Hi there! I'm Jen. This is Remembered
Reads. And this is going to be both a
reading project plan but also kind of a
check in for a read-a-thon. Katie from
books and things is hosting a
read-a-thon this month called the TBR
clear-out, which encourages people to
read the books that they have at home.
Which i think is convenient for anybody
who does a lot of their book shopping in
person when book shops are in general
closed right now in most countries, and
also libraries are mostly closed.
Although I'm fortunate in that both of
the libraries that I belong to have
quite extensive online options. So that's
less of an issue for me. But again it is
nice to think about reading one's own
books now and then. And I did - not that
long ago - acquire the box set of the
penguin little black classics, and I
thought it would be interesting to read
through a bunch of these. Because I had
seen a number of people when this was
first released getting this and a lot of
them were sponsored. And of course just
because people get things for free or
paid to talk about them it doesn't
necessarily mean that you can't trust
them. But I paid for these myself, so I
feel like I'm more willing to complain
about it than some people might be. Now to
be fair I did get it at a very cheap
price, which is the only reason I
bought them. But anyway, because it's a
bunch of short books I have been putting
off reading them. Because they're so
short you think "well I can read that
sometime when I don't have a lot of time."
But if you keep putting things off you
never read them regardless of how much
time you have so I didn't think it would
be a good idea to pick up some of these
for this TBR clear-out read-a-thon and
this could be the start of this project
where I read through these. Because I've
also been thinking kind of because I've
had conversations in the comments of
other people's channels - and on Twitter
actually - about things like abridged
versions and children's versions and
things like that. And these are not those.
What these are are they're described as
"snippets" in the marketing. And some of them
are certainly single items there are
single long short stories or small
collection of two to four short
stories, or one long essay, or a pairing
of short essay,s short collections of
poetry for example. But a few of them are
really excerpts of larger works. For
example the first book in this
box set is called mrs. Rosie and the
priest and this is by Giovanni Boccaccio
which these are of course stories from
the Decameron. Now, the Decameron is
essentially a collection of a hundred
short stories but without the framing
device, is that the right way to read
them? Probably not. Now I've never been
particularly interested in reading all
of the Decameron. I think it's kind
of an amusing thing that people look at
to go "hey did you know that medieval
people like to tell funny stories about
sex?" And I mean I think there's value to
that because I think the fact that
people are surprised that medieval
people were people in the same way that
we are uh-huh deserves to be out there
and not everybody wants to read whatever
it is it's like it it's over a thousand
pages because it is a hundred short
stories plus this framing device of
people fleeing the plague and telling
stories to each other as they're hiding
out in the woods I have read selections
from this before I back when I was in
high school I think there was similar
kind of excerpt in a book of short
stories so this isn't my first
introduction to it but I had kind of a
similar reaction to when I read other
stories from it before in that some of
these are amusing there this has four
stories in it and I thought two of them
were very amusing one of them was fine
and one of them was Wow has not aged
well it was the 14th century of course
it didn't age yeah that's not that bad
but at the same time it didn't inspire
me to go and read more now not all of
these are specifically excerpts from
larger work for example another one that
I have read over the past week was
Thomas De Quincey's "on murder
considered as one of the fine arts." This
is satirical essay from the early 19th
century. It is still reasonably funny. I
think when you look at a lot of 19th
century essayists they tend to read
really pretentiously today just because
there are so many classical references. I
was surprised by how entertaining this
was, but I think your mileage may vary in
terms of all those classical references.
Because I read this as being quite
similar to reading a lot of
kind of cultural commentators now who
make pop-culture references. Because I
thought it read the same way I thought
that was kind of hilarious just in terms
of the way things never change
except that his references were to
4,000 year old poems as opposed to
ones from year old TV series for example.
But regardless of that this is an
individual thing on its own. So there is
maybe a reason to have this packaged on
its own. And I was entertained by it so I
think that's kind of a win-win on both
sides, because it's not an excerpt and it
was amusing. I'm actually not sure that
it matters if these things are
entertaining, because I think what's
interesting with a collection like this
is that I don't necessarily think you're
reading it because you're interested in
every single item. I think it's an
interesting exercise and saying "well
I've never read any Tang Dynasty poets
and I feel like I should, but I'm not
that interested so I'll read this short
collection." Because that is one of the
things in this box set, although I have
not read that one yet. So I think there's
some value in that because you get a
taste of a number of different things
that you might not be considering
otherwise but so I guess that's the
point. In any case, in addition to those I
also read Gerard Manley Hopkins's
" As kingfishers catch fire." This is a
collection of poetry - which was on theme
for National Poetry Month in addition to
this particular project. This is the a
collection of poetry by a victorian
priest and he was a Jesuit Catholic
priest. Which I mention just because while a
lot of this is nature poetry that plays
with a style of rhyming that's more
similar to older poetry than it is to
other Victorian poetry - this was actually
published after his death so it actually
published in a post Victorian era - but
when he was writing it it's kind of
interesting that way. So I thought the
nature poetry elements were interesting.
