The Town of Odyssey

Does anyone on this board like literature? I LOVE literature! I especially like Leo Tolstoy, William Wordsworth, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, John Donn, etc. I love them all basically!

Not that much but I like some

Nope. Hate the stuff.

I would like to inquire as to how we are defining literature for this topic. "How are we defining literature for this topic?"

Literature as in poetry, short stories, novels, and other kinds from basically before 1950 or the modern era.

sheltiez wrote:Does anyone on this board like literature? I LOVE literature! I especially like Leo Tolstoy, William Wordsworth, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, John Donn, etc. I love them all basically!

Well, literature is quite a broad topic, but I love literature as you specified it as well.

I really just read old books.

sheltiez wrote:Literature as in poetry, short stories, novels, and other kinds from basically before 1950 or the modern era.

I encourage your next library trip to include an attempt to find a copy of M. H. Abrams' A Glossary of Literary Terms and look up 'literature.'

It would appear that your interest awaits the Romantic and Victorian periods of English literature. Is there a specific work you would like to discuss?

I meant all literature not just the Romantic and Victorian periods. Everything from the "Epic of Gilgamesh" to Robert Frost.

I think what 31899 is trying to say, is that 'literature' is the art of writtten work, regardless of publication, time period, or format.

I like reading, but literature in school this past year was really boring and hard to get through. I guess it is because the story selections I didn't have any taste for.

Maximus Meridius wrote:I think what 31899 is trying to say, is that 'literature' is the art of writtten work, regardless of publication, time period, or format.

Yeah. "literature" includes everything written from the Epic of Gilgamesh up to the modern day. I usually hear it in the context of the written word, but technically, it might cover all media as well as all time periods. (Come to think of it, would you count the works of William Shakespeare in there?)

I think "classical" might help you here. I do like me some Mark Twain...

The oldest i have read is i think Beowulf.

sheltiez wrote:Does anyone on this board like literature? I LOVE literature! I especially like Leo Tolstoy, William Wordsworth, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, John Donn, etc. I love them all basically!

Define "literature."

According to many of my teenage friends, literature is basically all novels.

According to many of my adult friends, literature is all the classics (Verne, Twain, etc.), with a few exceptions...

So, my question is, what do you mean by "literature?"

The Once-ler wrote:

sheltiez wrote:Does anyone on this board like literature? I LOVE literature! I especially like Leo Tolstoy, William Wordsworth, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, John Donn, etc. I love them all basically!

Define "literature."

According to many of my teenage friends, literature is basically all novels.

According to many of my adult friends, literature is all the classics (Verne, Twain, etc.), with a few exceptions...

So, my question is, what do you mean by "literature?"

Already been answered.

sheltiez wrote:Literature as in poetry, short stories, novels, and other kinds from basically before 1950 or the modern era.

I love classic literature. Ever since I got my Amazon Kindle I've been diving into Classic Lit and I've been loving it. I just finished "Great Expectations" (By Charles Dickens) And have just started Howard Pyle's "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood." After finishing "Robin Hood" I am going to read "The Cat of Bubastes" by G.A. Henty.

Taps wrote:I love classic literature. Ever since I got my Amazon Kindle I've been diving into Classic Lit and I've been loving it. I just finished "Great Expectations" (By Charles Dickens) And have just started Howard Pyle's "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood." After finishing "Robin Hood" I am going to read "The Cat of Bubastes" by G.A. Henty.

I read "Great Expectations" in high school and definitely liked it. I also read "The Cat of Bubastes" years ago (can't remember when exactly) but it was really good, Taps. I enjoy Jane Austen, and am also recently getting into the Sherlock Holmes stories.

I had to read Great Expectations my senior year, and I did not like it at all. It was incredibly depressing. Since then, I've heard a lot of people say they like it, so maybe I missed something.

Great Expectations was super depressing. But pretty much every book by Dickens is depressing.

Laura Ingalls wrote:I had to read Great Expectations my senior year, and I did not like it at all. It was incredibly depressing. Since then, I've heard a lot of people say they like it, so maybe I missed something.

Really? At my high school they have you read it in ninth grade. (Maybe that was why nobody really liked it. ) All the Pre-AP English classes (and regular too, I think) had to read Great Expectations, and most people complained about how overly-detailed and boring it was; even with his great enjoyment of books, my brother looks back on it and complains about how difficult it was to slog through.

The only book I've read that can truly be considered a "classic" is "To Kill A Mockingbird", and even then, it's a modern classic. (I love and adore that book, but that's beside the point.) I've seen classic book covers and read their descriptions, and they don't sound very good to me at all. (Here's the part where someone exclaims at the atrocity of my finding classic books boring-looking. )

Not to show off or anything, but I found Great Expectations to be quite an easy read, and entertaining almost the whole way through. The original ending was depressing, but there was also an alternate ending Dickens wrote that was a bit happier.