Poll -- Is the novel dead (to you)?

[GammaGlobulin]

7 minutes ago, 1FinickyOne said:

Actually surprised to agree w/you - now Mr. Glob...

 

Loved Victory - Loved most Dostoeyevsky - The Idiot, my favorite... 

 

what about Oblomov, by Goncharov? 

Oscar Wilde, I have read.

Sleeping forever is what I am now preparing myself for.

I have not read Oblomov.

I know nothing about Oblomovitis, other than that most of the people I see around me are integral to my reality.

Most people that I know are not redundant, and most are irreplaceable.

Except for some, I guess.

Seems to me that this is a topic which should not really be up for discussion.

Don't you agree?

 

[Fat is a type of crazy]

To be honest the novel is a bit dead to me. In my teens and twenties I read books constantly. Like romantic and light British novels by Iris Murdoch, Kingsley Amis, Daphne Du Maurier, Evelyn Waugh, P J Wodehouse and the like. Also modern American literature, Tom Wolfe, Jay McInerney etc. Throw in a Dosteovsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy and a Kafka.

Ayn Rand books changed my life though they are a bit extreme. She turned me from a lazy left leaning person to a bit more centrist with her right wing economics. Albert Camus left a big impression with his notions of living in the moment. 

Then I stopped reading. Just had enough. Not sure why. 

[Jingthing]

8 minutes ago, Fat is a type of crazy said:

To be honest the novel is a bit dead to me. In my teens and twenties I read books constantly. Like romantic and light British novels by Iris Murdoch, Kingsley Amis, Daphne Du Maurier, Evelyn Waugh, P J Wodehouse and the like. Also modern American literature, Tom Wolfe, Jay McInerney etc. Throw in a Dosteovsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy and a Kafka.

Ayn Rand books changed my life though they are a bit extreme. She turned me from a lazy left leaning person to a bit more centrist with her right wing economics. Albert Camus left a big impression with his notions of living in the moment. 

Then I stopped reading. Just had enough. Not sure why. 

You had me until you praised Ayn Rand.

 

https://www.good.is/articles/conservative-darling-ayn-rand-died-loving-government-handouts

Edited September 6, 2021 by Jingthing

[orchidfan]

One person (forget who) was quoted as saying "Regret is the stack of novels that I never got time to read"

.....presumably on his death bed !

[billd766]

I started reading books when I was about 9 or 10, some 60 odd years ago. Then I got my own junior library card and I was off on a lifetime of reading. In the RAF there were always station libraries for 22 years, and after I was married there were village a and town libraries.

 

When I went offshore working the only country I worked in that English books were very hard to find was Angola. When I came back to the UK between trips I would scour the charity shops to buy second hand books and give the ones I had read back for free.

 

A few years ago I bought a Barnes and Noble Ebook reader. It died after several years and I replaced it with a Lenovo 10 inch tablet which is a good sized Ebook reader. 

 

I was lucky enough a few years ago to find a guy through TVF and he gave me 1.6Gb of Ebooks and I am slowly cataloguing them into MOBI format and last name, first name authors and then into various categories. I try to do about 1 hour a night for a week and the next week the same thing but recovering files.

 

Up in my room I also have between 50 and 600 books, both hard and soft copies that I keep for a mate who has no computer, smart phone of Ebook reader and no use for them either. 

 

Edited September 6, 2021 by billd766
More spelling mistakes

[Fat is a type of crazy]

1 minute ago, Jingthing said:

You had me until you praised Ayn Rand.

I know what you mean. Sometimes you can read a book that acts as a catalyst to wake you up. A book like The Fountainhead, apparently based on Frank Lloyd Wright, had that effect.  The book shows  the idea of self reliance and a form of selfishness and how life affirming that can be. The architect who is not willing to give in to the consensus.

 You can understand her feelings about left wing things coming from the Soviet Union. 

Then I read Atlas Shrugged which went too far. 

 So then I went back to the middle. 

[The Hammer2021]

21 hours ago, Denim said:

Read hundreds of books. Mostly history but almost no novels. Why waste your time ? Truth is stranger then fiction. Novels titelate , history educates.

