Great Wrap up for April and May. A New Name and Moon over Soho sounds intriguing, so I'm adding it to my TBR. You’re doing well Nicole, take your time and move at your own pace on reading Metamorphis, even though I haven't started it as yet I know a lot of people say it is challenging. So continue to read it in the small bites that you have been doing and you will finish it before you know it. Happy readings 💕
@adayofsmallthings
Жыл бұрын
Aww thanks for the encouragement! I shall read on haha :) happy reading!
@keriford54
9 ай бұрын
Thanks Nicole, I'm enjoying watching your videos, I really like your methodical approach to reading, it seems like you're absorbing a lot. I intend to re-read Julius Caesar shortly, I have to say I saw a film version of Titus Andronicus many decades ago and was rather traumatised by it, I had no intention of revisiting it, but I think I'll be reading through all Shakespeare's works in the foreseeable future, there are a few I haven't read before, mainly history plays. All of which is to say I don't have much to say about those two plays right now, but I am more looking forward to reading Julius Caesar. You asked a question about Christian Fantasy, I am not particularly knowledgeable on the subject but I thought I'd share a couple of things. Madeleine L'Engle's book A Wrinkle in Time is quite well known and I quite liked it, I thought it was an easy and enjoyable read, it was influenced by Lewis but I think if anything it is more like his Space Trilogy than the Narnia books. Gene Wolfe was a Catholic and his Book of the the New Sun series is regarded as a major Sci Fi/Fantasy work, I didn't know he was a Christian when I read it, but he did think he put Christian ideas into it. Not necessarily an easy read, the 2nd book has about a 70 page play in the middle of it and you're often thinking there might be significant things happening but you don't know what they are. I was impressed by the series when I read it some decades ago, I must read it again sometime. My favourite contemporary thinker/writer is David Bentley Hart he is Eastern Orthodox, and American, he writes on a plurality of subjects, even done a translation of the New Testament where he tried to be as literal as possible. He's not generally an "easy" writer. Relatively recently he wrote what he called a Gnostic Fantasy called "Kenogaia" really his only outright Fantasy novel and I think it's a great read and highly recommend it. He wrote another recent work called "Rolland in Moonlight" Rolland is his dog and the book is part dialogues with his dog, part memoir, part fiction, part theology and I think a great book, certainly there is nothing else like it. I have already mentioned George MacDonald, so excuse me, I feel like I might be flogging a dead horse but as you mentioned Narnia and CS Lewis as your standard I thought I'd add a couple of quotes from Lewis on George MacDonald, to give you an idea of how highly Lewis thought of him: “I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself." "I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him (George MacDonald) as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him. But it has not seemed to me that those who have received my books kindly take even now sufficient notice of the affiliation. Honesty drives me to emphasise it. And even if honesty did not - well, I am a don, and 'source-hunting' (Quellen-forschung) is perhaps in my marrow. It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought - almost unwillingly, for I had looked at the volume on that bookstall and rejected it on a dozen previous occasions - the Everyman edition of Phantastes. A few hours later I knew that I had crossed a great frontier. I had already been waist-deep in Romanticism; and likely enough, at any moment, to flounder into its darker and more evil forms, slithering down the steep descent that leads from the love of strangeness to that of eccentricity and thence to that of perversity. Now Phantastes was romantic enough in all conscience; but there was a difference. Nothing was at that time further from my thoughts than Christianity and I therefore had no notion what this difference really was. I was only aware that if this new world was strange, it was also homely and humble; that if this was a dream, it was a dream in which one at least felt strangely vigilant; that the whole book had about it a sort of cool, morning innocence, and also, quite unmistakably, a certain quality of Death, good Death. What it actually did to me was to convert, even to baptise (that was where the Death came in) my imagination. It did nothing to my intellect nor (at that time) to my conscience. Their turn came far later and with the help of many other books and men. But when the process was complete - by which, of course, I mean 'when it had really begun' - I found that I was still with MacDonald and that he had accompanied me all the way and that I was now at last ready to hear from him much that he could not have told me at that first meeting. But in a sense, what he was now telling me was the very same that he had told me from the beginning. There was no question of getting through to the kernel and throwing away the shell: no question of a gilded pill. The pill was gold all through. The quality which had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live. I should have been shocked in my teens if anyone had told me that what I learned to love in Phantastes was goodness. But now that I know, I see there was no deception. The deception is all the other way round - in that prosaic moralism which confines goodness to the region of Law and Duty, which never lets us feel in our face the sweet air blowing from 'the land of righteousness', never reveals that elusive Form which if once seen must inevitably be desired with all but sensuous desire - the thing (in Sappho's phrase) `more gold than gold'."
