A Room with a View
Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her, until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate son George. Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn to follow her own heart?
Stats for nerds
6recommend
14mentions
10people
2011–2026years
57% recommend43% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I'd argue that the novels the TFA author reads are boring to the TFA author -- until they're not. If you are reading a novel that works for you, it's often not boring from the opening line.
Example: Anna Karenina. Gripping from the opening line (if you like the type of novel that it is; and it's fine if you don't, of course).
Or alternatively, Pride and Prejudice. Again, that opener just sucks you in (if this is a book for you, that is; and again, if it's not -- totally fine).
Example of a modern page-turner: The Hunger Games. If you are bored with this novel after three pages, you shouldn't read any further, because it's absolutely, certainly, not for you.
Or, Jeebus, Harry-Freaking-Potter. There is a reason that an entire generation grew up reading those books.
Or: "The Time Traveller's Wife", "The Poisonwood Bible", "The Road", "Interview with the Vampire", "A Room with a View", "Replay", "Of Mice and Men", "Brave New World". The list of books that are gripping from the start, should they appeal to you, can be almost endless.
Basically, if you and your book align (ugh, sorry), then there generally shouldn't be any form of "volta" (really, ugh).
There are many novels that are boring to me. I've never finished those; I discard and move on to the next one, where the author knew how to write something that isn't boring to me. Someone else might love them, and many people clearly do, but they're not for me.
Why do so many people assume that everyone will love the exact same books, and that if you're bored by a book you just have to work at it some more? Life is too short for that nonsense.
- So for my unofficial book club with a good friend, we're in the final act of A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, after having finished A Room with a View a few weeks before. I enjoy 19th and early 20th century literature for the prose quality quite a lot, and Forster does not disappoint on that score. It's also fascinating getting an inside view on Anglo-Indian relations during British rule. It's thematically similar To Kill a Mockingbird, in that both feature prominent "White Knight" type characters.
I'm also reading some less highbrow, yet highly entertaining novels that I'm obsessed with. I'm currently on book 16 in in Lindsey Davis' Falco series[0], which are murder mysteries set in Ancient Rome. I've been enjoying them non-stop ever since HN user "vintagedave" recommended[1] them around 4 months ago.
[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/series/42173-marcus-didius-falco
- That’s enough of an excuse for me to reread it. Along with Room With A View, two books I laughed on every page.
- Romeo and Juliet
he Blue Castle: a novel by L. M. Montgomery
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
- P+P is rollicking fun and all the P+P movies are rollicking fun. I do however, prefer Persuasion. And I'll admit that I didn't spot that Clueless (which was awesome) was based on Emma until I heard something on NPR. I just remember thinking at the time, damn this script is tight for a teen movie.
If you like P+P then A Room With A View, EM Forster, is a scream from start to finish. (Well, not) every chapter is titled X Lies To Y.
- +1 for Room with a View. Actually all of EM Forster is great.
