Are there any classic books which you just don't understand why they are considered classics?

[WI_DEM]

I would say for me it is "The old Man and the Sea", but then again I was never a huge Hemmingway fan.

[Phredicles]

1. Hemingway = way over-rated.

Beyond that, we had to read Steinbeck's "The Pearl" in the 9th grade: :puke:

[Arugula Latte]

119. I agree. Hemingway got waaaaay too muchadulation. nt

[LostinVA]

147. Agreed -- he ripped off Gertrude Stein and made it annoying

[Bjornsdotter]

2. Hemmingway

....Makes me want to rip my eyeballs out.

The 2 books I remember hating the most as required reading were "Moby Dick" and "Great Expectations", never understood why they were considered classics.

Cheers

[Redneck Socialist]

43. LOL! I love both Melville and Dickens

Moby Dick is one of the greatest books ever written, IMNSHO, of course.

PS I like Hemingway too. :D

[Bjornsdotter]

51. Lol

I don't mind Dickens, just hated "Great Expectations" and as far as Melville.....well I use his book to smash stinging bugs or to prop open windows.

It's funny how one person's literary torture is another's delight.

Cheers :toast:

[Bridget Burke]

158. I had Great Expectations in High School & a college English Novels course.

Cliff Notes got me through both times. Somehow, I could never stomach that book.

"Vanity Fair"--in that same college class--was a delight. Perhaps I prefer Not So Earnest Victorians.

[Courtesy Flush]

135. Read Typee

A great non-fiction work that jump-started Melville's career.

I haven't read Great Expectations, but I loved David Copperfield. When I retire I'll read more Dickens.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

157. Great Expectations sucked ass.

A Tale of Two Cities was amazing, however.

[LSparkle]

3. Call me stupid but anything by James Joyce

Just can't get into any of his books -- too darned convoluted.

[Hosnon]

8. You're stupid.

:evilgrin:

[ElizabethDC]

10. I agree

I don't understand what he's talking about half the time.

[Bridget Burke]

159. Try "The Dubliners"

It's a collection of stories written before Joyce's stylistic "experiments." (I can get into the experiments but agree they're not for everybody.)

"The Dead"--from that book--is my favorite short story of all time.

[bikebloke]

166. I liked the one I read.

In high school, we had to read "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man". I started it about five or six times. And then it clicked. I rolled right through it and still think it was one of the best books I read in school. In the class discussion, people were deciding it was convoluted symbolism for all sorts of things, including the Vietnam war. But it wasn't. Just a book about people.

[The Magistrate]

4. 'The Scarlet Letter', Sir

It pains me to think of all the trees dead to produce copies of it down the years, and amazed me to find it being still assigned in high school just a couple fo years ago....

[DemCam]

13. House of Seven Gables is worse.

[Bucky]

18. "Mom, Dad, I love you. But you have a hell of a lot to learn about rock and roll!"

The Scarlet Letter is indespensible.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. Oh, God...

:boring:

[artfan]

49. no way it is wonderful

and in todays fundie world still important to read

[jakefrep]

115. Amen....

...I despised that book.

[Bridget Burke]

161. At least it was shorter than "Great Expectations"

Nowadays, students can just watch Demi Moore's movie rather than read Hawthorne.

(Heh.)

[northzax]

168. on behalf of my distant ancestor

Stephen Batchelor, who inspired Reverend Chillingsworth, I agree with you. good to read as a bulwark against fundies, but anytime the Demi Moore movie version is more scintilating than the book, you know you have issues.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

5. I like Hemingways

short stories better than his novels. "One trip across" and "The short, happy life of Frances McComber" are great stories.

[Cabcere]

6. Anything by Thomas Hardy. n/t

[DemCam]

11. Oh, no.

Some of my favorite novels of all time. I love that bleakness and harshness. Reminds me all too well of growing up in West Texas. :)

[Cabcere]

23. Maybe it was just my age at the time

I had to read them for an AP English class, I think...I was about 17 and it just didn't really do anything for me. :shrug: I also really hated "The Hobbit" when I was forced to read it in eighth grade (although I only made it through about thirty pages, I think - honestly, how many pages are really necessary to describe a round green door?). Lots of people have told me I would probably enjoy it more if I read it now, but I haven't gotten around to it yet - and probably won't, to be perfectly honest. Being descriptive is one thing; taking approximately four pages to convey the idea that Bilbo's door was green and round is quite another. :shrugs: I guess I'm just impatient, or something.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

38. Ah, the Hobbit.

That book's interesting level starts at the bottom end of a parabola.