@adayofsmallthings
8 ай бұрын
Hi, thanks for introducing the authors and their works! - I didn’t know most of them. And thanks for sharing more about George MacDonald and his influence on Lewis - I look forward to reading him. Hope you enjoy Julius Caesar!
@beeheart6529
Жыл бұрын
Thanks for the recommendation for A New Name. That sounds like a powerful book.
@adayofsmallthings
Жыл бұрын
Pleasure :)
@nedmerrill5705
Жыл бұрын
I'd like to tell you about two authors and two of their books that I have just read (one I'm still reading) that are absolutely stunning. My last complete book in May was Dostoevsky's _Crime and Punishment._ Such a masterpiece! The next book, my current read, is Saul Bellow's last book, _Ravelstein._ _Ravelstein_ is a roman à clef written in the form of a memoir. The title character, Ravelstein, is based on the philosopher Allan Bloom, who taught alongside Bellow at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought. This is one of the best written novels I've ever read. It is beautiful.
@adayofsmallthings
Жыл бұрын
Hello! I know of the famous Crime and Punishment but haven’t got the courage to pick it up. It’s a pretty big book right? Glad to hear you enjoyed it so much. I’ve never heard of Saul Bellow or Allan Bloom, but the book sounds great and intriguing. Will check it out :) love seeing your enthusiasm in reading good books - thanks for sharing!
@sandra7319.
Жыл бұрын
The movie or series of Brideshead Revisited is like watching literature, especially the one with Jeremy Irons.
@adayofsmallthings
Жыл бұрын
Oooh nice, I’m very interested in watching a movie or a TV series of Brideshead Revisited. I can imagine it beautiful and dramatic on the screen. Thanks for recommending it!
@bettychoibooks
Жыл бұрын
The Dark Star by Hannah R Hess is potentially a christianish young adult/ teen fiction novel. I haven't read it yet, but I've heard of it!
@adayofsmallthings
Жыл бұрын
Cool thanks! Will check them out!
@pamelatarajcak5634
Жыл бұрын
In the 1920s England, Catholics were sort of outsiders. So the family was so outre as to be Catholic. Also Sebastain is gay, so he's an outsider in an outsider family.
@donaldkelly3983
Жыл бұрын
Is this your first Waugh novel? BR was the first of his books I read and that was from seeing the British television series. If you have not read any others, I recommend almost everything Waugh wrote. Curiously, I don't agree with his world-view. BR is not his best book. It's over written and sentimental. Waugh's other fiction is precise and very funny.
@adayofsmallthings
Жыл бұрын
Hello! Yes this is my first Waugh novel. I quite like to watch a TV series as well. I should go look for one. Interesting. I will keep this in mind and read other titles by him so I can compare. Any specific recommendations by him? Thank you :)
@donaldkelly3983
Жыл бұрын
@@adayofsmallthings My desert island Waugh novels are Scoop and The Loved One. Scoop is about journalism and The Loved One reflects how Waugh felt about America. Besides being a dedicated Roman Catholic, Waugh was a social reactionary. As you can tell from BR, the modern world was a ruin in his eyes and the Medival past was better. I don't agree, but I think Waugh was a monument of English literature!
@beeheart6529
Жыл бұрын
Have you heard the term Deus ex machina, a plot device when a god swoops in and solves a problem. Its not a very good way to build a story in my opinion. Using it once is more than enough. It starts to get on my nerves if it happens more than that.
@adayofsmallthings
Жыл бұрын
Hi there! No I haven’t heard of the term, just googled - interesting! I agree, it feels a bit too easy for the characters haha
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