No worries man.Quoting Grouchy (view post)
Just last night I saw the DVD on my shelf and was reminded that you might want it.
It's still sitting there!
No worries man.
Just last night I saw the DVD on my shelf and was reminded that you might want it.
It's still sitting there!
I haven't read a lot of novellas. I tend toward novels or toward short stories and poetry. Recommend some and I'll track them down.
Most of the novellas, or novella-length fiction (some older SF is more novella than novel), tend to be genre related. Horror seems to be a great genre for novella-length fiction.
The best I've read in a long time, and the best thing I've read all year:
The Divinity Student by Michael Cisco. Definitely not for everyone, but it totally won me over. This is among the most imaginative and creative things I've ever read. (You can get this in The San Veneficio Canon, containing two novellas - it is quite expensive to get The Divinity Student on its own).
H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and Shadow Over Innsmouth are all fantastic novellas (or longer short stories as they reside on the border of the two forms).
Elsewhere by William Peter Blatty is a fantastic little ghost story.
Dark Gods, by T.E.D. Klein is a collection of four awesome horror novellas.
My Work is Not Yet Done by Thomas Ligotti.
Don't know if you're into this kind of weird fiction or not.
I love Goodwill. Their book collections are always a mix of college coursework, Michael Crichton paperbacks, and at least one copy of The Celestine Prophecy.
The other day I picked up Cabal, Wuthering Heights, and A Tale of Two Cities. Three bucks.
I once relieved them of a copy of The Celestine Prophecy.
No, I'm pretty much a sheep when it comes to lit and stick to the classics. I also dig poetry so I spend a lot of time reading and memorizing that. I'll check some of these out for sure, though. I need a bit of a break from the blowhards.
Heh.
I'm like the exact opposite.
I hope you enjoy, or at least don't hate, some of those if you decide to check them out.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy is a MUST read novella.
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
I should read this.
Also, two more awesome novellas, both by the master of urban dystopia JG Ballard:
Concrete Island
Running Wild
White Nights is a good example of early Dostoevsky and only like 60 pages.
Wishful thinking, perhaps; but that is just another possible definition of the featherless biped.
Didn't he also write a novella about a gambler or something? I remember picking it up, and I'd like to actually read it some time.
The Gambler. It's not one of his best, but it's still very good. It paints a pretty good picture of dissolution into gambling addiction, both as a spontaneous excitement and as a weary withdrawal from the rest of the world.
I'm not sure if they count as novellas, but Dostoevsk'y Notes from Underground and The Double are both amazing.
Should have remembered that. I think I'll pick it up. I saw it at Half Price books for only 59 cents.
I want to read him, but his longer stuff scares me. I think if I start small, and work my way through his material, I will have a better chance.
You should definitely try Notes From Underground as well. There are a bunch of Dostoevsky collections that you can get for like 4 bucks. I bought one that had Notes from Underground, The Double, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (which you can find online, only like 20 pages).
Should have remembered that. I think I'll pick it up. I saw it at Half Price books for only 59 cents.
I want to read him, but his longer stuff scares me. I think if I start small, and work my way through his material, I will have a better chance.
Wishful thinking, perhaps; but that is just another possible definition of the featherless biped.
Cool, I will.
I noticed that there were a ton of those Dover Thrift Editions, or similar, at the used book store the last time I was there, and there were all ridiculously cheap.
You would have no trouble with Crime and Punishment. That's one of the easiest books I've read, and at the time I was also intimidated by longer novels. So long as you get to that eventually though, we're good.
Should have remembered that. I think I'll pick it up. I saw it at Half Price books for only 59 cents.
I want to read him, but his longer stuff scares me. I think if I start small, and work my way through his material, I will have a better chance.
The Book of Lazarus by Richard Grossman
The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
You are my hero.
Makes sense that you're a movie lover then--movies are short stories, tv shows are the novels.
How do you decide what to memorize? I'm thinking of making my students do some memorizing next semester since it's a dying/lost art, but I'm unsure if I'll choose a passage for them or let them do so themselves.
That's kind of true. I find most TV series far too long - their narratives are often stretched past the necessary point.
Although my heavy reading schedule this year is directly related to the fact that I no longer watch many movies. I've seen less than 15 films this year.
While I've always loved reading, this year I've found my passion for prose to be insatiable. I am devouring books, and loving every minute of it.
You're lucky.
I wish my reading bug would kick in again. The two-fer of "Angel Dust Apocalypse" and "Hell" really knocked the desire to read out of me, and I haven't been able to read more than a couple pages of anything since.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Didn't mean to leave this discussion twistin' in the wind but I've been at school from 9 to 8 most days this week.
Sometimes I memorize something because it seems pretty essential, like Blake's "The Tyger" or Hopkins' "The Windhover" or Stevens' "Anecdote of the Jar". Other times something just strikes me as clever or funny or it has a spirit I like such as "Sir Ptarick Spens" or Shelley's "Ozymandias". Lately I've started memorizing some things because of the challenge they pose. I'm also looking for more romantic poetry of late, not sure why.
It's hard to make a recommendation without knowing what level of school you teach. I can say, however, that I don't think letting them choose whatever they want is a good idea. Maybe giving them a pool of choices is a good idea or even assigning them a poet for the semester to focus on may help them develop a deeper connection to the poetry.
So this is the novella reading list I've made. I'm not sure when I'll start reading these but I think I'll post a few thoughts on them as I read them. If things keep going as they are, I'll have to make those thoughts very few.
-The Death of Ivan Ilyich
-The Divinity Student
after I read this,
"The Divinity Student is thrown out of the seminary after he is apparently struck dead by lightning. He is brought back to life by a mysterious group of people who gut his corpse and stuff him full of pages from a mysterious book."
I just stopped and knew I had to check this out.
-At the Mountains of Madness
-The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
-Shadow Over Innsmouth
checking these out as, and I'm loathe to admit this, I've never read any Lovecraft. (Largely because, and again I am loathe to admit this, I always kind of thought of him as a poor man's Edgar Allan Poe.)
-Dark Gods
-White Nights
This really sounds like something I'll dig.
EDIT: I have mention real quick that of the few novellas I've read Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is among my favorite. I see why it's oft filmed. If you've ever felt that certain animosity or ambivalence toward festivity the Dickens condemns, the story can be pretty powerful.
Sounds good man!
Hope you like some of these - especially The Divinity Student (by the way, you should buy the version called The San Veneficio Canon, which contains 2 novellas. The original version of the DS is quite expensive).
And just so you know, most horror scholars (yes there are such things, see S.T. Joshi - the world's leading Lovecraft expert) agree that Lovecraft is the second pillar of horror, the first of which being Poe. Lovecraft is not a "poor man's Poe" but he is, instead, the next scion. Some people are arguing that Thomas Ligotti is the third pillar, but it is probably too soon to tell. However, we should feel lucky to have someone of Lovecraft's caliber alive during our time.
Hey, if you do end up liking some of these weird tales, please check out my article over here:
http://www.playtime-magazine.com/pre...ading-journal/
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