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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
challenging
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Just, huh.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
——Pray reach me my fool’s cap—— I fear you sit upon it, Madam——’tis under the cushion——I’ll put it on——
Bless me! you have had it upon your head this half hour.——
Literally an 18th century social experiment. I have no idea how I feel about this book. I didn't hate it but I also didn't love it. I think if I was alive in 1763 I would have fucked with this heavy. It is a shame I am like, 260 years late to the party. I would have been like Yes Tristram. Fuck the Dutch. If anything this book made me speculate on the kind of life I'd live if I were alive when it was coming out volume-by-volume. This is probably one of the most seriously unserious books to grace this planet. Perhaps the true cock and bull story was the friends we made along the way, &c &c..
Bless me! you have had it upon your head this half hour.——
Literally an 18th century social experiment. I have no idea how I feel about this book. I didn't hate it but I also didn't love it. I think if I was alive in 1763 I would have fucked with this heavy. It is a shame I am like, 260 years late to the party. I would have been like Yes Tristram. Fuck the Dutch. If anything this book made me speculate on the kind of life I'd live if I were alive when it was coming out volume-by-volume. This is probably one of the most seriously unserious books to grace this planet. Perhaps the true cock and bull story was the friends we made along the way, &c &c..
Audible edition. Must be read with some context and other information. Really funny. Sometimes bawdy. Contains many elements that I identify as modern fiction techniques: the author shows himself, the plot sometimes disappears.
Reading this again. Not sure I really appreciated it the first time around.
Couldn't get into it this time. Will try a few years from now.
Couldn't get into it this time. Will try a few years from now.
This is a ridculously amazing book. But it's probably an acquired taste. Sterne has a very erudite style so it can be off-putting if you're not into that eighteenth-century/Restoration/British verbosity. But if you are....
Sterne's book is considered by many to be the first "modern" novel (by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and others) for its creative structuring of time and narrative, and the self-consciously narrative style of Tristram Shandy. He moves easily from talking about his birth, to talking of his conception, to relating stories of his mother's midwife's husband's horse - and it all somehow seems to relate. It's a long work, but it's perfect for reading over a long period of time. The fragmentary nature of the writing makes it perfect for reading in spurts. Despite the fact that it took me a long time to read it (school gets in the way), it's a fast read. I just never gave enough time to read it, but when I would, I would read furiously. The short chapters help in how quickly you get through it.
This is in my list of greatest books ever, but I think the style might require some getting used to - similar to how it's difficult to appreciate all Bob Dylan at first.
Sterne's book is considered by many to be the first "modern" novel (by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and others) for its creative structuring of time and narrative, and the self-consciously narrative style of Tristram Shandy. He moves easily from talking about his birth, to talking of his conception, to relating stories of his mother's midwife's husband's horse - and it all somehow seems to relate. It's a long work, but it's perfect for reading over a long period of time. The fragmentary nature of the writing makes it perfect for reading in spurts. Despite the fact that it took me a long time to read it (school gets in the way), it's a fast read. I just never gave enough time to read it, but when I would, I would read furiously. The short chapters help in how quickly you get through it.
This is in my list of greatest books ever, but I think the style might require some getting used to - similar to how it's difficult to appreciate all Bob Dylan at first.
Beginning. Middle. End. “Hold my beer,” says Laurence Sterne. To quote Steve Coogan from A Cock and Bull Story, Tristram Shandy is way ahead of its time, a post-modern novel before there was a modern to be post about. It’s meant to be about the life and opinions of one T. Shandy, but it’s not until the fourth volume that he enters the world. Before then, we’re introduced to an array of brilliant, eccentric, memorable characters: Walter Shandy, Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Doctor Slop, Susannah, Elizabeth Shandy, Parson Yorrick and Obadiah. Led by Walter (for the most part), they discuss the importance of a name, the importance of a nose and the importance of winding a clock just before you have sex (the opening of Volume 1 is hilarious). Later volumes deal with an older Shandy’s trip to France (echoing the author’s visit to the country due to TB) and the most remarkable love story in fiction: Widow Wadman and Uncle Toby. (Yes, the joke about where Uncle Toby was hit during the War is still funny four centuries later). With all its digressions, piss-takes, and nods to Swift, Cervantes, Burton, Tindall etc, Sterne shows us that our lives, ordinary as they may be, are too complex and rich to be nailed down, threaded with our experiences, but also the experiences of those who conceived us, reared us and influenced us. I’m gonna say it: Tristram Shandy is a masterpiece.
(read book one for uni)
this was a whole lot of everything and nothing all at once. i both loved it and hated it. he is so silly and goofy (never ever thought I would read pages in french about whether baptising a foetus by injection/squirting is theologically sound, or that his father wrote a whole essay about how much he hated the name tristram, but here we are). this had loads of different kinds of texts within it -- matryoshka doll stories, deeds, letters, french medical papers in response to ethical dilemmas, dedications, poems and more. he would also occasionally whack something stylistically in like just a huge black block (???) or a change in font or just 'SHUT THE DOOR'. I loved how the tone and address changes as well. this reminded me a lot of mr palomar. this took SO much energy to read as he just rambles and diverges and uses sentences that are literally half a page long with endless nested clauses, but the narrator says that "digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; - they are the life, the soul of reading! - take them out of this book, for instance - you might as well take the book along with them". he is incredibly decisive and has the reader in a chokehold throughout, dragging them this way and that at his every whim. I both love it and hate it. very neurodivergent literature in terms of how it just absolutely subverts plot, narrative voice, tone, structure, genre and so much more in favour of literal chaos.
this was a whole lot of everything and nothing all at once. i both loved it and hated it. he is so silly and goofy (never ever thought I would read pages in french about whether baptising a foetus by injection/squirting is theologically sound, or that his father wrote a whole essay about how much he hated the name tristram, but here we are). this had loads of different kinds of texts within it -- matryoshka doll stories, deeds, letters, french medical papers in response to ethical dilemmas, dedications, poems and more. he would also occasionally whack something stylistically in like just a huge black block (???) or a change in font or just 'SHUT THE DOOR'. I loved how the tone and address changes as well. this reminded me a lot of mr palomar. this took SO much energy to read as he just rambles and diverges and uses sentences that are literally half a page long with endless nested clauses, but the narrator says that "digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; - they are the life, the soul of reading! - take them out of this book, for instance - you might as well take the book along with them". he is incredibly decisive and has the reader in a chokehold throughout, dragging them this way and that at his every whim. I both love it and hate it. very neurodivergent literature in terms of how it just absolutely subverts plot, narrative voice, tone, structure, genre and so much more in favour of literal chaos.
Absolutely brilliant and almost unthinkably ahead of its time. Considered the father of stream of consciousness writing, this challenging, witty, tangential masterpiece explores the insurmountable unknowability of a person, the futility of truly telling a life's story, and the associative and seemingly random nature of memory and thought. Its format is unconventional for our time, let alone 18th century England-- the book makes abrupt and drastic shifts in time and place, in character, and in writing style, sometimes evolving spontaneously into French or Latin or an entirely visual gag (such as empty black pages when a character dies, empty white pages to describe a polar bear, line drawings to indicate the shape of the plot, etc.). It may at time's test a reader's patience with its absurdity, but Sterne knew exactly what he was doing when he made this beautiful mess. The end result is a hilarious and insightful novel about stories and how impossible really they are.
I read this book more than once in university as part of a literature course. I loved it! A classic book with lots of subtle humour!