I’m not sure why, but the depth and breath of your reading Steve still continues to astound me!

“Pack up your Updike...” see, this is why I watch this channel.

This was a fascinating discussion, Steve. I could see you in that room for sure, notebook open on your knee, listening impatiently to the young men's rants and offering simple solutions to their "unsolvable" problems.

A whole video about dude bro lit would be fantastic!

At 34, I'm outside the range of "young man", but I would love (and be intimidated) by Steve going through my personal library and shaping it up. Perhaps that would be a good side business: personal library consultant.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

I'v actually had the job of personal library consultant, at least a dozen times, and I've always enjoyed it - provided I'm given a fairly free hand!

I love how unabashedly opinionated you are! This video was great fun to watch. :) Your points about dudebro lit were fascinating -- I think the idea of those books stimulating the brain like video games will stick with me for a long time. Could you please provide a link or translator's name for your preferred translation of And Quiet Flows the Don? Thanks!

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

Sorry, yes! It was this translation: www.amazon.com/Quiet-Flows-Mikhail-Aleksandrovich-Sholokhov/dp/0786703601/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1537971228&sr=1-4&keywords=quiet+flows+the+don

@BabyTables

5 жыл бұрын

Thank you!

I’d love to see this one again!

As a young man, I'd love to hang out and talk books and politics with you Steve!

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

The next time you're in Boston, let's do it!

@MultiMaryland12

5 жыл бұрын

@@saintdonoghue Sounds Good!

I'm always so surprised and pleased when I find places where our assessments of an author or a book agree. In this case I agree that Edward St. Aubyn is great. Dude-Bro lit 4 eva!! :) Love Balzac btw. Hey, and we agree about Asimov too!

I didn't get far reading Wolf Hall either even though I've enjoyed Hilary Mantel's books before and I'm a somewhat diligent reader. The opening is amazing, but then I became confused and found it difficult so got distracted. You're assuming just because it's sold many copies the majority of those people read it all the way through. I'd wager the majority of people who bought it didn't read it all the way through.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

"somewhat diligent reader" - hah! the understatement of the year!

This will get your goat.....I haven't read ANY Jane Austen......................yet. But, I have read The Gormenghast Trilogy. We have two copies currently at my store, and one is a hardcover of the entire trilogy! Also, I like the Robot novels! Read them in high school. I like the combination of mystery and sci-fi. The novels give me that warm, fuzzy nostalgic feel that I am sometimes in the MOOD to read. Hehe

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

If you haven't read any Jane Austen, I have a 2019 read-along that might interest you ...

@suemoro

5 жыл бұрын

Steve Donoghue Interested!!!!!! That is, if Moby Dick doesn't swallow me hole in November!

You are incorrigible, young man! 😂😂

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

Hee - I'm now eager to do more Parasite Tags!

My local city library shows The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy by Overlook Press 2011 (943 pages), so I have it in my library list for reread someday. I first read the trilogy back in the 1970s. Quite an experience.

I enjoyed listening to this, a lot of good points. So I have a question for you, if someone were to begin a writing career/life what books or authors would you recommend they read to teach or inform their writing? For this I would limit it to fiction and the novel. What do you think a writer would need to do to become a better writer.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

No beginning writer ever LIKES my advice when asked this question! In order to become a better writer, you need to do two - and only two - things: read the Western canon and write five pages of prose every single day. Not 'read whatever you happen to feeeeeeel like reading right at this nanosecond' and not 'write a paragraph here and there whenever the moooooood strikes me.' Read the Western canon and write five pages of prose every single day.

@juliae.8237

5 жыл бұрын

@@saintdonoghue The best advice is always simple to state, but difficult to follow. I will take this to heart. Thank you.

I read Paradise Lost in its entirety for an epic literature college class, and Milton's poetry is masterful and beautiful. I don't think it is too controversial to say that Milton is probably was the best writer of Epic Poetry originally written in English. I actually found The Divine Comedy to be more challenging than Paradise Lost, but Dante was another master poet.

I’d like to hear your recommendations on sci-fi books that should not be missed.

