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Source: (consider it) Thread: Books You Can't Get Into
AngloCatholicGirl
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# 16435

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I had no trouble getting through Moby Dick, I was quite young when I first read it and I think all the symbolism passed me by and I just enjoyed it as an action yarn.

Wilkie Collins and the Woman in White however, I've never been able to finish, the whole story just seems interminable to me. Slaughterhouse 5 is also on my kindle, making me feel guilty every time I skim past looking for something to read.

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Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise -Samuel Johnson

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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
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I sort of gather that to properly appreciate Slaughterhouse Five you need to be in the 1970s and smoked up. To read Ulysses, you need to be in the 1930s and rather drunk. For the long suffering Russian doorstops, perhaps you have to be cold with a vodka hangover and suicidal. Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.

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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/

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mousethief

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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I sort of gather that to properly appreciate Slaughterhouse Five you need to be in the 1970s and smoked up. To read Ulysses, you need to be in the 1930s and rather drunk. For the long suffering Russian doorstops, perhaps you have to be cold with a vodka hangover and suicidal. Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.

Have a paper due.

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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...

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Sir Kevin
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quote:
Originally posted by Snags:

Books that have dishonoured me: Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time sequence, but I don't count that, because he cheated by turning shit part way through. I think that's it, but there are many more I haven't even started simply to avoid defeat.


Did not read them, but Pat, my brother-in-law and Z, my wife, both loved them! By the way, Pat is a published author of supense/espionage novels: he wrote two books for the Ludlum estate.

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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.

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Og, King of Bashan

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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I sort of gather that to properly appreciate Slaughterhouse Five you need to be in the 1970s and smoked up. To read Ulysses, you need to be in the 1930s and rather drunk. For the long suffering Russian doorstops, perhaps you have to be cold with a vodka hangover and suicidal. Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.

Have a paper due.
Even that didn't do it for me, but well done.

My smartest English professor was working on his PhD at Princeton in 1970 when Anthony Burgess was a visiting professor. At the request of some students, Mr. Burgess headed up a Finnegans Wake reading group at a local cafe. He was apparently the ideal guide, as he grew up in Catholic Manchester in the 20s and 30s, and actually understood the slang and cultural references. Even with that help, my professor admits that he dropped out after a few weeks. So I think we don't have to feel too bad.

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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy

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Kaplan Corday
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I don't regret finishing Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy, and I keep telling myself that I'm going to re-read them one day and get a lot more out of them the second time.

It ain't going to happen.

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North East Quine

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Another person who struggled with Lord of the Rings. I did finish it, eventually, but it took months as I kept taking breaks to read other, more rivetting books, including War and Peace.

I have never finished a novel by Sir Walter Scott. Although I have climbed his monument.

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Kaplan Corday
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quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I never quite finished "The Three Musketeers", but I hope to do so.

That's another book that I feel semi-literate for never having read, but I console myself with a vague recollection that I read it as a child in comic form - I think they were called Classics Illustrated.

Dumas' (Dumas's?) The Count Of Monte Cristo is pretty cool - and readable.

[ 28. March 2013, 20:00: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]

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Og, King of Bashan

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quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Paradise Lost

That's the one! I knew there was a book (poem rather) that I have been assigned to read several times and never made it through.

My high school had an advanced English class in which students studied both "Paradise Lost" and "The Wasteland," along with other works. In a conversation with a classmate years later, we determined that you were either a "Paradise Lost" person or a "Wasteland" person. The classmate thought The Wasteland was impossible to get through, and completely bought into Milton's claim that he would explain good and evil. I love everything Eliot, but Milton puts me to sleep.

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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy

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Tree Bee

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I struggled through the first third of Captain Corelli's Mandolin by De Bernieres before giving up.
I believe life's too short to read a book you're not enjoying.
Most books that I read are borrowed from the library so at least I haven't wasted any money.

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"Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple."
— Woody Guthrie
http://saysaysay54.wordpress.com

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Kaplan Corday
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quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
In a conversation with a classmate years later, we determined that you were either a "Paradise Lost" person or a "Wasteland" person.

