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Thursday, December 2, 2010

Welcome all Literary Book Blog Hoppers-week six-Dec 9 to the 12th

To me the Literary Book Blog Hop is a great event.    I read and post on mostly classics, short stories, Asian Fiction and what I see as literary novels.   Lately I have been very into the work of Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf but I am also reading through the work of Kenzaburo Oe and Junichiro Tanizaki, for example.

I admit sometimes I have felt out of place on events where it seems almost all the other bloggers post on young adult books, paranormal and vampire books.   


Every week the Literary Book Blog asks that participants answer a question-here is the question for this week

What is one of your literary pet peeves?  Is there something that writers do that really sets your teeth on edge?  Be specific, and give examples if you can.


I really  find most attempts by authors to capture the speech patterns of characters from lower economic levels annoying.   For example I recently read Stephen Crane's "Maggie:   Girl of the Streets" and I found I was being distracted from the core experience of the story by the need to figure out what the characters from the streets of New York were saying.      I love her prose but I nearly abandoned  Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South because of all the dialect discourse.   In many cases authors are depicting the speech patterns of people with whom they have no contact.   One exception to this for me recently was the marvelous use of colonial speech patterns in Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

I return all follows from fellow literary book bloggers


Mel u

30 comments:

  1. Good selection of poets, love the work of Whitman & Blakes
    The Garden of Love

    I went to the garden of love
    And saw what I never had seen
    A chapel was built in the midst
    Where I used to play on the green

    And the gates of the chapel were shut.
    And Thou shalt not, writ over the door;
    So I turned turn'd to the garden of love
    That so many sweet flowers bore,

    And I saw it was filled with graves,
    And tombstones where flowers should be:
    And priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
    And binding with briars,my joys and desires.


    is just a fantastic series of images. loved your post, thanks
    Parrish

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  2. Blake and Yeats are my two favorite poets as well. One of my favorite memories is of my then-5yo doing his impressions of Tyger, Tyger!

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  3. I love Yeats, as well. I remember reading "Sailing to Byzantium" in a literature class and being humbled at his brilliance.

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  4. I liked you choices very much! I haven't enjoyed poetry in so long. I always cried in the The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.

    Oh and I completely agree about often feeling out of place... I love how many people read, just can't add much since it's not my genre.

    Is that Yoda asleep with the computer as a pillow? You'd think cats would find somewhere softer. ;)

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  5. Yikes! I've only briefly dipped my toes into such great poets as these. Whitman, Blake, Yeats, Longfellow...I think I need to take a course on them! But, I'll look into the one you suggest as it's coming from you.

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  6. I wish poetry hit me that way--I keep trying, keep reading it, hoping something will catch, but I'm just a bigger fan of prose.

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  7. Hi Mel, Yeats is a good choice. I love "Innisfree"--can't remember the whole title right now! Blake was a visionary and a genius--his work is apparently simple, but not so simple...

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  8. Hopping by from the other Hop (stop by, there are many wonderful, INTERNATIONAL giveaways!). I would probably choose the work of poetess Emily Dickinson. Her work was profound.

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  9. I must admit that I always feel a little out of place whether it is among readers who read mostly light fiction (I try to read works with substance) or readers who read literary works (I am fundamentally a simple person and I have difficulty with complexity).

    Here's my post: http://readerbuzz.blogspot.com/2010/12/literary-blog-hop-favorite-poem.html

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  10. Shall I admit it? I don't like Yeats. Saying that, maybe I should give his poems another try since I read them about 8 to 10 years ago, as part of a course (it was the first module of my degree and I was struggling) and the tutor I had did not help at all either...
    Em

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  11. You? Out of place on the events? LOL. YOu are doing literary hopping and blog hopping which I don't have even have the courage nor the stamina to keep up!

    We love what you are reading so far, so there isn't a need for YA, paranormal or vampires! :)

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  12. Let me add that Charles is a handsome cat (I notice your old header is on the computer screen.).

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  13. Parish-thanks so much for taking the trouble to post this wonderful work by Blake

    Lifetime Reader-glad to see we have similar tastes in poets

    Olivia-so glad you also appreciate "Sailing to Byzantium"-not a work you can really blog about

    Laura@The Shabby Rabbit-I will look at the work you quote-thanks for stopping by my blog and I hope you will return

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  14. Bellezza-thanks very much

    Melody-thanks so much for visiting my blog

    Bibliophiliac-maybe we can do a read a long of some of Yeats Poetry this spring-

    Suko-I read a lot of Dickinson a long time ago-will have to read her again soon

    Readerbuzz-I am glad you share my feelings

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  15. Emeire-try one a week or so-thanks as always for visiting my blog

    bibliojunkie-thanks for sharing your love for reading

    Suko-I will tell Charles you think he is a handsome cat!-I admit we are all proud he is doing so well at 18-88 or so in our years-

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  16. I know how it feels....I see wo many people so into YA fiction and paranormal stuff, I feel rather odd. That's why I'm so excited about this blog hop.:D

    As for you literary peeve....I have to agree with you, it tends to throw one off their stride. I don't know if you've read Georgette Heyer, but when her characters start speaking cant or the local dialect I feel totally at sea!

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  17. Risa-I am very glad we are now mutual followers-thanks

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  18. Right now I'm reading Thomas Hardy--and although it slows me down and creates serious issues when I'm reading aloud, I'm really enjoying the rural speech he is creating. There are times when I resist who does and does not speak in dialect (and why)--but the particular voice gives his folks a real sense of character. Does that make any sense? (Meanwhile, I think my husband hates it, in this same work.)

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  19. Dialect is a bugaboo for me too, sometimes. I think it helps if the author just puts a light touch on it, gives us a feel for the language, but doesn't try to do the whole story that way. That was a big problem I had with Marlon James' novel The Book of Night Women. It was almost unreadable.
    www.newcenturyreading.com

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  20. I know what you mean about the dialects as I read a lot of slavery narratives or books about that time period. I wish there was something like you have in the sci-fi world, when the alien starts speaking in his tongue but then someone pulls out a handy dandy translator to make easier for the audience to follow - LOL

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  21. Dialects slow down my reading. Sometimes I keep the book aside...

    Here is my Literary Blog Hop post!

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  22. Haven't read Crane's book, though I understand how it can be difficult when authors try to capture characters of lower economic levels--it's just not the same as in speech! However, one such author that does well with that is Toni Morrison.

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  23. This bugs me too sometimes. I found it strange when I read the Anthony Briggs translation of War and Peace that all the Russian peasants had Cockney accents ...

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  24. think dialect works if done well ,Levy does it well and read a book from haiti that did it wonderfully ,all the best stu

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  25. I think dialect done well, with understanding can be fantastic, recently finished a short story collection by Irvine Welsh, which was a good example.

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  26. winstondad, i have both of Small Island and Long Song on my list for Jan reading. I will get to at least one of them.

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  27. I love reading dialect if it is done well, although I have a friend that cannot stand it. It does slow down the reading process though, you really have to make the effort to hear it.

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  28. Dialect can really bother me too - the first thing that came to mind when you said that was the dialect used by the gardener (or what ever whe was, I can't remember now), in Wuthering Heights.

    The caretaker might be a better word.

    I spent so long figuring out what he was saying that I kept getting lost.

    In the end I jsut skipped it whenever he spoke becaause I just couldn't figure it out.

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  29. I like dialect if it's done well.. I think it helps really bring a character to life. Good point though.

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your comments help keep us going and do a lot to make the blog more interesting.thanks