Natalia’s Comments (group member since Sep 19, 2016)

Natalia’s comments from the Overdue Podcast group.

Jordan wrote: "I know Craig & Andrew have done a podcast episode on Pygmalion, but I haven't had a chance to go back yet and listen to it, so I don't know how they felt about it. I remember ABSOLUTELY LOVING it t..."

I remember feeling that way after reading C.S. Lewis years later. I had loved it as a kid, blind to the Christian under (and over)tones of the books in his Narnia series. I had a similar experience with Orson Scott Card, who I read before I found out about his homophobic feelings, and also before I realized just how sort of...mentally masturbatory so many of his books end up being, and how his women are basically robots. I think that's part of the beauty of books, though. You never read the same story twice because you aren't the same anymore. It's sad but also beautiful in a fragile sort of way.

I started with books I already knew and was interested to hear opinions on, and then I started venturing into books I had started but hadn't finished yet, for whatever reason, and now I am poking around some books I have either wanted to read or never heard of. It's been an interesting bag and I am most impressed by how they seem to know when to reveal the ending or not. For Tuck Everlasting, they do reveal the ending (because that isn't as important as the rest of it) but they didn't for Johannes Cabal, because that's part of the whole point of reading the story. I trust them to treat the material with sensitivity, even when they're joking, and to talk about it from a reader's perspective so I'm starting to listen to ones about books I have more active feelings for because I think it'll work out. Plus they have a really quirky perspective on some of the books that has nothing to do with the English Lit background I have, so it's fascinating to hear them talk about it from a purely reader, just looked something up on Wiki, perspective.

Oh man, where to start. I was one of those kids that always wanted to read the book before watching the movie, or immediately read the book if I had seen and loved the movie, so I could compare them. I read Howl's Moving Castle right before they made a movie for it, the Harry Potter books, the Hunger Game Books, Twilight books, Swiss Family Robinson (the movie was far superior), Spooksville (only noting it because they started a TV series about it a few years ago), the Shining (book was amazing, far superior to the movie), V for Vendetta (that was a weird comic), The Count of Monte Cristo (movie also came out weirdly right after I read it), the Three Musketeers, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons (Christmas presents for my dad), Me Before You (haven't watched the movie though and I was curious about the controversy), Pride and Prejudice, Princess Diaries, Stardust, American Gods (CANNOT WAIT), and so many more. I find it fascinating to see how some people take the same story and tell it in different ways. The podcast for Wizard of Oz summed up what I expect from a movie adaptation well, in that it takes the best of the book and adapts what works for it in a movie while keeping the essence of the story. Part of me still wants the exact replica of the books, as in Harry Potter nerdiness like forgotten lines and eye colors, but in the end, the essence of the story is the most important.

It's an interesting question that has a lot of interesting side-quests of information to go through. My first thought was that part of what I think an education in English should include is context for these stories. Part of what makes them stand up to modern day, I think, is how grounded in their time they are. Reading them and expecting the same reaction through a different plot doesn't seem to be feasible, because our circumstances are so different from when the books were written. I get that a lot from reading things like Oliver Twist or To Kill a Mockingbird. So the context question is very important, in that, should we be reading these books in a vacuum (in a classroom where the teacher explains what to think), or does independent reading necessitate additional research and reading to fully understand some of these concepts and ideas? Sometimes, discussing books is far more interesting than the stories themselves. At the same time, there are other stories that do just fine and stand up to the test of time. Frankenstein is one of those that I think stands up really well, as does most of Jane Austen. Some of the language and way they go about solving their problems might be different but they still have similar thought processes, thoughts and fears that society still seems to give weight to. I don't know, I think it's interesting to get a snapshot of the world as it was at the time of its writing. I do remember reading an article at one point talking about how a rash of YA suddenly had the teenagers in the stories listening to 80s music because the writers had grown up in the 80s, but that the modern YA readers were much younger and confused about it. I think the snapshots might still exist, just not as deeply studied as the older classics that have survived.