VS.
Round 8-C: Dostoyevsky vs. J.R.R.Tolkien
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
C&P.
... and now they tied
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If Lord of the Rings wins I will burn this website to the ground.
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Simmer down now!!! I LOVE LOTR!!!!Originally Posted by Mattrick
28 in 23 (?)!!!!
63 in '23!!!!!!!!!!
My Collection: https://www.thedarktower.org/palaver...ion-Merlin1958
The Houston Astros cheated Major League Baseball from 2017-18!!!! Is that how we teach our kids to play the game now?????
My eyes cannot accept what they are seeing right now. I'm almost offended by these results :/ Now I have to see Dostoesky lose to frackin' Harry Potter now too, don't I?
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LOTR is great, no doubt, and I have all those beautiful Tolkien deluxe editions but come on...
Books are emotive things. It's not always just about which is the better story or has the better writing. Factors such as the age you were when you read it first, who introduced you to or gave you the book, your emotional state at the time, etc all have a contributing factor to how you rate it personally. I read a book as a child called "The Phantom Tollbooth" (there was even an animated film made of it). Not a great book by anyones standards, but as a young kid I thought it was full of intelligent humour and concerned a solitary child which resonated with me personally. I have often looked for a really nice 1st edition, but alas nothing yet.
"A real limited edition, far from being an expensive autograph stapled to a novel, is a treasure. And like all treasures do, it transforms the responsible owner into a caretaker, and being a caretaker of something as fragile and easily destroyed as ideas and images is not a bad thing but a good one...and so is the re-evaluation of what books are and what they do that necessarily follows." - Stephen King
But this shouldn't have anything to do with sentimentality. This is about the greatest novels, not most beloved novels.
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Like I voted Animal Farm over The Old Man and the Sea because its the better novel, not because I love it more...I even put Animal Farm over Catcher In The Rye which I love so much.
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I think many will find that a hard distinction to make. A lot of books on this list were nominated because they were peoples favourites. What makes them great is that others agree. The more they agree the higher they will go.
"A real limited edition, far from being an expensive autograph stapled to a novel, is a treasure. And like all treasures do, it transforms the responsible owner into a caretaker, and being a caretaker of something as fragile and easily destroyed as ideas and images is not a bad thing but a good one...and so is the re-evaluation of what books are and what they do that necessarily follows." - Stephen King
I am not sure we should differ "greatest" from "most loved".
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
C&P.
Because I think it is a book that can make a lasting, profound, and even character-changing effect on the person who reads it. Regardless of age, gender, etc. Because the feelings and thoughts it touches upon sit way deeper within the personality than anything LOTR can ever reach.
Disclosure: I do not particularly like LOTR (call me biased). Respect it for its magnitude and the ability to make hordes of people love it (all the way to wanting to LIVE it). It was a very difficult read for me, not because it was "uninteresting" per se, but because reading it felt like I was cruising it, not really having the feelings that a book *must* awaken to be considered great. For the record, read it at about the same age as C&P.
If you are going through hell - keep going
wow!! Marina, you said exactly what I would have said - only better!
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm honored, Jean. Thank you.
If you are going through hell - keep going
Me, too. Very well said. I'm not in favor of trying to divide "greatest" from "most loved," either, but LOTR is a work I really liked, not a work I really loved, and it seems to me that people need to think about that difference.
Thank you, Mike.
If you are going through hell - keep going
Well you can love a book that isn't particularily well written but isn't that what this is about? The best written books? In terms of the style and content of writing there is a gaping canyon between Dostoevsky and Tolkien. Favourite has nothing to do with quality, or at least not in all cases. There are films I love and can watch over and over again but I know they are not great, then there are films that are so good I have to wait years between viewings. I think Dostoevsky's best book is Brother Karamazov but Notes From Underground is my favourite and if I have to judge the greatness of one vs the other, which I do when it's called 'greatest novels' I look at them objectively side by side. Favourite for me is a word that denotes partiality where greatest doesn't. That's just how I vote on these things. Favourites can always change because we change but the quality of the work never changes, it is always the same and it's always great to re-visit art as we age because we will always see it even though it never actually changes.
I'm just thinking if a bunch of our members loved Twilight and Twilight was beating Dostoevsky...I'm getting chills just thinking about it lol
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The greatest works have partiality within them. If you set aside the personal viewpoint and try to asses writing unromantically, could you allow yourself to give any more credit to the writer who expresses a romantic take on personal cares than to one who is firm-minded and technical?
I don't mean to say someone is wrong in voting with partiality...but isn't partiality what gave us Indiana Jones as the greatest film character of all time? I recall some sadness over that lol
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Well, I'm not sure: It's hard to say exactly what it was that led ultimately to that.
Fortunately, I keep my sense of perspective. We can criticize literary guilds for acting like the lists they come up with are supremely definitive, but some of us don't even pretend that what this site does is perfect. What can you say but "Come on, guys, LOTR, seriously?"
Just no burning the place to the ground, okay?
I'll try not to lol Maybe I'll re-read 451 and just imagine it's Lord of the Rings only that gets burned lol
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Sorry, guys, but C&P beat me down somewhere about half way through. All the self-flagellation and angst felt like it stretched on forever to the point of feeling over-the-top. I could not bring myself to finish the book. I have a strong need for closure, so that almost never happens.
Perhaps I will revisit CRIME AND PUNISHMENT someday and my perception will change, but until then, it isn't winning any contests for me.
"...that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little." ~ Ray Bradbury
Man, I loved that book! In junior high, we adapted the book into a stage play. I played Milo in our school production of The Phantom Tollbooth.
"...that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little." ~ Ray Bradbury
this poll closes tomorrow
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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