Favourite books list - meme request

[therealsnape]

Tetleythesecond asked tor this list, as a result of the excellent meme started by Miss Morland.
Thank you, Tetley, for giving me an opportunity to procrastinate. And thank you, wonderful Miss M., for starting the meme. So far, we've had two brilliant stories out of it. If you've missed them, go tomiss_morland and tetleythesecond  at once. Not Tetley's one just before going to bed, however. It's a compelling and beautiful read, but you need a bright, sunny morning to counterbalance. Miss Morland's one, on the contrary ....



For the non-English books I've checked Amazon for translations, in case anayone is interested (and needs a translation - you all seem a very linguistically gifted set. Yet Dutch isn't everyone's cup of tea, or rather, glass of Heineken).
 
*Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (saying 'a collected works edition' would be cheating, I guess?)
*Liaisons Dangereuses, Choderlos de la Clos. (Dangerous liaisons). Perhaps some day we'll write Marquise de Merteuil femmeslash for each other?
*Onder Professoren, W.F. Hermans. Alas, no translation. A book about a Dutch University professor who finds his colleagues rather Hogwarts like. And finds that life with a Nobel prize is not a bed of roses. A brilliant picture of University-world small-mindedness.
*A Christmas Carol in Prose, Charles Dickens. This is the one I re-read yearly, so if I have to pick just one ...
*Huis Clos, J.P. Sartre. L'enfer, c'est les autres.
*Kruistocht in Spijkerbroek, Thea Beckmann (recently turned into a movie, Crusade in Jeans, Kreuzzug in Jeans). Although I really like her trilogy on the 100 year war between France and England best, but that isn't translated. And this, too, is a childhood love that started a lasting passion for history.
*The murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie. Must have one, and this is a narrative masterpiece.
*Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, JKR. Tripe, Sybill?
*The pursuit of love, Nancy Mitford. The romanticized depiction of the madcap Mitfords. Oh, to sit in the Hons' Cupboard.
*The House Gun, Nadine Gordimer. The story of two intellectual middle-aged parents who hear that something terrible has happened to their son. Their minds run the whole gamut of accident, attacked, mugged. It's not that. It's murder.
Their son is ... a murderer. Set against a background of post-apartheid South Africa. With a narrative technique that never feels contrived, but still reminds one of Nathalie Sarraute at her best.
 

Comments

[kellychambliss.livejournal.com]

Fascinating list. Wish I could read the Hermans book. I love academic fiction. Are you familiar with David Lodge's academic satires? They mostly look at the world of larger universities, which is not my world (not since graduate school), but he still managed to capture precise and devastating portraits of academia.

Then there's Richard Russo's Straight Man, set at a smaller college somewhat similar to mine. His depiction is so spot-on that I'm half-convinced he is one of my colleagues in disguise. This novel contains one of my favorite teacher/student scenes. An annoying writing student (who is of the "one-writes-to-shock" school) attaches a note to his terrible short story asking if the prof. thinks the cannibal/sex scene is overdone. The professor writes back, "Always understate necrophilia."

The Mitford book is one I really like, too. I suspect that if I'd known them all in person, I would have hated the lot of them, but they're such fun to read about.

you all seem a very linguistically gifted set

Not all, I'm afraid. Half my flist is fluent in at least one and often more languages besides their native one, and here I sit, having only one language to show for my many years. So provincial!

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

Thanks for mentioning Lodge and Russo. Love academic fiction too, I look forward to it.
"Always understate necrophilia." What a brilliant line. Pity FF net doesn't have it on its opening page.
So provincial! For a provincial lady, you keep a most interesting diary. Enjoyed your comments on 'polytropos', oh linguistically challenged one!

[tetleythesecond]

Ahh, inspiration! I just began filling the gap in my literary education entitled "Austen, Jane" by starting Northanger Abbey (it said "tomboy" on the back cover) and will definitely read more.

We did 'Huis clos' in school (wonder if anyone wondered about my enthusiasm...). Fascinating read, and it's probably the play I've seen most often. The mirror scene never fails to give me creeps.

