Scan barcode
linorris_'s review against another edition
adventurous
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Vaya libro. Un clásico que bebe muchísimo de Cervantes y Rabelais, da la vuelta a todo y, desde la Ilustración radical del barón d'Holbach, se caga en todos y le da igual decirlo. Como todas las bromas que son graciosas por ser anti-todo de manera autoconsciente, esta acaba siendo pesada al final, pero no deja de ser una maravilla de leer. Me ha costado pillarle el ritmo, pero cuando lo he hecho, ha sido una auténtica gozada.
blairmahoney's review against another edition
5.0
Unquestionably a hugely influential book, one of those outliers in the history of literature, written by someone who didn't care for the conventions of the novel and how they should be approached. A precursor to postmodernism a few centuries before it happened and a masterpiece of the digressive arts.
rkaufman13's review against another edition
5.0
I don't give many books five stars. But oh my god, if ever a book deserved 5 (or more), this would be it.
I could not stop laughing while reading this. Even though most of my reading is done in the early morning hours while I commute to work via train, and I'm usually too sleepy to really appreciate a good book, I could NOT stop laughing.
This is not an easy book, and I found myself wishing for my English teacher so he could explain some of the jokes (I totally missed the first joke about the clock the first time around), but I was also impressed with myself for understanding as much as I did.
Plus, the book isn't *all* silly. Sterne mangles words in a brilliant way to sort of conflate the sign with the meaning--heady stuff. The only stuff I didn't completely love were the overly sentimental scenes, but my edition notes in the introduction that the Victorians felt Sterne ruined his sentimentality by throwing in humor. How quickly culture changes.
Mostly, though, I loved the book for its humor. I think I scared my boyfriend last night while cracking up in the last few pages at the amours of Toby and Widow Wadman.
Seriously, you can't read this book and not laugh, no matter how straight-laced you are.
I could not stop laughing while reading this. Even though most of my reading is done in the early morning hours while I commute to work via train, and I'm usually too sleepy to really appreciate a good book, I could NOT stop laughing.
This is not an easy book, and I found myself wishing for my English teacher so he could explain some of the jokes (I totally missed the first joke about the clock the first time around), but I was also impressed with myself for understanding as much as I did.
Plus, the book isn't *all* silly. Sterne mangles words in a brilliant way to sort of conflate the sign with the meaning--heady stuff. The only stuff I didn't completely love were the overly sentimental scenes, but my edition notes in the introduction that the Victorians felt Sterne ruined his sentimentality by throwing in humor. How quickly culture changes.
Mostly, though, I loved the book for its humor. I think I scared my boyfriend last night while cracking up in the last few pages at the amours of Toby and Widow Wadman.
Seriously, you can't read this book and not laugh, no matter how straight-laced you are.
tdsump's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
bubbleybrain's review against another edition
1.0
Why did my friend "gift" this to me? Why am I friends with them at all. What terrible people for giving me this book. FYI, I made it through half of it and couldn't read anymore after being bored to tears. I can see why Laurence Sterne self-published this. (Yes, originally self-published. Thanks 'Forward' for explaining that even back in the 18th century, it was too garbage for publishers back then and its existence was partially designed to troll the public and be a flippant remark to society at large. It's basically self-insert criticisms.)
The plot itself is light, and not expansive. And while the English and its perspectives is older, and bit harder to enjoy for my tastes... what really killed it was this was the author's thinly-veiled attempt at also marketing the sermons he published. For over 20 pages, one of the characters literally reads a sermon diatribe that fell out of another book, verbatim. The book is a lecture, within a lecture, failing to get anywhere. The whole idea that it's novel that the character isn't even born for the first few chapters, as if we as readers should marvel at the absurdity, is not interesting. The marvel here is how anyone can enjoy it.
The plot itself is light, and not expansive. And while the English and its perspectives is older, and bit harder to enjoy for my tastes... what really killed it was this was the author's thinly-veiled attempt at also marketing the sermons he published. For over 20 pages, one of the characters literally reads a sermon diatribe that fell out of another book, verbatim. The book is a lecture, within a lecture, failing to get anywhere. The whole idea that it's novel that the character isn't even born for the first few chapters, as if we as readers should marvel at the absurdity, is not interesting. The marvel here is how anyone can enjoy it.
horsehighpriestess's review against another edition
challenging
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
daja57's review against another edition
5.0
This is a classic of English Literature, written between 1759 and 1767, whose fame rests mostly on the fact that it is so surreal. It is the ur-novel of the 'stream of consciousness' style and is marked by digressions within digressions ("This is neither here nor there - why do I mention it? - Ask my pen, - it governs me, - I govern not it."; 6.6; on the other hand "There is nothing in this world I abominate worse, than to be interrupted in a story." 7.1, but this book is all interruptions!) and by transcending the form of the novel, using blank (and black) chapters, and squiggles; it contains passages in other languages and (a few) footnotes. The Author's Preface is in volume three chapter 20!