[Bjornsdotter]

50. Lol

...I tried to read at 17, 25, and 36. I just can't get past the first 50 pages, so I've given up.

Cheers

[conscious evolution]

69. I think you are right

I read it in 5th grade and I am a total tolkien geek.What I have noticed in the Tolkien geek world is that the younger you were when you read the Hobbit or LotR's the more likely you were to become a Tolkien geek.

[tigereye]

125. I think that means my kid will be a geek, then

people should read Tolkien out loud, too, it really makes a difference. The language and tones of the stories read aloud are great...

[Alexander]

88. I had to read "The Hobbit" in 7th grade, and HATED it.

I re-read it when I was about 20, in my free time, and loved it.

I agree with you though - in any Tolkien story, the first 50 pages or so are the hardest to get through. "Fellowship of the Ring" took me several months to finish, just because the first half dragged so much. "The Two Towers" and "Return of the King" took me less than a week.

I think Tolkien likes to paint pictures before he gets to telling the story - putting intricate detail and minutiae first, so the characters and setting seem multi-dimensional once the story takes off.

Unfortunately, this makes his books initially hard to get through. The good news is if you get past the more boring parts you will be richly rewarded with an excellent story and characters you care about.

One example comes to mind, and if you don't want to read it (it spoils the ending of "Return of the King", the book version anyway), don't go any further.
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Tolkien's excruciatingly long and dry description of the Shire and everything Hobbit-like made sense to me when Saruman and Wormtongue take over the Shire and turn it into a nightmarish dystopia - the contrast between what you know as the Shire and the Shire at the end of the story is striking, and I found myself silently cheering on the Hobbits as they pieced together what was going on and tried to fix it.

This is also why I feel the movies are far inferior (but still good) - Peter Jackson didn't like ROTK's ending and cut out all the "Scouring of the Shire" chapters. I felt that it was the best example that the Hobbits matured, grew and learned from their adventures, becoming heroes themselves instead of just observers. But that's just me.

[pokerfan]

93. I think The Scouring works better in the novel

than it would have worked on the large screen. A novel can be any length, but the third film was already at the three hour mark.

It is a very important part of the story to show how the hobbits had grown --two of them literally-- and to return the story to its origin. Jackson accomplished a lot of that without subjecting an already butt-numbed and bladder-bursting audience to yet another battle, and a fairly minor one at that.

Frodo Lives!

[Alexander]

118. That's why I think it should've been 6 movies, and/or "Two Towers" should've been longer.

There were, technically, 6 books in the Lord of the Rings trilogy - each book was divided in half.

Had Jackson made 6 shorter movies out of the series, I think fans of the books would've enjoyed them more, the audience would've been more patient, and it probably would've made more money. After all, all 6 books do end on a note of suspense (except the last one, of course).

Also, he ended the Two Towers way too early - it should've ended about 30 minutes into Return of the King. Had that happened, the scouring could've taken the place of the Shelob scenes.

I don't agree that the scouring was a "minor" battle - it wrapped up all the loose ends of the plot, killed Saruman and Wormtongue (rather than just show Saruman stuck in his tower) and could've been made more grandiose on the silver screen. Imagine a battle a quarter of the size of Helm's Deep, only entirely consisting of Hobbits. I think it could've been done and done well, but that's just me.

[Bridget Burke]

164. Jackson initially planned to make two movies.

When the money guys suggested that three would be better.

If they'd realized the movies were going to be so successful, more money might have been forthcoming. Watching the special features on the DVD's & hearing the commentaries, I realized that both time & money were strictly budgeted for such a huge project.

[tigereye]

126. yes, I agree totally

[TroglodyteScholar]

22. AMEN

Talk about an unrewarding experience....

[Cabcere]

24. LOL, glad I'm not the only one who feels that way! n/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. Yes - "Return of the Native" was incredibly boring

and put me off attempting anything else by him. An eminently forgettable plot, and boring, chapter-long descriptions of heathland.

[KittyWampus]

47. what about Proust. It takes his character about 7 pages to turn a doorknob. Kind of like me on acid

[jane_pippin]

55. Aw, but Jude the Obscure is the ultimate in depressing,

dreary, bleak winter reads! It's so depressing it's almost a comedy of errors. I'm not a huge Hardy fan really, but I love that book.

[deutsey]

106. Same here...I have really tried to give Hardy a chance

but I just can't get into his books at all. His books bored the hell out of me in high school, but I thought maybe you have to mature a bit to grasp what he's doing. Nope. Still found him ploddingly dull.

