Gulliver's Travels and Showing Versus Telling

Classic literature is an indulgence of mine. I have it in my head that I want to be refined and classy and well-read, so between every few contemporary novels and non-fiction I read classics. This time it was Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.

(I remember as a child watching an old movie about this and for some reason the scene where Gulliver pees on the Lilliput palace is stuck in my mind. Hee hee. And no, I will not see the Jack Black version; I refuse.)


I know most classics are stuffy and terribly packed full of big vocabulary that is outdated and rather pretentious, but I like the challenge. As I was reading this one though, I realized how terrible the telling was. It felt like a historical account written by Ferris Bueller's teacher. I wanted to see what happened and deduce for myself what it meant, but Jonathan Swift kept throwing philosophical ideas at my face. Seriously, I felt as though it was a silly account of Utopia by Thomas More.


But where Utopia has its place, Gulliver's Travels is supposed to be a fun, quirky read. It just wasn't.


I'm wondering if the ideal book has changed or if they were saying 'show me don't tell me' back in the 1700s.

Classics Challenge - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

For the classics challenge this month, I read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

There is a lot of comparison to split personality disorders and this novella. The allegory hidden in the writing definitely points to that. But most visual portrayals of this book make Mr. Hyde a hideous creature, almost ape-like and deformed. Robert Louis Stevenson did not write him that way. None of the characters could describe why he made them uneasy, there was nothing wrong with his appearance. It was the evil shining through that made them cringe.

Stevenson wrote this book after having a nightmare, and he wrote it in a hurry. Not having known him, or much about him besides what Wikipedia says, I'm not sure why he would write this book. I think there is an innate sense in every human to explain the unexplainable and perhaps that what he was doing here. Maybe he felt that his mind was cracking in two and the only way to stop it was to put it outside of himself.

150 Followers Give-away!

We interrupt this regularly scheduled Word of the Week to celebrate 150 stalkers! I feel like really giving you guys a gift for being my stalkers. So here we go. Penguin books has a new collection of cloth-bound classic books. The covers are beautifully designed, and I want to collect them. So to start off the collection, I'm going to give one to one of you!

You will get to pick the book of your choice, just click here to view them all. This contest will be open until August 13th (ooo, Friday the 13th, cool). I fly to London the next day and will either pick up your book there or purchase it online (depending on cost). Just fill out the form below to be entered.

By the way, I saw one of these books in Munich. It was the Emma one. They are even more gorgeous in person. I'm so glad Penguin decided to do this.