I read somewhere a classification of children into those who liked the sensible and responsible Swallows And Amazons books (Arthur Ransome) and those (like me) who preferred the anarchic William books (Richmal Crompton).
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Pearl B4 Swine
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I was always afraid to mention that I had never read the Tolkien books. I tried ever-so-hard.

Same with Wuthering Heights. (I adore Jane Eyre & re-read it regularly)

The Scarlet Letter. I know about it, but have never been able to finish it.

Terry Prachett's books: Every now & then there's a glimmer of enjoyment, but then the fade sets in. Can't finish any.

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Oinkster

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Eigon
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I confess to loving both Swallows and Amazons and Just William!
I also refuse to feel bad about not being able to finish certain books when there are so many other good ones out there that I want to read (I have a shelf full of books I want to read which should take me a couple of years to get through as it stands at the moment!)
So I won't be tempted to try any of the Russian authors - I tried War and Peace once and after three pages I couldn't keep track of all the different names for the same people. Likewise, the Worm Ouroboros by Eddison (which I always think of as Our Rob or Ross from the Red Dwarf joke), which threw about three different languages - without translation - into the first three pages.
As far as Virginia Woolf is concerned - look, just go to the Lighthouse, for heaven's sake! And pull yourself together, Madame Bovary!
Thomas Hardy is depressing, and Jane Austen's plots move at a glacial pace, and all I can remember of Lady Chatterley's Lover is a rainy garden (there was a CJ Cherryh fantasy I tried to read once where I slogged through three chapters of mud and cold rain and finally gave up, too).

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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.

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Leorning Cniht
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quote:
Originally posted by Pearl B4 Swine:

Terry Prachett's books: Every now & then there's a glimmer of enjoyment, but then the fade sets in. Can't finish any.

I find the first few much harder to read. They get much more readable somewhere around Small Gods.
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hanginginthere
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I used to make myself finish any book I started but now life's too short. I abandoned White Teeth and The Line of Beauty because I couldn't make myself care about any of the characters or even (in the case of WT) work out what was going on. Can't abide Hardy - his characters make me want to shout 'Get a grip!' My greatest book marathon boast is Richardson's Clarissa, all 4 vols of it. Someone complained that Jane Austen's plots move at glacial pace (I don't agree, BTW) but Clarissa makes JA look like greased lightning. I loved it, though, it became sort of addictive after a while.

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'Safe?' said Mr Beaver. 'Who said anything about safe? But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'

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QLib

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quote:
Originally posted by Eigon:
As far as Virginia Woolf is concerned - look, just go to the Lighthouse, for heaven's sake!

I quite like Woolf in small, infrequent doses, but I cherish a student resposne to my suggestion that one of her stream-of- conscioiusness passages was "exciting writing". He said
quote:
I can quite see it may have been exciting to write ... however, that does not necessarily make it exciting to read.
[Big Grin]

But, Eigon - are you seriously telling me you never like Hardy? Not even in your angst-ridden teens? Golly.

Me, I could never get on with The Time-Traveller's Wife but I recently enjoyed the film.

[ 28. March 2013, 20:59: Message edited by: QLib ]

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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.

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ArachnidinElmet
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I'd second Hard Times. Apparently you're supposed to read each set English Lit A level text at least 4 times for a good pass. Don't believe it.

Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things was a struggle, still not sure why. Nothing wrong with the plot, the characters are interesting and/or sympathetic and I made it to the end, but it took 4 years on and off. Some marriages don't last that long.

Does anyone else sometimes have a problem finishing books they're really enjoying? I have a nasty habit of reading more than one book at a time, then if another priority comes up it's toomuch to finish one book so I may leave them to languish, completing them months or years later.

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'If a pleasant, straight-forward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres' - Kafka

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Keren-Happuch

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quote:
Originally posted by ArachnidinElmet:

Does anyone else sometimes have a problem finishing books they're really enjoying? I have a nasty habit of reading more than one book at a time, then if another priority comes up it's toomuch to finish one book so I may leave them to languish, completing them months or years later.

Yes. I never used to on either count but now I'm finding it much harder to just read a book from beginning to end.

