobel: Yes. Many times yes. This deserves to be in the epic cannon along with "War and Peace". It's a really, really good book. In many ways, I liked this better than "War and Peace" (as it's funnier and has more light hearted moments - as well as Sienkiewicz does a better job describing things than Tolstoy does). The only way I can fault it is that there isn't a hugely coherent through plot the way there is in the best of novels.
Next up: Rudyard Kipling (as before, Giosuè Carducci isn't in my local library)
Sunday, October 27, 2019
The Bridal March
I feel a bit bad about this review, seeing as Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson is known for his poetry and all I could find in my local library was a selection of short stories. So know that this probably isn't his greatest work. Then again, translating poetry into other languages is difficult,so...maybe it is for the best.
Name: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Year Won: 1903
Read: "The Bridal March and Other Stories"
Original Language: Norwegian
Reason: "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit"
About: The Bridal March follows a couple who falls madly in love, but then the bride's mother has bad memories about the march. The bride hums her family's bridal march a lot and there's a lot of peculiar intergenerational angst relating to the march and marriage in general.
It (and the rest of the stories in the collection) seem to take place in a half-real, half-fairy tale Norway in which things are in a sort of bucolic peasant world that never actually existed, but is kind of what Romantic era writers imagined peasant life to be like. The intro mentioned that Hans Christian Anderson was an inspiration, which is an apt comparison. Yet while in Anderson, there's always this plot pulling everything forward, often enough in this collection, things just happen.
(e.g. in one story, a woman wants a girl as a daughter in law, so commands one of her sons to marry her. None can decide who will marry her, so they summon her and let her decide which brother she wants. She, of course, decides on the best, they have six sons, then eventually she dies and is buried by her sons. There is literally no dramatic tension.)
Yet it's all strangely compelling, perhaps because of its time out of time setting, or maybe because it's well written or...who knows?
What I liked: The stories are really, really compelling. And they describe what I imagine late 19th century Norway was like fairly well, in a similar way that the Anne novels probably give a good glimpse of life in 19th century Prince Edwards Island. They're also extraordinarily well written.
What I disliked: Most of the stories didn't have much in the way of a plot, which made them maybe less exciting than they otherwise could be.
Should it have won a Nobel?: Hard to say, seeing as Bjørnson's poetry is what probably got him the prize. As the stories go...they weren't bad, but L.M. Montgomery or Laura Ingles Wilder probably deserved it more for beautifully describing a time and place.
Next up: Henryk Sienkiewicz (Alas, the 1904 winners Frédéric Mistral and José Echegaray do not appear in my local library, likely because their contributions appear to have been in poetry and drama, respectively)
Name: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Year Won: 1903
Read: "The Bridal March and Other Stories"
Original Language: Norwegian
Reason: "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit"
About: The Bridal March follows a couple who falls madly in love, but then the bride's mother has bad memories about the march. The bride hums her family's bridal march a lot and there's a lot of peculiar intergenerational angst relating to the march and marriage in general.
It (and the rest of the stories in the collection) seem to take place in a half-real, half-fairy tale Norway in which things are in a sort of bucolic peasant world that never actually existed, but is kind of what Romantic era writers imagined peasant life to be like. The intro mentioned that Hans Christian Anderson was an inspiration, which is an apt comparison. Yet while in Anderson, there's always this plot pulling everything forward, often enough in this collection, things just happen.
(e.g. in one story, a woman wants a girl as a daughter in law, so commands one of her sons to marry her. None can decide who will marry her, so they summon her and let her decide which brother she wants. She, of course, decides on the best, they have six sons, then eventually she dies and is buried by her sons. There is literally no dramatic tension.)
Yet it's all strangely compelling, perhaps because of its time out of time setting, or maybe because it's well written or...who knows?
What I liked: The stories are really, really compelling. And they describe what I imagine late 19th century Norway was like fairly well, in a similar way that the Anne novels probably give a good glimpse of life in 19th century Prince Edwards Island. They're also extraordinarily well written.
What I disliked: Most of the stories didn't have much in the way of a plot, which made them maybe less exciting than they otherwise could be.
Should it have won a Nobel?: Hard to say, seeing as Bjørnson's poetry is what probably got him the prize. As the stories go...they weren't bad, but L.M. Montgomery or Laura Ingles Wilder probably deserved it more for beautifully describing a time and place.
Next up: Henryk Sienkiewicz (Alas, the 1904 winners Frédéric Mistral and José Echegaray do not appear in my local library, likely because their contributions appear to have been in poetry and drama, respectively)
Monday, October 21, 2019
A History of Rome
Now onto my first review. Whew! We'll begin almost chronologically with Theodor Mommsen (leaving out poor Prudhomme as my library doesn't stock him, alas).
