THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: ScrambledGregs on 18 Dec 2006, 08:43
-
We've had similar threads on the videogame and music boards, but...keep in mind that 'great' means books that are highly rated or other people have raved about but you didn't like...anyway...
Any 'great' books you've read that you didn't like, or even hated?? Personally I remember reading On The Road and not getting past the first third of the book because I thought it was shit. Like whoever famous guy said about it, that's not writing, that's typing. Just recently I've tried my damndest to read Walden but I can hardly bring myself to read it as more than toilet material. I think Thoreau's journal of what he did everyday for two years at Walden would make for better reading, because I've always wondered how often a dude living by himself in the woods must jack off. I imagine it would be a lot.
-
Basically anything written in the 19th century or before. Except Shakespeare. He's hit or miss to me.
I'm not implying that there's anything wrong with the stories themselves, I just dont care for the style of writing used in that era.
-
The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy.
-
Like whoever famous guy said about it
Truman Capote.
For me, it's the Magus by John Fowles. It's so unbearably pretentious, and the main character's a complete twat.
-
Catcher in the Rye. Some people I know really like this book. Not me. Coming-of-age-story my ass, Holden Caulfield was a big baby.
-
I'd take Kerouac over Capote anyday. Truman couldn't write a soup recipe.
Writers:
Jane Austen (Dull, dull, dull)
DH Lawrence (writes like an autistic child. endless repetition, sloganeering and cheesy sex)
TS Eliot (overladen with pointless symbolism)
John Updike
Julian Barnes
Kurt Vonnegut (with the exception of Mother Night)
I've never understood the love for Catcher in the Rye either. It's meaningless.
-
I like Vonnegut myself but I'll admit that sometimes I just can't take him seriously.
Off-topic, but nice avatar.
-
Pretty much anything classifed as "Classical Literature", with the one exception of The Wizard of Oz, because that is the greatest Classic-Lit book -ever-... I don't like the way they wrote back then. I find it easier to read books written within the last...oh, 35 years or so.
-
You mean you find it easier to read badly written childrens books? Well, yeah.
Catcher in the Rye.
Hell yes.
-
Catcher in the Rye. Some people I know really like this book. Not me. Coming-of-age-story my ass, Holden Caulfield was a big baby.
That was sort of the whole point. Holden was being what he himself called a "phony", and we're supposed to realize that and see how stupid it is and learn from it. I hated the book too. I'm not a big fan of a bunch of the older stuff. Jonathan Swift, Chaucer, and Shakespeare are okay.
-
Jane Austen is pretty shit. Especially compared to the Brontes.
-
I'm not a big fan of a bunch of the older stuff. Jonathan Swift, Chaucer, and Shakespeare are okay.
Bugger Chaucer. 800 year old fart gags shouldn't be anyones idea of classic lit.
So basically we're all giving up on older books because of their 'outdated' styles. Bye bye Steinbeck, Blake, Dostoyevsky, Joyce and Dickens. Also: music made before 1969 sucks because it is old and their recording technology was silly and medieval.
-
I dare say Classic Lit should ONLY be 800 year old fart jokes, but maybe that's just me.
-
I can't read Huckleberry Finn or anything by Mark Twain really without wondering what was the point of the book. The LOTR books are hit or miss with me: one read-through I adore them and the other I find myself thinking about why we had to know who Frodo lent his third favorite tea set to and who some obscure character with only two lines' great-great-great grandfather was and how many kids he had, etc. etc. Back and forth, back and forth with these books.
-
I dare say Classic Lit should ONLY be 800 year old fart jokes, but maybe that's just me.
Try writing an essay on it in University. "So your man here farts, which causes a girl to fall off a roof. And this symbolizes dark age serf attitudes to the then bourgeouise attitudes of the ruling class during feudalism blah blah de waffle blah..."
Dreams about cannibal rapists are less painful.
Huck Finn? It's about pre-civil war racism in America from a child's pov.
This is the only time in my entire life where a literature will ever be even vaguely useful. indulge me.
-
Bugger Chaucer. 800 year old fart gags shouldn't be anyones idea of classic lit.
There's like, one fart joke in Chaucers entire oeuvre. If you think Chaucers just scatological humoutr or something then seriously fuck you, there's a few of the canterbury tales that are told by rude uncultured people or whatever and so include that and thats it. You might as well complain about the pissingly boring ones like the Monks tale. Chaucer is a fucking master story-teller and one of the sarciest, wittiest motherfuckers in the last 1000 years, barely clipping under Doctor Johnson. He invented fucking english literature. Just because you don't have a clue doesn't mean yous shoudlnt shut the fuck uop.
-
And cave paintings are better than Rembrandt because they came first. Of course there's more to Chaucer, any half-educated sod knows that. And hell yes I complain, because cultural importance or not, The Canterbury Tales are drawn-out and mediocre. Wit is fine as the icing on the cake but Chaucer, let's face it, is a cake-less motherfucker. Even without the scatology his work is a half-cut undergraduate's idea of storytelling and social commentary. The Wife of Bath, for christ's sake. Calm down. Internet rage solves nothing!
-
I was not implying some came first shit.
Though I will point out that Rembrandt wasn't that hot. He coudln't light a fuckign scene2 to save his life. I've seen more dynamic shit than Christ on the Sea of Galilee in fucking White Dwarf.
-
Ah, substitute Rembrandt for any famed artist: Raphael, Dali, Carravaggio, Picasso, frigging Warhol (alright, maybe not Andy) take your pick. The point (I had a point?) is that Chaucher's only real relevance (to me anyway) is as a landmark of literature, lacking any real entertainment value or artistic merit in and of itself. Do you actually read ol' Geoffrey for pleasure at the end of a long day? You're a braver man than I. Still I can't say much. I read Joyce for fuck's sake. It's serious a problem.
