I am trying to get into reading and I started with Brave New World, I have been reading the book for a year and have about 60 pages remaining. Before anyone mentions I am aware it is a small book that can be finished in a week, I am not used to reading. I normally read short stories, comics, and manga. I finshed the machine stops quickly, but I couldn’t get into Brave New World, it has a lot of boring parts.
After finishing Brave New World should I read the Tempest, the main character made me interested in the story. I only read one other shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet the sparksnote version, it was great.
I am always a little surprised that people are so keen to ‘read’ the plays. People don’t seem to have a similar desire to read film scripts.
To me, the obvious thing to do would be to watch a performance. There are plenty available online and, depending on where you live, stage performances are not too hard to find.
Reading it without seeing a performance lacks about 90% of the impact, I’d say. Reading it AFTER you see a perfomance is another matter: then you can pull out the language and take a deeper dive, but see a performance first.
Heavy disagree here. It has been completely normal to read plays since forever, many dramatists were aware that their texts will be read - extremely obviously in dramatic texts from late 19th c. until today, and it has even been speculated that the variants in the early editions of Shakespeare’s plays are a result of him writing one version for reading and the other one, slightly simplified, for performance. Shakespeare himself most definitely read plays (e.g. the influence of Seneca is obvious in Titus Andronicus, and I don’t believe anyone was performing his works back in the 17th c.; Seneca is also believed by some to have intended his plays primarily for reading as well).
As for the experience/impact itself, that’s very subjective but I have been as affected emotionally and intellectually by plays as any other sort of literary writing. And if you read plays, you don’t rely on what the local theaters decide to produce and how they decide to do it - modernised, cut up, badly or well performed…, with the repertoire limited in language and culture of origin. (And I don’t mean this to be a criticism of theater, it’s just a different beast, a different art form. A lot of interesting contemporary theater doesn’t have a dramatic text as its basis at all…)
If something has a diminished impact, it’s recorded performances - they’re useful as documents and awkward (IMO - unwatchable) as films, I’ve no idea how people can enjoy them.
Movie novelizations and published screenplays used to be a lot more popular when I was a kid. I read lots of movies, from Adventures in Babysitting (novel) to Raiders of the Lost Ark (screenplay). And we used to pass around Monty Python scripts like .mp4s.
Since English isn’t my first language my opinion isn’t worth much. Anyway - I would consider Huxley to be much easier to digest than Shakespear. First because of the language, 2nd becase reading a play is IMO more challenging than reading a “regular” novel. It might depend on how “modernized” your version of The Tempest is going to be, but if I was in the process of building my reading habbit, I might aim for slightly lower hanging fruit.
The first book I’ve ever read in English was Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. The first “ebook” I’ve read (those days it was one looong hard to navigate txt file) was the Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy. I loved both.
I would recommend reading The Hobbit! It is structured to be very accessible, without all the grinding through pages of descriptive prose like in the rest of Tolkien’s works. I think The Hobbit is his best book by far, and it’s certainly his most readable book for people who are not yet strong readers. It’s intended to be accessible to children, but I certainly would not call it a children’s book. It’s quite sophisticated if you want to look for depth but it’s very interesting and exciting on the surface level as well.
Right now I am reading Peter Pan to my partner. I’ve never read it before and it’s delightful so far.
You don’t have to finish every book you start.
It’s easier to read books you enjoy than books you don’t.
These are free science fiction ebooks that are sorted by length. Start small and gradually build up to longer works.
Since they are free, you won’t feel an obligation to finish them if you do not enjoy them.
https://standardebooks.org/subjects/science-fiction?sort=length
What else are you interested in?
Fantasy, sci-fi, romance, etc
The tempest is fine. I find it was successful getting back into reading when I started reading something I was nerdy about. So I started with sanderson and it just hooked me.
I had not had that experience with Shakespeare.
I honestly don’t like romance, but I liked Romeo and Juliet. So I guess it depends on the story, but I mainly lean towards sci-fi and fantasy.
Some books read: Animal Farm, The Machine Stops, Around the world in 80 Days, And The hunger games book 1.
Try mistborn, or the hobbit, or project hail mary
I honestly don’t like romance, but I liked Romeo and Juliet.
