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

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

I never read James and the Giant Peach when I was a kid. It was an amusing little story. It's light and funny but I like that old kids books aren't afraid of death and danger.

Next up is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I have fond memories of that one.

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl



150 pages

40,071

I've been really looking forward to this one. I haven't read anything by Clark Ashton Smith before but I love this kind of weird fiction stuff!

Not just any fantasy, horror, and science fiction author could impress H. P. Lovecraft into calling him "perhaps unexcelled by any other writer, dead or living” or compel Fritz Lieber to employ the worthy term sui generis. Clark Ashton Smith—autodidact, prolific poet, amateur philosopher, bizarre sculptor, and unmatched storyteller—simply wrote like no one else, before or since. This new collection of his very best tales and poems is selected and introduced by supernatural literature scholar S. T. Joshi and allows readers to encounter Smith’s visionary brand of fantastical, phantasmagorical worlds, each one filled with invention, terror, and a superlative sense of metaphysical wonder.

Abyssdancer wrote: "An African Story - Don’t mess with my dog!"

Yep

Sounds really cool. Hopefully I'll read some of the adult stories later this year.

Mike wrote: "I came across an interesting passage that highlight the patriarchal nature of the Icelandic/Nordic society. In this genealogy the males are listed first, than the females but in a fascinating twist..."
It is fiction but historical fiction. Based, in theory, on people who actually lived.

That's what makes it a classic. I wonder why nothing else she did is well known.

Jess wrote: "This was my first time reading this series of author. I've always enjoyed Arthurian media but don't think I've actually ever read a proper Arthurian book until now.

I enjoyed the pace and the cha..."
Same. I've never read Arthurian legend and I look forward to reading the rest of this series...some day. lol

Yeah, maybe Guinevere will be a better female character.

Karin wrote: "Last night instead of starting the one edited by Jane Smiley, because I've always meant to do this, I started the first of the 5 volumes of [book:The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, including 49 Tale..."
That's really interesting.
What exactly is the difference between the sagas and the tales? I know the tales are shorter obviously but there must be hundreds of Icelandic stories. How do these 49 get included in the "canon"?

Yeah, that's it. I thought there were more volumes. I do wish they'd republish it.

What is the five volume set?
I have the volume you linked that contains:
Egil's Saga
The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal
The Saga of the People of Laxardal
Bolli Bollason's Tale
The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey's Godi
The Saga of the Confederates
Gisli Sursson's Saga
The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue
The Saga of Ref the Sly
The Saga of the Greenlanders
Eirik the Red's Saga
The Tale of Thorstein Staff-Struck
The Tale of Halldor Snorrason II
The Tale of Sarcastic Halli
The Tale of Thorstein Shiver
The Tale of Audun from the West Fjords
The Tale of the Story-Wise Icelander

I also have a few more of the sagas that have been translated into English. But as far as I know the only way to get all 40+ in English is a VERY expensive and hard to find set.

Welcome Gayathri.

The Food of the Gods by H.G. Wells


147 pages

Total to date: 11,977

I finished. It was interesting but I didn't love it.
The later part was about the humans that grew huge. There's a lot about class struggles and people who don't fit into society.
The description of the book is wrong. They didn't have any "extraordinary mental powers".

I read The Gremlins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiMy_...

It was a cute little story. What I liked most was the art.
Also the part about how it was supposed to be turned into a Disney movie was interesting. It made Disney seem like an evil empire even back then.

✅ The Gremlins 1943
✅ James and the Giant Peach 1961
✅ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 1964
✅The Magic Finger 1966
✅Fantastic Mr Fox 1970
✅Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator 1972
✅Danny, the Champion of the World 1975
✅The Enormous Crocodile 1978
✅The Twits 1980
✅ George's Marvellous Medicine 1981
✅The BFG 1982
✅The Witches 1983
✅The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me 1985
✅Matilda 1988
✅Esio Trot 1990
✅The Vicar of Nibbleswicke 1991
✅The Minpins 1991
✅Boy
✅Going Solo
The Roald Dahl Treasury (collection) 1997

Adults
Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying 1946
Sometime Never: A Fable for Supermen (novel) 1948
Someone Like You 1953
Kiss Kiss 1960
Twenty-Nine Kisses from Roald Dahl 1969
Switch Bitch 1974
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More 1977
The Best of Roald Dahl 1978
Tales of the Unexpected 1979
My Uncle Oswald (novel) 1979
More Tales of the Unexpected 1980
A Roald Dahl Selection: Nine Short Stories 1980
Two Fables 1986
Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life: The Country Stories of Roald Dahl 1989

Evelyn wrote: "It’s actually 6 of his novels!!"

Is it this book?

I have that one and we're reading Food of the Gods now. I've read all of those except The Invisible Man.

Welcome Mike, Evelyn, and Phoebe.

I'm about halfway through it.
So far it's pretty much a "monster movie". There's a movie from 1976 that I'm pretty sure I've seen a long time ago. Sounds like one of those movies they used to play on Saturday afternoons.
If anybody's wondering "perambulator" means a stroller, which I'm pretty sure they shortened to "pram" in England. And a "stone" is 14 pounds or 6.35 kg.