-
Do you actually read ol' Geoffrey for pleasure at the end of a long day?
Fuck yeah. His poetrys great. it's human, its completely unpretentious because he comes from an era where no one had even thought up that kind of shit. There's just something joyful, vital and fun about Chaucer. I love it.
-
Though I will point out that Rembrandt wasn't that hot. He coudln't light a fuckign scene2 to save his life. I've seen more dynamic shit than Christ on the Sea of Galilee in fucking White Dwarf.
Well, first of all, due to the age of his paintings, their appear darker than they actually were (the Mona Lisa nowadays is in need of a serious cleaning, and did not look like that at all back in Da Vinci's day). And "Rembrandt can't light a scene?" WT to the F? I don't care for his "epic" paintings, but his quieter stuff is excellent.
Also, Omnicide, you can read JAMES JOYCE and not Chaucer??? Explain that one, because I can't come up with a retort, because that is seriously flabbergasting.
-
The Gulag Archipelago. I tried, seriously I tried, and it moved me but it was so fucking boring I never finished it.
How the hell can a story about some of, if not the worst systemic human rights abuse in history be boring?
-
Well, first of all, due to the age of his paintings, their appear darker than they actually were (the Mona Lisa nowadays is in need of a serious cleaning, and did not look like that at all back in Da Vinci's day). And "Rembrandt can't light a scene?" WT to the F? I don't care for his "epic" paintings, but his quieter stuff is excellent.
I was being semi-flippant, though in general I'm not so hot for Dutch Golden Age painting as a lot of people. Some Vermeers are absolutely breath-taking, but for me a lot of it lacks that 'spark', for want of a better word, that inspires me in a picture.
-
Complaining about the lighting in Rembrandt is rather missing the point. Go to a gallery, get in the same room as one of his paintings - preferably one of his portraits of ordinary people he spotted on the street - and spend a good few minutes just looking at the face. There are such stories told in those faces. Then come back and tell me if you think Rembrandt is over-rated or not.
-
I've seen Rembrandt in the gallery.
As I said, there isn't that vital spark there that engages me with his paintings. For me, though his depictions of the world might be impeccable, they are descriptions only. It's not like, say, Hogarth, where the faces just leap out at you and even though the drawing or painting might be cruder than Rembrandt, and Hogarth isn't really that far beyond my own skill level (I can at least replicate his works fairly well) I know that I could never have produced those originals. I couldn't have produced Rembrandts either, they're massively skilled works, I'm just saying that they don't grab me: I don't take inspiration from Rembrandt, and if the choice was given to me to own an original artwork by any artist, he would be far, far, far down the list.
-
I got to part 3 in Gravity's Rainbow before putting it down.
Seriously, Pynchon, what the hell? Why do I need to know that the guy was so constipated he had to stick a spoon up his ass to get the shit out? I don't need to know that, man!
-
I'm not a Hardy boy, Thomas just doesn't do it for me.
What I have been looking for is the Norton Anthology of Victorian Erotica. you read me, Victorian Erotica. 3000 pages of it.
-
Half of its probably copperplates of table legs and ankles.
-
I got to part 3 in Gravity's Rainbow before putting it down.
Seriously, Pynchon, what the hell? Why do I need to know that the guy was so constipated he had to stick a spoon up his ass to get the shit out? I don't need to know that, man!
Because it keeps you off-balance, and pushes the limits as far as what was broadly publishable.
I can totally see how folks would not be able to get through Gravity's Rainbow. I, however, fucking loved it to bits.
-
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I had to read this in high school and college, and I didn't like it at all either time. I don't care how "important" it is, the book sucks.
-
I got to part 3 in Gravity's Rainbow before putting it down.
Seriously, Pynchon, what the hell? Why do I need to know that the guy was so constipated he had to stick a spoon up his ass to get the shit out? I don't need to know that, man!
Because it keeps you off-balance, and pushes the limits as far as what was broadly publishable.
I can totally see how folks would not be able to get through Gravity's Rainbow. I, however, fucking loved it to bits.
I second the love for Gravity's Rainbow. It took a couple of tries but once I got through it I couldn't not like it. Crying of Lot 49 rocks too....
Back on topic though I ditto Ravenbomb's hating of Things Fall Apart because it was beyond dull, yet I would hardly call it a great book to begin with. Another one I hated on the high school reading list was Animal Farm. I hate it with a passion. Maybe it was the many movies in cartoon and 'RL' form based off it or the text itself though I just can't stand it.
-
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I had to read this in high school and college, and I didn't like it at all either time. I don't care how "important" it is, the book sucks.
Yeah, there are very few "important" books that I have ever enjoyed.
-
Catcher in the Rye. Some people I know really like this book. Not me. Coming-of-age-story my ass, Holden Caulfield was a big baby.
I really, really hate Holden Caufield. I actually like the book alright, but the character pisses me right the hell off. He's a whining, sniveling little bitch.
-
Am I the only one who liked "Things Fall Apart?" I mean, okay, not the number 1 best book in the universe, but it was an interesting exploration of the culture, of the conflict of the early, well, meeting I suppose of the Europeans and Africans. Although, the fact that it was definately a "statement" by Achebe that "Africa had it's own old, storied cultures long before the Europeans came thankyouverymuch" is distracting...
-
I just think it was flat-out badly written. The characters were uninteresting, the entire first half of the book was boring (okay, I understood what he was going for, but if he wanted to show the culture and all that, he should've done something to make me care about the characters first, because the first half just KILLS the book), and it's frustrating because there COULD be a good story there. It's like he took what could've been a really good, interesting book, murdered it, and Things Fall Apart is just the chalk outline around its body.
