Books.

wanderlust wrote:

sunlight wrote:

wanderlust wrote:

sunlight wrote:

wanderlust wrote:

sunlight wrote:Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

I know it's generally characterised as being primarily about a young woman feeling trapped and becoming adulterous - which caused a scandal at the time - but underpinning the story is a hefty dose of French realism, itself a departure from the (unrealistic) romanticism that preceded it, so if that floats your boat you might be interested in Balzac and Proust who were Flaubert's main influences. Balzac in particular is a great storyteller in the Dickensian style.
Also, a hundred and twenty years before MB, L'Abbe Prevost wrote Manon Lescaut which has a lot of the same elements as MB and IMO is a better rendition despite L'Abbe having to rewrite and tone down the scandalous bits in the second edition. Check them out.

I am impressed. You know your stuff. The book I have half read, so far, over the last week and a half, when I have had the time and will, is Hard Times by Dickens. It is my first read of Dickens and it is really really grim. I enjoyed one quote, it was along the lines of " the town was built half by God and half by man, and most of Gods half had been bricked up " . I need to finish this one off, actually, before I commence the extremely interesting Madame Bovary in Hardback that I have purchased. They say that a book always lands just when you need it. I have read the introduction of it and the wiki of it. I am impressed you know lots about all of this genre.

French Literature A level donkey's years ago TBH.
Dickens is class but you might have started off with something a bit lighter than Hard Times- the clue is in the title Mercifully, it's quite a short novel. The deal is - as with the aforementioned French writers - social realism, so they set good stories in the context of the struggle for survival that everyone bar the rich had to cope with  during the 18th and 19th centuries. Even so, most of their books tend to focus on those people lucky enough to have some form of employment, shit as it was. Given the excessive amount of glamourisation of those periods, these writers are one of the few sources of information about how life really was back then - unrelenting poverty and hunger for most and an average lifespan of half what it is today.
Back then, there wasn't much money in painting or writing about the poor so it didn't happen often.

As an aside, when I did French Literature, we did it in the original French and it never crossed my mind that I was learning to speak like a bloke from the 18th century - I do get a few laughs when I'm speaking to French folk.

It has cheered me up that not all Dickens books are as grim as this one as I wish to read his classic ones and they are really long. I did French language at school for five years but only English books in Literature lessons. It is amusing about you saying you spoke like a nineteenth Century French person. What you are saying about the poor never being written about in that period has enlightened myself about the idea of Victorians in England always being portrayed in a certain way, the middle and upper classes. An interesting reply and I thank you for it.

Here you go...a one page history of poverty in England since the Middle Ages.
Worth a quick look as it provides context - and highlights the distorted/romanticised view of our history.

boltonbonce wrote:Have you read 'The Classic Slum:Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century'? 

It's a brilliant read. Written by Robert Roberts, it's straight from the horses mouth.

okocha wrote:Balzac's Le Pere Goriot is awesome! Don't want to spoil it for you if you haven't read it, but there's a vividly detailed description of a revenge castration in there.....not right at the end and not gratuitous....so enjoy!!

boltonbonce wrote:A Chinese friend of mine told me that a few of his relatives back home learned English with the help of BBC radio. 
They used to listen to the old panel show 'Just A Minute'. When they finally visited him over here, most of them sounded like Kenneth Williams.

wanderlust wrote:

boltonbonce wrote:A Chinese friend of mine told me that a few of his relatives back home learned English with the help of BBC radio. 
They used to listen to the old panel show 'Just A Minute'. When they finally visited him over here, most of them sounded like Kenneth Williams.

It can happen. My French has far too many "forsooths" in it apparently. The plummiest English I ever heard came out of a Gujerati warehouse manager in Qatar - who insisted on wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella in the desert. He wasn't daft mind.

sunlight wrote:

wanderlust wrote:

boltonbonce wrote:A Chinese friend of mine told me that a few of his relatives back home learned English with the help of BBC radio. 
They used to listen to the old panel show 'Just A Minute'. When they finally visited him over here, most of them sounded like Kenneth Williams.

It can happen. My French has far too many "forsooths" in it apparently. The plummiest English I ever heard came out of a Gujerati warehouse manager in Qatar - who insisted on wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella in the desert. He wasn't daft mind.

People were better then. Thats all been lost now and it made us special.

sunlight wrote:I dont mean the bowler hat and umbrella. I mean the way that English people spoke. I much prefer it like we spoke in those old black and white films. But not the cockney thing, not the " Oh there was a right old Bull and Cow going on ", I mean proper English. Shakespeare was the best language of all.

sunlight wrote:I dont know who Danny Dyer is.

boltonbonce wrote:A Chinese friend of mine told me that a few of his relatives back home learned English with the help of BBC radio. 
They used to listen to the old panel show 'Just A Minute'. When they finally visited him over here, most of them sounded like Kenneth Williams.

boltonbonce wrote:World Book Day today. Don't you dare Bob. I'm warning you.