As a well-read philistine*, I'd say that most of the literary canon is bumf. Most of it's written for people who like introspective navel-gazing, realism, & lots of gloom, rather than imaginative storytelling. In school & universities, who do we study? Austen (the Mills & Boon of the Regency period), Proust, Beckett, gloomy books by the Russians (interminable descriptions of potato farming), James Joyce going on about potatoes ... (Has anybody written a thesis about the influence of the potato on literature, or the influence of literature on the potato? If you have potatoes with yoghurt, they'd be cultured. Nowadays, though, we're all couch potatoes.) Why is something interesting just because it's true to life, because it could have happened? Surely it means that the writer's got no imagination! And apart from being boring, they're also usually depressing - people leading drab lives & having horrible things happen to them until they die. Such larks, Pip!
*: I have a degree in English - & hate literature (or, rather, the husks whereof the highbrows do eat - usually with potatoes). A literary friend of mine - poet - recently praised Hemingway on Facebook, for being "heartbreaking". Me: "You like Hemingway? Good grief, man! Hemingway's greatest contribution to literature was his suicide." He promptly accused me of trying to get a rise. How well he knows me.
And what do good books have? Storytelling; Lots of incident & imagination; interesting settings with atmosphere; & memorable scenes & characters. A story's improved by larger than life eccentrics, cannibalism, witchcraft, spontaneous combustion, lost civilisations, exploding ostriches, steampunk, & locked room murders. The best books are full of life & energy & humour. In other words, why read something that isn't FUN?
Which is why anything by Dickens beats Austen & the Brontes hands down. Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo has everything you could want: dramatic escapes from prison, treachery, bandits, insane woman poisoners, infanticide, elaborate revenge schemes - and, as Steven Moffat would say, LESBIANS. (The TV series with Gerard Depardieu is great.) I, Claudius is jam packed with megalomaniacs, murders, treason & treachery - & the TV series is a brilliant black comedy, with every British actor in it, & lines so good you could sing them. (Nero probably would, & force pregnant women to give birth in the theatre.) Sherlock Holmes & Father Brown!
Humour - where to start? Terry Pratchett's the spiritual heir to Dickens - a great entertainer who's used his books to say serious stuff about life (& potatoes, mashed or reincarnated) - &, in another century, will probably be looked on as one of the great writers of the 20th century. P.G. Wodehouse, Gerald Durrell, Douglas Adams, Evelyn Waugh (but keep away from A Handful of Dust, unless you like wallowing in misery), Saki, & Tom Sharpe.
At the moment, I'm reading Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy, which is splendid - very funny, great world-building, interesting characters.
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Originally Posted by munenori2