-
To be fair, the "bad" writing I think is a rejection of the normal, European/American tradition of novel writing.
-
But, see, I've liked other books that were written in different styles. In the same class we read Arabian Nights & Days and that was written a lot better than Things Fall Apart.
-
The Red Badge of Courage. An intimate portrait of how a person reacts to war by someone who never actually saw a war. Poorly written too, although that might just be the olde english pokling through.
-
The Davinci Code. I'm sorry, but I read it, and I can't even remember anything from it. i'm the type of person that reads a book in 2 days or less and usually I can pretty much memorize sections of the book the first time through. This book...sucked...in my opinion. I have no urge to reread it, and that isn't normal for me. 4 times is usually my minimum for reading a book over...and that's for one I don't like. Also the book Monster...didn't even get past the first page, same with the Yearling. They were just flat out boring.
-
Black Like Me, that guy bitches to much.
-
The Davinci Code. I'm sorry, but I read it, and I can't even remember anything from it. i'm the type of person that reads a book in 2 days or less and usually I can pretty much memorize sections of the book the first time through. This book...sucked...in my opinion. I have no urge to reread it, and that isn't normal for me.
Ditto. I still don't see what all the fuss is about. I think the only reason it was such a bit hit is because of the religious "controversy" it stirred up. The movie, however, was far more entertaining. I actually kinda liked it.
As for other big books I couldn't get into, I think my prime example would have to be Little Women. It was huge among the kids I went to school with, but I just didn't find it interesting.
-
The Da Vinci Code was just one of those huge breakthrough things. It was easy to read, it had a gripping story. And it was one of the worst written books I have ever read in my life. Seriously, there are a good few forumites who are significantly better writers than Dan Brown.
-
I've got a sort of love-hate relationship with Brave New World. I think the points he makes are interesting, and it's especially spooky to see how prophetic his predictions turned out, but the book just drags a lot for me, and the characters just seem flat to me. Maybe it's just because I disagree with him politically, or because I subconsciously compare it to 1984, which is a superior book on every level. But it seems to me when you distill it down to its basic arguments (too much sex, mass production is ruining art, religion is becoming meaningless, etc.), it just seems to be the intellectual equivalent of some guy yelling at the teenagers to get off his lawn. Plus, it's pretty blatantly racist, even for the 30s.
-
Catcher In The Rye is quite a fun book. You guys are doing it wrong.
I haven't been able to properly read 1984 or A Brave New World. The former is too damn bleak and I can't stand Huxley's writing style.
If anyone in here says they can't read Steinbeck I may cut them.
-
The bleak style of 1984 is one of the many, many things that makes it so great. It's depressing, but that lends to its realism and just strengthens the emotional impact of the later action of the book.
I really, really love that book.
-
Which is fair - I've read a good chunk of it and what I read was really good, it's just that I can't bring myself to finish it.
Oh and I didn't think Chaucer invented literature. Poems and stories were around before he was, and I thought the consensus was that the first modern novel was Don Quixote.
-
Don Quixote is a good two hundred years after Chaucer. Also, Chaucer was (well according to wiki anyways) the first author to demonstrate the power of the vernacular, at least in English. And I can't think of much that came from pre-Chaucerian times - Gawain and the Green Knight is the only one I can really think of that made much of an impact.
-
The first modern novel was Don Quixote.
Don Quixote is often nominated as the world's greatest work of fiction. It stands in a unique position between medieval chivalric romance and the modern novel. The former consist of disconnected stories with little exploration of the inner life of even the main character. The latter are usually focused on the psychological evolution of their characters.
-
Tale of Genji is considered the first novel, right? But how is Don Quixote that different to be the first "modern" novel? Other than being western?
-
I think you may have hit it on the head with that one...
-
The difference between old-school literature and the novel is that the novel is, well, novel. That is, it tells a new tale. Not all novels focus on psychological evolution by far. The reason the Canterbury tales isn't a novel is because the plots were lifted wholesale from the Decameron and French poetry. Chaucers skill was the pointed, somewhat satirical tweaks he put on these tales, and his marvellous language and humour, but apart from, possibly, the framing narrative and the way it's all been composited, with the characterisation of the pilgrims and the social commentary that their manner of speaking and choices of tales provide. Don Quixote is all made up. That's slightly off I suppose, but hey.
Don Quixote's the first western novel. Tale of Genji is a different tradition. I suspect it might have been termed a romance had it been produced in the west, though I'm not sure, because nothing like it really cropped up in the western literary tradition for a good while afterwards. If you're to define novel in the modern way, and then work backwards globally, then I suspect it would be the first novel.
-
Austin was mentioned earlier and i have to agree and add to that a great deal of other victorina literature. even the brontes and dickens i struggle with. the novels always tend to be, in my opinion, overlong and ponderous. instead of fascination and occasionally caustic examinations of class and society i find them pretty dull and uninteresting. i sorta enjoyed hard times and jane eyre but the farther into them i got the harder it was for me to have any motivation to continue. i guess i just haven't garnered an appreciation for the era yet.
-
Goddamn Mother Fucking Ass Raping Bitch... "Grapes of Wrath" can suck my fucking nuts.
I read that monstrously long boring ass book for high School and I hated every fucking second of it.
-
If anyone in here says they can't read Steinbeck I may cut them.
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.
-
Honestly I never even gave that book a chance. That and Faulkner.
-
I've got a sort of love-hate relationship with Brave New World. I think the points he makes are interesting, and it's especially spooky to see how prophetic his predictions turned out, but the book just drags a lot for me, and the characters just seem flat to me. Maybe it's just because I disagree with him politically, or because I subconsciously compare it to 1984, which is a superior book on every level. But it seems to me when you distill it down to its basic arguments (too much sex, mass production is ruining art, religion is becoming meaningless, etc.), it just seems to be the intellectual equivalent of some guy yelling at the teenagers to get off his lawn. Plus, it's pretty blatantly racist, even for the 30s.
