Persuasion

What Hacker News says

1. dave333Feb 2022
   Chronologically starting with children's:

   Swallows and Amazon series. Stranger in a Strange Land, The Man In The Maze, Tau Zero, Asimovs Foundation series. All Jane Austen's work: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Northhanger Abbey.

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2. handrousMay 2021
   Austen's Persuasion is easily my favorite of her novels, and I believe it's understood to have been not just a polish-edit away from ready for publication, but one or two content and punch-up passes, too (which reveals to me that I probably don't really like the stuff she added to her other books in that stage).
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3. hc-tawayMar 2021
   I think it depends on where you're coming from—like, what do you already read? Romance? Sci-fi? Fantasy? Contemporary adventure fiction? Young adult (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, et c.)?

   There are a couple kinds of classics: there are adventure stories that have endured, and there are books that are considered outstanding literature. There's some overlap in these categories, but there are plenty which are definitely in one category but not the other.

   There are some difficulties that accompany classics: 1) quality of translation, if not in a language you can read; 2) "old" language, if in one you can (also a problem in translations, actually, especially public-domain ones), 3) they take place in times that are alien enough that they're harder to understand now than they were originally, and 4) in the case of "literary" works, what one may be expected to appreciate about them is... not always the same sort of thing one may expect to appreciate about, say, a Tom Clancy novel. For most people it takes time to really get that, and begin to enjoy it.

   Research and advice can help with #1, and one must get used to the idea that one may read a book once and hate it, but read it again in another translation and love it, and anyway, it's not a problem for everything, just works in translation. Exposure and practice are what get you through #2 and #4, precisely like getting into a new genre of music (especially one that's considered hard to appreciate, like, say, jazz or classical music, but hell, hip-hop's dense AF and takes time to really get, too). #3, exposure helps (as you pick up more about various cultures and time periods) but you've really gotta get comfortable with annotated editions and seeking extra material outside the book you're trying to read.

   So, I'd say entry-level depends on the kind of classic, and where you're coming from.

   Adventure-classic? For a native English speaker? Easy recommendation for King Solomon's Mines. It's great, it's pulpy, it's not terribly long, it's... weirdly modern in some ways? The language isn't old enough to be hard to read. Delightful, even in 2021.

   Adventure-classic + literature? The Odyssey. Easy. If you find verse hard to read, just get a prose translation. Bonus: try to appreciate the so-called "Telemachy" (a few "books" [chapters] about Telemachus looking for his father, but mostly just drinking with his dad's old acquaintances). You'll be on your way to appreciating the more literary-side of classics if you can find enjoyment in that part.

   You a sci-fi reader and want to learn to appreciate more literary things? Bradbury. Lots. Of. Bradbury. When you're loving his "boring" stories, you've made it.

   Everyone who likes romance seems to get into Austen just fine, so that's easy. If you bounce off the more popular ones, try Persuasion. It's very short and, I gather, didn't get a "polishing" edit/rewrite pass from Austen so it reads differently from the others. Maybe stretch into Isak Dinesen's short stories? Not romance, exactly, but I think it'd do the job.

   I'm garbage at fantasy, so I'll leave that rec. to someone else. Tolkien seems obvious, but IDK, and I'm not sure he's really a great gateway to broader "literature", and anyway I'm not that well read in him (I've read Fellowship and The Hobbit—I enjoyed The Hobbit). Ditto young-adult. The usual path there is just to move into friendly, short, easy-to-read semi-literary authors like Vonnegut, I think.

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4. asarkJul 2019
   (1) I'm with him on her technical composition of a story being hard to tease apart (in a good way) but not so sure about them seeming unusually real or true. Structure and purpose of the novels' parts, the flow from incident to incident and scene to scene, is smooth and natural (more or less), plot, I dunno. Probably a personal thing.

   (2) seems wrong to me, if by "literary" he means "broadly recognized as part of the 'Western Canon'" and not "recent works self-consciously written as literary fiction". Most read aloud really well, in my experience.

   (3) Ugh.

   (4) Austen's among the widest-read of the "canon", and not especially challenging (probably not an unrelated fact). This comparison is a real stretch. He couldn't think of someone better to use as an example? Huh.

   (5) IDK about using it to illustrate this particular point, but yeah, basically.

   If you struggle with Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility (I do—I find them too smug in a "gee look at me, the author, writing such clever things" way, though I think that's what people like about them so it must just be a me problem) try Persuasion. It's short and apparently Austen didn't get a chance to do her usual "punch-up" edit before she died, which probably explains why it comes off (to me) as less full of itself than the others and a much more agreeable read.

   Emma seems to be her parody of herself, as best I can figure. I enjoyed it. Longer. Desperately wants to be a tragedy. (spoiler?) Isn't. Probably it shouldn't be, I mean she's Jane Austen and I'm just some asshole. Oh well, still good.

   Haven't read Mansfield, which I understand is very well regarded, or her juvenilia. Tried Northanger but seemed pointless without a better-annotated copy, which I'll probably get around to acquiring and reading some day.

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5. madhadronFeb 2017
   I separate my books into levels. Level 0 are the books that I reread steadily over the years (also the ones that I pack in my suitcase when I'm moving as opposed to shipping), so I'll just post that list here, in no particular order: 'Good Poems' edited by Garrison Keiller; 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen; 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen; Fitzgerald's translation of 'The Rubaiyat'; Ford Madox Ford's 'Parade's End'; Hafiz, 'The Gift'; Modesitt, 'Gravity Dreams'; Heinlein, 'Time Enough for Love'; Bulgakov, 'Master and Margarita'; 'Ovid in Love' (Guy Lee's translation of the Amores).

   I've been revisiting a lot of Le Guin's novellas ('The Found and the Lost' is a great collection) and Borges's stories since the election. They have been a source of great comfort.

   I find that I don't reread nonfiction. I'll reference something I remember in it, but I can't think of a work of nonfiction I've reread in the past few years.

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6. asharkDec 2016
   Which ones have you tried?

   If you want to have something to talk about when people are talking about female authors and Austen inevitably comes up, I'd recommend Persuasion, and maybe Emma provided you are OK with imagining your own ending to make it the slow-motion soul-crushing tragedy it so clearly wanted to be.

   Persuasion wasn't given her final punch-up editing pass before she died, and so it lacks much of the "gosh I, the author, am so clever and my remarks so cutting!" tone that I've been unable to get past in her other books (save Emma) while still actually being reasonably clever. It's also quite short. Emma is kind of a take-down of that exact tendency in Austen herself, so it worked OK for me.

   Mind: if you're not OK with the prose, tone, and topics of 19th century English literature in general, you'll hate any of it regardless.

   Anyway, it can be a good thing to get a taste of the "foreign" in reading.

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