Why assume non fiction is truth? The greatest works of literature in the world are non fiction and contain essential truths.

[pomchop]

Hard to imagine so many people don't read novels at all.  I enjoy historical novels like James Michener, Wilbur 
Smith, Gary Jennings, et al.  But I also enjoy a good legal fiction like John Grisham writes.  I agree it is sad how so many authors these days seem to "sub out" the writing and plaster their name on books to sell more.

 

I would rather read a book than watch 99.9% of movies and 99.99% of TV <deleted> shows.

[GammaGlobulin]

1 hour ago, thaibeachlovers said:

LOL. I read a Reacher book to the last chapter before I realised that I'd read it already. Still a good read though.

I do that a lot with DVDs as well.

 

I've taken to putting a post it note in the front of books I read to avoid repetition.

You mean, you don't take copious notes in the margins of books you read? 

[1FinickyOne]

1 hour ago, GammaGlobulin said:

Oscar Wilde, I have read.

Sleeping forever is what I am now preparing myself for.

I have not read Oblomov.

I know nothing about Oblomovitis, other than that most of the people I see around me are integral to my reality.

Most people that I know are not redundant, and most are irreplaceable.

Except for some, I guess.

Seems to me that this is a topic which should not really be up for discussion.

Don't you agree?

 

It's a topic about novels..  I have no idea why you think novels should not be discussed in this topic... I was surprised you had/have similar tastes to my own. In my 20s, I took a portion of a chunk of my life off - to read the Russians.. 

 

Oblomov - no itis attached was a lazy sort of guy who did not get out of bed for the first, I think 79 pages.. I read it long ago - - 

 

unless you are talking abt sleeping forever as something that should not be discussed... a very fascinating topic though off subject of novels.. maybe you don't sleep forever but transition... but,,, more at another time maybe.

[rott]

21 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

I like reading. I never watch TV. I like cinema with a big screen and good sound.

 

When I watch a movie I want to see it from start to finish in one go without any interruptions.

The great thing with books is that they work only with our imagination. I like novels, especially long novels like i.e. Pillars of the Earth. I also read (auto)biographies or other interesting books, i.e. Edward Snowden.

Mostly I read them on my eBook reader (not phone or tablet!) and sometime real paper books.

Sometimes I read just for 1/2 hour and sometimes for hours. I think with a book it's easy to put it to the side and maybe a day later read again. With videos that just doesn't work (mentally), even if it is easy to start and stop a video at anytime.

I would be very surprised if my reading habits will change over the next decades.

 

Is a Kindle an ebook reader.? I keep meaning to get myself into the new millennium technology. 

What in your view is the advantage of an ebook reader over tablet, laptop, notebook etc. 

Got a mate that swears by his Kindle but I am still attached to the old ways. 

I am waiting anxiously for rules to be relaxed and my trips to Bangkok to be worth it again, including the Nielsen Hayes Library. 

Edited September 6, 2021 by rott

[1FinickyOne]

4 minutes ago, rott said:

What in your view is the advantage of an ebook reader

I have a kindle and cannot compare against other readers but the wonderful thing for me has been the ease of book shopping.... I lived in a small village for a long time and even in Bangkok or Chiang Mai, I could rarely find the English titles I wanted... 

 

With my kindle, I could purchase a book in less than a minute w/o leaving the house. 

[OneMoreFarang]

1 hour ago, rott said:

Is a Kindle an ebook reader.? I keep meaning to get myself into the new millennium technology. 

What in your view is the advantage of an ebook reader over tablet, laptop, notebook etc. 

Got a mate that swears by his Kindle but I am still attached to the old ways. 

I am waiting anxiously for rules to be relaxed and my trips to Bangkok to be worth it again, including the Nielsen Hayes Library. 

Yes. I have a SONY which I bought about 10 years ago - a friend brought it from Australia.

The one I have is the size of a thin pocket book. And it has enough memory for thousands of books.

