Posted on 12/06/2010 1:08:16 PM PST by Borges
Oprah Winfrey has chosen a pair of Charles Dickens classics, "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Great Expectations," as the latest selections for her popular book club.
Winfrey said on Monday's episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" she has never read Dickens before. She said, "It's the best of times, readers," and called the books timeless classics.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Oprah zombies will find the vocabulary a bit challenging.
You didn’t like Tess? It’s one of the great prose tragedies in English.
Oprah was in high school from 1968-1972.
Read all his books. Went to his museum in london. Thoroughly enjoyed everyone, then I’ll consider myself a dickens scholar. BTW the museum is in his house where he wrote most of his books. As I stated enjoyed all of them, even the book he never finished”the mystery of edwin drood.”
Our book list that year:
Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”
Solzhenitsyns’s “Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
Huxley’s “Brave New World”
Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”
Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”
Chaucer “Prelude to the Canterbury Tales”
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”
Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”
And they wonder why teens are prone to suicide... As you can see Tess doesn’t exactly ‘shine’.
Great books, and by far the best program I ever did.
If I had to make a curriculum:
Hesiod’s Thegony
Virgil’s Aeneid
Chaucer, ‘Clerk’s Tale + Wife of Bath’ + Prelude
Chretien de Troyes Percevel the Story of the Grail
Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Milton’s Paradise Lost
Tennyson’s Idylls of the King
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
And that gives us 8.
Faux-liberals of today should look to the Cheerybles in Nicholas Nickleby
as examples of the spirit of classical liberalism;
much closer to the our conservatism
than the totalitarian statist tendencies of today’s ‘liberal’ left.
Valid point on both ends, but with an eight year old red headed boy and an eleven year old red headed boy both sporting the name “Bitzer” I have a soft spot in my heart for Hard Times.
‘Jude the Obscure’ is tough going. I’ll stick to Jane Austen.
My favorite too.
I have a complete set of leather bound Dickens that my parents bought in the UK when they lived there in the 50’s.
I give credit where credit is due. I think this is fantastic.
A great tragedy should cheer you up. It’s cathartic.
When it happens to someone you don’t like, sure.
But Tess? I identified with her, and I didn’t much like the book.
Dombey was going to be the next one I read. What’s wrong with it? It’s supposed to be the first of his ‘mature’ novels.
No a great work of tragic art is cathartic. Regardless of how you feel about the characters.
Well, it’s been 17 years, but as I recall it dragged, and the characters just weren’t as interesting as Dickens’ usually are.
OK, kidding, but only a little. It's a TV audience, after all. Maybe she's got the level about right. Lord knows she's sold enough stuff.
You’re weird you know that? ;)
It's sad really and it can be laid right at the feet of the "education" establishment and the greedy teachers unions.
And so does A Tale of Two Cities.
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