to love popular fiction and be unashamed of it.
The fact this one's tastes seem to range so wide and the fact he dared omit many big names whose work didn't have much of a personal impact on him as a reader actually make me far more curious and interested to read his book.
It makes me think of one of the favourite teachers I've ever had, who could on a whim spend a full course to talk about why he thought Milan Kundera was the greatest living novelist after he finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being and was just dying to share his passion for it, or who would tell us he's re reading Flaubert each year for the beauty of his prose... but could also be seen reading Stephen King or P.D. James between classes from time to time. And if you asked, it would have had something intelligent and interesting to say about those writers or why he enjoyed them.
The fact this one's tastes seem to range so wide and the fact he dared omit many big names whose work didn't have much of a personal impact on him as a reader actually make me far more curious and interested to read his book.
It makes me think of one of the favourite teachers I've ever had, who could on a whim spend a full course to talk about why he thought Milan Kundera was the greatest living novelist after he finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being and was just dying to share his passion for it, or who would tell us he's re reading Flaubert each year for the beauty of his prose... but could also be seen reading Stephen King or P.D. James between classes from time to time. And if you asked, it would have had something intelligent and interesting to say about those writers or why he enjoyed them.
John Sutherland's Lives of Novelists includes Jordan, but not Tolkien
- 07/12/2011 04:43:14 PM
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Re: John Sutherland's Lives of Novelists includes Jordan, but not Tolkien
- 08/12/2011 02:19:14 AM
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to be fair, every generation says culture is going down the drain 
- 08/12/2011 03:04:27 AM
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- 08/12/2011 03:04:27 AM
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The article states that the novelists chosen were of personal interest to the author. *NM*
- 08/12/2011 09:01:09 AM
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My mind boggles a little
- 08/12/2011 09:47:23 AM
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Why not? All of us did at one point or another.
- 08/12/2011 03:55:52 PM
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All of us did at one point or another.
- 08/12/2011 03:55:52 PM
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Although Sutherland was hardly a teenager like most of us when he read them. *NM*
- 08/12/2011 04:15:04 PM
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Well...he's hardly the first scholar...
- 09/12/2011 02:29:25 AM
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