Literary Blog Hop

We haven't participated in a blog-hop for months now but we couldn't resist taking part in The Blue Bookcases literary hop. Even if you have no interest in participating its worth checking out the other links just to look at other blogs which come under this category.

The question for the blog hop is;

Please highlight one of your favourite books and why you would consider it "literary."

Of course this question only brings up the further question of what is literary. My source of all knowledge Wikipedia classifies literary as 'focusing more on style, psychological depth, and character, the plot may or may not be important. Mainstream commercial fiction focuses more on narrative and plot'.

That sounds about right although I did like someone's answer on yahoo answers who said 'a book is classed as literary when its on the spark-notes website'. Chris even joked that he classifies something as literary when he finds it hard to read.

On that note we have both listed our most hardest book that we liked. A book that despite being sometimes difficult was in fact worth it in the end.

Jess's choice

The Turn of the Screw



The hardest book I have read is actually Moby Dick but I couldn't finish it (and not did I like it) so this is my choice. Ok so this one is a stupidly short one but believe me it felt as times like I was taking on a 500 page epic. The writing I found flowery and heavy and was not what I would consider an easy read. After saying that, I found parts of it quite creepy and I enjoyed the overall story of the governess as she looks after two slightly odd and possibly demonic children.

Chris's Choice

Lord of the Rings



Technically this is cheating since the book is, in fact, a trilogy; The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King all written by J.R Tolkien. To be fair my copy is all together in one book so I guess it's not cheating too badly.

I found the book challenging for numerous reasons but the most obvious would be its sheer size. At 1216 pages it isn't exactly short and took me some months to drag myself through. The depth of the story and the characters in it are breathtaking. I'm sure there is no book like it in the world. Unfortunately there are a lot of characters and it became quite difficult to remember them all, particularly as none of them are found in the English language. At points it felt like entire chapters were dedicated to describing a landscape or a castle which isn't the kind of writing I appreciate. I stuck with it because it is such a wonderful and exciting book and Tolkien really did have the ability to transport the reader to another place. I loved 'The Hobbit' (a much shorter book) and had to know how the adventure would end. Hopefully some day my son will allow me to read it to him at bedtime but until then I doubt I'll have the courage to attempt it again.