Wednesday reading experience #41

Read THAT book.

You know the one I mean: the one every one of your friends has read, or the one you promised someone you would read, or the one that you want to have read but don’t particularly want to read, or the one that you have desperately wanted to read just about for ever but haven’t because it daunts you because of its size or its reputation.

THAT book can be just about any book ranging from Twilight to War and Peace, so I would love to hear what you would choose and for which of the above reasons.

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When I have finished my current reading challenges I am planning to tackle a tome that is the embodiment of THAT book for many people: James Joyce's Ulysses. I want to do this to challenge my prejudices about Joyce, whose short stories were apt to put me to sleep when I was studying him in modern literature at college. It is also one of those books that any literary snob worth her salt wants to have read, and I dearly want to be able, when said snobs start talking about Ulysses, to be able to tell if they have really read it or if they are pretending. Evil of me, maybe, but just think of the possibilities for pulling one over on a lit snob. The particular snobs I have in mind find my taste in detective novels and romances deplorable, and I would love to challenge their prejudices about romance and mystery readers.

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It has occurred to me that I shouldn't be calling this feature reading experiences, but rather reading prompts, but I guess it's too late to change it now. If I decide to continue it next year I'll probably rename it.

Comments

Geetali said…

Ha-ha, you just reminded me that I'd promised friends to read Kiran Desai's "Inheritance Of Loss". As with your prejudice of Joyce, I have one against Indian writing in English: it's silly, pretentious and just downright mediocre at times. This prejudice has stopped me from looking at what might be some good writing!

October 15, 2009 5:19 am

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Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...

Reading in Reykjavík

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