I'm definitely agreeing with you here. I read Brave New World last weekend and it just didn't hit home for me like 1984 did.
Also, I don't like Harry Potter.
-
the Da Vinci code is the second worst book I have ever read. Angels and Demons is the worst. Dan Brown cannot write action; his dialogue is terrible, his characters are flat, and his murder's mystery developed by excluding important details.
-
the Da Vinci code is the second worst book I have ever read. Angels and Demons is the worst. Dan Brown cannot write action; his dialogue is terrible, his characters are flat, and his murder's mystery developed by excluding important details.
Dan Brown is a person who 'makes books', not an author.
It's probably not a great per se, but Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy is tripe. I was pissed off after I finished that I'd wasted so much time reading the whole damn thing.
And awesome as Hemingway is, "The Old Man and the Sea" doesn't do it for me at all.
-
I'll jump on the Austen hatin' bandwagon too, along with the Hemingway. As far as more recent authors go, I could not get into Paul Auster. I found The New York Trilogy to be by the numbers metafiction with no color or humor. I'll also second the notion that if you've gotten stuck partway through a Pynchon then you should keep slogging. Also, if you like or dislike 1984 and Brave New World, then you should read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
-
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.
I found a copy of that book in a used bookstore for $.50, so I picked it up figuring it would be at least worth reading once. Upon further review, I should have just bought some M&M's from the Jerry's Kids candy machine.
-
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
-
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.
-
Plus, it's pretty blatantly racist, even for the 30s.
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.
-
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.
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.
-
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. ^_^
-
The first thing that comes to mind for me is Animal Farm. It's just utterly lacking in imagination, there's no subtlety to the storyline. I just can't think of a single redeaming feature it has. Well, other than the fact that it's short, so I didn't need to suffer through it for long (though I read it through three times to try and see if I was missing anything).
You know, I'm also not big on 1984, though I'm not sure why. My favourite Orwell is definately Down And Out In Paris And London.
-
I know it's not a book, so please don't kill me but I HATE THE LOTTERY. Um, also Vanity Fair. I can't really discuss why I hate them, they just never hooked me.
-
Tolkien reads to me like a cross between Thomas the Tank Engine and Alice in Wonderland - the story is good, but old, the writing is just terrible. It could be (certainly for the Hobbit) that its a children's book, and I'm not a child....
Rowling of course has the opposite problem - fantastic writing and a cruddy story.
Grapes of Wrath? That was a fantastic book...studying a book is like dissecting a flower to find the bit that makes it beautiful.
Most books by Richard Dawkins are considered to be 'great', but I can't get rid of this feeling while I read them that he is a prime tart...
-
I detest Shakespeare with a passion. Julius Caesar, Romeo & Juliet, A Midsummer's Night Dream; I just can't stand any of it.
-
Tolkien reads to me like a cross between Thomas the Tank Engine and Alice in Wonderland - the story is good, but old, the writing is just terrible. It could be (certainly for the Hobbit) that its a children's book, and I'm not a child....
Rowling of course has the opposite problem - fantastic writing and a cruddy story.
Grapes of Wrath? That was a fantastic book...studying a book is like dissecting a flower to find the bit that makes it beautiful.
Most books by Richard Dawkins are considered to be 'great', but I can't get rid of this feeling while I read them that he is a prime tart...
Honestly, It seems to me more that Tolkien was an amazing story teller and a not so amazing author.
-
Does The Scarlet Letter count? Because if so, eeeeeuuuuaaaaggghhhh.
-
make that all of Hawthorne
-
hang on, did someone just say that JK Rowling was a better writer than JRR Tolkien.
GACK.
GAAACK.
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK.
*dies*
-
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Vasquez was absolutely terrible. Yeah sure, the guy won a Nobel Prize, but this was so much crap it's ridiculous.
-
Surely, you mean Gael Garcia Bernal
-
100 Years of Solitude was an amazing book. Probably one of my all time favorites. The mix of history with magical surrealism with his captivating style. Spectacular.
I really was bored by Ethan Frome, however.
-
I've read Love In The Time Of Cholera and 100 Years Of Solitude and found them both pretty enjoyable. Y Tu Mama Tambien is still his best, though. (to flagrantly knick E. Spaceman's joke)
Along the magic realism lines, I was bored shitless by Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, which won the Booker of Bookers prize or whatever (the prize for being the best of the first 25 years of prize-winners...). Something a bit too cozy about it, and generally just way too waffly.
Not sure I like the style of most Bookers candidates much at all, despite them being what I read a lot after I finished studying, cos I wasn't sure how to find contemporary goodness. Actually I do really love some Ian McEwan books, but that's an exception rather than the rule. And I also just finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and that was really good.
I thought everyone ever bitched about the Da Vinci Code, maybe it was highly popular but never highly rated?
Only John Fowles I've read was The French Lieutenant's Woman and it was awful. Almost wilfully middlebrow.. it's like if you're going to try to break from classical form then fucking go for it, go the whole modernist hog, be as ornery as Joyce or whoever. Clever little anachronisms and breaking the fourth wall and all that other po-mo shit don't cut it IMO.
Am slogging my way through Gravity's Rainbow now. It's hard going so far, so I'm oh so looking forward to the constipation bit. :-P
I have to admit a lot of books mentioned here are "greats" that I always avoided because I thought they looked bloody hard work. Maybe I should dip in to some of them. I would like to read some Conrad, for example.