The advantage of eBook reader is that they use ePaper displays. That looks and "feels" like paper. It has no background light and (at least my one) is dark grey on light yellow, just like a book. But better, because...

- I can change the font size. When we get older it's just a lot easier to read with bigger font.

- It's thin. Even a 1000 pages book is small in the hand. And I can store thousands of those books.

- I downloaded many books. That is mostly easy with compilations of the NYT best books, etc.

- Because the ePaper needs no electricity to show a page the device has only to be charged ever couple of weeks.

 

Possible disadvantages are for big size books with graphics or i.e. programming code. I.e. I learned a new programming language and I bought a traditional big book so that I could easily read the programming code and see some flow charts.

As far as I know it is also possible to buy large size eBook readers. 

 

Summary: Get one! It has many advantages and you can still read "traditional" books. Win/win! 

 

[billd766]

1 hour ago, rott said:

Is a Kindle an ebook reader.? I keep meaning to get myself into the new millennium technology. 

What in your view is the advantage of an ebook reader over tablet, laptop, notebook etc. 

Got a mate that swears by his Kindle but I am still attached to the old ways. 

I am waiting anxiously for rules to be relaxed and my trips to Bangkok to be worth it again, including the Nielsen Hayes Library. 

From what I can remember the kindle is a very good Ebook reader. Having said that, that is just about all that it does and you tend to be tied to Kindle books.

 

I use a Lenovo 10 inch tablet and it does everything that a Kindle can do plus most other things that a pc can do except (in my case I cannot make or receive phone calls).

 

I use a free app called FB reader which reads most Ebook formats and if you upgrade to the full version (2xx baht) it also reads audio books to you.

 

The main difference I have found is that I can load 1, 25, 50 or even hundreds of books and it weighs no more, but if you carry 50 paper books you have the weight and bulk of them to carry around.

[blazes]

4 hours ago, n00dle said:

That is ridiculous. Any professional.setting still has an expectation of proper grammar and sentence construction.

Agree.  But don't forget that in the Twittersphere and in Wokeville, correct grammar is now considered "racist".  Even mathematics is now considered "racist", since no child's 'feelings' are to be trashed by his being told that 2+2 do NOT equal 5.....

 

 

 

 

[roger101]

I read somewhere between 2 and 3 books a week. Real ones. I don't have a Kindle. I keep one in the loo so I have something to look at and the other one by my armchair, This one normally gets read when I have have sport on the TV as a background. . All fiction. SF and fantasy (although not so much SF nowadays) and crime. All the main authors.

I've just reread Song of Fire and Ice Game of Thrones I had forgotten how much the TV serial had left out. Anyone who enjoyed the TV will be amazed at how much better the novels carry the story. I'm just about to start Storm of Swords Book 1.

 

One regret about a Kindle is that in Pattaya we are down to one secondhand bookshop so the choice of books is not as good as it was a few years ago. So I might end up getting a Kindle anyway. I seem to remember an article I read not long ago ago that the sales of real books was actually increasing. Long may it continue to do so.

[geisha]

On 9/5/2021 at 6:59 PM, OneMoreFarang said:

That is an interesting point.

There was a time when I enjoyed James Patterson books, and then he outsourced his writing to co-authors..

I read lots of great Reacher books. After the last one I am not sure I will buy another one again.

Same with Baldacci. The last book which I read was horrible, after many good books.

At least Stephen Leather still writes great novels.

Ken Follet, a winner for me every time. Ive read all his books and wait for the new one . The thing I like with his writing is that the history subjects and descriptions are mostly exact , so I learn as well as enjoy. I also have my Kindle and I like to read one of the classics now and again. No searching the shops needed.

[talahtnut]

I start very young on the Beano, now much older, I've graduated to the Viz.

Every Christmas I like to buy the Annual.

 Does that count on one of the buttons please?

[blazes]

1 hour ago, talahtnut said:

I start very young on the Beano, now much older, I've graduated to the Viz.

Every Christmas I like to buy the Annual.

 Does that count on one of the buttons please?

Preferred the Dandy and Desperate Dan.....

