# "White Tie" Reading Thread



## topbroker (Jul 30, 2006)

Thank you, Andy, for starting "White Tie." Since I was one of those who asked for it, I will try to be a vigorous participant!

Reading and book-collecting are great passions of mine, and I always have numerous books in progress at any given time. One of my reading "slots" lately has been reserved for 19th century novels, which I read long chunks of on Saturday and Sunday mornings at my local coffee-shops. So far this year I have finished Charles Dickens's _Martin Chuzzlewit_, Anthony Trollope's _Can You Forgive Her?_ (the first in the six-volume Palliser series), and (completed just last weekend) George Eliot's _Middlemarch_ -- all magnificent books. This weekend I start on William Makepeace Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_.

More later, but I wanted to kick the thread off.


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## Scrumhalf (Dec 20, 2007)

Tremendous list, topbroker.. not a dud in that group! I love 19th century literature myself. Some of my favorites that I have re-read recently for the nth time: The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas), Oliver Twist (Dickens). Currently re-reading The Annotated Sherlock Holmes - Baring Gould edition.


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## Lushington (Jul 12, 2006)

topbroker said:


> Thank you, Andy, for starting "White Tie." Since I was one of those who asked for it, I will try to be a vigorous participant!
> 
> Reading and book-collecting are great passions of mine, and I always have numerous books in progress at any given time. One of my reading "slots" lately has been reserved for 19th century novels, which I read long chunks of on Saturday and Sunday mornings at my local coffee-shops. So far this year I have finished Charles Dickens's _Martin Chuzzlewit_, Anthony Trollope's _Can You Forgive Her?_ (the first in the six-volume Palliser series), and (completed just last weekend) George Eliot's _Middlemarch_ -- all magnificent books. This weekend I start on William Makepeace Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_.
> 
> More later, but I wanted to kick the thread off.


Try Dickens' _Bleak House_ and Trollope's _ The Way We Live Now_. The later could easily be transposed to the present day.


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## agnash (Jul 24, 2006)

*Twain*

Travelling With the Innocents Abroad is another 19th century book that could be transposed to today. Just a bunch of Americans on a cruise ship seeing the sights.


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## topbroker (Jul 30, 2006)

Scrumhalf said:


> Tremendous list, topbroker.. not a dud in that group! I love 19th century literature myself. Some of my favorites that I have re-read recently for the nth time: The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas), Oliver Twist (Dickens). Currently re-reading The Annotated Sherlock Holmes - Baring Gould edition.


I'm an enthusiastic Sherlockian and love the Baring-Gould _Annotated_. I haven't checked out the newer Annotated yet -- are you familiar with it?


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## topbroker (Jul 30, 2006)

Lushington said:


> Try Dickens' _Bleak House_ and Trollope's _The Way We Live Now_. The later could easily be transposed to the present day.


_Bleak House _is my favorite novel! I haven't read _The Way We Live Now_ yet, although I hear it is tremendous (and also that the BBC adaptation was excellent). Another great Trollope novel, that I have read, is _Orley Farm _-- highly recommended.


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## Scrumhalf (Dec 20, 2007)

topbroker said:


> I haven't checked out the newer Annotated yet -- are you familiar with it?


No, I'm not, although the Amazon reviews are extremely good, some of them putting it ahead of even, dare I say it, the IMHO incomparable Baring Gould.


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## Buster Brown (Sep 28, 2008)

agnash said:


> Travelling With the Innocents Abroad is another 19th century book that could be transposed to today. Just a bunch of Americans on a cruise ship seeing the sights.


Ditto for Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Tragedy of the Korosko'. This one features an international cast of characters and it's interesting to consider how the national archetypes have and have not changed in the last 100 years.


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## &Son (Feb 18, 2008)

topbroker said:


> I'm an enthusiastic Sherlockian and love the Baring-Gould _Annotated_. I haven't checked out the newer Annotated yet -- are you familiar with it?


The newer annotated is fantastic, definitely check it out! I myself spent a summer reading all of Dickens, it was quite a long summer!


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## topbroker (Jul 30, 2006)

&Son said:


> The newer annotated is fantastic, definitely check it out! I myself spent a summer reading all of Dickens, it was quite a long summer!


I'm spacing my Dickens project over a period of years. Next up is either _The Pickwick Papers_ or _Dombey and Son_. I need to re-visit the Dickens novels I read in adolescence: _David Copperfield_, _Great Expectations_, _A Tale of Two Cities_.

