A Room with a View
by E. M. Forster · first published 1905
60% recommend40% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Elegant early-20th-century prose with a light, witty touch. The writing quality stands out, and it suits fans of classic English literature.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her, until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate son George. Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn to follow her own
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Must read? 1984 and Animal Farm. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Life on the Mississippi and Roughing It. Emma and Pride and Prejudice. Iliad, Odyssey and first half of the Aeneid. A Room With A View and The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Great Gatsby, Call of the Wild and Age of Innocence. War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Don Quixote.
on “Ask HN: What are some must read books?” ↗…didn't spot that Clueless (which was awesome) was based on Emma until I heard something on NPR. I just remember thinking at the time, damn this script is tight for a teen movie. If you like P+P then A Room With A View, EM Forster, is a scream from start to finish. (Well, not) every chapter is titled X Lies To Y.
on “Wild Child: On Jane Austen” ↗Romeo and Juliet he Blue Castle: a novel by L. M. Montgomery A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
on “Ask HN: What are the best books you've ever read?” ↗So for my unofficial book club with a good friend, we're in the final act of A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, after having finished A Room with a View a few weeks before. I enjoy 19th and early 20th century literature for the prose quality quite a lot, and Forster does not disappoint on that score. It's also fascinating getting an inside view on Anglo-Indian…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading?” ↗+1 for Room with a View. Actually all of EM Forster is great.
on “Wild Child: On Jane Austen” ↗> Or, if you're on this site, it's a great excuse to sit in a small room with a view and not talk to anyone for several days, just read, write and program. This sounds like fun. I wonder if there are any European routes that are as long/uninterrupted that I could try that on.
on “There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway” ↗That’s enough of an excuse for me to reread it. Along with Room With A View, two books I laughed on every page.
on “As 'Dorian Gray' ages, its relevance only grows” ↗…Harry-Freaking-Potter. There is a reason that an entire generation grew up reading those books. Or: "The Time Traveller's Wife", "The Poisonwood Bible", "The Road", "Interview with the Vampire", "A Room with a View", "Replay", "Of Mice and Men", "Brave New World". The list of books that are gripping from the start, should they appeal to you, can be almost endless. Basically, if you and your book align (ugh, sorry),…
on “Every novel is boring until it isn't” ↗For anyone to whom the name E.M.Forster does not ring a bell, he's more well known for "A Room with a View" and "A Passage to India".[1] He also wrote another short story which I consider to be even better than The Machine Stops. It's called The Other Side of the Hedge[2], and while it's not as prescient…
on “The Machine Stops (1909) [pdf]” ↗"The rise of communications as a means of linking people together was completely missed" Not by everyone. Take a look at "The Machine Stops" by E.M.Forster (of "A Room with a View" and "A Passage to India" fame).[1][2] In 1909 he predicted something like the internet, chatrooms, internet addiction, and various other things that have since happened. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops…
on “Asking the wrong questions” ↗Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/140... - quite good so far (1/2 way through) A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster http://www.amazon.com/Room-View-Bantam-Classics/dp/055321323... - not sure what I think of it yet (about 1/2 way through). Found some of the writing a bit opaque, where I'm not sure…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading right now?” ↗For anyone to whom the name E.M.Forster does not ring a bell,[1] he's more well known for "A Room with a View" and "A Passage to India". [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._M._Forster
on “The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (1909)” ↗The Machine Stops, 1909 by E M Forster (room with a view/Howard's end) could almost be a sequel to this. Ideas are often older than we think. (Short story/novela length. Not a gripping read but a nice quick length and interesting for the age)
on “Before Skynet and the Matrix, This 50-Year-Old Movie Predicted the Rise of AI” ↗I've not read Passage (yeah, yeah, I know, it's supposed to be his best, I'll get around to it) but have read both of what I think of as his Italian novels (A Room With a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread) and English novels (Howards End, The Longest Journey) and, of those, would recommend Howards End as the best of those four, by a long shot. Angels is the only one I'd suggest…
on “The Machine Stops (1909) [pdf]” ↗