I remember hearing a radio program a few years ago about "Jude the Obscure" and it sounded like such an interesting story that was in many ways relevant to my life. So I got it and maybe got to page 20 before I just gave up on it.

:shrug:

[MountainMama]

144. Try it again....

I highly recommend "The Mayor of Casterbridge." A portrait about a man who's evil and pitiable all at once and his daughter. Saw it dramatized first and liked it enough to pick up the book.

I concur with the "Moby Dick" and "Scarlet Letter" comments. Couldn't get through either one back in high school and have no desire to try again anytime soon.

[deutsey]

145. I love Moby Dick

I may try Hardy again sometime, but I'm not eager to seek out any of his works, unfortunately.

[ElizabethDC]

7. I agree with you on "The Old Man and the Sea"

I also don't understand why people get so excited about "Wuthering Heights" - I've read a couple of times, and I just find it dreadful. And I'm not sure if it's considered a classic yet, but I found "Beloved" to be way too disturbing to enjoy (I realize it's *supposed* to be disturbing, but I just have a hard time getting around it!)

[Hosnon]

14. I agree. I didn't have the usual feeling of accomplishment and understanding

that comes from reading a great book when I finished "The Old Man and the Sea".

I think the style was revolutionary (which makes Hemingway great) but I find it a bit dry.

[Cabcere]

21. Oh, ugh...Wuthering Heights

*shudder* That was a terrible novel. :puke: My mom thought so, too - she's pretty open-minded when it comes to literature, but even she thought pretty much everybody in the story was seriously messed up. Especially Heathcliff (and especially when he jumped into Catherine's grave - ugh!). :puke: But yeah, I agree. Horrible, horrible book.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

27. I liked the semaphore version...

[Cabcere]

28. LOL!!

AP English would've been a lot more fun if my teacher had chosen to assign us that version, methinks. ;)

[Oeditpus Rex]

81. 'Julius Caesar' on an Aldis Lamp was pretty good, too

The Women's Association enjoyed it.

[More Than A Feeling]

155. I loved Wuthering Heights!

It was like Romeo and Juliet if all of Shakespeare's characters had been complete assholes. I found that appealing for some reason.

[Czolgosz]

9. Ayn Rand defied the laws of physics; her writing style is overheated but her thoughts are half-baked

[haf216]

79. I so agree.

My AP English teacher loved her, so we had to read The Fountain Head, then watch the movie. It was the only book for school that I never read all the was though.

[Zorra]

83. Agreed. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are horrid little

exercises in not thinking things through and then writing boring fiction about it.

[NMMNG]

94. You obviously just don't have the capacity to comprehend her ideas

And more than likely you're a collectivist slacker. ;-)

[Sisaruus]

12. my high school contemporary literature course reading list

I don't understand why the books I read in a high school contemporay lit course are now on the classics list at Barnes and Noble. How did that happen? WHEN did that happen?

[Bucky]

15. As long as we're going after the heavy hitters...

Moby Dick is well structured, but rather poorly edited. About a third of its text should be cut out. There's a reason why this epic novel is so easily translated into a 100 minute movie. Melville wrote an excellent story, but then polluted it up with a lot of extraneous crap.

[rug]

39. Now wait a minute.

His digressions were the best part.

One of them concerned Quaker whale ship owners who went to an island where there was an enormous whale skeleton the islanders worshipped.

If I remember it correctly these whalers went inside the ribcage to estimate how much oil that whale contained. Melville commented how these New England pragmatists earnestly went about their business measuring a god while the islanders watched silently.

Or something to that effect.

I'd also recommend Bartlebty the Scrivener to you, but I prefer not to.

[MorningGlow]

54. "I'd also recommend Bartlebty the Scrivener to you, but I prefer not to."

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[WindRavenX]

77. hahaha lawl!!

:rofl:

[Arkansas Granny]

16. I would have to say another Hemingway: "The Sun Also Rises".

I read it and could not understand why it was considered, by some, to be a great novel.

[Joe for Clark]

17. April Morning.

Proud and the Free.

Howard Fast -

Although - I like my book - On a Wing and Prayer.

Terrible plug -

Joe

[catnhatnh]

I met him in the 80's....

a small, dapper, and seemingly (somehow) European man...I often wondered how he envisioned "Sparticus"...that said his wife was a huge and brassy Amazon who pushed her vision of sculpture on a very gullible public (her stuff was shit) and who dismissed him from serious discussion, sending him to talk to foundry workers that bored him while she hung out with the supposedly more artistic types in the wax room...