@txmatt2112

5 жыл бұрын

Never mind I see you have sff starter kit vid kzread.info/dash/bejne/aqKirNZ_YqSzftY.html

My algorithm seems to think I need to watch all your older videos now (maybe I'm watching too many landscaping videos and it's trying an intervention?) Anyway, I looked up Hilary Mantel on my local library system, and they actually do have the whole trilogy now as audiobooks, so I may be finishing out the year with those. :) Thanks for the recommendation on those. The Gormenghast books were really great. I wish he'd lived longer to write more of the books in that world he was creating. That library burning scene in the first book was one of the most traumatic and tragic scenes I've read in a long while.

Delightful! I've had two goes at The Secret History. I found it to be a little over written.

What about One of Ours? I loved that book. I have O Pioneers on my TBR.

Yes. Loved your remarks about Star Wars. I used to be a massive Star Wars fan before they were adulterated and cheapened with the later editions. I remember reading and loving Tales of the bounty hunters, Tales from Jabba's Palace and Shadows of the Empire when they came out. I still don't know why they didn't consult Kevin J Anderson or any of the other writers of that time period when they were conceptualising the prequels or any of the films that have followed in the franchise. Would have made for a much better result.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

The reason George Lucas didn't consult any actual writers about the prequels is fairly simple: George Lucas is insane.

I haven't read Donna Tart but by what you say, I don't see what's ineffective about characters aware of their condition as characters. The earliest place where that happens that I know of is Pirandello's "six characters in search of an author," but I can't see why there wouldn't be earlier occurrences, for instance in fables. That feels also as the snail painted on the edge of a painting of Mary and Jesus, it confuses the space of the painting with the space in the room. Or as children’s books that have a picture with say fur on it, the characters’ physicality is in your hands in the shape of the book. I'm not sure whether there's a name for that, there likely is one. If there's none I can come up with one.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

But when you talk about Pirandello you're talking about something different - I didn't mean that Tartt's characters are meta-aware that they're in a novel called "The Secret History" - I meant that they ACT like fictional creations rather than real people. They ACT like moving parts in a novel rather than people caught up in life.

@mrl9418

5 жыл бұрын

@@saintdonoghue Borgesianly, I feel deprived of what has become a non-existing version of Donna Tartt's book :/

Thank you for saving me from Infinite Jest

Steve, I have Sholokhov in the Daglish translation from Carroll & Graf 1996

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

That's the one! Yes, the Daglish!

Only young men? How about girls? Have you ever have girls under tutelage? How come I had not seen this video before? How lucky is Curtis to get this detailed examination of his tbr...

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

Curtis might have been lucky for this video, but where is he now? Gone!

Why is this video so short!??!?!?!

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

Hah! Isn't it my longest video yet?

@CurtisBooksandFilms

5 жыл бұрын

Your description of me as someone just transformed from the most British and mild-mannered werewolf is absolutely the most accurate said by anyone to date.

Interesting video. Lots to think about. Wolf Hall is a good book with some depth and worth. Prose style is interesting, but sentence-making is often just atrocious. There is no regard for syntax, rhetoric, imagery, the beauty of language and the inventiveness of imagery and all that good stuff! I think it will be forgotten soon. But Sade influenced and freed other great writers to write about that important subject. For that alone his legacy is surely safe. Often, "poorer writing" is well worth reading. I am glad I read Breton and explored the oddity and nonsense that is Surreal Fiction. Cormac McCarthy, Asimov, Harry Potter.... but you like Dracula!

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

I naturally disagree completely about the syntax, rhetoric, imagery, and beauty of language in "Wolf Hall" (or I wouldn't praise it every time I mention it) - not only are all of those elements quite good in the book, but they're demonstrably quite good. Maybe you just weren't in the MOOD!

@readingnomad7045

5 жыл бұрын

It is a book of shifting scenes, where is the rhetoric and beauty of language going to come from. The first part? Far too Bernard Cornwell. And try defending this: "Carefully, stiffly, he straightens up. Every part of him hurts now. Not as badly as it will hurt tomorrow; on the third day the bruises come out and you have to start answering people's questions about why you've got them. By then he will be far from here, and presumably no one will hold him to account, because no one will know him or care. They'll think it's usual for him to have his face beaten in." This is just poor! Carver, Bartholomew, and Hemingway - they knew how to write beautiful minimalist prose. Mantel clearly doesn't. Oh and for direct comparison of style and prose - The Executioner's Song by Mailer is far better.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

Hah! "Wolf Hall" hardly needs me to defend it! But in any case, I wouldn't defend the (oddly quotidian) passage you quote here as Hemingway-esque minimalist prose because it's clearly not trying to be that.