[thaibeachlovers]

6 hours ago, roger101 said:

I read somewhere between 2 and 3 books a week. Real ones. I don't have a Kindle. I keep one in the loo so I have something to look at and the other one by my armchair, This one normally gets read when I have have sport on the TV as a background. . All fiction. SF and fantasy (although not so much SF nowadays) and crime. All the main authors.

I've just reread Song of Fire and Ice Game of Thrones I had forgotten how much the TV serial had left out. Anyone who enjoyed the TV will be amazed at how much better the novels carry the story. I'm just about to start Storm of Swords Book 1.

 

One regret about a Kindle is that in Pattaya we are down to one secondhand bookshop so the choice of books is not as good as it was a few years ago. So I might end up getting a Kindle anyway. I seem to remember an article I read not long ago ago that the sales of real books was actually increasing. Long may it continue to do so.

Local bookshop where I live is doing fine.

 

I found the GOT books were far better than the tv series and I loved the tv series ( but not series 8 ).

I did notice though, that the author has a food fixation, going into extreme detail of meals.

It's a shame he never completed the series, which allowed the abominable tv series 8 to fester in the producers imagination. At the very least they should have had Arya stabbing Cersi to death in a very unpleasant manner with Needle. Allowing Cersi to have an easy death in the arms of her lover was an unforgivable travesty of justice.

Far too many things in the tv series 8 just didn't make sense eg when the Dothraki charged the Army of the Dead, it was implied that they all died, yet after the fall of the Red Keep there they all were to cheer the Dragon Queen.

 

[thaibeachlovers]

2 hours ago, blazes said:

Preferred the Dandy and Desperate Dan.....

Don't remember the magazine, but it was the one with Dan Dare- that Mekon guy was a blast.

[blazes]

1 hour ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Don't remember the magazine, but it was the one with Dan Dare- that Mekon guy was a blast.

The Eagle.  I remember walking home on a bright sunny day (in April, I think, 1950), gently cradling the first issue of this brand new magazine, which my father then proceeded to read from cover to cover. (For many years after!)

 

I wonder if any one on this thread used to read Biggles books (author, W.E. Johns)  or the Boys Own Paper (published from about 1879 to 1967).

 

I would also love to hear of the "reading history" of other people.  In particular, the jump from teenage fiction (say 13-17) to "adult' fiction.  For me, that would have been Billy Bunter books at about 10-11 to (at about 12) The Woman of Rome by Alberto Moravia, a novel about the life of an Italian prostitute.  A friend at school told me about the book, available at W.H. Smith.  It was not at all "smutty", though my mother assumed it was.....

 

 

[Fat is a type of crazy]

 

5 hours ago, talahtnut said:

I start very young on the Beano, now much older, I've graduated to the Viz.

Every Christmas I like to buy the Annual.

 Does that count on one of the buttons please?

My girlfriend visited England around 1990 and brought me back a hard cover book. Billy the Fish. Sid the sexist. Fat slags.  What a beauty. Never saw it before or since. 

[ArcticFox]

On 9/5/2021 at 10:11 PM, CharlieH said:

Never been a reader, unless it was practical/educational.

I just dont seem to ever have time to sit and read and lose myself in a book as some seem to do.

So, voted 0, never done it and cant see that changing.

 

That's sort of interesting.  With novels you create the narrative in your mind.  It can be a very rich tapestry.  I wonder if some people can't create mental imagery or are at least not drawn into that imagery and instead prefer visual stimulation.  Not good or bad - just interesting.

[fredscats]

Fiction is fiction    Ive an imagination,not reading other imaginations..  Notice now that women especially are churning out more and more junk fiction,and it surely is junk,they think their time has come  lol......Kindle tells all,yes the more readable books, non fiction, do cost ,but worth it

Edited September 7, 2021 by fredscats

[billd766]

12 hours ago, blazes said:

Agree.  But don't forget that in the Twittersphere and in Wokeville, correct grammar is now considered "racist".  Even mathematics is now considered "racist", since no child's 'feelings' are to be trashed by his being told that 2+2 do NOT equal 5.....

