Locator: 49733BOOKS.
When Cloudflare is down -- RBN Energy is down -- I go back to .... do I dare say ... books?
Word for the day:
Two books arriving today. One was "free" (cash back) from Amazon, a new copy priced at about $30. The other from Thriftbooks which had the best price by far.
The first one, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, ordered yesterday (?) was at my door before 7:00 a.m. this morning. Whoo-hoo.
Tristram Shady, Laurence Sterne, Everyman's Library #7, Introduction, c. 1991. It was published from 1759 to 1767. Think about that, some 20 years before the Revolutionary War, and continues to show up on "best book lists." I have very few books from Everyman's Library but wow, they are nice books.
The other, my personal favorite. Hunter S Thompson's The Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman Gonzo Letters, Volume 1, years 1955 - 1967, c. 1997. This book has been in my library for decades, perhaps one of the first books that started me on my eclectic reading journey. Somewhere along the line, it appears I lost my copy; at least I couldn't find it this past weekend. Soft cover editions are very affordable, but amazingly, the hard copy editions seem to hold / maintain their original release price, adjusted for inflation.
So, there you go.
I'm still reading Charles Dickens Tale of Two Cities. I can see why folks Dickens. This is a very thick -- a very, very long -- novel and difficult for the 21st century high school senior to read but yet it catches your interest in the very first chapter if one actually reads it to enjoy it. AI helps a lot. When I come across a paragraph that is a challenge, I prompt ChatGPT with the entire paragraph. ChatGPT's reply is amazing.
Break, break. Back to Laurence Sterne's Tristam Shandy. To get an idea of what ChatGPT can do with a good prompt, see this prompt / reply at this link. I found that reply absolutely amazing.
************************
Never Quit Reading
The introduction to Tristram Shandy suggests that this novel was a "return" to the novel which "had been forgotten."
The writer immediately references Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and Samuel Richardson's Pamela. I've read much of Defoe but have probably not read Robinson Crusoe as an adult (for obvious reasons) but have enjoyed all his other work. And Pamela! Of all the books I've read over the years, I never would have imagined someone mentioning Pamela in an introduction to Tristram Shandy. I can't say it enough times, never quit reading.
For those with limited time, one option is to read two or three chapters of the novel in question. Then explore wiki and other reviews and then decide if one wants to read more of that novel. But a close reading of the first two or three pages, and then a solid look at the book through other internet sources and you should really have a great understanding of where this all fits.
Pamela was a real slog but I did finish it. I would like to re-read it more closely but it's just so incredibly long and wordy -- which one would expect.
Samuel Richardson's Pamela is typically between 450 and 830 pages, varying by edition, while Charles Dickens's novels range widely, with some being shorter like Hard Times (around 17,400 words) and others much longer, such as Bleak House (928 pages). Compared to most Dickens novels, Pamela is a moderately long book, but shorter than his longest works.
