I value writing style and pacing way more than any volta. Pride and Prejudice is hardly my genre, yet I remembered it grabbing me immediately. So just now I checked to see if I remembered it correctly, and within the first minute I laughed and I'm hooked again.
Life's too short for novels that might get good halfway through, especially when there's plenty Austen I haven't read yet.
Yes! The opening line of Pride and Prejudice alone is already immediately captivating. And then makes you re-read it again, after you finish the book and it suddenly shines differently.
I feel enormously fortunate for being fluent in Russian, reading Bulgakov and Tolstoy in original is pure joy, any translation removes subtleties - it's like listening to Bach through the car stereo, you still can enjoy it, but it won't make you want to cry, like listening in symphony hall might. If I had no other reason for learning English but to understand the prose of Austen, it'd still be worth it. And I'm just discovering the simple elegance of G.G. Márquez in Spanish. He does a similar trick in the first line of Cien años. "Había de recordar" is a future seen from the past, and Spanish carries it without strain. English has to choose between "was to remember" and "would remember", and both just miss it. The sentence sets up the whole book's time scheme in five words, and the beauty of it has to be contemplated.
Sometimes, reading a single passage from a book, I mean truly, deeply, honestly letting it sink into your subconsciousness makes up for all the insufficiencies in the story.
>I feel enormously fortunate for being fluent in Russian, reading Bulgakov and Tolstoy in original is pure joy, any translation removes subtleties
As a native Russian speaker, I find it easier to experience their writings in English (and I don't feel anything of importance has been lost). And I've also heard other russian speakers claim that English prose (i.e. Shakespeare) is too dry, so I'm assuming this all comes entirely from people's subjective perceptions and is not an objective fact.
> easier to experience their writings in English
I suppose, it may feel easier, because English can be dense, it can feel more compact. Of course, it has this chameleonic ability to implode into scholarly dry, sophisticated and complex language, but yes, when I need more informational throughput, English usually outshines other alternatives - it delivers the point from the page directly into your brain. Although with prose, often it's not the sheer throughput but small subtleties that matter - we read not just for the sake of the fast comprehension of the story. How would you paint the difference between 'сухарь' and 'сухарик' in Russian text, especially if the words are used metaphorically? Of course it is all very subjective - I can only imagine what emotions evoke the arrangement of words I choose to put in this text - they could make you angry or sad, or bring smile or utter indifference. I've read Bulgakov in four different languages, and yet translations never matched pictures the original elicits in my head. "В белом плаще с кровавым подбоем, шаркающей кавалерийской походкой, ранним утром четырнадцатого числа весеннего месяца нисана ..." simply can't be done in another language for me - it just never feels the same.
Shakespeare is dry in English and feels easier in Russian translation because there's such a thing as "archaic English". The Russian language, in comparison, has changed little over the past few hundred years.
>it's like listening to Bach through the car stereo
Bach sounds great even as chiptunes. The artistic value is mostly in the harmonic development, not the timbre, so sound quality isn't so important. The organ works will suffer a bit without a big subwoofer, but you can get that in a car. Bach composed a lot of his works on a clavichord.
A better example would be a composer like Mahler.
I'm not a musician, I suppose I should have picked a better analogy. Now I'm listening to Mahler and trying to find enlightenment. Thankfully, my desk audio setup is better than my car's.
For me there are novels with such big pay-offs that they are worth 100s of pages of setup to me. I usually only start them when I read online that they are worth it. I had this with Atlas Shrugged (500-600 pages of setup?).
Some are simply such a nice world (and indeed writing style) that they don’t even really need a Volta. I had that with the Commonwealth Saga by Hamilton. I just wanted it to go on and on (and it does for >2400 pages). (I was sadly disappointed by the follow-ups which are much less "sci"). Same with the Bobiverse books, eagerly awaiting part 6, although I still want to be in that world, it also feels like it should come to some beautiful end before dragging on too long...