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Topic:
Modern Classics of World Literature (currently disc. "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck)
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Yodas-evil-twin
Registered:
Jun '05
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Date Posted:
6/24/07 3:25pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing The Three Musketeers)
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I have a 600 page hard back edition that I mean to finish reading some time soon.
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"Who watches the Watchmen?"
"The JCC is pretty much Lord of the Flies without the healthy outdoorsy atmosphere."
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NYCitygurl
Title: Manager of SFFBC, C&G, and NSWFF
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
7/4/07 12:29pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing The Three Musketeers)
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Great Expectations
The story traces young Pip through his childhood, when he goes to "play" for the eccentric Miss Havisham with her ward, Estella. Pip falls in love with the hauty little Estella, who was taught to hate all men by Miss Havisham, who was jilted on her wedding day and had obsessed over it ever since.
Pip learns that he will be receving money from a mysterious, unnamed source after he moves out of his sister's house and goes to London. He spends his years growing up, still loving the beautiful Estella. His benefactor is eventually revealed as a convict who Pip helped as a child. After a long string of events, the convict dies after releaving that Estella is his daughter.
Pip moves on and eventually becomes a guardian to the son of his brother-in-law and his second wife.
Pip meets Estella later, a more softened woman who says that she has been reformed by her suffering at the hands of an abusive husband. However, Dickens originally wrote another ending which his publishers forced him to change.
Great Expectations
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"Not till the moon falls. Not till the world ends."
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
7/4/07 12:52pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Great Expectations)
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It's perhaps his greatest novel; but I agree, the ending is slightly off.
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NYCitygurl
Title: Manager of SFFBC, C&G, and NSWFF
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
7/4/07 2:47pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Great Expectations)
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Nothing I hate more than unrequited love, so I was disappointed.
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"Not till the moon falls. Not till the world ends."
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
7/4/07 11:54pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Great Expectations)
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Dickens transforms his main character from a miserable little snob to a sympathetic adult...quite ye feat. There is a very good film adaptation, too.
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NYCitygurl
Title: Manager of SFFBC, C&G, and NSWFF
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
7/23/07 7:40am
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Great Expectations)
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Peter Pan
Originally a play written by J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan is the magical story of a boy who won't grow up.
Peter listens to the stories that Mary Darling tells her, Wendy, John and Michael, about him, and then he appears one night and takes them off to Neverland, where they have adventures and battle Captain Hook, Peter's pirate enemy. They also play with Peter's Lost Boys and Tinkerbell, a little fairy.
Wendy decides that she needs to return to London and her parents, and her brothers and the Lost Boys go with her. In some versions, at the end Peter appears after 20 years and asks Wendy to go back for a little while, but she is grown up and with a daughter, Jane. Jane agrees to go with Peter, and he promises that he will come every spring and take her for a while.
Peter Pan
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"Not till the moon falls. Not till the world ends."
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
7/23/07 2:09pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Peter Pan)
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I have to say: I agree with Anthony Hope, whose reaction to this play was: "Oh! for an hour of Herod!"
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NYCitygurl
Title: Manager of SFFBC, C&G, and NSWFF
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 3:15pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Peter Pan)
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I've always liked it (the Disney movie in particular).
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
This is the story of the four young March women and their journey through young adulthood during the Civil War. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy deal with poverty and an absent father while they grow up, fall in love, and make lasting friendships.
It's not really a "guy" book, but every girl I knew when I was little read this book. It's an absolute classic and one I read several times.
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Jango10
Registered:
Sep '02
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Date Posted:
8/8/07 6:50am
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Little Women)
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"Just how little are these women?"
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"I love the smell of Napalm in the morning."
McCain/Palin '08
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
8/8/07 12:18pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Little Women)
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Seen the Cuaron movie version, which is a bit slow, but not bad.
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NYCitygurl
Title: Manager of SFFBC, C&G, and NSWFF
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
9/1/07 9:02am
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Little Women)
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Animal Farm by George Orwell
This satire is one of Orwell's most famous books, after 1984. It's aimed at the Communist policies of the Soviet Union.
The story takes place on a farm whose owners are run off, and the animals take charge in what is supposed to be a democrasy. However, the pigs lowly take control, and at the end there is no difference between them and the humans they overthrew.
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"Not till the moon falls. Not till the world ends."
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
9/1/07 9:58am
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Animal Farm)
- Date Edited:
9/2/07 10:41pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Zaz
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Orwell was a socialist, he fought on the leftist side in Spain, but never did he allow this to blind him to certain things. "Animal Farm" is an allegory--specifically of Stalinism, but it shows the standard pattern of history: the people overthrow the ancient regime, the king is replaced by a dictator--usually military, who is just or more as repressive. There is usually a counter-revolution which doesn't work, but there wasn't in Russia, so Orwell leaves that out (there was one in both England and France).
See also: The English Civil War (Cromwell); the French Revolution (Napoleon); the Russian Revolution (Stalin).
Snowball is the Trotsky figure. Boxer and the horses are the Old Bolsheviks, that actually believe in the revolution.
There is an exception, of course: the American Revolution. It could have gone the way of the rest, but George Washington was a very remarkable man in way his people don't give him credit for.
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NYCitygurl
Title: Manager of SFFBC, C&G, and NSWFF
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
9/1/07 10:28am
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Animal Farm)
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That's because everyone who has studied him almost every year until high school graduation is completely sick of him 
I read this in English, but I liked it for itself even without the underlying message (it took me to reads to like 1984). And for once I do enjoy the symbolism. It's a really incredible book.
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
9/1/07 11:03am
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Animal Farm)
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I'm not talking about the crappy history they teach in shcools...
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NYCitygurl
Title: Manager of SFFBC, C&G, and NSWFF
Registered:
Jul '02
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Date Posted:
9/1/07 3:34pm
Subject:
RE: Modern Classics of World Literature (currently discussing Animal Farm)
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Maybe he's not taught well, but I'm a senior and I've been lectured at about him so many times that every time he's mentioned I want to thump my head against my desk.
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