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Thank you! Always good to hear from you. Yes, it was the busiest month I've had in years, and you're right, without a sense of humor I'd never have survived it. The Q&A at the Deleuze and Guattari conference was particularly strange, with neither the questions nor the answers making any apparent sense. The whole event felt like a huge practical joke. It was a completely different world to that of Edwin Vethamani, who is engaged in empirical research and producing fiction based upon it that explores pressing social issues, and all of it capable of being discussed without any technical jargon of any kind. As for the reading glasses, they provide valuable exercise as I spend at least ten minutes a day running around looking for them. :-)

Thanks for the comment, and I hope giving it a second chance bears fruit. I've similarly struggled with Mann's other works, but this one really did it for me. I've just picked up another of his books, very brief, The Transposed Heads, an Indian tale, we'll see how that is. Interesting you mention Colm Toibin as I've just criticized/praised him in my latest video, where I explain how I'm reading his The Blackwater Lightship in Chinese to develop my Mandarin skills.

Really? I wonder if they even sell them in Taiwan because old men here famously deal with the lack of a waist by hitching their pants up preposterously high... I shall investigate.

Thank you!

Thank you so much! Welcome to the channel, glad you enjoyed this.

That's great to hear, Oleg. Thanks for taking time to leave a comment, and for the Pelevin recommendation, which I will definitely act upon.

Good to hear. Blake's illustrations are excellent, too. www.ngv.vic.gov.au/collection/international/print/b/blake/dante.html

@@TheChannelofaDisappointedMan Oh yes, by the the most highly individualistic of geniuses.

Thank you!

None. I am not someone who generally has a favorite book, but Metamorphoses towers above the rest of what I have read. When I reached the end, I was ready to immediately begin reading it again.

@@TheChannelofaDisappointedMan Sitting down to start it now!

Which translation?

@@TheChannelofaDisappointedMan Melville!

Sorry to hear that. For the record, I too find Faulker next to impossible to digest.

Thank you! A month like few others, that's for sure. As usual, I'm hoping for great things from the classes and that there's a chance to combine what we learn with writers and texts I'm already interested in. Wishing you some good reading this month, too.

It varies, obviously, but the minimum most days is around two hours, while on days that are not so busy it can go up to four, five, six hours plus.

@@TheChannelofaDisappointedMan it's not a surprise then you are so eloquent

Thank you, that's very kind of you to say.

Thank you! I'm going to be trapped reading what the professors have chosen, fingers crossed.

One at NTNU with Ioanna Luca (think that's right), Comparative Literature, New Materialism, and Multiple Modes of Existence in Contemporary Literature and Art. I'll drop one of these if I get a place on all four. Trust you're well!

Thank you! Yes, my shelves are in a state of perpetual flux due to reading their contents, making fresh purchases, and the occasional big earthquake that throws a random selection to the floor.

@TheChannelofaDisappointedMan I have a little understanding, it's why I'm so impressed . It's not poncy or pretentious, it's lived in and shows .

Thanks for saying that, it would pain me for anyone to find the channel 'poncy and pretentious' when the aim is to be, like my bookshelves, natural and accessible.

This situation has indeed arisen on a couple of occasions. In each case, I said nothing and simply dropped the class when the add/drop window opened.

You're far too kind!

More Hamsun soon.

Or Cliff Richard's appallling "Living Doll" if we're compiling a Kokocshka playlist.

Thank you! I didn't mention the Shakespeare surprise, so I would know who watched to the end. ;-) Much more variety is possible when able to pick and choose one's purchases, that's for sure, and I'm so excited about sitting down and exploring these books.

@@TheChannelofaDisappointedMan That's cunning! For sure it's a huge surprise for your viewers. I'm very happy you've been able to do these purchases, and perfectly understand your excitement. Thanks again for sharing your great book haul, very much appreciated!

It took me years to get good at grammar, now my focus is sentence formation. My vocabulary needs some work too

Hi, Greg. I just went and had a look on my shelves to come up with some suggestions. It seems to me that Dickens is well above what you describe as your 'middle school level,' so I will suggest a number of writers who each have different styles, so your reading would expose you to a wide range of sentence types. I'll list them in ascending order of complexity. First would be Knut Hamsun, novels like Dreamers and Victoria. These use simple vocabulary, but the words are very carefully chosen and so they give a good guide to using the language (and are also great stories). Second would be Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man and Prater Violet. These use a style that has a lot of interiority, the character's thoughts mixed with what they're doing, and following this style would test/develop your reading. Jean Rhys is around the same level, perhaps a little easier, Leaving Mr. Mackenzie and A Voyage in the Dark. Third would be Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes and Two on a Tower. These have a lot of description of nature, dialogues, letters, etc. and the style is often more poetic. Last would be reading something with plenty of complexity, where if you understand it fully you will feel the story come to life in an extraordinary way, and that would be Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. If you really wanted another challenge after that, it's a huge novel but extremely rich and written in an accessible manner, and that would be Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. It covers an enormous range of characters, types of life, types of relationships, emotional states, bringing together in one place the entire world of human affairs. Hope this helps, and best of luck with developing your English skills, which from your comments already seem quite well-developed. Feel free to come back at any time and report on your progress.