@readingnomad7045

5 жыл бұрын

Steve Donoghue The quote is just one example of poor writing from Wolf Hall. Of course, it isn't minimalism compared to Hemingway. The actual comparison is with Mailer's book. Her style is rough - it lacks the exquisite craftsmanship of what even Capote possessed. It is hardly flowing prose, is it? Even Alive Munro has more flow...

Hi Steve, out of curiosity, when you were speaking of Murakami, were you referring to Haruki Murakami or Ryu Murakami?

I really didn't like Wolf Hall or the sequel. I'm not entirely sure why... I did, however, watch both plays in the same day and absolutely fall in love. Perhaps I'll give the books another try at some point. Edit: (I should have watched the whole video before commenting!) I have not (yet) read Gormenghast, but in the UK it is present in every bookshop I have ever visited, usually collected, if that helps :D

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

OOOOh! I've never seen the plays! What were they like? They really worked well?

@Ph4ntomR3q

5 жыл бұрын

Steve Donoghue They were amazing! If you get a chance, I would definitely recommend seeing them. Little things, like Henry being young and handsome in part one, then overweight in the next; all of those details were great. They were beautifully done.

You might have a bit of a reputation, but you’re so much fun-somewhat like those girls one heard about, like the Countess Olenska or Lily Bart. Can’t abide McCarthy. Just...no. He leaves me completely unengaged. Wolf Hall, on the other hand, is marvelous. But I think the Mantel Tudor-era novels might require at least a working knowledge of the times and people. I tend to agree with you about allowing mood reading to take you over until you’re constantly giving up on books. While mysteries of a certain type will always be my personal retreat from reality, I love Middlemarch (fourth read coming up next year), the challenge of something like Moby Dick, and the absorbing worlds of Trollope and Balzac. On Cather: read and hated My Antonia, but loved Death Comes for the Archbishop. A question: how would you compare Dude Bro Lit with the Romance genre?

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

I think Dude Bro Lit and romance novels compare quite closely, with one key difference: ROMANCE READERS DON'T CALL THEIR BOOKS 'GREAT LITERATURE'

@gaildoughty6799

5 жыл бұрын

Truth.

Dictum? Hardly knew em!

um I have to say I mood run/jog all the time: angrily hating life lol

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

You mood RUN? Hope you don't injure yourself!

There is a vintage books collection of the Gormenghast trilogy, it is in every bookshop in existence in Australia I am pretty sure, at least I have seen it in everyone I have gone in. I even own it, it is a painfully underrated trilogy.

l'm trying my luck. Can you suggest some books from 1960-2018, that are bloody, shocking, deals with inner evil, let you think about human-inhuman nature, are not about war or concentration camps and are not bro lit?

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

Hah! Fairly specific, hmmm? What about "Silence of the Lambs"? Too popular for tastes?

@VisualFeast7557

5 жыл бұрын

Steve Donoghue Well in this case, l'll stick with war/concentration camps memoirs. l asked this, because l will get Blood Meridian, and l thought that it will be good literature. l guess l was wrong. Still, thank you for answer :)

@BiblioAtlas

5 жыл бұрын

Could I suggest Cancer Ward or the Gulag Archipelago?

@VisualFeast7557

5 жыл бұрын

Biblio Atlas l read Gulag Archipelago, I'll try to look for Cancer Ward. Thank you for suggestion.

@ThatReadingGuy28

4 жыл бұрын

Mr. Putler Gollum how about the American Psycho?

As a young man who is a book reader, I cannot, for the life of me, understand why so many people love Infinite Jest--or anything by David Foster Wallace for that matter.