 

 

 

 

I try to keep well away from sites like that.

[billd766]

4 hours ago, blazes said:

The Eagle.  I remember walking home on a bright sunny day (in April, I think, 1950), gently cradling the first issue of this brand new magazine, which my father then proceeded to read from cover to cover. (For many years after!)

 

I wonder if any one on this thread used to read Biggles books (author, W.E. Johns)  or the Boys Own Paper (published from about 1879 to 1967).

 

I would also love to hear of the "reading history" of other people.  In particular, the jump from teenage fiction (say 13-17) to "adult' fiction.  For me, that would have been Billy Bunter books at about 10-11 to (at about 12) The Woman of Rome by Alberto Moravia, a novel about the life of an Italian prostitute.  A friend at school told me about the book, available at W.H. Smith.  It was not at all "smutty", though my mother assumed it was.....

 

 

I used to enjoy the "Biggles" books when I was young, also Arthur Ransome with Swallows and Amazons, Enid Blyton "Five go..." series and more but at 77 my early memories are sporadic.

[thaibeachlovers]

6 hours ago, blazes said:

The Eagle.  I remember walking home on a bright sunny day (in April, I think, 1950), gently cradling the first issue of this brand new magazine, which my father then proceeded to read from cover to cover. (For many years after!)

 

I wonder if any one on this thread used to read Biggles books (author, W.E. Johns)  or the Boys Own Paper (published from about 1879 to 1967).

 

I would also love to hear of the "reading history" of other people.  In particular, the jump from teenage fiction (say 13-17) to "adult' fiction.  For me, that would have been Billy Bunter books at about 10-11 to (at about 12) The Woman of Rome by Alberto Moravia, a novel about the life of an Italian prostitute.  A friend at school told me about the book, available at W.H. Smith.  It was not at all "smutty", though my mother assumed it was.....

 

 

Thanks for that. I remember none of the other stories off hand though I probably would if I googled it.

Indeed I read Biggles avidly, and in a stroke of good fortune I found what I think are all the Biggles books in a chest in an op shop, so i bought the lot. Only read one so far. If any woke people read it they'd be organizing a book burning for sure :-).

I was a great reader in my school days, and I read anything I could get my hands on, including my sister's magazines. Mother bought a lot of magazines and comics for me, including Superman, which I do still remember. We also borrowed books from the library. I read all the Jungle Doctor books, though I don't remember the stories. My favourites though, were science fiction.

 

Looking back I'm very glad I had a childhood before tv. So much more time to read.

 

Primary school days I read Enid Blyton, John Pudney, William books and such like, but when I went to college I graduated to Biggles, Tolkien, Rider Haggard and Edgar Wallace, etc. Loved those Sanders books.

 

After I left school, I was unfortunately seduced by the dark side and spent more time watching tv than reading, though I did read all The Executioner and Conan books.

Never been interested in what some would regard as "quality" literature. I read to be entertained, not brought down. Been trying to get through the Dune books, as I became a big fan of Frank Herbert, but since his son took over they have been heavy going. I've had one waiting to finish for about 3 years. If I ever have to go to hospital for a while I'll take it for sure.

 

If I remember correctly, the naughty book of my adolescence was The Perfumed Garden, but I never got to read it then. I found a copy in an op shop about 5 years ago and I'll read it when I get motivated.

[thaibeachlovers]

3 hours ago, ArcticFox said:

That's sort of interesting.  With novels you create the narrative in your mind.  It can be a very rich tapestry.  I wonder if some people can't create mental imagery or are at least not drawn into that imagery and instead prefer visual stimulation.  Not good or bad - just interesting.

I wonder if people that grew up with tv were able to develop an imagination to the same extent that those of us that grew up without tv did.

I notice that when I watch tv my brain switches off to an extent. IMO if we don't use our brain much it isn't going to work as well.

[Jingthing]

Two novels that greatly influenced my early years.

 

Portnoy's Complaint

Philip Roth

 

Naked Lunch

William Burroughs