If you follow me on Instagram I posted
one of the pages there. But a lot of it
is also quite religious which for a
priest is not surprising. And actually
when I first picked this up I hadn't
noticed that he was a priest I thought
he was some kind of Protestant Vicar, so
I was not as surprised by the style of
religion and the poetry. But I kind of
associate Jesuits with a more
intellectual style of religion and this
felt more
religious-religious, if that makes sense.
Which is not particularly interesting
for me, but did surprise me just given
the context of the kind of educational
background he would have had as that
type of priest. So this was more
interesting than I thought it was
fantastic. But do you want to read
Victorian poetry that doesn't feel like
Victorian poetry? This might be
interesting. It wasn't something that I
was particularly looking for, but I feel
like having read that - I will say the one
flaw of this is that you don't have
notes in any of these. And I am a big fan
of notes when there are you're reading
any kind of historical work that has
some kind of historical importance. And I
felt like the lack of that was too bad
these were definitely all things where I
went and read stuff on Wikipedia
afterwards because I think with a lot of
it you need to know some of the context
of why is this important who was this
person what is the historical context
around this writing because the other
thing that I read was the saga of gundog
serpent tongue this is an Icelandic epic
and it was translated by Katrina Atwood
this was interesting and that I didn't
particularly enjoy the first half of it
which does a lot of setting up things
and describing characters who are now
exit the saga it says multiple times it
does in terms of entertainment value get
going near the end and I was entertained
by the way that this mirrored I think
when you look at a lot of ancient epic
this is something that was from at least
the 9th century but was written down in
the 11th century I believe it is in any
case this is an old story and it feels
like any of the ancient Mediterranean
traditions but with the kind of a
different ending so I thought that was
really interesting so the context around
this I did think was super interesting
just outside from the entertainment
value of reading the actual saga I am
not super I've never been particularly
interested in the Norse sagas I did
read the poetic Edda about 15
years ago which was interesting. I do
think one of the kind of fascinating
things about this is that the characters
within this saw
often recite poetry to each other or
invent verses for each other and what
the translator has done with that is
gone for a really literal translation
and then explains inside notes what the
translation means. so we'll have point
goddess means
Valkyrie, or Serpent's bed is gold, things
like that flinger is a generous man etc.
So this I thought was a lot more
interesting just because it had those
notes from the translator. so I really do
wish that there were more notes in other
books now a number of the other things
in here are translated so I'm hoping
that those are going to have more were
these interesting snippets so far yes
were they entertaining sometimes so I
feel like this is a fun project because
they are so short there isn't really the
same dedication that picking up any
random longer work from a similar set of
sagas from any given culture or a
similar collection of essays or poetry
from any given 19th century writer so I
definitely see the value in that so I
feel like it's a worthwhile thing just
to have some context I think as I go
through this I'm going to encounter more
of these that are either from authors or
cultures that I'm more familiar with or
things that I have actually read in
other forms before so I think that will
be interesting just to see if I think if
I decide that they're good example of
the wider things or not because with
these four as I said I had read
selections from the Decameron before but
not the same one and with the other
three I wasn't familiar with any of it...
oh maybe I was with the Thomas De
Quincey - I'm not sure. Actually I feel
like that might be something I read in
the collection in high school too,
something from him. In any case I'm
finding this to be an interesting
project I do think it is a good length
for getting a decent taste of things
I'm overall pretty pleased so far but I
don't know if it was for pure
entertainment value if it would have the
same value or for pure educational value
I feel like you'd be better off getting
focusing on one thing with more depth
rather than so many things so narrowly
but for my own
basically curiosity purposes I think I'm
enjoying it. If you've read a bunch of
these I'd be curious to hear your
experience with them. And of course if
you're taking part in the TBR Clear Out
read-a-thon I'd love to hear how you
decided on what you're reading and what
you are reading. Anyway that's it for now.
Ciao.
