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Great books you don't like??
KnnOs:
I had to read Gone with the Wind for summer reading one year, 900 pages of racism, plot holes and bizarre characterization.
Much as I love the stories in themselves, I can't make myself read through one of the Horatio Hornblower books
If ANYONE can get through Derrida and tell me wtf is up, I'd appreciate it
Hewittv18:
I hate Charles Dickens. Great Expectations is the same. Goddamn. Book. TWICE.
Book 1: Stupid people are mean to nice child.
Nice child helps someone.
Mysterious old lady does weird shit.
Book 2: Stupid people are mean to nice young man.
Nice young man is nice to someone again.
Mysterious old lady does more weird shit and dies.
She didn't even have the decency to commit a murder suicide.
KharBevNor:
--- Quote from: Moo Cakes on 03 Jan 2007, 05:00 ---Plus, it's pretty blatantly racist, even for the 30s.
--- End quote ---
Balls it is. Brave New Worlds really NOT that racist for the 30's, and in fact it can probably be taken as an argument against racism. Remember that the feelie they watch, it's not his race but something wrong with his 'programming' or whatnot. You could even read it as a satire of contemporary attitudes about race: the hysteria that black people were coke-sniffing rape machines (what's changed). The black guy falls in love with her and kidnaps her, and she has to be rescued by white sex machines.
Besides, the point that Brave New World makes is much, MUCH deeper than what you're suggesting. Brave New World is an exploration of happiness versus free will, basically. It asks us whether it is better to be happy, but insensitive, ignorant and without any real free will (though the society of Brave New World seems very libertine on its surface, in fact it is far more insidiously controlled than Airstrip One), or whether it is better to be intelligent, sensitive and free, but to suffer the rigours of life. It's a full on satirical critique of modernism, which also happens to touch very heavily on issues of bio-ethics. What Brave New World does is expose the unfeeling meaninglessness of a world on which liesure has become king, and to warn us what lies down the path of mass culture and capitalism. It's a book that needs to be much more widely read and taken heed of.
Alarra:
--- Quote from: Johnny C on 03 Jan 2007, 02:19 ---
Anyways another one occured to me. Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a fucking terrible book. Honestly I would say I hate it more than any other book I've ever read.
--- End quote ---
Yes. I would consider this the worst book I have ever read.
And I have to jump on the bandwagon against the DaVinci code. It had a relatively interesting plot, and I liked trying to piece together connections, but my god, that man is an abysmal writer.
Hewittv18:
I liked Heart of Darkness. I dunno how much you really know about the book, but my understanding was this book is largely allegorical about Conrad's life. He wrote it stream-of-consciousness, and never edited it because it was too emotionally painful for him to even read the text.
I'm not saying it's wicked good or anything, I'm just saying I enjoyed it and wanted to share some background. ^_^
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