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“Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” That is one of my favorite quotes of all times, specifically taking into account the setting of the book.
While this is tragic news, this really doesn't feel at all correlated to HackerNews.
If people find the submission intellectually gratifying then it conforms to the spirit of Hacker News submission guidelines. Given the impact of Harper Lee's writing on US culture, it is not surprising if many people do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not snobby in the slightest. A friend put it best: "George RR Martin is a great storyteller, but he's no great writer"
I think it's a bummer that all the popular fantasy is not the best writing. (I do quite enjoy GRRM and Abercrombie.) Are there any, may lesser known, fantasy that is more literary?
“Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” That is one of my favorite quotes of all times, specifically taking into account the setting of the book.
I couldn't stand most of the books I had to read in high school, especially To Kill a Mockingbird. Others included The Great Gatsby, & Lord of the Flies. All awful books IMO, & still dreadfully awful. I can't believe American culture thought (still thinks?) those books were good. Luckily I read books that I liked on the side to make up for it.
At least in high school English classes you get to read some legitimate literature. In middle school, I remember being subjected to an unending string of aggressively mediocre young-adult historical fiction and science fiction that featured teen-aged girls as protagonists by my all-female English teachers. Hard to summon much enthusiasm for that kind of thing when Arthur Clarke, Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Asimov, Ben Bova, Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, Ken Follett, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Conan Doyle, Tolkien, Robert Jordan and George RR Martin beckon.
“Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” That is one of my favorite quotes of all times, specifically taking into account the setting of the book.
What does it mean to be 'licked'?
“Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” That is one of my favorite quotes of all times, specifically taking into account the setting of the book.
This sounds like an armchair-philosopher platitude to me.
I couldn't stand most of the books I had to read in high school, especially To Kill a Mockingbird. Others included The Great Gatsby, & Lord of the Flies. All awful books IMO, & still dreadfully awful. I can't believe American culture thought (still thinks?) those books were good. Luckily I read books that I liked on the side to make up for it.
I have to agree. I wonder if part of the general illiteracy is a reaction to the dreck that we are forced to read in school. At least in high school English classes you get to read some legitimate literature. In middle school, I remember being subjected to an unending string of aggressively mediocre young-adult historical fiction and science fiction that featured teen-aged girls as protagonists by my all-female Engli…
I loved "To Kill a Mockingbird" so much when I read it as a kid. The moral of the story seemed really obvious. In the last few years I came across this article which blew my mind and changed my perspective about the book's meaning a lot: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/the-courthouse-...
I wholeheartedly disagree. In fact, the only way you can change systemic problems is to convince the minds and hearts of people to change.
You cannot simply make new laws and expect everything to go smoothly if few people have changed their minds or hearts. How will you enforce the new laws?
And furthermore, he wasted a whole lot of his time and mine trying to reveal the disparity between the novel Harper Lee wrote and the one she should have written. Why?