In recent years I have been concentrating on the dense masterpieces of Dickens's maturity: _Bleak House_, _Our Mutual Friend_, _Little Dorrit_, and _Martin Chuzzlewit_ (as well as the atypically tight, but great, _Hard Times_).

Other gaps: _Oliver Twist_ (how have I never read this?), _Nicholas Nickleby_ (I once saw the eight-hour theatrical adaptation), _The Old Curiosity Shop_, _Barnaby Rudge_ (the least read of the novels), and _Edwin Drood_. I have read all five Christmas books.


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## boatshoe (Oct 30, 2008)

*Dickens*

For a Dickens novice, what would you advise to read first?

Topbroker, I can relate to your Dickens project. The past two years I've been working my way through Dostoevsky's great novels. I'm not sure if my approach was best though. I started with _The Brothers Karamazov, _which is considered his _magnum opus, _if not the greatest work of the 19th century. Next was _Demons, _which is also popularly known as _The Possessed. Demons _was more openly ideological than any of Dostoevsky's other works. Then came _Crime and Punishment, _which was good, but was dwarfed by the greatness of _The Brothers Karamazov, _and oddly _Demons _as well, at least for me. And my last was _The Idiot, _which was also very good, but possibly my least favorite thus far.

As for Dickens, my only exposure to him was playing Oliver in a school play in grammar school. But I have read so many comparisons between Dickens and Dostoevsky that I decided Dickens would be my next project.


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## topbroker (Jul 30, 2006)

I think that _David Copperfield_ is the place to start. It was Dickens's own "favourite child," and is perhaps his most highly approachable novel.


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## Viniator3 (Sep 12, 2008)

But as Dickens goes, Bleak House was his ultimate work. Worth reading. Immensely grand.


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## Scrumhalf (Dec 20, 2007)

topbroker said:


> I think that _David Copperfield_ is the place to start. It was Dickens's own "favourite child," and is perhaps his most highly approachable novel.


+1000. Absolutely. A masterpiece and very accessible to a new Dickens reader. Another good one in a very different vein is The Pickwick Papers.


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## Miket61 (Mar 1, 2008)

boatshoe said:


> Topbroker, I can relate to your Dickens project.


I can't, and I'm envious.

When I read a book, I read it all the way through in one night, no matter how long it is. I might get very little sleep, but I finish it.

When the last _Harry Potter _book came out, I read it in its entirety twice in the first week.

The problem, of course, is that it's difficult to set aside an entire evening to a book. But I really enjoy it when I can.

The only book I ever set down was _Scarlett_ by Alexandra Ripley. I didn't care for the way she dismissed all the plot points that were in the _GWTW_ book that weren't in the movie, usually by Scarlett throwing money at them, and how the author clunkily inserted historical events to make it seem more historically accurate. But I put it down when she got on the boat to Ireland thinking it was passable.

The second half was absolute science fiction.


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## TweedyDon (Aug 31, 2007)

Scrumhalf said:


> Currently re-reading The Annotated Sherlock Holmes - Baring Gould edition.


What do the Annotations cover? I adore Holmes, but the *Baker Street Irregulars* is as far as I've got with commentary on it.

I did, though, used to bank at the Abbey National bank/building society at 221B Baker Street! :icon_smile:


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## topbroker (Jul 30, 2006)

Viniator3 said:


> But as Dickens goes, Bleak House was his ultimate work. Worth reading. Immensely grand.


No argument from me. _Bleak House_ is the peak. Lawyers especially --I know there a lot of attorneys on the board -- should read it, because it is the finest and most realistic novel of the law.


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## Scrumhalf (Dec 20, 2007)

TweedyDon said:


> What do the Annotations cover? I adore Holmes, but the *Baker Street Irregulars* is as far as I've got with commentary on it.


I found it full of endlessly interesting facts and indispensable for putting the canon of Sherlock Holmes in the real context. There are numerous details relating references in the stories to actual happenings or to the London of the era.


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## topbroker (Jul 30, 2006)

Miket61 said:


> When the last _Harry Potter _book came out, I read it in its entirety twice in the first week.


I haven't read any of the Potters yet, but I have just one book to go in Lemony Snicket's 13 volume _A Series of Unfortunate Events_ -- truly one of the drollest works in the language, and it deepens as a work of art as it goes along. Not just "kid stuff" by any means.