-
100 Years of Solitude was an amazing book. Probably one of my all time favorites. The mix of history with magical surrealism with his captivating style. Spectacular.
I really was bored by Ethan Frome, however.
couldn't have said it better myself. wharton bores the hell out of me in general, short stories and all. as for marquez, he's great and 100 years of solitude is flat out brilliant.
-
I don't think it's fair to compare JK Rowling and Dan Brown to Chaucer... they're completely different. I wouldn't put any of them down as my favourite authors (JK Rowling in particular writes books that are like rare truffles coated in a very cheap chocolate) but they're too different to be classed together.
Chaucer is a bit dated for me; I'm ashamed of it rather but I gave up trying to read through the Canterbury Tales because it took too long to piece it together with modern life. It was a while back though, and I'm older (and hopefully wiser) now so I might have another go.
One book I forced my way through was Portrait of a Lady. I hated that book. It had some tremendous description that was about twenty times too convoluted, it had some interesting and in-depth characters who were all inexplicably obsessed with a dull cardboard cut-out of a heroine, and it had a carefully developed plot which chugged its way to the top of the story and fell rapidly to a predictably cliched doom almost immediately.
Having said that, it at the very least managed to sustain my interest. There are many books out there that I pick up and think "I've read this before..." then flick to the end to see if I finished it, and realised I gave up half way through so many times that the first chapter is imprinted on my brain and the last page is totally new to me.
And just to demonstrate my lack of years, a series that's popular amongst my peers but makes me laugh it's so bad is the one that's got titles like "I Fell Over my Hugely Large Breasts" and "He's a Sex God and he Hates Me" or whatever they are. All about some girl who keeps falling in love with guys who don't like her. She never does anything interesting and she speaks like a moron. It's teenage fiction that gives us a bad name, not teenage behaviour. We're not really like that. I hope.
-
i wish i could agree with you on that last point. i'd say it is most definetly teen behavior that gives us a bad reputation, not teen fiction. i think the former is infintely more detrimental to us than the latter in 99% of cases.
-
100 Years of Solitude was an amazing book. Probably one of my all time favorites. The mix of history with magical surrealism with his captivating style. Spectacular.
MEXICAN MAGIC REALISM IS AWESOME
-
No one mentioned Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I realize that it's considered the first science fiction novel, and that it has a lot to say about the nature of humanity, about taking responsibility for our actions, and about the role of women in a world controlled by men. You can get pretty much all that from the movies, especially the 1931 Boris Karloff version, since the book is overwritten and drags on and on and on and on and on.
-
Jane Eyre... I hated that book. I really liked Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice, but Jane Eyre just... bored me.
A classic that I enjoyed, but couldn't bring myself to crawl through the badly translated English was Crime and Punishment. I had to read it for my AP English class in High School. I just could not do it. So, I got it on tape, and enjoyed the story immensely. The actual reading of it, though, whew!
And, if anyone bashes Heart of Darkness, I will beat you until you've the consistency of mashed potatoes.
-
I can't stand Dracula. I've tried reading it on a few occasions, but give up 3 quarters of the way through.
I also loathe "The Power of One" by Bryce Courtney. Some people think it's this great novel, but I absolutely hate it.
-
I'm so glad I read Animal Farm after I read 1984, the latter was much more fufilling, Animal Farm was frustratingly obvious.
Harry Potter was shite, there's nothing that can persuade me to read any further than the first book.
And Mary Poppins, after seeing the film, turns out she's a bit of a bitch in the book...also there's no songs in the book.
And I've just started reading the Da Vinci Code, should I bother to continue seeing it's so put down?
-
The first Harry Potter book is shite compared to the later ones - it's basically a children's book and unashamedly so, whereas they move more towards young adult as time goes on. As for the Da Vinci Code, sure, you might as well. It is an entertaining romp, just he cannot write for peanuts - description is a minor downfall of his, for example.
-
That's alright, I don't like peanuts.
-
Fantasy: seconding Hobb as it is ridiculous drivel and Eddings as well. I never made through the first book.
The worst book I have read is probably a tie between John Steinbeck - The Pearl and Ib Michael - The Troubadour's Apprentice. The first one is endlessly tedious and despite the short length it feels a 1000 pages longer. To this day I feel a latent animosity against that dreadful book. The second is stream-of-conscious magic realism situated in Italy during the plague and it is unreadable drivel. He takes an childish glee in describing vulgarities(graphic sex scenes involving dwarves being one) and often goes off on long rants about the moon or the stars or some shite, the farther away from the story the better. It is a plotless mess and the worst part is that this guy is a literary giant in Denmark.
Though I suppose it is worth mentioning that they were forced down my throat in primary school.
-
I am not liking all the hating on Catcher in the Rye! I can sympathize if you were made to disect it in school - that experience came CLOSE to ruining for me what otherwise is a monument to our (I suppose I mean America's, possibly the West's) persistant cultural pathologies. I can only stand in sheer awe of Salinger's insight and sheer communicative ability, in light of this book and also Franny and Zooey.
Now, The Scarlet Letter. Different story. Made me want to bleed out my eyes. Some good parts, though.
-
Oh yeah, 1985. Some great ideas, but I absolutely hate Orwell's writing style.
-
1985 was written by Anthony Burgess. Mayhaps you mean the significantly more famous 1984?
-
i was one of the three people in my english class in HS who liked Jane Eyre. i was also one of the few who didn't really care for Catcher in the Rye. i mean, it was well written, but i hated Holden. i wanted to smack him. i'm currently reading wuthering heights (never read it in HS like just about everyone else) and i like it. Jane Austen has good books, but i can't read them too often. and i was one of the few people who liked The Grapes of Wrath. i read it in the summer though, so i forced myself through the first third, but once i got into it, i realized i actually liked it. and we didn't have to disect the hell out of it, which might have been part of it.