The two I always mention as having given up on halfway through were Philip Hensher's The Mulberry Empire and Mann's The Magic Mountain. With both of them, I got about halfway in and then realised I didn't care a hoot about any of the characters or what happened to them. What on earth's meant to be magic about that mountain I'll never know.

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Travesty, treachery, betrayal!
EXCESS - The Art of Treason
Nea Fox

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Og, King of Bashan

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You aren't the only one who struggles through enjoyable books from time to time. I am loving LeCarre's The Honorable Schoolboy, but I am having a hard time getting through it. Long chapters make it hard to get much effective reading done in the bedtime window, and it is about twice as long as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, so even though I have read almost 300 pages, the plot is really still developing. The Queen of Bashan is out of town next weekend, so I should have a chance to really get a good chunk done.

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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy

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Kaplan Corday
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Decades ago, when I used to read to my kids at bed-time, I tackled Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies with them.

Talk about pushing shit uphill!

At least it sent them to sleep.

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Stetson
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Og wrote:

quote:
At the request of some students, Mr. Burgess headed up a Finnegans Wake reading group at a local cafe. He was apparently the ideal guide, as he grew up in Catholic Manchester in the 20s and 30s, and actually understood the slang and cultural references. Even with that help, my professor admits that he dropped out after a few weeks. So I think we don't have to feel too bad.


When I read the trashing of Ulysses on this thread, I immediately thought of an interview I saw with Burgess, in which he said that when he sits down to write, he does so knowing that he will never be able to come up with anything remotely approximating the greatness of that book. Never having read it myself, I can't really take sides in the argument.

Deseret Daughter wrote:

quote:
Am currently facing the challenge of my reading life with having to eat my way (for a research project I foolishly agreed on participating in ) through the original version of Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'. It. is. hard. work.


I read his shorter ethical treatise, The Groundwork For The Metaphysic Of Morals, for a philosophy class, and actually found it a fairly breezy read. His use of concrete examples(eg. the fishmonger who is ethical just because it's good for business) helped a bit.

No Prophet wrote:

quote:
I sort of gather that to properly appreciate Slaughterhouse Five you need to be in the 1970s and smoked up.
It's one of those books that's used in popular media as a synechdoche for "stuff you would see on a hipster's bookshelf", along with guys like Sartre and Camus.

But ironically, I think one of the reasons I didn't like it was because I had recently read Sartre for the first time, and was enchanted with his idea of absolute human freedom. Whereas Vonnegut takes the polar opposite view, stating that freedom is just an illusion that silly humans have cooked up(again, that cracker-barrel misanthropy).

quote:
Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.


First, come from a background of being raised on Schoolhouse Rock style propaganda about how great democracy is. This sets you up to be absolutely blown away when you encounter a renowned thinker who disagrees with that.

Secondly, buy into the notion that YOU are the type of reader that Plato had in mind, ie. the fabled philosopher king, able to understand his esoteric arguments in favour of elite rule. Thus, when you encounter arguments along the lines of "We don't take a vote on how to cure a sick horse, we go to a vet, so why should we take a vote on how to run a government?", you will be disinclined to admit to yourself just how dubious they really are.

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basso

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quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
I usually love Dickens - even Bleak House - but I have twice got halfway through David Copperfield and then stalled utterly. I just don't like the whiny kid enough to persevere.

Holden Caulfield, anyone? I shudder at the thought of trying that again.
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Moo

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quote:
Originally posted by basso:
Holden Caulfield, anyone? I shudder at the thought of trying that again.

I read Catcher in the Rye because the alternative was staring at the wall in a railway station waiting room. I had to wait three hours for the train, and there was no one else waiting.

It was marginally better than staring at the wall.

Moo

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See you later, alligator.

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Kaplan Corday
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quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
I couldn't get on with Trollope's books

Male grossness alert.

I was distracted when reading Barchester Towers by the question of why Obadiah Slope was lusting after a woman who was apparently paralysed from the waist down.

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Jigsaw
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How about some non-fiction?
For Christmas I was given Neil Young's "Waging Heavy Peace" which now lies abandoned half-way through. Too skittish, jumping around from one topic to another, musicians mentioned in passing early in the book and then popping up again some time later so you have to search back to see who they were. I love Neil Young's music, but the book was too much hard work. The photos are great, though - and maybe that's all you need to look at. (Not a possibility in fiction, I guess)

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You are not alone in this.

