Having finished reading Girl with a Pearl Earring yesterday, I felt slightly vexed--why did it end like that! In fact, when I was about half way I already noticed bits that reminded me Hardy's Tess. Tess is great, and having been able to remind me of Hardy, Tracy Chevalier did a rather good job (the characterization isn't perfect tho). I'm hard to please.
Shakespeare's contemporaries probably weren't all that excited about plays that referred to so much of tales&history previously told by the earlier literary generation. We probably think he did it well re-telling others' original stuff, because we're instilled in our minds some bias of 4 centuries' praises. Classics isn't necessarily the synonym of goodies.
With music I feel different. It's ok Manic Street Preachers and The Seahorses sound like Mercury Rev, and it's fine Muse is like Radiohead; with people it's different: a reminds me of b, I like c because he's like d, and e loves me because I'm like f. But it's not OK that Tess has come back haunting my reading experience when I read a contemporary novel...
Goodbye Griet with the pearl earring, and Hello, Dorian Gray... (don't think Wilde will ever disappoint me...)
What are you reading now before sleep? at lunch? in the bath? while having your cup of cappucino alone?
3 comments:
Hugard and Braué - The Royal Road to Card Magic... a classic!!! hahaha...
yesterday I finished a novel by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt (only know the German name - translated: Oscar and the pink lady)... he is a contemporary author and playwriter... so far I only watched two of his plays and thought they were well good...
liked this novel a lot... it is written as a collection of letters to god of a 10 year-old boy, who has cancer and is about to die... reminded me a lot of the movie "Life is beatiful" in the sweetness of treating a disturbing and sad topic... well done...
this is what I read... oh yes - and of course a book of the great Volker Vosskühler about the art of joggling... hehehe
jan
yesterday I went to a bookstore (last day of the 20%off for poor students) and almost bought a book by Vikram Seth that Jens mentioned on her blog!
However, I put it back down coz I wondered if his writing has much to do with post-colonialism... I'm really not into that topic...
Jan, I thought you went for joggling and card tricks lessons--I didn't know you simply remain home reading books for self-taught magics... haha. Will check out the book by Schmitt--he's actually rather famous and successful, but I never got to read his work.
Seen the film adaptation of _Girl with a Pearl Earring_ now. Pretty disappointed at it, it's simply not good enough. A lot of the emotion in the book's totally missing in the film...
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