Madam Bovary was probably the most boring book i've ever read. i hated it. Flaubert was a waste of my time, and this was a book i chose from a list to do a project on. i gave up and got the sparknotes, which i really don't like doing, because it was that painful of a read.
-
possibly not a great book, but a great author
the Silmarillion, seriously, was the man on crack or something, Its so unreadable
-
Perhaps a liiiitle off topic.
But I have to write a chapter for the beginning of "Of Mice and Men"...I was supposed to give it in about a month ago and decided now was a good time to start it.
I've had a few ideas but I find that they're stupidly simular to the first chapter Steinbeck wrote, or I can't write about it for more than half a page.
Help?!
:(
-
Personally, I'd submit Steinbeck's first chapter verbatim. I can't imagine what good that assignment will do you at all (other than passing the course maybe). So glad I'm not in school anymore.
Was anyone else made to read The Collector in highschool and actually like it? I was the only person in my class who didn't just go "book sucked lol, why write that bit in the middle twice?". (Incidently I also failed every assignment related to the book, and the exam too).
-
1985 was written by Anthony Burgess. Mayhaps you mean the significantly more famous 1984?
Yeah, that too.
-
This thread is the perfect opportunity for me to tear into James Joyce, as I have previously done in a thread devoted soley to "the master of stream of consciousness."
Why anyone would ever want to write in a faulty style is beyond me in the first place. I fucking couldn't stand reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in my lit class last semester, and that one is supposedly the easiest to read out of his great books. Ten pages into it, I felt like I needed to open up my skull and rub some pumice stone soap to get the dirt off of my brain. It's total bullshit that he's considered the greatest 20th century author by lots of literary types.
I don't think Austen is overly terrible, but I just don't like her style of writing, or any style of writing in novels during that era for that matter. They do an awful lot of telling, with the narrator's voice being the exact same as the author. That kind of bothers me. I like my narrators impartial, simply filling in important details in between dialogue.
I hate Dickens with a passion, although A Christmas Carol is actually really good. It's also simply funny, which most of Dickens' other stories were not. He's the perfect example of a writer with fantastic story ideas, really poignant stuff, that just cannot write worth a damn.
-
you hit why i can't read Austen right on the head. it all blurred together and i couldn't tell what was going on.
-
I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Sense and Sensibility was also fairly good. While there are not many people from that era I enjoyed, I always appreciate authors with sharp wit, which was in prevalence in her novels.
-
Personally, I'd submit Steinbeck's first chapter but written backwards.
Personally, I'd submit Steinbeck's first chapter but with no punctuation.
Personally, I'd submit Steinbeck's first chapter except every character is replaced with an analogous Looney Tune.
-
Personally, I'd submit Steinbeck's first chapter except every character is replaced with an analogous Looney Tune.
i'd give that an A.
i love Austen's plots, i just prefer to watch them. and that is a horrible horrible thing to say, but unbelievably true.
-
How about read aloud with a British accent?
-
ooo. anytime.
-
There's actually quite a lot of 19th century British novels that are a LOT better if they are read aloud and with a British accent.
I also discovered Shakespeare is also quite a lot better when you read it with a British accent. It's easier to get through, at least to me. I suppose that's because, you know, it was written to be acted in English, hence, use an English accent.
-
shakespeare is just better when read aloud in any accent. when i'd have to read it for class, a few of us would just get together and read aloud, because it's more fun that way.
i can't remember many books i've read that i didn't like, even if we had to read them for school. the only one i really remember as being a bit of a pain was The Bluest Eye, only for the fact that parts of it were increddibly messed up. not to bash toni morrison's work, though, because she is a good writer.
-
Indeed, a lot of Shakespeare's poetry hinged on peculiarities in the pronunciation of Elizabethan English that are gone today.
-
i get epilepctic fits from jane austin.
-
I happen to think Pride and Prejudice by Austen is wonderful. I think it's required to have a uterus to like this book. Not saying that every female likes it, but.. I can't think of too many guys that do. I also love Shakespeare, although not his poetry.
A man that I have immense hatred for: Charles Dickens. GOOD CHRIST, he needs to shut up. I have hated everything by this man that I have been forced to read. Although Oliver Twist was okay. But Great Expectations? I wanted to shoot myself. In the face.
I also second (or third? or fourth? I'm not sure...) the hatred of James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was one of the most painful things I've ever had to read. Also, Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence was pretty fucking awful, in my opinion. It seems I'm not a big fan of BritLit. Except Jane Austen.
I'm sure there are others that I can't think of right now.. honestly, I hate a lot of so-called classic literature.
-
I despised the Crucible SO MUCH. SO FUCKING MUCH!
Agh, god, I hated that book. HATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATE! It was utter crap, and it's even worse when your retarded high school classmates have to read it. They didn't even try to put any emotion in to it
-
Agreed, Grunty.
Puritans are such a boring subject to write about. I think Hawthorne had potential to be amazing, but alas, he wrote about something so genuinely uninteresting that I have a strange love/hate relationship with his works. The Crucible is just doubly bad because it's not actually about Puritans, but it's about COMMUNISM in relation to how Puritans are depicted. I forgot the writer of the play, isn't that sad?
There's nothing worse than trying to read a play out loud and people not putting any emotion into it?
-
Ayn Rand. I couldn't get into her novels.
Ray Bradbury. He haunted my highschool years.
Zora Neale Hurston. No thank you. Very much.
Mark Twain.
-
Ooh yes. Twain. No like.
War. And. Peace. Holy crap.
-
If you like or dislike 1984 and Brave New World, then you should read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
Especially if you really, really, really, really love ellipses. I dunno, maybe I just had a bad translation.