[catnhatnh]

74. Delete...Dupe.

[catnhatnh]

75. And, in a new personal best-Double Delete.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

20. You know, I haven't read that one.

But I did enjoy the Burgess Meredith movie.


... or was that Spencer Tracy? Damn.

[WI_DEM]

26. Spencer Tracy, but I thought the movie was dull too.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

25. Yup. All Of Them.

Can't think of one I ever read that technically didn't bore me to death.

When some James Patterson novels become considered classics, then I'll reconsider my position. :)

[GirlinContempt]

60. James........... patterson............

fuck the what?

[Richardo]

100. You speak for many, GiC

:patriot:

[GirlinContempt]

101. Tis a hard cross to bear

but tis mine

[fudge stripe cookays]

103. And that explains SO much. n/t

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

123. Damn, you beat me to it. -nt

[StatGirl]

29. Wuthering Heights

Is that a classic? It sucked so majorly, that I wanted those hours of my life back.

On the other hand, it did come in handy later when I read Jasper Fforde's excellent Thursday Next series.

[LiberalEsto]

37. Amen. I can't stand W.H.

All those uncontrolled emotions, with characters saying one thing and doing the other. None of their actions made any sense to me.

And no, I'm not a Vulcan. I love all Jane Austen's novels.

[smirkymonkey]

58. That's exactly why I like WH. All those uncontrolled emotions.

Maybe I am mentally ill, but I could relate to Cathy & Heathcliff. Then again, my sensibilities have always been about 150 years behind the times. ;)

[MedleyMisty]

31. I like Wuthering Heights.

But then I am a fan of everything ever written by a Bronte.

I wrote a long love email to my husband once that included quotes from Wuthering Heights (the bit where Catherine goes on about her love for Heathcliff and says that their souls are made from the same stuff) and Jane Eyre (the bit in the garden at night with the conversation about Jane going off to Ireland and how much it would hurt to break the tie between their hearts.)

I also really liked The Scarlet Letter.

I love my 19th century classics.

I have to agree with the majority, though. In freshman English we had to find ten adjectives in The Old Man and the Sea. I had to practically reread the book to find ten. Gah.

Most of the fiction that I read growing up came from the classics section of the library and bookstore. I love Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, but yeah, I have to agree that Dickens got boring as he got older. I tried to read Great Expectations once and didn't make it very far.

I've never read James Joyce, but I have seen quotes. Which is why I haven't read any of his stuff. Definitely not my style.

[pretzel4gore]

42. Emily Bronte was stunning...

the craftmanship of 'Wuthering Heights' was and remains astonishing. It is possibly the best thing ever written (and that it is really just a harlequin romance just accentuates the sheer genius of Emily, who died at 28). I know that it isn't for everyone - even its title evokes images of preposterous dewy eyed virgins having ghostly visions amid background of thunder-and that's only talking of the guy! lol. one thing for sure: Emily was no typist!

[GOPisEvil]

32. "The Catcher In The Rye"

Reading that book at 30 was probably a mistake, but for the life of me, I cannot imagine why anyone would name their kid after Holden Caulfield.

[Hosnon]

57. Oooh. You may have the beer quote going for you but I have to disagree with

you here.

I read that book at least a dozen times growing up.

My college roomie actually thought I was going to go apeshit sooner or later.

[smirkymonkey]

59. That's one of my favorite books.

I read it in High School and a few times again in College and to me, Holden Caulfield was like the best friend I never had. It was the first time I ever became aware of the fact that there was another human being (J.D Salinger via Holden Caulfield) who thought of the world in exactly the same way I did.

I had a similar experience reading Dosteyevsky and Hesse. They expressed in words thoughts and feelings that were hidden in my subconscious until I saw them on the page.

[Alexander]

84. Anyone who hasn't read that book by the end of high school will hate it.

It's really a book for adolescents, more than anything.

I first read it at 15, and thought it was pure genius. Now at 23, I re-read it, and still like it, but it's not the same to me at all. But I remember why I used to think it was so great, and get all nostalgic.

"The Cather In The Rye" is a book about teenage angst - particularly male teenage angst, kind of like The Who put in book form. If you don't read it as a teenager, it's really hard to relate.

Just about everyone I know who read "Catcher" as a teenager still likes it, and everyone I know who read it afterwards hates it.

