Comments on: Stories by Guy de Maupassant (Introductory Thoughts)

By: Rebecca Reid

Rebecca Reid — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:36:40 +0000

Kim, thanks for your thoughts. I’ll have to see what I think about poetry when I start in on it! I’m undecided as to which I prefer in short stories!

Jessica, I’ll have a list of favorite stories when I’m “finished” with Maupassant!

By: Jessica

Jessica — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:47:51 +0000

Luckily, I enjoy verbose beauty AND concise beauty. It just depends on my mood. If I HAD to choose just one, I would probably choose concise beauty.

I haven’t read any Maupassant, but I’m going to at least sample him based on your reviews.

I rate the books I read on a 5-star scale. I’ll be the first to admit that the system is a little unworkable. It’s hard to compare oranges or apples. Plus, I tend to be a little harder on an author or a book if I’ve been set up to expect greatness (prize winners, classics, etc.). Still, use the rating system to give readers an idea of whether I think they should read the book or not.

I just want to add that your posts are so thought-provoking and fun to read.

By: Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness)

Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:40:55 +0000

I think I like concise beauty more than verbose beauty, although like other people have said it depends a lot on the author. I think I’m more drawn to conciseness in poetry — Billy Collins, an American poet, uses really simple and particular words as he writes, and I really admire how much he meaning can attach to a single word in a poem. I tend to dislike poets like T.S. Eliot, who I think is very verbose, probably because I find the poetry a little tedious.

By: Rebecca Reid

Rebecca Reid — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:26:45 +0000

Amanda, I don’t think I’m going to read all of them either! I’ll just read Maupassant until I get bored. I’ll have a post in probably two weeks with my favorites. I like the idea of up and down and side to side ratings!

Literate Housewife: The interesting thing about Maupassant is that while his stories often are about sex and prostitutes and such, they have little sex in them. If only modern-day writers could take that lesson to heart: it is possible to write about sex (as they say, “sex sells”) and still not make it gratuitous!

Not having a reference point for rating my reading is also my problem. I don’t know where to start. Nothing would get a perfect score because everything has some problem with it! And yet, almost everything has something good too!

By: Literate Housewife

Literate Housewife — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:02:56 +0000

Oh, and that would be concise beauty for me. I’m reading Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin right now and there have been more paragraphs that run more than two pages long than I can count. I’m not loving that at all.

By: Literate Housewife

Literate Housewife — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:01:42 +0000

This is a wonderful post! I’ve never read Maupassant before, but my tolerance for sex in a book is completely dependent upon the novel. What might be considered gratuitous to me in one place might go completely unnoticed in another. Does that make sense?

I don’t rate my reviews on my blog. I have a hard time doing that because I’m not sure what I’m rating them against. Against my ultimate novel ever? Against other books in the same category? I just write what I feel at the time and leave it at that.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 23:01:09 +0000

I’ve never wanted to read Maupassant before, but you make him sound interesting. Probably won’t read the entirety of him short stories, though.

I don’t rate books - I’d be way too picky on the details, I’d need an up and down and side to side rating system, haha!

And in general, I prefer concise beauty, rather than poetic.

By: Rebecca Reid

Rebecca Reid — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 03:50:40 +0000

Eva, Yes, he wrote “The Necklace,” which I enjoyed. I wouldn’t call it his best, although it is the most well-known. Thanks for explaining how you “rate” books. I still don’t think I’ll be trying to rate my reads, but that does make sense.

By: Eva

Eva — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:33:09 +0000

Is he the one who wrote “The Necklace”?

I love verbose and concise beauty, as long as there’s beauty involved. I’m in the middle of Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence right now and the verbose way that man plays with words is intoxicating. Then there’s someone like Ishiguro, who has a ‘plain’ style that completely enchants me with its quietness.

On my ‘books read’ list, I do give between one and five stars to each book I finish. It’s not at all scientific though, and it’s not a comparative system. It’s how that isolated reading experience was. So I gave five stars to War and Peace and to Wicked Lovely, which is a YA urban fanasy book, because they were both wonderful, wonderful reading experiences that I want to re-live. Make sense?