Classic books I've somehow missed. Advice

[Lang Spoon]

I read Cohen's Quixote translation (for fun!) at Uni and loved it. I also love Parrot's Svejk tho, not knowing what I'm missing I guess.

[Sam]

I enjoyed part 1 much more than part 2 (perhaps unsurprisingly, given Cervantes wrote part 2 in response to an imitator ripping him off and trying to make money with a 'sequel' of part 1), but yes Don Quixote is brilliant. I read the same Rutherford translation imp has, I think, but there has since been one published by Edith Grossman which got rave reviews at the time.

[Sam]

Oh and SB if you've managed to not read anything from nineteenth-century British authors you've got a hell of a treat in store when you get to Wilkie Collins. I'm not fully up to speed with a lot of the other myself really, but Wilkie's superb.

[Sits]

Of Hardy’s, Tess of the D’Urbervilles was the best I reckon. Almost made me cry.

[ale]

Have just started Larry McMurtry Last Picture Show. Finding it very engaging so far. Wasnt previously aware it extended for a further four novels to 2010. On that basis invites comparison with Updike Rabbit chronology although seems more breezy and less meditative.

[S. aureus]

From the other thread: should I read Buddenbrooks sometime?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Definitely. It's essentially a 19th century three generation family saga. Long certainly, but never boring.

[S. aureus]

OK then. Next question - translator recommendations (or warnings)?
Though at my current rate of book reading we might be on the next global pandemic before I'd actually get started on it.

[Sporting]

Though at my current rate of book reading we might be on the next global pandemic before I'd actually get started on it.

We'll be on this one for years yet.

[Amor de Cosmos]

OK then. Next question - translator recommendations (or warnings)?
Though at my current rate of book reading we might be on the next global pandemic before I'd actually get started on it.

Jeez, darned if I can remember! It was almost certainly the current Penguin edition from sometime in the mid-seventies.

[S. aureus]

We'll be on this one for years yet.

True.

[Hot Pepsi]

I'd have trouble finding any equivalence between Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle. I'd agree the latter is tedious but at least erudite. The former was cod-philosophy for fourteen year-olds.

ZatAoMM is one of the only books like that I really like. I’ve read it twice. I also like the sequel.

I read Jonathan Livingston seagull. I thought it was cool to imagine life as a bird, but don’t recall anything else about it.

[Amor de Cosmos]

ZatAoMM is one of the only books like that I really like. I’ve read it twice. I also like the sequel.

I read Lila too, though it left no mark. Pirsig is a genuinely tragic character I think. Academically brilliant but a diagnosed schizophrenic. Underwent electro-shock therapy, later divorced by his wife then, after the success of ZatAoMM, his son was murdered in a mugging.

[Hot Pepsi]

Yes. I kinda wish he’d been more public and done talks that might now be on YouTube or something. Like Alan Watts.