[idgiehkt]

143. I love that book

I love that Salinger was able to so thorougly inhabit the mind of that character at that age and give him genuine reactions. That is incredibly tough and that is why most of the novels that are considered classics are books about adults. I've known so many Holden Caulfields in my life it is not even funny. George W. Bush is a Holden Caulfield, or was. Salinger captures this kid right at the time before he shuts his mind down and compartmentalizes and grows up to be what he is expected to be; the Great American Nightmare known as the Businessman. He basically shows us in that book how an American psycho is made, but he leaves us with Caulfield while there is still hope, even though we know it is hopeless, that he won't be able to reconcile his environment and the expectations of his family of origin with his true desires and that he will grow up to become a parasite on the backs of his fellow man despite his attempts at being an authentic human being in adolesence.

[TheWraith]

33. Catcher in the Rye. Complete mystery to me. NT

[Alexander]

86. Were you a teenager when you first read it?

That may be why.

[Wanet]

34. The Great Gatsby

what an awful book -- my son's reading it now for AP English in high school. -- Wanet

[StatGirl]

41. But there is one great quote

"I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . ."

Remind you of anyone?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

35. I'm thinking "The Great Gatsby"

There's some humungous piece of crap that hasn't been mentioned yet. I would have mentioned "Scarlet Letter" if it hadn't been mentioned yet.

The Great Gatsby's up there, but I'm not sure it's what I'm thinking of.

God, I'll probably remember it at two in the morning.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

36. Then there's Huck Finn...

which I think is a fine book. Just way, way overrated. And I think does more to ruin interest in high school English classes than most.

[crim son]

72. My thirteen-year-old son is reading it for pleasure.

He loves it! :)

[raccoon]

111. I loved Huck Finn, but in the last chapters Twain really dropped the ball.

Huck has grown through his experiences, and in the last chapters he goes back to being Tom Sawyer's sidekick. :puke:

[Mist]

40. Eliot's "Silas Marner"--why this was considered an important read, I'll never know. nt

[pretzel4gore]

48. just finished it....the author George Eliot wasn't a guy!

imagine that! a girl using a man's name! but then i probably wouldna read 'Silas Marner' if its author was a Miss 'Mary Evans'! hahaha.
here's my fave quote from 'Silas Marner'
"...little bags around their necks, and, in consequence, had never had an idiot child (george bush junyer) as Ann Coulter had..." {paraphrased}
btw 'Silas Marner', like 'treasure island, high wing in jamaica' and a legion of other books could NEVER be written today, as immediately an old man would be suspect if he tried to provide a home to a 2 year old orphaned girl as in the Silas Marner case....
sad, in a way...(in 'kidnapped' protagonist david actually sleeps with his friend, innocently yes but....)

[cmkramer]

76. I loved "Silas Marner"

Steve Martin did a movie some years ago that was a modern-day re-telling of the story.

[tigereye]

127. I have to say that I never really "got" Marner

read it in jr high. It would probably make more sense to me now, as a parent.

[idgiehkt]

138. Now that I am older I wonder why in the hell

we were reading these books at an age that we were not psychologically mature enough to understand half of what was going on in them. I think of a story like "The Rockinghorse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence and just wonder what the f*ck I was doing reading something like that as a middle schooler. It seems almost psychologically abusive to me now. I think kids that age don't need to deal with these heavy themes they can't possibly absorb, all they can do is observe them and be traumatized by the hopelessness and desperation... Kids should just work and express their own creativity and emotions and maybe adults should be the ones reading this deep shit. :shrug:

[NashVegas]

165. A Middle-Schooler Doesn't Have to Understand the Full Impact

Just to get the gist of the theme. In Silas Marner's case it was a pretty easy one for a kid to take in.

I just went back and read a synopsis and perhaps 2/3 of the stuff that was going on in that story went over my head at the time, but what's always stayed with me was the story of how a child got through to a miser and became more important than wealth.

[Courtesy Flush]

136. I loved that book

After reading it, I lent it to my supervisor. He was transfixed. Sorry. I thought it was a great book.

[idgiehkt]

44. Moby Dick

I don't like it. I don't like any of that crap like that. I don't like these universal themes stapled onto people like dude was stapled onto that whale by the harpoons. It's an appropriate image, I think, of what authors like that alwasy tried to do to with their characters, and it always does drown them. Makes me gag. :puke:

[lildreamer316]

45. Any of those looooooooong russian novels.

Look, I just don't really need to have every step down the sidewalk described in miniscule agonizing over-adjectived detail. Where's the story?
So sue me.

[GirlinContempt]

61. Have you ever actually read one?

[ElizabethDC]

67. I think some of them are okay

often the basic plots are good, but the language is so meandering. It's just a cultural translation problem, though, because Russians just like adjectives. They should make abridged versions for us Americans who just want them to get to the point(though many of them probably do have abridged versions, anyway).