That actually makes sense. Romeo and Juliet isn’t really a romance. It’s a tragedy. People just think it’s a romance because the main characters think they’re in love. I normally don’t recommend reading Shakespeare’s plays as they are much easier to follow when performed. But if you read and enjoyed Romeo and Juliet, you may enjoy The Tempest too. The Tempest is a comedy, rather than a romance or tragedy, if that matters.
Since you like sci-fi and fantasy, I would second the recommendation of reading The Hobbit. It is fairly easy reading and a good story. For more modern material in the sci-fi vein, you might enjoy Leviathan Wakes by S. A. Corey. I found it to be straight forward reading with a good story and engaging characters. Like the Hunger Games book you mentioned, it is also the first book in a series. If you enjoy it, there are another 8 books in the Expanse series.
Another reason I recommend Leviathan Wakes is that it is more modern than many of the books you mentioned. While the books you listed are good (The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster is amazing!) they can be a bit of effort to read because of outdated terminology and older writing styles. It occurred to me that more modern titles might be a better option for you because the writing style could be closer to what you are used to with comics and manga.
Here’s some random sci fi recommendations:
The Foundation trilogy
Pandora’s Star (and the sequel Judas Unchained)
Starship Troopers (nothing like the movie, but the movie is great also)
Dune (starts pretty slowly but if you can make it through that, it’s amazing)
I, Robot
On Shakespeare, it’s REALLY hard to read, because SO much of it is dependent on understanding the politics and context of the time it was written. I think another poster recommended reading a script with footnotes - to me that’s a minimum. Shakespeare is AMAZING if you take the time to actually study why it’s so amazing. Most people who read it are introduced to it in a language arts class in middle school or sometime, they hate it, and never go back. There’s so many freaking hilarious or just plain clever parts of his plays, he was a freaking genius, but it’s lost to history unless you seek it out.
It’s like people 500 years in the future trying to watch South Park, or Saturday Night Live. It will make no sense to them, like at all.
It’s not the same, but have you considered listening to audio books? They’re a great way to absorb books at first if you’re not a huge reader. You can pair them with the physical book so that if you start to lose motivation you can switch to the audio book in the car or something and keep yourself hooked.
yes… but I’m biased because it’s my favorite Shakespeare
How would you start reading it? I have tried a few sentences it is hard to grasp. I get the gest that they are in a storm, but it is still confusing.
I think others have suggested this, but you could use a site like Sparknotes if you need help. There might even be some youtube videos out there that help clarify things.
If you aren’t used to reading, jumping into Shakespeare is like “So I’m not really good at swimming, I think I’ll start with the English Channel.” :)
The Tempest, even for Shakespeare, is challenging.
Plus, reading a play is a completely different skill set than reading prose. The Sparks Notes versions give you an overall feel of the characters and plot, but narratively it’s very different from reading a play.
So here’s what I’d do… You need to work up to Shakespeare.
First you need to get used to reading, then you need to get used to reading plays, then you need to get used to Elizabethan English, then you can tackle Shakespeare.
Start with something light like Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, or Taming of the Shrew, and work up from there.
Edit My wife also notes, Shakespeare wasn’t meant to be read, it was meant to be spoken aloud.
Check youtube for “Redneck Shakespeare” for people making it accessible.
Don’t feel obligated to finish books you aren’t keen on, as seems to be the case with Brave New World. Have you given Light Novels a go? Plenty of manga and anime (Mushoku Tensei immediately springs to mind as one) came from those roots.
I have read light novel before, but all of them are clichéd so I drop them after 20 to 50 chapters. As for Mushoku Tensei I am not going anywhere near it, the main character is an awful person. I do read a lot of manga, I am trying to get into normal novels. I want to start with the classics for example the brothers Karamazov.
You didn’t ask, but I really love:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poe's_Tales_of_Mystery_and_Imagination/A_Descent_into_the_Maelstrom
This is among Poe’s several stories that are now considered proto-scifi. I recall one where a balloonist becomes the first person to reach the moon, and I was fascinated when I read it as a kid.
Sure.
Seaech The Pirate Bay for ‘BBC Shakespeare’ for the performance.