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Ariston
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quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

Deseret Daughter wrote:

quote:
Am currently facing the challenge of my reading life with having to eat my way (for a research project I foolishly agreed on participating in ) through the original version of Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'. It. is. hard. work.


I read his shorter ethical treatise, The Groundwork For The Metaphysic Of Morals, for a philosophy class, and actually found it a fairly breezy read. His use of concrete examples(eg. the fishmonger who is ethical just because it's good for business) helped a bit.

quote:
Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.


First, come from a background of being raised on Schoolhouse Rock style propaganda about how great democracy is. This sets you up to be absolutely blown away when you encounter a renowned thinker who disagrees with that.

Secondly, buy into the notion that YOU are the type of reader that Plato had in mind, ie. the fabled philosopher king, able to understand his esoteric arguments in favour of elite rule. Thus, when you encounter arguments along the lines of "We don't take a vote on how to cure a sick horse, we go to a vet, so why should we take a vote on how to run a government?", you will be disinclined to admit to yourself just how dubious they really are.

The Groundwork is NOT even close to Metaphysics of Morals in abstraction or Kantspeak. And then there's the Transcendental Deduction from the Critique of Pure Reason, about which people are still writing real and fruitful new interpretations...mostly because the thing's so damn opaque nobody really quite knows what Kant's really going on about. In the words of my Kant professor, Kant's not really writing for you, and doesn't actually care if you get it or not.

As for Plato...well, everybody thinks they might be Guardian (or at least auxiliary) material. Except for the Strausians, but they think all of Plato's really just an Aristophanic farce anyway (seriously women ruling the city? No Greek would be able to say that with a straight face), so they don't count.

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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.

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Kelly Alves

Bunny with an axe
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Portnoy's Complaint.


289 pages of some dildo whining like a power drill.

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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.

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Lamb Chopped
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Oh gosh, Clarissa. Made it through that by sheer pigheadedness and then collapsed on Pamela. Just why?

And Henry James was born to mock me. I'll read Leviticus rather, any day of the week.

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Gee D
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# 13815

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quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I don't regret finishing Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy, and I keep telling myself that I'm going to re-read them one day and get a lot more out of them the second time.

It ain't going to happen.

I re-read Paradise lost very couple of years, at least. Never fail to get some different insight into what Milton's talking about each time.

Two books I gave up on, because I was getting nowhere:

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch. It was just getting more and more convoluted and I could not be bothered finding out how it was all gong to be resolved.

The Four-Gated City by Doris Lessing. I had enjoyed the earlier books in the Martha Quest series, but once Lessing started her very idiosyncratic mysticism, I just gave up.

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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican

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Adeodatus
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quote:
Originally posted by SonOfAPreacherLad:
Has anyone had any joy with Barchester Towers? I'm trying to plough through that at the minute [Roll Eyes]

I never even made it through The Warden. I think I remember getting as far as chapter 4. It's a pity, because the tv adaptation back in the 80s was brilliant.

I am not one of those who enjoy curling up in bed with a good Trollope.

Welcome aboard, by the way!

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"What is broken, repair with gold."

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Gee D
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I liked The Silmarillion . I think a problem many have is to read it through, whereas it is a seres of very loosely collected accounts and may be better read over 2 or 3 months.

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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican

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hanginginthere
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# 17541

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I can't read Henry James either. Years ago when Mr hanging and I visited Lamb House in Rye the guide rabbited on about HJ until we said that we were really more interested in EF Benson, who had also lived there. At which the guide almost hugged us and said she was too and would much rather talk about him than HJ. [Smile]

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'Safe?' said Mr Beaver. 'Who said anything about safe? But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'

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Smudgie

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# 2716

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Our book club at work started with The Time Traveller's Wife and we decided to postpone discussing it until everybody had read it. It would have been fine, except that I really really couldn't get into it. Eventually I locked myself in the en suite on holiday (I had to read in there as I was sharing a room with my two sleeping sons who needed supervising until they were well and truly in the land of Nod) and simply stayed there until I'd made my way through the whole book... not really getting much out of reading it at any stage. I then rang my colleagues to break the good news - only to be told that they'd lost interest as it was now so long since they'd read it!