[crim son]

73. I love about them exactly what you dislike.

I think the Russians produced some of the most well-rounded lifelike characters in literary history and in many cases, the character is the point of the story. It's funny what people turns some people on, isn't it?

[ElizabethDC]

78. I think the descriptions of the characters are fine

it's the stuff that's nonessential to the plot that kills me - as in Anna Karenina, when it gets in to the politics of the Russian countryside . . . wow, I could do without that!

[lildreamer316]

90. THAT's exactly what I meant.

I don't mind long descriptive treatises about the character. It's when it wanders off too much into a sidestreet and continues for three pages that i get crazy.

[crim son]

96. Well, that stuff is rather central to the theme, and it's also

something I think Tolstoy had to deal with personally. But I get what you're saying.

[ElizabethDC]

114. I guess it's just not central to the part of the theme

that I cared about, lol. But I don't remember, I read it a long time ago. I thought it was a good book, though, just a bit long-winded.

[KittyWampus]

46. We may be literary twins. Hemingway makes me doze off.

[ms liberty]

52. Around the World in 80 Days...

Now, I love to read. I've read an average of 4 - 6 books per week, basically since I learned to read at the age of 3.

But I had to do a book report on Around the World in 80 Days when I was in high school. It was sooooo effing boring that, for the first and only time in my life, I watched the movie instead of reading the book. I would have not had a book report to turn in, if that movie hadn't been showing on TV the weekend before it was due!

[MorningGlow]

53. Anything by Henry James

Yeah, they'll probably take away my master's degree for this, but..P.U.! Page-long sentences and multi-page-long paragraphs...his meandering made me doze off. :puke:

[Silver Swan]

80. Giving a book a second chance...

I had to read Henry James's "The American" as a college freshman. At the time, I thought it was mostly boring with only a few good parts.

I re-read it about fifteen years later and I liked it. The parts I had found un-boring when I was 18, seemed melodramatic when I was thirty-someting.

Literary tastes change.

[MorningGlow]

97. True 'nuff, but...

I read James when I was in grad school and STILL hated him. I may be a lost cause! But I never say never. I may try The American--thanks! :hi:

[ellisonz]

56. Hemingway rocks. I don't get the hatred.

Great Expectations is evil. Mrs. Haversham. *cringes*

[GirlinContempt]

62. I like him too

[hfojvt]

63. I do not understand people saying he is boring

I think he tells a great story, but that he just does not know how to end it. He doesn't want to have a predicatable happy ending so he feels that he had to dump a pile of sh*t on the main characters in closing. In my experience this leaves the reader feeling like he just got kicked in the stomach after he finishes the book.

[fudge stripe cookays]

104. It's not the content for me.

It's his writing style. To me, it sounded like a high school kid who had just tried to sound professional-- too many clauses and crap just floating out there.

No one could deny he lived a helluva life. But the way he chose to write about it was disappointing.

[Arugula Latte]

120. When I think Hemingway, I think of the phrase: "Leaves me cold."

I just feel blah after one of his books. For some reason, I don't care about his characters.

[fudge stripe cookays]

128. Exactly.

But I mean...you SHOULD. Here they are, fighting the Austrians in Farewell to Arms or fighting the Fascists in Spain in For Whom the Bell Tolls, and being honorable and brave and supposedly passionate about stuff, but the characters have no warmth or believability.

He doesn't know how to write so that you know these characters are human, and he doesn't know how to write dialogue or any of that.

Blah.

[Hardrada]

153. But Hemingway's short stories are excellent

and the dialogue is sinister and true to life. Some of it Hollywood used verbatim in film noirs.

[NashVegas]

160. I Liked the Old Man

I read that way back in 6th grade. Can't recall anything about the style of writing, but the story, itself, is unforgettable.

[deadparrot]

64. Walden.

*thud*

[Catfight]

65. To Kill a Mockingbird. I really didn't connect to it and thought it was

average writing.

[ElizabethDC]

66. Same here!

I'm glad that someone else feels the same way - it seems like so many people consider it one of their favorite books, whereas I just don't get it. I think it's very over-hyped.

[raccoon]

112. Diff'rent strokes.

It really struck home with me, having grown up in a small Southern town myself.

I'd say now it's my favorite book.

[Generic Brad]

68. Naked Lunch

The book makes no sense to me. Perhaps I have always been too sober to appreciate it.

[bif]

70. "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon

I've tried 4 times to read that fucker and have finally given up. Threw it in the trash, proud to say.

