Besides The Man who Would Be King this is the only book I've ever just stopped reading abruptly

If this is anything like the Waves you just don't get it and there is nothing challenging about it.

The OP complained about the prose and user challenged that notion.

>Prose requires mastery of language, which is what literature is all about.
Well then, in that case ghetto nigga rappers must be the pinnacle of literature, amirite?

Seriously though, you're objectively wrong. Mastery of language is the prerequisite, not the goal. The goal is carrying across a religious message, especially one that's too sublime to express as non-fiction.

P.S. 'Religion' means any teaching about the meaning of life and man's place in the universe. Most religions are non-theistic.

My fears were correct. Nice job.

The first half of the book is nice. The stream of consciousness is strongest here and the whole family being so close is also nice.

It is a bit odd how the thoughts of the son and the mother go back and forth when thinking about the father but it is interesting. Better than Faulkner for me.

The small middle piece is horrible. Just purple.

The second half is boring. The strength that the first half is gone and I think it is because the stream of consciousness style just...disappears if I remember right. All that is left is a bunch of characters talking about what could have been, and not in a unique way. There are few strong lines though towards the end.

I'm hoping the waves is better since to the lighthouse is the only book I've read from her.

way to project your cromagnon idiocy on everyone else.

ok I wasn't sure before but now it's obvious this was a bait thread, 7/10 OP had me for a sec

Why read Woolf when you can read Proust or Joyce? She pales in comparison to them. Her incredible butthurt at Ulysses shows how jealous she was because it excelled at everything she'd ever attempted to do.

>it excelled at everything she'd ever attempted to do.
Bit of an exaggeration there, mate. Besides the obvious similarities (stream-of-consciousness, general "Modernist" sensibilities), their themes and aims were pretty divergent.

In general, I cannot accept the validity of a criticism whose author didn't finish the work. I can appreciate that you didn't like it at that point in the narrative, found it boring, but you can't talk about "getting it" or "gaining" anything from it if you haven't followed the work to its conclusion. The mechanisms of tension and resolution, which are instrumental to any work of art enjoyed over an extended period of time, are rendered completely ineffective by dropping the work halfway through. And in general, the themes of the novel are only fully evinced once the plot has concluded.

Even ignoring all that though, I would insist that you're just not in the right state of being to enjoy the book, and the defect here, if such a one exists, is in you, rather than the work itself. People forget that art, as opposed to entertainment, is a decidedly two-way experience, and their enjoyment of a work is solely contingent on what they bring to it, and how they bring themselves to it. Read it again when you're in a more patient state of mind; otherwise, don't imply there's nothing to be gained from reading it.

OP the plebtard

It was just boring. Why does thinking a particularly book is boring make me a caveman pleb? You think I set up a shop the literature board on an anonymous imageboard site to go "wow books are hard and boring".

Think I've never read a book before? Have you honestly ever pulled your heads out of your ass for 5 minutes to think why would someone come here, of all places, if they didn't want to read?

Sometimes something can be just too boring for its own good.

What "bored" you about it? Was the prose not beautiful enough for you? Give an example of what you regard as beautiful writing.

joyce is shit and for proust i should stop being lazy and get my french better than it's now

and then i doubt anything of proust would strike me stronger than the waves

I'm going to start Mrs. Dalloway today or tomorrow, it's my first book by Woolf.
What should I expect?

>What should I expect?
ughmm... it's written in english

You know the whole point about TTL is that there's no plot, right?

It's about little snapshots of human experience. How we communicate or fail to communicate with others. What it feels like to be alone.

ah perfect, thanks

I dunno, it just never felt like it was conveying anything of substance. I understand Woolf is more all about human experience and the snapshots of human experience and thought, there's no big momentum going and you're supposed to be able to just enjoy it for what it is but I wasn't able to.

Wallace, Hemingway, Pynchon, hell even Orwell I felt like they were able to give you that but also something more. One moment you were looking at one wheel spin and you then another and you knew they were going to form some greater framework, a bunch of amazing cogs that made up one beautiful functioning element that you couldn't fathom how it would tie in and still be good, but you knew it would.

I don't know if that makes any sense.

i liked the second part where she very casually killed off half the characters

a mother hen clucking over her nestlings

really it's pretty well written though

Joyce is a genius.

You remind me of me trying to read madame bovary at age 15.

No, it does't make sense at all.

Most of the writers you name (Pynchon?) have nothing to do with what Woolf is trying to accomplish.

>Anybody above the age of three can come up with a good plot.

P-please, can you give me some advice? I am terrible with this.