Name: Theodor Mommsen
Year Won: 1902
Read: "A History of Rome"
Original Language: German
Reason: "the greatest living master of the art of historical writing, with special reference to his monumental work, A History of Rome"
About: A History of Rome is a 2,000 page non-fiction chronicling the history of Rome from the origins of Rome to its fall. It's incredibly detailed, involving just about every dispute imaginable, reasons for why one event or another happened, biographies, trade agreements, war and negotiations. It's got it all...like...EVERYTHING.
It's a LOT. I read maybe 200 pages of it as it's just a LOT. Too much for me, honestly.
What I liked: Mommsen does a really great job not just of describing events, but explaining why they happened. He uses a lot of detail, including economic and census data, that makes it much less "Julius Caesar did so and so on such and such a date" and more "because there was a famine and this was a grain producing area, it made sense to launch an invasion". He skillfully weaves together the lives of luminaries with the economic and political conditions of the time. This isn't super unique now, but I imagine it was revolutionary in 1854 (when he released the first volume).
What I disliked: It's...dry. So like, I get that it's history, but modern retellings of history tend to use a lot of narrative non-fiction (which is far more pleasant to absorb as a lay reader). This is an advance that is clearly far in the future for Mommsen, so I can't fault him. But it didn't make reading this all that fun. It was more a fairly dry chronicle of the Roman Empire.
Would I read it again: No. I didn't even finish the full 2,000 pages.
Should it have won the Nobel? Probably. I'm not sure what it was competing with, but it is a MONUMENTAL work and probably was one of the first places in which history was told with as much an eye for politics and economics as Names and Places. With that said, it feels more like it deserves a Nobel Prize for History (I know, one such thing doesn't exist...) than a Nobel Prize for Literature.
Who would enjoy: If anyone is interested in a lengthy, detailed description of Rome, this will do it for you. I suspect there are modern volumes that involve more recent archeological history (and may be more fun in the retelling), but for complexity, I think it's this or Gibbon. (And if you love Gibbon, why not try Mommsen too?)
Next up, the guy with a lot of letters that don't exist in English: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Name: Theodor Mommsen
Year Won: 1902
Read: "A History of Rome"
Original Language: German
Reason: "the greatest living master of the art of historical writing, with special reference to his monumental work, A History of Rome"
About: A History of Rome is a 2,000 page non-fiction chronicling the history of Rome from the origins of Rome to its fall. It's incredibly detailed, involving just about every dispute imaginable, reasons for why one event or another happened, biographies, trade agreements, war and negotiations. It's got it all...like...EVERYTHING.
It's a LOT. I read maybe 200 pages of it as it's just a LOT. Too much for me, honestly.
What I liked: Mommsen does a really great job not just of describing events, but explaining why they happened. He uses a lot of detail, including economic and census data, that makes it much less "Julius Caesar did so and so on such and such a date" and more "because there was a famine and this was a grain producing area, it made sense to launch an invasion". He skillfully weaves together the lives of luminaries with the economic and political conditions of the time. This isn't super unique now, but I imagine it was revolutionary in 1854 (when he released the first volume).
What I disliked: It's...dry. So like, I get that it's history, but modern retellings of history tend to use a lot of narrative non-fiction (which is far more pleasant to absorb as a lay reader). This is an advance that is clearly far in the future for Mommsen, so I can't fault him. But it didn't make reading this all that fun. It was more a fairly dry chronicle of the Roman Empire.
Would I read it again: No. I didn't even finish the full 2,000 pages.
Should it have won the Nobel? Probably. I'm not sure what it was competing with, but it is a MONUMENTAL work and probably was one of the first places in which history was told with as much an eye for politics and economics as Names and Places. With that said, it feels more like it deserves a Nobel Prize for History (I know, one such thing doesn't exist...) than a Nobel Prize for Literature.
Who would enjoy: If anyone is interested in a lengthy, detailed description of Rome, this will do it for you. I suspect there are modern volumes that involve more recent archeological history (and may be more fun in the retelling), but for complexity, I think it's this or Gibbon. (And if you love Gibbon, why not try Mommsen too?)
Next up, the guy with a lot of letters that don't exist in English: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Friday, October 18, 2019
The Nobel Project
I've decided upon a new project. I intend to read literature by each winner of the Nobel prize in literature.
Reasons for doing this:
Reasons for doing this:
- It's a great way to read a diverse selection of writers from around the world
- Someone thought they were very good in order to give them a prize
- It'll expose me to lots of different forms of literature from over a hundred year span and a number of countries
A few rules:
- I'm only going to review things that I can acquire at my local library. (So no Sully Prudhomme, aka the first winner)
- I will read things in English, unless possibly I find a good Spanish language copy, in which case I might read them in Spanish, but probably not
- I will review the books here based on both whether I liked them (as a reader) and whether I think they're good books (from hopefully a more "well, this did interesting things, even if I thought they were stupid" perspective)
So hopefully I'll find some great books. Maybe I'll just read a lot. Stay tuned for more!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)