No idea, Duster. Try again.

I might have noted that many of his novels are short, some can be read at a single sitting. Easy writer to get into.

I'm sure you'll soon turn up some of his stuff, given how mobile you appear to be.

Good to hear from you again. No, I've not read any less well-known stuff, given there are twenty-three novels to explore first, but I'll go take a look at what Tough Poets are putting out. Update: I see they're publishing first English translations of his novels, so many thanks for making me aware of this.

I'll read the Sayers as well in due course, along with some other translations. There's value in the notes in Chiadi, at least, as he assumes less knowledge than Sayers, gives specific references to texts Dante cites, and is stronger on Dante's contemporary references to Florentine politics. But as a faithful rendering of the original, as you rightly point out, the Sayers is superior. Didn't know that fact re the third book, thanks for that.

Thanks for commenting. I, too, have not discovered quite what it is that makes Welch such a favorite of mine, to the point where I've amassed and read pretty much all the scholarship on him, and amassed many editions of his writings. No matter. By the eay, have you read Jocelyn Brooke's Orchid Trilogy or J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country? They each provide Welch-like pleasures (well, not all of them, they're not as prolific at stumbling across men in various states of undress...)

Thank you! I wish I was in Spain, too, trying all the wonderful food... Hope to visit one day.

Thank you so much, and welcome to the channel. Hopefully you will find plenty more viewing pleasure in the many videos I've already made.

Indeed. Funny you should mention 'first European novelist' as I have just begun Apuleius' The Golden Ass, the only Latin work approximating a novel to survive in its entirety.

Thanks, I'll try using Google in future. I greatly enjoyed Notre Coeur, but it had a few flaws in my view. Firstly, the way it disclosed information in that Jane Austen type of way, where chapter one is just a lot of backstory and physical description of the characters. I'm not a great fan of this technique, peculiar to the novel, and prefer information to be disclosed organically from the characters' experiences as much as possible. Secondly, the moral universe of this novel was impure, and so it was hard not to, as you say, share in the cynicism on display. Perhaps I am being very English, but the idea that a person has a great passion, a great love for a woman, but is still having sexual relations with other women, that just seemed to be a case of having one's cake and eating it, too, and the happy ending was preposterously French and amounted to the fulfilment of a male fantasy. First Love by Turgenev, which Notre Coeur clearly borrows from, was much better in this respect, and if you've not read it, I highly recommend giving it a try. Bel-Ami next!

@@TheChannelofaDisappointedMan Thanks for your answer. I'll just leave at...I'm speechless.🤔

Oh, no!

Thanks, David. I'll read the Sayers after Ciadi.

Ciardi s is very readable. It's more of a transliteration.

Thanks. I put the artwork together, dropped some PRB paintings into the video, too. I imagine metal detecting is fairly relaxing and throws up a fair few surprises, a hoard of Roman coins or an unexploded WWII bomb...

Thank you! I'm certainly going to get hold of a few more translations, but the Ciadi one will do for a first read. He freely admits to having taken considerable liberties with the original, so I'm keen to try one that stays closer to Dante's text.

@@TheChannelofaDisappointedMan looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the other translations!

Say it loud!

Indeed, Tom. And by the way, do you have a favorite English translation?

@@TheChannelofaDisappointedMan So far, that’s Mandelbaum for me.

Thank you!

Absolutely. These works are of unsurpassed depth.

Thanks for the supportive comment, Mike, and I'll get hold of that translation anon.

Thank you. Yes, I run the risk of being pelted with metaphorical stink bombs by the Austen fan club, but I cannot tell a lie.

@@TheChannelofaDisappointedMan i am afraid that there are authors that are just ...old fashioned, because of their theme selection and their closeness to their era. and Jane Austen is one of them. for example i just could not stand reading Archibald Cronin or Charlotte Bronte....even as a kid...too soppy, too slushy...in contrast with Stevenson or de Maupassant. of course, the Russians are always a safe literary bet.

​@@JosephKnecht-b5w This is truth.

Thanks for commenting. You raise a good point, though I'm equally unconvinced by Theroux's methods. One of my favorite of his books is The Kingdom by the Sea and, being English, many of the supposed conversations with English people strike me as having been embellished or as highly improbable. I think there's something inherently unreliable in travel writing as a genre, but it's no less enjoyable for that.

Aye, aye, cap'n!