Not a book I'd bother to read again, despite wide acclaim.

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Miss you, Erin.

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HughWillRidmee
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# 15614

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quote:
Originally posted by piglet:

Tolkien. Couldn't get past page 2 of The Hobbit.

Me also + James Joyce

Had to read a compendium of “20th Century Short Stories” for “O” level. Eight(?) stories – the first was Conrad; ISTM turgid and pointless and took up some 40% of the pages. Never read Conrad since – but then I’ve never tried to read anything that people say I should – left me free to discover the writers I enjoy instead.

Possibly my attitude stems from being sufficiently self-confident that I'm intolerant of opinion based on authority/tradition/conformity - or maybe because I think that my reading, like the rest of my life, should be fun.

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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)

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Heavenly Anarchist
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# 13313

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I fail on Moby Dick, Clarissa, Voyage of the Beagle and Barchester Towers. But I do like Virginia Wolfe, especially Mrs Dalloway which I had to study, and Jane Austen.
I've never been inclined to attempt Ulysses or Anna Karenina. My other half loves Russian novels though and I have forced myself through most of Dostoyevsky's works.

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Moo

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# 107

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quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Portnoy's Complaint.


289 pages of some dildo whining like a power drill.

Yes. If he's going to get up to this kind of stuff, the least he could do is enjoy it. I got so tired of the moaning.

Moo

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Jay-Emm
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# 11411

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quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
I liked The Silmarillion . I think a problem many have is to read it through, whereas it is a seres of very loosely collected accounts and may be better read over 2 or 3 months.

Seconded, it also takes some use in getting the perspectives.

Some Dicken's I find ok (Oliver Twist rolls along quite quickly in Kindle, and I was surprised at how unoriginal the funny bits in the Muppets/Pantaloons version is), "Two cities" though I had to read from both ends (you just didn't care about anyone in the middle otherwise)

Austen I finished a couple, (and really quite like Northanger and the little ones) but found P&P,S&S and MA, hard to recognise as parody/satire.

I'm going to need someone to give a compelling reason before I start Joyce or Wolff though, you get a definite 'emperors new clothes' vibe from peoples comments.

[oh and on the Russian's, tried "The Trial" and "The Idiot" found them very heavy going and gave up. War and Peace at least has some structure, and I was ill, Crime and Punishment I recognised what was going on]

[ 29. March 2013, 13:34: Message edited by: Jay-Emm ]

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Eigon
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# 4917

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I'm a Barchester fan - I first came across The Warden as the radio version, and then read that and Barchester Towers and a couple of others before I ran out of steam with the one where the vicar signs some sort of promissory note and gets hopelessly into debt.

And, Qlib - in my angst ridden teens I was reading my way through Mary Stewart's mystery romances, and Victoria Holt's historical romances, and Georgette Hayer, and Mary Renault's ancient Greek novels. The only reason Hardy came up on my radar was because my sister was studying Tess of the D'Urbervilles at school and hating it!

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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.

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HCH
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# 14313

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I believe I read all of "The Republic" until Socrates actually produced the definition of justice--the proclaimed purpose of the whole dialogue--and I never did finish the rest of it.

(Enough of PLato--read Xenophon's memoir of Socrates
and his version of the Symposium.)

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SvitlanaV2
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# 16967

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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Like many, I've tried reading the bible. Cannot get through Leviticus, Chronicles, Revelation. With several others, where I read the words, don't get the point, and brain glazes.

I had problems with Revelation too.

One version that helped me read the Bible all the way through is the 'Cover to Cover Complete Bible', (eds. Selwyn Hughes and Trevor J. Partridge) which is a 1 yr chronological reading plan based on the Holman Christian Standard Bible. I don't know how it rates as a translation, but I found the page layout, the plentiful subheadings and the chronological re-ordering very helpful. You're given a bird's eye view of each book of the Bible at the bottom of the relevant section, and there are timelines for all the big events(but no attempt to 'date' the Creation, thankfully). It did take me longer than a year, but I stayed on track! Each day's reading ends with a short paragraph 'for thought and contemplation', some of which are more worthwhile than others, depending on your own theological perspective.