Mental note: Re-watch and finally read Liaisons dangereuses.

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

How lucky you are, having all the Austen fun ahead of you!

Mental note: Re-watch and finally read Liaisons dangereuses.
Word of advice: skip the re-watching. Admittedly, the costumes are just so and the first 3/4 not bad, but the end, with screaming, raving Glen Close, is the worst bit of OOC-ness I've seen in a long time (by people who are paid for what they produce, that is.)
Laclos' Marquise is exquisite, multi-layered, and perfectly in control. Always. Enjoy yourself!

[tetleythesecond]

**points at icon**

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

How utterly flattering! Wow!
I seem to manage a decent phrase occasionally... today, even... could it be, that not the entire SeverusBigBang wordcount of this afternoon is utter crap?
That entry of yours was a Godsend, by the way, such lovely procrastination.
(By the quickness of the replies you can tell how desperate I am.)

[tetleythesecond]

Ha! If it made you feel better I would almost share the sentence containing the words "Rolanda", "sex", "wall" and ::looks:: oh, yes, "hair-yanking" with you for your amusement. Except then I'd have to dig a hole in the ground and disappear in it forever.

I look forward to the SevBang!

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

I'd have to dig a hole in the ground and disappear in it forever.
???????
You mean this is a sentence you don't want to write? Meelsie and I have been giving our all so that you'd get inspiration for tackling this wonderful sounding story that contains Hooch and Sex and Wall and even Hair-yanking in the same sentence, and you tell me that you don't want to?
No, of course not. Sorry. You'd never do a thing like that. This was a joke. We'll wait patiently, and we'll get the story.

[tetleythesecond]

*g* Except that the story, in its current, hypothetical form doesn't have anything to do with Madam Hooch. That tidbit (in its current, utterly unpublishable draft form) just sort of wrote itself as I was sitting in on a boring presentation.

Then again, fics can have interludes... *ponders*

[meelsie-love78.livejournal.com]

Interlude, please...

No, no, we'll be patient, I promise. We'll just sit here quietly awaiting your Fic Of Epic Proportions. Shan't hassle you at all ;)

[the-winterwitch.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, reading some of the comments here I have the distinct feeling that right now, something is happening as it did exactly three years before. Then, I found out that fanfiction exists and haven't been seen or heard of for WEEKS. I literally read many, many nights trough... and am still reading more fanfic than printed books.
And now I seem to have stumbled over what I've been so sorely missing since university: people ticking like me, liking similar things apart from Harry Potter and writing the most interesting entries and all that in this mysterious LJ thingy I've been avoiding for so long because I didn't understand it... *ties rope around midsection and secures it on table leg so could be pulled out of the monitor if necessary)*

Sorry for the large OT, therealsnape. A list of personal favourite books is quite the idea, I absolutely have to do one, too. It would take some mulling over, though, as I've been reading so much fanfiction these last years *blushes*.
The Hermans book intrigues me, too, but I'm afraid Dutch is over my abilities, too.

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

people ticking like me, liking similar things
It's what I absolutely love about LJ.
On the plus side, you're going to have the most incredible fun over here.
On the downside, you'll have huge backlogs of Real Work, less sleep, even less time to read novels, you'll have to remind yourself time and again that Real Friends are not a dratted nuisance eating into LJ-time, but, in fact, Real Friends.
Still, didn't regret joining for a second. Welcome to the club!

[the-winterwitch.livejournal.com]

Thanks! :o) And thanks for the friending, too, by the way (I'm only slowly getting into that bit, too).
I love this line: "...to remind yourself time and again that Real Friends are not a dratted nuisance eating into LJ-time, but, in fact, Real Friends. "
None of my real friends of before fanfiction is a HP fan or knew this at all, though by now, everybody knows at least that fanfic exists and what is this weird stuff I write. And since then, I have added a handful of real friends formerly being online and fanfic friends. So by now, it's at least nothing new to most. But I'll write this line down and hang it over my monitor, just in case *giggle*.