Well, of course I've heard many things about it, so a few things that may have surprised me at one time I already knew.
Interesting narrative style though, with the letters framing the story. The prose is very much in the 19th century style, no surprises there. The actual course of the story was not known to me before and that worked well for me.
In all, I can see why it's an influential piece, particularly given the time it was written in. I enjoyed it, though I've gotten somewhat used to the 19th century style of narrative so that probably helped a bit. It's a quick and easy read, really.
I saw it on a list of 100 top SF stories and realized that I'd never read it, so I grabbed a Librivox recording.
As an aside, I find that the ability to control both the pitch and speed of playback under Rockbox helps enormously when playing Librivox recordings; when I got to a couple of chapters that had been recorded by a guy with a quite low voice, I could increase the pitch. Similarly women with very high voices could be lowered, and slow readers could be sped up. This eliminated a big part of the frustration that I've had with Librivox recordings in the past.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-10 11:23 pm (UTC)Interesting narrative style though, with the letters framing the story. The prose is very much in the 19th century style, no surprises there. The actual course of the story was not known to me before and that worked well for me.
In all, I can see why it's an influential piece, particularly given the time it was written in. I enjoyed it, though I've gotten somewhat used to the 19th century style of narrative so that probably helped a bit. It's a quick and easy read, really.
I saw it on a list of 100 top SF stories and realized that I'd never read it, so I grabbed a Librivox recording.
As an aside, I find that the ability to control both the pitch and speed of playback under Rockbox helps enormously when playing Librivox recordings; when I got to a couple of chapters that had been recorded by a guy with a quite low voice, I could increase the pitch. Similarly women with very high voices could be lowered, and slow readers could be sped up. This eliminated a big part of the frustration that I've had with Librivox recordings in the past.