-
The Catcher in the Rye- I thought it was supposed to be a classic. Dumbest book ever written.
The Scarlet Letter- Normally I did all of the required reading in HS, but I had to use Spark Notes for this one. I couldn't force myself to read it.
Of Mice and Men- Just flat out gag me. Ish.
Nicholas Nickelby- I usually like Dickens. I also liked the movie. But not the book.
That's all for now. I do tend to like the classics, so it's a short list.
-
The Glass Menagerie
Things Fall Apart
The Martian Chronicles (not sure if this even counts as a "great" book, but it was required reading in one of my classes way back in HS)
-
Ayn Rand. I couldn't get into her novels.
I've started reading Atlas Shrugged, but I'm finding the proselytising is laid on a bit too thick. I'm trying to give it a chance, though.
-
The Crucible is by Arthur Miller (he of Death of a Salesman fame).
-
i'm so glad i'm not the only one to despise catcher in the rye.
i agree with the classic literature and lord of the rings comments, too.
-
"Catcher in the Rye" blows donkey cock.
"Heart of Darkness" put me to sleep within 5 pages literally every time I picked it up. I think it's the only book that's ever done that.
I understand that "Of Mice and Men" is well-written but I didn't enjoy it at all. Also, "The Pearl" is the worst strand of tripe I've ever read. Come to think of it, I'd completely blocked out the memory of reading it until I came across it in this thread. It is STILL the worst strand of tripe I've ever read. Criminy, that book was terrible. TERRIBLE.
I DESPISED "Beloved." Toni Morrison might be a good writer but I certainly didn't notice.
"Lord of the Flies" is also terrible.
On the other hand, Shakespeare kicks ass and so does 1984, Mark Twain, Tolkien (including the Silmarillion, which granted is not for everyone), The Martian Chronicles, The Sound and the Fury (but only if you have a really good teacher teaching the book to you) and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (ditto). Reading the last two on your own might ruin them. I sure needed a little help.
-
Of Mice and Men- Just flat out gag me. Ish.
I LOVED Of Mice And Men, even if we did study it for a whole year for English Lit!! What aspects do people dislike, just out of interest?
As much as I've tried, I really can't properly get into Catch-22, everytime I try, I just lose concentration after about 2 apges, which is odd for me as I can generally read anything and everything due to my addiction to books... Did anyone else get that with that book..??
-
I love Catch-22 yet have never been able to finish the last half of it. Not due to dislike but more the fact it get's too depressing to me the further into the book I got. Another book I didn't dislike but had trouble making it through was Naked Lunch.
-
Ayn Rand. I couldn't get into her novels.
Ray Bradbury. He haunted my highschool years.
Zora Neale Hurston. No thank you. Very much.
Mark Twain.
Totally agreed on Ayn Rand - her books are just kind of like a hammer banging away at your head while you read. OKAY OKAY OKAY ALREADY!!! I get it! I got it in the first damn sentence!!!
If you hated Bradbury in high school, I'd recommend trying him one more time without all of the forced analyzation (high school SUCKS for making people hate otherwise great books). Of course, you may just not like him, or you may just not like sci fi, and that's okay too, but he's one of my favorites and I hate seeing him dismissed for a bad HS experience.
I'm really glad this thread seems to have gotten over the whole, "I can't stand books not written in the last 30 years" thing - I'm a literature nerd, so I start to get all twitchy when I hear crap like that (ie, just because you can't read the book in 6 hours doesn't make it BAD).
On to my contribution, which is one I haven't seen mentioned yet, and that is Melville. I cannot STAND Moby Dick. It drives me insane with boredom. I get the allegory and the white whale bit and all that jazz, but I'd rather just know and never ever ever have to read that book again. Ever. Also, ditto to whomever said The Old Man and the Sea. Now, I'm a Hemingway fanatic; I think his style of writing was just brilliant because he knew exactly how to say all sorts of things without ever saying them (and if you think his style was easy, go try and write like him - it's crazy hard), but TOMATS generally bored me to tears. Thank god it's so short.
-
The Scarlett Letter and Heart of Darkness
The Scarlett Letter could have been written in 30 pages and it would have still been a dull story.
Heart of Darkness is just a drag with heaps of boredom on top of it. Lord of the Flies is a better case study of a group of people going mad plus it is far more entertaining because while there is internal conflict, it manifest itself as external hunting.
Though I wouldn't call it a great book Andromeda Strain is another book I could have gone my entire life without reading.
-
Lord of the Flies is a better case study of a group of people going mad plus it is far more entertaining because while there is internal conflict, it manifest itself as external hunting.
And then it ends in a pile of shit.
-
Of Mice and Men- Just flat out gag me. Ish.
I LOVED Of Mice And Men, even if we did study it for a whole year for English Lit!! What aspects do people dislike, just out of interest?
I think the main point was that I found it dull, and I flat-out dislike Steinbeck's writing style. The Red Pony was also a terrible book for me.
-
Do Ayn Rand books count as "classics"? Because I can't read more than 20 pages of her bullshit. And I often can't spend more than 20 minutes around people who like her philosophy.
-
For those that don't enjoy Mark Twain, what are ya'lls thoughts on William Falkner?
I couldn't stand Falkner's stuff the first time I read it but I started reading more of his short stories and thought they were great and more important enjoyable to read. I really like Mark Twain's writing style and stories overall but I hate how the plot moves in some of his stories particularly Huck Finn.
And I think Futurama said it best when they described it as "a corney slice of Americana"
-
Thank god someone mentioned Moby Dick... I became a "Nuke the Whales" supporter after reading that book....
Another one is Don Quixote... yeah it is suppose to be all satirical but blah I just hated the main character.
