Book Nerd’s Comments (group member since Dec 20, 2018)

Book Nerd’s comments from the Never too Late to Read Classics group.

Welcome Theresa and Basil.

That's a separate story. They printed them together in a weird way.

Has anybody read Snow Crash? The way this talked about language reminded me of that book.

Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany


219 pages

Group Total: 457,139

Lesle wrote: "Actually sounds very interesting. I found the link for PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1210"
Cool, thanks.

I've read a lot of Japanese folktales but I just didn't think these were told especially well.
But my favorite was The Dream of Akinosuke.

The whole recruiting a crew thing is pretty out there but stick with it.
I like all the stuff about how different languages work.

I just started this. It's really weird.

A blind musician with amazing talent is called upon to perform for the dead. Faceless creatures haunt an unwary traveler. A beautiful woman — the personification of winter at its cruelest — ruthlessly kills unsuspecting mortals. These and 17 other chilling supernatural tales — based on legends, myths, and beliefs of ancient Japan — represent the very best of Lafcadio Hearn's literary style. They are also a culmination of his lifelong interest in the endlessly fascinating customs and tales of the country where he spent the last fourteen years of his life, translating into English the atmospheric stories he so avidly collected.
Teeming with undead samurais, man-eating goblins, and other terrifying demons, these 20 classic ghost stories inspired the Oscar®-nominated 1964 film of the same name.

Humanity, which has spread throughout the universe, is involved in a war with the Invaders, who have been covertly assassinating officials and sabotaging spaceships. The only clues humanity has to go on are strange alien messages that have been intercepted in space. Poet and linguist Rydra Wong is determined to understand the language and stop the alien threat.

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn

127 pages

Group Total: 451,760

I think there are a lot of different editions of this book that just throw in whatever Chambers stories they can. Mine didn't have The Street of the Four Winds or The Prophets' Paradise but it did have three weird "searching for extinct animals" stories at the end.
Yes, my favorites were the ones that directlt refer to The King in Yellow.

Brianna wrote: "If you enjoy musicals, another great version (and closer to the book) is the musical Notre-Dame de Paris. No Djali in that version though. ;) Hard to bring a live goat onstage, I guess."
Where would you see that?

I finished The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
(view spoiler)[The ending was intense! Hugo sire can write a tragedy.
Oh well, at least Djali, the only character that never got on my nerves, made it. (hide spoiler)]
I want to watch the Disney movie tonight.

Georgia wrote: "Just finished Anna Karenina and I'm breathless. Here is my reviewhttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."
One of the really long books I really want to read.

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo


510 pages

428,899

Pillsonista and Karin - That's not a review, it's the summary for the book on Goodreads.

I finally read the summary of The Hunchback of Notre Dame:

This extraordinary historical French gothic novel, set in Medieval Paris under the twin towers of its greatest structure and supreme symbol, the cathedral of Notre-Dame, is the haunting drama of Quasimodo, the disabled bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, as he struggles to stand up to his ableist guardian Claude Frollo, who also wants to commit genocide against Paris' Romani population.

Lol, what a 2024 summary. Frollo is as bad as most of the characters here but he hasn't said anything "ableist" yet. Anyway, Quasimodo's only real handicap is that he's deaf from being right by the ringing bells.
And he hasn't said anything about genocide, he's just infatuated with Esmerelda.

Jenna wrote: "I’m reading The Collector by John Fowles. I believe there is a discussion thread about this book. It’s very unique and creepy. The deranged lines that male character thinks. Unsettling! But I’m lik..."
Have you finished?
(view spoiler)[He's the villian obviously but it seems like she's made far more hateable.
I also thought it was weird that a healthy young woman just suddenly got sick and died. My thoery is that there was some kind of gas seeping into the basement and she was literally like a butterfly in his killing jar. (hide spoiler)]

Bilen wrote: "I just finished The Idiot by Dostoyevsky, and now I'm staring at a wall as all the scenes replay before my eyes. I'm too stunned."
I love Dostoyevsky. Wait till you read Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamozov.
(Oh, I see you've read them. Maybe Demons next?)

Melanie wrote: "Book Nerd,

I read that these are the themes of the triptych:
Les Miserables: Struggles against Religion
Hunchback: Struggles against Society
The Toilers of the Sea: Struggles against Nature"
That's interesting.

Karin wrote: "The Disney Versions are ALWAYS wrong; they are notorious for changing things to suit their audiences. I learned more about this when I read The Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History which is a good book."
Yeah, I know Disney versions are always different but I thought Quasimodo would at least be the hero.
For more accurate versions of fairy tales like The Snow Queen and The Little Mermaid you should watch old anime or Russian versions.

Wren wrote: "I think it’s a bit late for me to come here but oh well I’m currently reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
Me too. I'm about a third of the way through and it's a lot different from the Disney version. I'm very disappointed that Quasimoto seems to be a villain. And all the painfully detailed descriptions of architecture.

Melanie wrote: "Wren, I heard that The Hunchback of Notre Dame is the second book of a triptych: Les Miserables is the first book and The Toilers of the Sea is the third. I'm reading Les Miserables now, and I'm looking forward to reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame next!"
That's interesting. I don't know anything about The Toilers of the Sea but Les Mis and Hunchabck don't seem to have much in common. Maybe it's just people with crappy lives but that's pretty general.

The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories by Robert W. Chambers

268 pages

Group Total 222,829