It isn't easy to read! The speech of characters is sometimes juxtaposed and interleaved to the extent that it is sometimes difficult to know who is talking. Many of the narrator's digressions (and there are many) deal with philosophical and religious issues current in the middle of the eighteenth century which I needed explaining through the usually excellent notes to the Penguin Classics edition. Similarly, although it is famed as a bawdy book, full of double-entendres, many of these were lost on me; who knew, for example, that 'cabbage-planting' was a rude expression?
Just working out what was going on was a strain. "When a man is telling a story in the strange way I do mine, he is obliged continually to be going backwards and forwards to keep all tight together in the reader's fancy." (6.33) But the continual going backwards and forwards made it difficult for me to keep track.
The plot of the first two volumes revolves mostly around the gestation and birth of the protagonist whose nose is damaged by the forceps used by male midwife Dr Slop and whose name is misunderstood as Tristram because the maid Susannah, taking him to be baptised, can't remember his father's chosen name of Trismegistus. Later volumes include a journey from Calais to Avignon, and the amours of Tristram's Uncle Toby (an ex-soldier who spends most of his time talking about the campaigns in which he was involved before being injured in the groin).
The characters include Tristram, the (initially not-yet-born) narrator, his father and mother, his Uncle Toby, Dr Slop, Corporal Trim, Obadiah and Susannah.
It's influences include Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes, The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais and works by satirist Jonathan Swift, poet Alexander Pope, essayist Montaigne, and philosopher John Locke. I have read very few of these authors and so I was unable to appreciate the borrowings (sometimes amounting to plagiarism) or the satire.
The modernist 'stream of consciousness' writers such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf were clearly influenced by Sterne's style.
To sum up, I found it very hard going. But who says a classic should be easy?
It isn't easy to read! The speech of characters is sometimes juxtaposed and interleaved to the extent that it is sometimes difficult to know who is talking. Many of the narrator's digressions (and there are many) deal with philosophical and religious issues current in the middle of the eighteenth century which I needed explaining through the usually excellent notes to the Penguin Classics edition. Similarly, although it is famed as a bawdy book, full of double-entendres, many of these were lost on me; who knew, for example, that 'cabbage-planting' was a rude expression?
Just working out what was going on was a strain. "When a man is telling a story in the strange way I do mine, he is obliged continually to be going backwards and forwards to keep all tight together in the reader's fancy." (6.33) But the continual going backwards and forwards made it difficult for me to keep track.
The plot of the first two volumes revolves mostly around the gestation and birth of the protagonist whose nose is damaged by the forceps used by male midwife Dr Slop and whose name is misunderstood as Tristram because the maid Susannah, taking him to be baptised, can't remember his father's chosen name of Trismegistus. Later volumes include a journey from Calais to Avignon, and the amours of Tristram's Uncle Toby (an ex-soldier who spends most of his time talking about the campaigns in which he was involved before being injured in the groin).
The characters include Tristram, the (initially not-yet-born) narrator, his father and mother, his Uncle Toby, Dr Slop, Corporal Trim, Obadiah and Susannah.
It's influences include Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes, The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais and works by satirist Jonathan Swift, poet Alexander Pope, essayist Montaigne, and philosopher John Locke. I have read very few of these authors and so I was unable to appreciate the borrowings (sometimes amounting to plagiarism) or the satire.
The modernist 'stream of consciousness' writers such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf were clearly influenced by Sterne's style.
To sum up, I found it very hard going. But who says a classic should be easy?
brisingr's review against another edition
Skim read this for one of my exams (it's in two days, keep me in your good thoughts).
While I found the book to be too large and too boring, that's exactly the point and I can appreciate the writing techniques that Laurence Sterne uses and that set him so apart from his contemporaries.
While I found the book to be too large and too boring, that's exactly the point and I can appreciate the writing techniques that Laurence Sterne uses and that set him so apart from his contemporaries.