[tigereye]

129. that was my husband's fave book for years

I myself could only get through part of it.

Pynchon is almost too clever and sly, somehow.

[Bridget Burke]

167. "The Crying of Lot 49" is a better intro to Pynchon.

That (shorter) novel also includes references to Yoyodyne!

[Forkboy]

71. The Bible

[deepthought42]

109. I've never gotten that one either.... n/t

[Arugula Latte]

121. That god character is such a dick in the first part of the book. nt

[deepthought42]

131. ...

:rofl: Good point. Which is probably one of many reasons I won't be finishing that book anytime soon.

[Oeditpus Rex]

82. All of Edmund Wells' works

"David Coperfield," "Grate Expectations," "Knickerless Knickleby," "A Khristmas Karol," "A Sale of Two Titties"...



Oh, and "Rarnaby Budge" by Charles Dikkens, the well-known Dutch author.

[XemaSab]

85. Great Gatsby and anything by Dickens

n/t

[AshevilleGuy]

87. Any by Thomas Wolfe, and look where I live!

I walked by his Home this afternoon. I tried to read Of Time and The River, couldn't get through it; the dialogue was commonplace, boring, without insight.

[idgiehkt]

91. Welcome to DU, Asheville Guy

I've lived there three times (but not anymore :( )
I just realized I've never read anything by Thomas Wolfe, though. :shrug:

:hi:

[raccoon]

110. I couldn't get into Thomas Wolfe either. He goes on and on and on.

And Faulkner. While I could relate to some of his characters, and I like the two books of his I've read, the way his sentences went on and on and on...he should've been put in jail for that. :silly:

[Fenris]

89. "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka

Never have I thrown a book so far and so often.

And then there is the oeuvre of Mr. Henry James. And Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne.

And although it is probably too contemporary to be considered a classic, I also despised "Song of Solomon" by Toni Morrison.

[KitchenWitch]

92. James Joyce is an author that comes to mind

Nothing like suicide inducing literature.

[Phillycat]

133. I'm with ya completely.

:boring:

[NMMNG]

95. Huckleberry Finn

Of course, if my English teacher hadn't raved for the first 3/4 of the semester about it I might have been able to appreciate it when it finally came time to read it. As it was I was so sick of hearing about it the experience was entirely distasteful.

[Critters2]

139. I completely loved that book. I could imagine myself floating down the river

Of course, I grew up within "sweetie, don't go too close to the river" shot of the Mississippi, so maybe it spoke to me more personally.

[BreweryYardRat]

98. Joyce. I've read his short stories. Don't need anything more.

Nice descriptions, but Jesus God, he's boring.

[noonwitch]

151. I tried to read Ulysses, but could make absolutely no sense of it

The language was too hard.

[terrya]

99. "The Woman in White" by Willkie Collins

I read this "classic" a while back. Collins was a writer, in Victorian England, who wrote this book, which is considered a classic today. I thought it was a big snoozefest.

[raccoon]

113. Bram Stoker owed a lot to Wilkie Collins. nt

[mac56]

102. I just finished "A Conspiracy Of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole.

I gotta say, I don't know what all the fuss is about. Idoan geddit.

[Arugula Latte]

122. Agreed. I thought it was overrated.

I kept waiting for some sort of magic that I never felt.

[likesmountains 52]

130. Same here, it's one of the few books I couldn't even finish...

[Phillycat]

134. I assume we're talking about A Confederacy of Dunces here?

[mac56]

141. Yes, you are correct.

Fast, sloppy typing on my part.

Even so, it didn't grab me.

[NashVegas]

162. What? You *Finished* It?

I gave up 100 pages in. I couldn't stand, nor had any sympathy for, Ignacious.

[Bassic]

105. Gods I hated that book. nt

[deepthought42]

107. A Farewell to Arms...

Had to read that in high school, which meant I would dislike it immediately, but geez! I'm a self-professed bookworm, but I was ready to kill myself rather than finish that book.

[PVnRT]

108. Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities:

"I love you!"
"You're sweet, but I love this old dude in prison."
"Hmmmmm. I look like him...I could bust him out and trade places! Then you'll love me!"
"Uh, no, you'll be dead."
"Shit. Fuck it."

[ScreamingMeemie]

116. Treasure Island...poorly (no..worse than poorly) written.

How does one strip naked, swim to the treasure and then fill their pockets? (pockets on a naked person)

The proof reader in me really became glaringly apparent with that book.

