What I don’t understand is why anyone would want to own or read The Mystery of Edwin Drood or The Love of the Last Tycoon. These unfinished masters are best left alone just as it’s wasteful listening to a rough uncut demo from a rock band; this is not the polished diamond of official recordings. Schubert’s unfinished symphony is another case in point. Only two movements long (personally I think one movement is enough but that’s another story) it doesn’t last the formal distance. These incomplete bodies of work leave too many questions dangling as to their ending. It can be
Boadicea's Chariot 
Some creature tried to finish Jane Austen’s last work of which there were only a couple of chapters started.
Abysmal rubbish, best left unfinished for the aficionados delectation!
Tend to agree about Edwin Drood!
I’ve seen The Last Tycoon film but I’m not sure how close to the partial book it is. As for Austen, I don’t think her books are for me. Nothing much happens in them, does it?
Reading my Times digital subscription today (two months left) there’s an op-ed about a face change to the five pound note. The writer of the article is advocating Jane Austen. Though the smart money is on Churchill.
Austen is not for most men or women either of this day and age. As you say, not a lot happens, it generally is how it does or doesn’t happen. Subtle irony, delicate waspishness, early feminism and a pen more suited to be a razor. I re read them and find them funnier every time I read them.
I do wish they would leave the bloody currency alone, what is the point of keep on changing the bloody face? Total waste of money as usual and a few more bob in some civil servant’s pocket. Puke making. Frankly who gives a damn who is on the note? You either have a walletful or you don’t, the quantity whereof being far more germane than the bloody design!! Have to admit I have no idea what face is on any of the notes in my purse and that includes USA, Canada and UK currency. I never bother to turn them in, just keep them till the next trip, never bother to look at them either.
JW, sorry to see your end is dangling too. is it a case of
Completely agree with you about Edwin Drood. If a work is unfinished, it lacks any real substance, in my view. I have read all of Dickens except for that last which I cannot bring myself to do. As for Austen, I enjoyed her books, though I am not sure that I would put them in the same league as Dickens. Having recently acquired a Kindle, I am thoroughly enjoying Trollope, downloaded foc from the Gutenberg project, interspersed with a bit of P G Wodehouse. The latter was a genius. I have also downloaded Wuthering Heights which I have not read since my O’Level year. I used to be able to recite long passages by heart. I wonder if I will enjoy it as much this time round.
Just re read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I found it improved upon acquaintance of a few decades!
Sipu has Kindled. This is a monumental day. It’s the same as Dylan going electric.
In all seriousness I find I can read a fiction book on a Kindle faster than I would a paperback. Without needing to turn pages or worry about breaking the spine (books need treated with care) scrolling using the side button makes huge chunks of the book pass in no time. Non-fiction books are more troublesome. It’s a pain flicking back to re-check something and maps, family trees etc. usually don’t fit on the one page of the screen.
Good morning CO. I have never read either of the youngest Ms Bronte’s novels, but will now do so.
TR, I agree that it is easier to read on a Kindle. My only complaint is that the screen is a bit too small for the larger fonts that I find myself using. You only get half a page which requires too frequent ‘page turning’, but I am sure I will get used to it.
Incidentally the Kindle was a birthday gift and the first useful present I have had in many, many years. I was given a pair of tartan trews a few years back. Without wishing to appear ungrateful or to be looking a gift horse in the mouth, I have to wonder how anybody thought that such a garment would enhance my sartorial image here in southern Africa.
Not too sure it would be much of a man’s book! As a novel it is overwhelming in its passion. It is a sublimation and wish transference fulfillment of the life she never lived. and had no chance of having. Poor thing was dead well before 30 of TB. Have you ever been to Haworth? My aunt lived near there so I went that way often as a child. a more bleak and soul destroying place would be hard to find. Evidently the town increased in size in Victorian times somewhat exponentially, the water and the sewage were extended and interchangeable, net result most of the denizens of the town died of extremely high rates of cholera and/or TB.
The Brontes father, the vicar, outlived all of his 4 children!
I suppose age gives one more patience and sympathy with such literature. I no longer read for the story so to speak.
If I had to rely on electronic books I would never read again! Nearly all the books I read I have owned for thirty years or so. Interesting to watch them age and decay, (just like their owner!) No substitute for turning the pages. One finds interesting old bills and notes etc in books. The libraries round here are full of books that would be better off burnt. There is a great demand for ‘Christian’ fiction, badly written, trite nonsense of no value whatsoever or books about dogs that talk! Beyond!!!
Re the tartan trews, were you stoned in the streets?
Good morning Christina. I have never been to Haworth. In fact I have visited very few places north of Watford and south of the Grampians. As I mentioned we studied Wuthering Heights for O’Level and I recall the bleak atmosphere conveyed in that book which must have been very familiar to all the Brontes. Theirs does seem to have been a tragic existence.
I heartily concur with your sentiment about not reading for the story (if saying so does not put lie to my refusal to read Edwin Drood on the basis that the story is incomplete). When I first really got into Dickens, about 20 years ago, Bleak House lay by my bed for over a year, remaining stubbornly unread beyond the first hundred or so pages. And then one day I decided to take the bit between my teeth and began again from the beginning. This time the words mesmerised me. I think the opening pages of that book are truly sublime. I was hooked. And yet, the story itself is almost destroyed by an overwhelmingly foolish decision to kill off one of the villains in a most extraordinary unlikely way. What the Dickens was he thinking!
‘Can You Forgive Her?’ is the first of the ‘Palliser’ novels by Trollope. The story itself is long and convoluted and not exactly thrilling, but it does provide a wonderful insight into the life of Victorian society and is beautifully written and frequently witty. I have to say that I think that for all their venality, double standards and iniquities Victorian values were often much better than those embraced by modern society. It is curious to note the details Trollope gives to his description of a hunt. He writes as if his readership must fully understand the intricacies of such an event and yet, even assuming that only the privileged classes would read his work, I can’t imagine that the majority of them would have actually hunted themselves or would have known anything about the sport. In that case they would, I am sure be have been fearfully confused by it all. But perhaps his audience was more targeted than I imagined or the general population did follow the sport with more enthusiasm than I give them credit for.
As for electronic readers, my problem is that I hate possessions. They are a burden to me. While I love visiting the houses of other people and browsing through their bookshelves, I like my own house to be sparse and free from clutter. The Kindle provides me with unlimited reading and zero clutter.
So, you can see why trews would not really be my cup of tea. Thankfully I was not stoned in the streets, but I was slightly stoned when, wearing them at a ball in Cape Town, I picked up a very pretty lady who found them intriguing. So perhaps they have their merits.
Anyway, that is enough pretentious drivel for one day.
I thoroughly understand hatred of possessions.
I have crossed the Atlantic with a full household five times and have the rule that it all must fit in only one container!
My copies of the Palliser novels were a victim of #4 move!! Try the videos, they are excellent.
Ironically I now live surrounded by possessions as spousal unit is a pack rat. AARRGH!