From Electric Lit:
Pretty much everyone who reads sometimes uses books as a way to escape. A book is a door to another world, a way to get away from reality for a few minutes or hours and focus on characters and circumstances wholly and blessedly unrelated to one’s own life. Sometimes, the more unrelated to one’s own life, the better.
I love literary fiction; it’s the genre I read most frequently. But literary fiction also tends to be about things that are distinctly related to my life—heartbreak, money, family troubles. So when I have a particularly bad day, I tend to turn more and more to science fiction and fantasy. Reading a book about a wizard or a spaceship is my version of taking a stress nap. While literature about serious, familiar, recognizable problems is both necessary and important, sometimes life is hard and I want a space opera where the gods are real and teenagers can conjure up demons.
. . . .
[S]ometimes, when I start to wish literature offered more of an escape from reality, I find myself scanning my shelves full of novels about family and death and imagining that they’re about wizards and dragons instead.
. . . .
Infinite Jest – A small town in Maine is bewitched so that all the inhabitants live forever as long as they never stop laughing.
Wolf Hall – The exact same book, but with wolves.
The Corrections / Freedom / Purity – A Hunger Games-style trilogy about a spunky kid escaping a repressive dystopia in which “blood purity” is valued above all things and children are “corrected” in order to gain higher status and please the authorities. Our hero, Jonathan, sees his world’s cruelty for what it is and must infiltrate its highest echelons of power and take them down from within.
. . . .
The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo – A heartwarming series of books about the adventures of a girl and her dragon, Tattoo.
Little Women – An accident with a shrink ray.
Link to the rest at Electric Lit
Except Infinite Jest is science fiction, involving a comedic film people can’t stop watching as an extremely drawn-out version of Monty Python’s “Funniest Joke in the World” sketch. The alternative proposed in the article is somehow even dumber.
I wouldn’t really consider Little Women literary fiction. It was merely contemporary fiction when it was published; nowadays I’d consider it general (period) fiction. Or perhaps YA/NA if you will.
Now now, as it’s ‘literary’ fiction, there isn’t supposed to be a plot (or any real reason to read it in the first place), it’s a ‘literary’ thing.
I’d read those versions! Haven’t managed any of the originals, apart from Little Women.
(Felix, I think you commented on the wrong post.)
No mention of the story inside,just the packaging.
You’d think somebody looking for world language rights would be interested in ebook distribution but apparently tbey are middlemen looking to deal with other middlemen, fattening the supply chain so readers pay more and authors get less.
Hey, how’d this end up here?
I wrote it under the previous article:
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2018/01/mexican-publisher-grano-de-sal-looking-for-world-spanish-rights/
Not much relevance here.
Word press must hate me.