Deimos
Elite
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2022
- Messages
- 4,989
You make not a few salient observations.
Yes the HG author is really not very good. 2/3 of the way through the first book I was skipping a half dozen pages at intervals because the writing was so bad... that was the "slog" part.
And the fact that I could skip al those pages and still follow the story tells you something (not very praiseworthy) about the writing. **
Good to know you got through Hamlet untranslated. It's one thing to use notated editions, even heavily notated. It's quite another to read a translated edition, as you would miss the very thing that makes Shakespeare worth reading.
Austen's works are not romances, altho they do tell stories of people falling in (and out of) love. They are "comedies of manners" . Look up "comedy of manners", as it may help you to appreciate P&P and her other works, when the time comes. (You may also like Emma). That is, her works reflect the best and worst of flawed human nature, which all worthwhile literature does.
And if there are any characters in P&P that are so pathetically, yet hilariously flawed, they are Mrs Bennett (the Mother), Mr Collins (the vicar cousin), and Lady Catherine De Bourgh (Darcy's imperious Aunt).
** Good writing improves your reading comprehension, but it does more. People who read good writing willy-nilly become good writers, even if that was not their intent, if they only read for pleasure.
I have read all kinds of writing. The bad stuff teaches you what to avoid ("If I couldn't stand reading this style of writing, I'm certainly not going to imitate it."). The mediocre stuff trains you, often without you being aware of it, to have a critical eye for writing, i.e what is good, what is bad about a writing style. The good stuff teaches how to write well, engagingly, what works to convey what you want to say (or describe). How often have you been utterly captivated, transported by a single sentence or even just a phrase. Some English bloke named Tolkien was pretty good at doing that. 😉
Another English bloke wrote what I think is one of the most beautiful passages ever penned in English.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare
From The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1