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Kelly Alves

Bunny with an axe
# 2522

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quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Portnoy's Complaint.


289 pages of some dildo whining like a power drill.

Yes. If he's going to get up to this kind of stuff, the least he could do is enjoy it. I got so tired of the moaning.

Moo

For real! Give me Valmont any day!

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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.

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marzipan
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# 9442

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quote:
Originally posted by comet:
Atonement.

about page 12 I lost my will to live.

Similarly with me. I bought it at a train station when the film came out, and I couldn't get past the first chapter (I can't remember what I did on the train instead of reading it, perhaps I had another book with me)

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I don't regret finishing Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy, and I keep telling myself that I'm going to re-read them one day and get a lot more out of them the second time.

It ain't going to happen.

I got both of those a couple of years ago, and I got through the inferno but I lost track somewhere on the boat to heaven. Paradise lost I couldn't get into at all, perhaps because my copy had really odd line breaks (or do all the versions have that? I forget)
Another one who can't get through the Bible. Perhaps I need less other books to distract me.
Most of the rest of the books mentioned on this thread I've not even started reading (though I do like to read the concise OED every so often, I've not managed to get through it all yet)

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formerly cheesymarzipan.
Now containing 50% less cheese

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ArachnidinElmet
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# 17346

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It doesn't have to be lengthy or complicated to be difficult to read. Some 'friend' tried to tell me that Kathy Lette's book Silly Cows was funny. It's the only book I've ever thrown across a room; didn't get to chapter 3.

quote:
Originally posted by cheesymarzipan:
Paradise lost I couldn't get into at all, perhaps because my copy had really odd line breaks

I wonder if typesetting plays more of a part in reading comfort than we think. I've not long finished The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore. It had huge margins making focusing and speedy reading hard, especially for such a simple text.

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'If a pleasant, straight-forward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres' - Kafka

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Ariel
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# 58

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quote:
Originally posted by ArachnidinElmet:
I wonder if typesetting plays more of a part in reading comfort than we think.

Quite a lot more - well, for me anyway. I borrowed a recipe book from a friend once and couldn't get on with it, even though some of the recipes were great: it was presented in one of those "handwriting" fonts all the way throughout.

It's one of the more extreme examples but I do notice fonts and these days, particularly type size, and what I don't want is some gimmicky font that looks so distracting that you can't concentrate on the text. Save it for headings.

Text design is another thing that can make or break a book. The same content can be presented so differently that a good text design can make it either a book you want to keep, or a poor one makes it something you struggle to read, keep for a while and then end up donating to a charity shop.

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Kaplan Corday
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# 16119

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To me, the Mount Everest of significant but unreadable books is Das Kapital.

Anyone conquered it?

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Tea
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# 16619

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I've found that well annotated editions can be indispensable for making sense of some of the works mentioned above. So when I read Moby Dick some years ago, I found the notes in the Penguin Classics edition most helpful; similarly, I've always been glad of the annotations and glosses in Penguin Classics and OUP World's Classics editions of Walter Scott, as I fear that otherwise my ignorance of Scottish dialect and history would make Scott unreadable for me.

Works that many have found daunting or unreadable can be cracked with the aid of suitable preparatory reading and vade mecums. For example, readers might be best advised not to attempt Ulysses if they have not already read - and enjoyed - Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Nobody should feel ashamed about using something like SparkNotes to help make sense of the action of Ulysses. It really is worth the trouble, by the way; as Dafyd noted, the fat is the book, and the satire, pastiche, and web of allusion help make Ulysses a thoroughly engaging read.

I don't feel guilty or ashamed of not having read Finnegans Wake;it's defeated some of the best literary minds I know.

Now for my list of shame...