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## Penang Lawyer (May 27, 2008)

topbroker said:


> I'm an enthusiastic Sherlockian and love the Baring-Gould _Annotated_. I haven't checked out the newer Annotated yet -- are you familiar with it?


As a Sherlockian I have both the Baring Gould and Leslie S. Klinger editions. The Klinger edition includes new data and the print is better. You might also be interested in "The Oxford Edition". Also consider the Canonical Compendium by Stephen Clarkson. Have you ever heard the BBC radio series with Clive Merrison (as Sherlock) and Michael Williams (as Watson) Michael Williams died shortly after finishing the series and his wife (Judi Dench) played Mrs Hudson in one of the broadcasts.


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## Simon Myerson (Nov 8, 2007)

2 journalists who ended up in England wrote novels together which I think aree some of the funniest things ever written. Their names were Caryl Brahms and SJ (Skid) Simon and many of the books centre on a Russian ballet company run by an impoverished impressario called Vladimir Stroganov, whose main aim is to stay solvent and to bed the dancers without Mrs S finding out. The first is called "A Bullet in the Ballet".

They also wrote No Bed for Bacon and Don't Mr Disraeli. Both are wonderfully funny pastiches of English life and the former - although not credited as far as I know - was quite clearly the inspiration for the film Shakespeare in Love. Recommended.


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## Miket61 (Mar 1, 2008)

topbroker said:


> I haven't read any of the Potters yet, but I have just one book to go in Lemony Snicket's 13 volume _A Series of Unfortunate Events_ -- truly one of the drollest works in the language, and it deepens as a work of art as it goes along. Not just "kid stuff" by any means.


I've read snippets of Snicket, but haven't sat down with an entire book. I really must.

The Potter series needs to be read with three things in mind:


The intended audience gets older as the series progresses, so the early books might seem a bit juvenile. Trust me, it gets better.
Very little is mentioned for no reason. If a gun appears in Act I, it should be used in Act II, to quote Dostoevsky.
People of the intended audience go to school, and their lives are superimposed by the school year, with its start, holidays, exam, and end. The books are set up the same way, so that school events pop up in the story line regularly whether it's convenient or not.


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## Joe Frances (Sep 1, 2004)

I have been toying with picking up "A Sentimental Education" by Flaubert. Does anyone here have a well-considered opinion on this book?


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## topbroker (Jul 30, 2006)

Joe Frances said:


> I have been toying with picking up "A Sentimental Education" by Flaubert. Does anyone here have a well-considered opinion on this book?


Yes, I do. It is a masterpiece, one of the greatest experiences that French (or any) literature has to offer. But it is a very different *sort* of experience than the classic English Victorian novels -- harder, cooler, drier. Be open to what you find, and the novel will repay your investment immensely.

The Penguin translation is excellent, and the notes are helpful. Reading a few Wikipedia articles on the French and European political background couldn't hurt.


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## Sartre (Mar 25, 2008)

For this group that seems to admire the British canon and also likes to sink its teeth into something substantial, may I suggest Anthony Powell's _A Dance to the Music of Time_? A 12-volume cycle following a core set of characters from post-WWI Britain through the 1960s. Incredible experience. The writing reads like an incantation.

(Also done as a television series within the last 10 years or so...not bad, but impossible to follow if one hadn't already read the books.)


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## dfloyd (May 7, 2006)

*I did it the other way around .....*

I watched the tv dramatization of 'Dance to the Music of Time'; then started on the books. The English book club, The Folio Society" has 'Dance to ... published in four volumes. I'm through the first volume and it is tremendous. Much longer and better than "Brideshead Revisited" although I'm a big fan of Waugh.

I also watched the great dramatizations of Dickens, with 'Bleak House" and "Our Mutual Friend" making the books even more enjoyable to read. "Avengers" fans will love Diana Rigg in "Bleak House".


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## Joe Frances (Sep 1, 2004)

topbroker said:


> Yes, I do. It is a masterpiece, one of the greatest experiences that French (or any) literature has to offer. But it is a very different *sort* of experience than the classic English Victorian novels -- harder, cooler, drier. Be open to what you find, and the novel will repay your investment immensely.
> 
> The Penguin translation is excellent, and the notes are helpful. Reading a few Wikipedia articles on the French and European political background couldn't hurt.


Thank you, I am going to pick up the Penquin addition tomorrow with the Gift Certificate I received from Santa today. Thanks again, and Merry Christmas!


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