@bad-girlbex3791

2 жыл бұрын

Because it's funny. It's like a great big treasure hunt that made me want to discover where all the clues led. I approached it expecting to hate it - almost wanting to hate it - but found myself genuinely laughing out loud in parts, feeling huge amounts of sympathy for characters I found genuinely well written, and a sense of awe as to how a person could hold the entirety of this work in their head and then deliver it onto the page in such a way as to keep me gripped, amused and entertained throughout. I expected to find it pretentious and unreadable, based on the things other people had said; but it won me over in the first 20 pages, made me feel like an ass for having allowed other people to make me have a sort of pre-hatred for it, and became my second favourite book of all time. I'm looking forward to going back and reading it again soon, because I know there's more for me to discover and that's the genuine fun and value I get from it.

Here is Steve’s SFF starter kit. kzread.info/dash/bejne/aqKirNZ_YqSzftY.html

After you described Blood Meridian, I was gripped by a morbid curiosity to experience it for myself. I couldn't stand to read more than a page and a half of it on Amazon's site, using the sample feature. I've never read anything like that brief beginning section of Blood Meridian before, and I don't want to ever again.

I'm NOT opinionated. I've never had an opion on anything. Ever.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

Hee. I'm telling you: ten BookTube judges!

You kill me, Steve. Not only is Cormac McCarthy not literature, he's not even reading! I daresay he's no true Scotsman - or Southerner, I suppose - either. But truly, this video was wonderful to watch.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

"no true Scotsman ..." - HAH! Oh my Gawd, I love my subscribers!

@zmaxwell9548

5 жыл бұрын

@@saintdonoghue and we love you, Steve!

My snowflake sensibilities are pissed off. The solution, I'm reading that Sade book b/c there's a reason it's still in print. Ada or Ardor with all my hate still has a reason for being in print, though I still don't know why. Calling a book garbage isn't something to be taken lightly. I called it garbage because I can't find a redeeming quality, I'm still waiting for comments or research that says it has redeeming qualities. If it's to simply explore how low we can go regarding word choice & descriptions, fair enough. If it's to justify or incite child abuse, then I'd have trouble defending it's merits & willingly call it garbage. De Sade, if it's for fapping, then fine. Have at it. If it's to incite rape culture, again I'd have trouble defending its merits. If it sheds light on deviance, then I'd defend it to the high heavens, Ada too. I haven't read Blood Meridan, so I can't say. Your comments about reading are grossly irresponsible. If people read because it doesn't feel like reading, great, keep reading they are experiencing something. And yes, mood reading has it's merits every bit as much as reading by rote responsibility.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

My comments on reading are grossly irresponsible? Who exactly am I being responsible TO, in this weird version of reality?

@BiblioAtlas

5 жыл бұрын

Steve Donoghue An obligation to no one of course. But seeing how much you know about books, I'd safely say there's a lot of people who look up to you as a reading mentor. So I'd say you have a responsibility to people who look up to you.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

Biblio Atlas I take that responsibility seriously. But I have no idea what you're even objecting to. Nothing I said in this video was irresponsible in any way.

Blood Meridian. If you only read one book, that's the one.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

HERESY!

@paltieri11

2 жыл бұрын

Try Melville..has become my favorite

There are other ways to convince us that you subscribe to bourgeois liberalism.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

HAH! There's a chance - just a slim chance - that you're a bit off about that.

You should be ashamed of your opinion of Blood Meridian and it is very telling that you aren't

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

Ashamed? Heh. That's good. So it's "very telling" that I hold my own opinions instead of, just guessing here, yours?

@Orpheuslament

5 жыл бұрын

@@saintdonoghue - I don't expect everyone to hold my exact opinion on the book but yours was so ignorant and presented without justification I am surprised you were willing to say it in public. If you are willing to present some points against the book that can be construed as intelligent (unlike your previous comments) I would be willing to continue this. If you don't care to, fine, but that will only solidify in my mind my past impressions of you.

@saintdonoghue

5 жыл бұрын

Orpheus So I have the slim chance, if I work hard enough, to change the insulting opinion you already have of me? Yep, that's a prime use of my time. If you think I'm an ignoramus who ought to be ashamed of himself, my suggestion would be that you just skip my channel.

@Orpheuslament

5 жыл бұрын

@@saintdonoghue - My general state is contentedness at ignoring everything you do but I happened upon this video and heard what you said about Blood Meridian and couldn't countenance such stupidity. What a shame you didn't even try to justify yourself. Instead of wasting your time replying to me you can waste your time making worthless videos for people to mindlessly agree with. What a life to live.