  • On the Road
    It's short, it's easy, it's important, so why haven't I done it yet? Part of me feels like the forty year old virgin, and another part of me suspects that I am now too old to enjoy it anyway.
  • Proust
    My French is good enough to allow me to feel ashamed of reaching for an English language translation of Proust while not being quite strong enough to let me feel confident that I would finish the original before the year/decade/century is out.
  • Atlas Shrugged
    I've read enough of and about Ayn Rand to be pretty sure that this is an absolute stinker - one thousand plus pages of ideological toxicity in a poorly organized, overwritten "novel of ideas"; you don't have to put a turd in your mouth to know it would taste nasty, yes? Yet part of me wants to have that first hand reading knowledge so that I can talk without a sense of bluff or hypocrisy to the young enthusiasts I encounter.
  • News from Nowhere
    I wanted so much to like and learn from this. Instead, I gave up half way with the literary equivalent of the dry mouth, lock jaw sensation that accompanies the attempt to eat a packet of crackers in one go with no liquid. It's not just a problem with Utopian literature as a genre, because I managed to get through the notoriously tedious A Traveler from Altruria and the almost as dreadful Looking Backward - Morris wrote NfN in response to the latter.
    Perhaps my powers of reading endurance are declining with age.
  • Paradise Lost
    I'm supposed to be well educated, and here I am confessing that I have not read a single line of this epic. The shame of it...
  • Almost all contemporary fiction
    My work involves a great deal of reading, so I tell myself that I shouldn't feel too bad about not having read Junot Diaz or Hilary Mantel. Yet I sometimes wonder if I deliberately do not make time for contemporary fiction for contemptible reasons: first, that I in fact lack sufficent confidence in my own taste and judgement to form an opinion on a work that has not already been canonized; second, that a Leonard Bast like part of me is stricken with anxiety about not having read enough of "the classics", which is, of course, a task without end.
  • All contemporary poetry
    Here I am so clueless I do not even know of any names to bat about. Any suggestions?

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Dafyd
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# 5549

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quote:
Originally posted by Tea:
[*]Proust
My French is good enough to allow me to feel ashamed of reaching for an English language translation of Proust while not being quite strong enough to let me feel confident that I would finish the original before the year/decade/century is out.

You could try telling yourself that the Scott-Moncrieff/Kilmartin version is one of those translations that almost qualify as classics in their own right, if that helps?

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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hanginginthere
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# 17541

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Re the Bible, in my previous life (only just ended) as a proofreader, I had to proofread the Bible several times. I used to lose the will to live round about 1 Kings, but had no choice but to continue to the last syllable of recorded time - sorry, I mean of Revelation.

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'Safe?' said Mr Beaver. 'Who said anything about safe? But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'

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Stetson
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# 9597

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Tea wrote:

quote:
Atlas Shrugged
I've read enough of and about Ayn Rand to be pretty sure that this is an absolute stinker - one thousand plus pages of ideological toxicity in a poorly organized, overwritten "novel of ideas"; you don't have to put a turd in your mouth to know it would taste nasty, yes? Yet part of me wants to have that first hand reading knowledge so that I can talk without a sense of bluff or hypocrisy to the young enthusiasts I encounter.

I've managed to become adequately conversant in Ayn Rand by reading Anthem, a pamphlet-sized novella that encapsulates her basic ideas, and leafing through a few of her other books(none of them novels) at the bookstore over the years. It's basically a re-hash of laissez-faire liberalism, with a veneer of bombastic romanticism added on.

She also hates Kant, but you probably don't need to know the ins and outs of her objections to get through a conversation with her followers. Just use "Kant" and "altruism" in the same sentence a few times, and they'll be impressed.

I suspect if you were to read a summary of Atlas Shrugged on wikipedia, or watch the recent movie, you'd know enough to discuss the novel itself with her followers. I'd imagine it's just am epic extension of a few simple ideas.

Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
Stetson
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# 9597

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Ariston wrote:

quote:
As for Plato...well, everybody thinks they might be Guardian (or at least auxiliary) material. Except for the Strausians, but they think all of Plato's really just an Aristophanic farce anyway (seriously women ruling the city? No Greek would be able to say that with a straight face), so they don't count.


The Straussian re-reading of Plato, whatever its absurdities, is nothing compared to the claim I've heard that Socrates was put to death for luring the youth of Athens into homosexuality(because, like, what else could "corrupting the youth" mean, right?)

Funny thing is, I've heard that howler repeated both by gay activists and by homophobes, to advance polar opposite agendas.

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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!

Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged



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