[raccoon]

146. Maybe the guy shoved the treasure someplace, but in the 19th

Century, Stevenson didn't want to say where. :evilgrin:

Good point, Mrs. G. I didn't catch that when I read it some 30 years ago.

[shrike]

117. "Gatsby" is one of my favorite books

Had no idea there was so much hostility out there for it.

Then again, I have NEVER been able to get all the fascination with the Rings' stuff, all those fantasy books, etc.

Guess there are as many opinions as there are people.

[hyphenate]

124. Actually

Most of them. I was never a fan of the books we had in high school to read, except for a few. At least three Charles Dickens books (Tale of Two Cities, Nicholas Nickelby and Great Expectations), Red Badge of Courage, A Separate Peace, Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter, Evangeline and at least another half dozen.

I didn't mind the Latin classics as much--Odyssey, Ovid, Caesar, because we had 5 out of 6 years of Latin. And I understood why every year we had one of Shakespeare's plays to read. And poetry never bothered me, except for the epic poems which we sometimes got. But man, some of the books were so depressing and unreadable!

On my own, I got away from the classics we had in school, and concentrated on classics I could relate to much better: Sherlock Holmes, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, all kinds of science fiction, Rick Brant's Science Adventure Series, Greek and Roman mythology. By the end of high school, I think I had read at least two times what the others had read, and I had a more diversified pool from which I had read.

[RedStateShame]

132. "Gone with the Wind"

Historical novel, my ass. The only time the Civil War is mentioned in the novel is when Margaret Mitchell needs to kill off a husband for Scarlett. The next time you see paperback books in grocery stores with bare chested pirates holding women as if pectoral muscles lactated Cosmopolitans, thank this long-winded turd.

[SaveElmer]

137. Neuromancer...

Hated it...just hated it!!!

[Redneck Socialist]

142. If you're willing to give Gibson another shot I'd recomend...

Pattern Recognition. It is very different from his earlier work, and very, very good.

[Runcible Spoon]

149. ugghh gotta disagree..

LOVE LOVED LOVED Neuromancer but Pattern Recognition seemed outdated, contrived, and strained even hot off the presses. All of the "slick" detail seemed like 70's commercials..not sure exactly what I mean by that but it felt like Gibson was "the old man in da club" and couldn't resurrect his ahead of the times cool. Ironically the book is about "cool chasing" :shrug:

[Lilith Velkor]

163. Count Zero was way better.

I thought Neuromancer was alright.

[Javaman]

140. Ethan Frome. Ugh I hate that book! nt

[LanternWaste]

148. Conrad , 'The Heart of Darkness'

Joseph Conrad', 'The Heart of Darkness'. It was very trendy for me and my pals (your typical group of college pseudo-intellectual elitists) to read and discuss this one over a few joints, some bizarre-tasting beer and sunglasses back in my college days; but for the life of me... did every sentence HAVE to be a paragraph long?

Conrad makes Dickens and Victor Hugo read like Dr. Seuss (and that's a trick to do). Although I truly do appreciate the overall message of the novel, the form and format? ...not so much.

[Zavulon]

150. Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky are both overrated.

Tolstoy, too.

[Broken_Hero]

152. I don't know if these are considered classics, but these

books, I didn't care for at all...

Merchant of Venice

Black Like Me

Cry the Beloved Country

Summer Lightning

The Pearl

[SoCalDem]

154. Bleak House..

Although it's starting to all come back to me re: Anna Nicole..

actually MOST of Dickens bored me to tears, as did Dostoyevsky..

and don't get me started on Chaucer :puke:

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

156. This lit major couldn't agree more.

That book was friggin horrible. It was only dubbed a classic after Hemmingway was so gracious as to explain what he meant in the book. Any literature that needs to be explained by the author is, by definition, crap.

[northzax]

169. this little one called 'the Bible'

first off, what a stupid name, calling a book 'the book' but in a fancy old language, so it sounds better. that's just dumb. And it goes on from there. What, was this thing written by committee or something? how can you go from the poetry of Song of Solomon to the genealogical dust of "so and so begat so and so" for like 50 pages. Come on, it's like reading the old version of The Princess Bride, (by S. Morgenstern) without the modern culling. painful. and the violence. and the sex. incest? please. it's all been done. the thing is painfully derivative, and the crappy translations don't help. What's with the Deus et Machina ending? please. tacky. sentimental preachy claptrap.

seriously, if I want cheap obvious plots, I will read Nicolas Sparks. Could you imagine walking into even a vanity press with this thing and trying to publish is de novo? not a chance.

[JitterbugPerfume]

170. anything by

Ayn Rand or Hemingway