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

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

Yep, seemed like a good December read.

I've read A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Haunted Man and The Cricket on the Hearth this month.
Reading The Battle of Life now.

The Festival

A Lovecraft Christmas

midnightfaerie wrote: "Thanks! I've been working on the classics for years. I love labs. Mine is named Max after the Grinch's dog. He's our 4th lab (others deceased). 7 months old and always into our Christmas Tree!"
Seven months old and you dare to put up a Christmas tree?

midnightfaerie wrote: "Hi, I'm Janine aka midnightfaerie, or even just midnight. I saw a list years ago on "100 books most ppl haven't read" and was appalled at how few I had read. So I jumped into it. Then I got into Gi..."
Wow you have a long list!
I also have a yellow lab. :)

John_Dishwasher wrote: "The idea that this might be better in German makes me feel better. I didn't know I was reading a translation. I hate to be a downer but what others are calling poetic felt to me laborious and sentimental. And while I respect the ambition of the work, I felt like she crammed too much into too few pages to keep track of. I had a hard time finishing it."
Yeah I thought it was poetic but the language was just a little weird sometimes.

I was wondering what Yoshiwara was. It's only mentioned a couple of times and it's not really clear. I found this Yoshiwara

So you have the New Tower of Babel, no mystery there.
You have Rotwang's house that they're constantly reminding you has hexagrams on the doors, representing technology as some kind of new age sorcery. (I would wonder if his name was some kind of joke except it was written in German).
There's Yoshiwara, their Sodom maybe?
And there's the cathedral left over in this city that seems to have no use for it.

I just listened to this.
I liked it. Very Lovecraftian. And the science was surprisingly good, talking about forth dimensional entities.

The movie was weird. In silent movies they have to be really expressive with gestures. The woman who plays Maria plays two parts and the faces and head movements she makes as "evil" Maria were so funny.

I might try to read Hiroshima if I can. I liked it as a freshman in high school.
So much to read and do.

It's not very long but the language can be a bit complex. I read it in around ten hours, you can probably do it quicker.

Belén wrote: "Hi! My name is Belén. I'm from Argentina and I've started reading quite recently. My favorite novels are Crime and Punishment and The Idiot, along with No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. I'm currently..."
Cool. You should definitely read Notes from the Underground and The Brothers Karamazov and The Tale of the Heike.

The back of my book says "In the literature of Science Fiction, there is no more an underappreciated and ignored piece of writing than Thea Von Harbou's magnificent Metropolis."
I have to agree. This belongs up there with the greats of sci-fi. Some parts are a bit hard to get through because of the language, maybe it's better in German, but totally worth it.
Now I have to watch the movie. I didn't realize it was silent. An almost three hour silent film might be tough to get through too. But it's so highly praised I want to check it out.

So what does everybody think of the tons of symbolism in this?

There's
Prelude to Foundation
Forward the Foundation
Foundation's Edge
Foundation and Earth
I don't think they really live up to the original trilogy but I'd say they're worth a read.

By genre then by author. And yeah, kind of piles all over the place. :p

I read a lot more fiction than nonfiction and my favorites are sci-fi and fantasy but I'll read any good story.

Joseph wrote: "There's a GoodReads Group about Canadian Literature. The moderator' s name is Tracey."
Thanks. I'll check it out.

Karin wrote: "FYI, after you focus on your next areas which are excellent ones, there are also some fabulous Canadian classics which often get overlooked :)"

I don't know of a single Canadian classic. What am I missing?

I'm about halfway through. It's very lyrical and poetic. All about how people were afraid of losing their humanity to industrialized society back then.

And I've always been curious what a visi-sonor looks like. I found this from some cover. There's really no description of it in the book so it's pure speculation.

Sounds kind of like The Time Machine.

Anyway I'll start in a couple of days but I keep asking for opinions: book first or movie first?