Oh and although everyone recommends the "New Testament" I could not get through the whole thing... its a tough read.
-
The problem is not with the 'great books', its with mediocre teachers. Instead of presenting these books on their own terms, they choose to load it down with post-colonialism, post-modern, lit crit bullshit that does nothing to explain the philosophy, ideas, or concepts of the book in question. I'd hate Shakespeare to if I had to listen to a post-colonial interpretation of The Tempest.
As for me, Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir is high on my list of terrible great books.
-
The Life Of Pi by Yan Martel seemed to get a ton of praise. I contend that it was very much not good, and Yan Martel seems a bit of an idiot.
-
Catcher in the Rye - it's about nothing! i finished it and didnt feel that i had even read anything.
1984 - ok, i like this book but it's so draining to read. i had to take a break every 3 or 4 pages because it actually wore me out. it took me twice as long to read 1984 as it would have to read something that was twice as long. great book but what a pain in the ass.
-
Wuthering Heights. I had to drop my AP English course just because I couldnt force myself through it.
On the other hand, the same course required me to read "The Importance of Being Earnest", which is what started me on my Oscar Wilde kick that i've been on for a while.
So it was a mixed blessing.
-
As for me, Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir is high on my list of terrible great books.
A fucking men to that. After 3 years of Uni I've done Beowulf, the decammeron, Henry James and a disertation on Ulysses but goddammit there are lost tribes living in Beauvoir's sentences. "After the third semi-colon we just gave up and ate Barry for nourishment!"
Over-rated poets, anyone? When they made us study William Carlos Williams and listen to people call The Red Wheelbarrow 'genius' I finally snapped. Literary academia is a haven for the truest kind of metnal defectives.
-
If anyone in here says they can't read Steinbeck I may cut them.
I can't read Steinbeck. Sorry.
People now adays are raving about fucking Eragon. Fuck Them, thank you very much. Lets take the basic point of Star Wars. Eat a dick, Paolini.
-
Of Mice and Men
Wuthering Heights
Anything by Rousseau
Anything by James Hillman - the man is a fucking egomaniacal fuckwit who only writes in buzzwords.
Anything by Annie Proulx but specifically The Shipping News
I actually really like Robin Hobb, I find her style a lot easier to digest then say Tolkien or Eddings.
-
I can't read Steinbeck. Sorry.
(http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/4121/hand20holding20kniferm3.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
-
The best example for me would be A Tale of Two Cities. Part Three wasn't that bad, but the first two parts just dragged on and on with random stuff that was completely irrelevant to the plot. Dickens seemed to like spending several pages describing a scene followed by about two sentence of something actually happening. It was one of those books where I would read for half an hour without actually digesting any of it.
-
Oh and Battlefield Earth pissed me off too. The book should have finished halfway through (though for me it did because that's where I stopped reading). I can actually no longer tell if I can't stand L. Ron Hubbard because I hate his books or I hate the religion he started. It's just like how I can't tell if I don't like Tom Cruise because he's a fucking weirdo or because I find the majority of his films to be subpar.
-
I can't fucking stand Pride and Prejudice. Most of my friends love it, they'll watch the BBC miniseries and mouth the dialogue, and honest to god, I'm certain they write fan fiction. I just can't stand it. It thinks its so incredibly clever, but in reality its just pretentious drivel.
-
Okay let's see...
The DaVinci Code, absolutely awful book, I wouldn't read it again if I was paid to. It was trashy, too obvious, and really poorly written.
Possession by A.S. Byatt. Terrible. So damn boring. Just... don't. Seriously.
Anything by Thomas Hardy, his books bore me to tears. I don't think I even got halfway through The Mayor of Casterbridge.
I'm sure there's more, I just can't think of them at the moment.
-
Lord of the Flies, Things Fall Apart, and Heart of Darkness. Friggin' hate those books.
-
The Scarlet Letter- Normally I did all of the required reading in HS, but I had to use Spark Notes for this one. I couldn't force myself to read it..
I didn't even use Spark notes when we had to read it in HS. The book was so fucking predicable, I just guessed everything that would happen next, and was always right. It was terrible. I read maybe the first chapter, and returned it to the library.
I agree with everyone about Ayn Rand. I'd rather peel my skin off, fry it, and then eat it than read any of her books again. I read both Atlas Shrugged, and the one Rush wrote an album about(Anthem? Was that what the book was called?), and they were so boring. She's way too wordy.
-
Another one is Don Quixote... yeah it is suppose to be all satirical but blah I just hated the main character.
In my channel-flipping days a few years back, I kept seeing this advertisment for a Hallmark-produced Don Quixote with John Lithgow starring as the title role. Now I never saw the movie in the end. Nor did I read the book. However, I have hence pictured Don Quixote as a medieval Dick Solomon and never looked back. I mean, how CAN you go wrong with that?!?
On topic - I could not get through the following two books and am inclined to consider them rubbish:
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Hemingway (fell asleep somewhere halfway)
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner (got through the whole dislodged-in-time bit only to be met by trite - apparently I can read 'crazy' but not 'boring')
-
My girlfriend and I have been arguing over Joyce for the passed few days now. I read the first 30 pages of A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man, and the first page of Finnegan's Wake. My girlfriend insists the writing is genius, yet, I strongly disagree.
First of all, we have A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man. I'm not totally sure of the plot, it has some of the most simplistic dialogue I have ever read. It's all "noun verb, noun verb" through-out most of the narrative, with some poetry thrown in occasionally.
Then, Finnegan's Wake is from the exact opposite spectrum. I can't definitively say this is a bad book, because I don't understand a word of it, but I can definitely make thoughts to that conclusion. I don't feel bad at all for not understanding it, because I doubt many people do.
I do love the thought of a recursive novel, though.