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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
My fourth time through. Maybe I'll read it again in a few years. "Maybe"? Who am I kidding?
I‘ve always been reluctant to read this (beyond the mandatory reading I had to do) in part because I was intimidated and in part because it seemed „too religious“ to me - even when I learned about Satan as this tragic figure etc. But recently a couple of things persuaded me to give it another shot: 1. I am teaching Frankenstein, 2. colleagues told me that they love <i>Paradise Lost</i> (colleagues, in this cotext, equals “friends who do the same thing as me”). I don’t trust everyone’s taste, but I’m willing to give everything a shot they say they love. And, surprisingly or not, I actually had a pretty decent time with this one. I‘m firmly persuaded by the Satan line of the argument (how can you avoid a thing for being evil if you don’t have an understanding form what „good“ or „evil“ is? I agree that blindly and ignorantly following orders does not seem appealing or good, tbh. And I even understand that Satan was being a bit of a hissy-fit-throwing, angry child when God announced that he has a favourite creation - but also that God was being very human by having a favourite creation in the first place, especially one that then has to be paraded in front of everyone else.), which is quite fun to me. Though I, personally, could have done away with the last 2 books or so.
Two days from now, i.e. 3rd of November 2020, I will have finished this book, or at least partially. I only have to read the books ( book 1, 2, 4 and 9) selected by my professor. But Jesus Christ, this is hard to read. I am following along with an audiobook, which I normally never do. But in this case, it will be the only way to get through this book (on time). I hope I will revisit Paradise Lost at a later point in my life and then, hopefully, enjoy it to the fullest.
Got the audiobook in a giveaway. Not for me.
Nothing I've read before has brought so near the splendor of Eden.
What can I say. It's a poem and it's 400 pages long. By the time I got to the end I was speechless. I would recommend the book to anybody who is interested in the Christian creation story, and anybody who likes poetry at all.
3.5 stars. The language in this was really dense. I had to read and re-read this/listen to this and then look up analyses and chapter breakdowns in addition to explanations of the many allusions. So it was a lot more work than most books I read/listen to. But it was a great discussion and one of the most interesting things we talked about is how entangled the vision of Heaven, Hell, Satan and the Battle in Heaven have become with not just literature, but Christianity. In particular, many of the people in our group are either actively or grew up LDS and part of their doctrine involves the War in Heaven and seems to have influenced their ideas about Satan and the Garden of Eden. I'm definitely glad to have read it, but it will be a while before I pick it up again.
challenging
slow-paced