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Source: (consider it) Thread: "Great" books we hate
Tubbs

Miss Congeniality
# 440

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quote:
Originally posted by Snags:
...
I was actually glad when the cat pissed on it and I had to throw it away.
...

Given that a book should be loved and cherished before filing it away or passing it on, the fact that you were pleased when this happened at is a) proper book hate and b) the best benchmark for a bad book ever!!!! [Overused] [Killing me]

[The one exception was the collection of really dodgy Christian literature we found when we cleaned out the church palour. Where unwanted Chrstian books had gone to die. Straight in the black sack! Along with some Richard Clayderman LPs [Paranoid] We had some admissions to the book ownership, but no one claimed the Clayderman!)

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"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than open it up and remove all doubt" - Dennis Thatcher. My blog. Decide for yourself which I am

Posts: 12701 | From: Someplace strange | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
North East Quine

Curious beastie
# 13049

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quote:
Originally posted by Pigwidgeon:
The Old Man and the Sea just goes on and on and on about that stupid fish.

Seconded.

And Lord of the Rings. It took me 3 months to read LOTR, because I kept breaking off to read books which were more enjoyable. Then back to plough through a bit more of LOTR.

Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007  |  IP: Logged
LeRoc

Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216

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How can The Old Man and the Sea go on and on and on if it is that short?

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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)

Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76

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quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
quote:
Originally posted by Pigwidgeon:
The Old Man and the Sea just goes on and on and on about that stupid fish.

Seconded.

And Lord of the Rings. It took me 3 months to read LOTR, because I kept breaking off to read books which were more enjoyable. Then back to plough through a bit more of LOTR.

Whereas LoTR is just about the only fiction book more than about 300 pages I've ever managed to get through. About seven times. I preferred the Silmarillion though.

[ 27. November 2014, 13:40: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]

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Might as well ask the bloody cat.

Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
balaam

Making an ass of myself
# 4543

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quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I just happen to think long descriptive passages fell out of vogue because they're startling tedious. And yes, Thomas Hardy, I'm looking at you...

[Paranoid] Careful, now. No dissing the greatest novelist in the English language!
Doc, if you want action on every page read Dan Brown. Some of us want storytelling, which is where pacing comes in.

Which is why I disagree with what has been said about The Old Man and the Sea. Brilliantly paced, really slow at the beginning, very descriptive, especially of the Old Man's emotions, then the pace quickens for the actual fishing bit and slowing for the conclusion. One of the best books I have read.

I am unable to comment on Tubbs suggestion of Emma by Jane Austen because I have never read it and never will. I have read Northanger Abbey and tried Sense and Sensibility but could not finish it. I found absolutely nothing of value in either, other than Ms Austen could string a sentence together rather well, it's a shame that talent was wasted on writing drivel.

So not a book, but I give you Jane Austen, the worst author ever to be thought of as "Great."

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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688

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quote:
Originally posted by Tubbs:
Straight in the black sack! Along with some Richard Clayderman LPs [Paranoid] We had some admissions to the book ownership, but no one claimed the Clayderman!)

Tangent/ The cellist on some of Richard Clayderman’s albums is my teacher, slumming for a paycheck. Crap music, very good money, apparently /Tangent

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balaam

Making an ass of myself
# 4543

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Sometimes even the great authors have times when the muse deserts them and they carry on writing regardless.

Umberto Eco, are you listening?

I enjoyed The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, despite the latter having no sympathetic characters. But what were you thinking of writing Baudolino?

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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Dafyd
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# 5549

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quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
I have read Northanger Abbey and tried Sense and Sensibility but could not finish it. I found absolutely nothing of value in either, other than Ms Austen could string a sentence together rather well, it's a shame that talent was wasted on writing drivel.

You did realise that Northanger Abbey is supposed to be funny?
'No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.'
(Austen was rewriting Northanger Abbey when she died and I don't think she'd completed the process; there are scenes, such as the wife-murdering scene, that waver uncomfortably between romantic comedy and farce, and as a result I don't think the whole novel really comes together.)

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

Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Aravis
Shipmate
# 13824

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I'm not sure there are any I actually hate, but I have never been able to get through Women in Love, Nostromo, or Moby Dick. I haven't read much Dickens either; it's not the length of the novels, I'm happy with absolutely anything by the Brontes or Elizabeth Gaskell, or some of the longest modern novels such as A Suitable Boy or The Name of the Rose (both favourites).
I used to like Hardy but find him harder work now.
I read Proust once - in French - probably the greatest achievement during the three years of my English degree, and also the most pointless. Never again.

Posts: 689 | From: S Wales | Registered: Jun 2008  |  IP: Logged
leo
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# 1458

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quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I just happen to think long descriptive passages fell out of vogue because they're startling tedious. And yes, Thomas Hardy, I'm looking at you...

[Paranoid] Careful, now. No dissing the greatest novelist in the English language!
Hardy the greatest novelist in the English language! It's just doom and gloom in the odour of sheepshit, isn't it?
Yes but he wrote about places where i grew up so love his work.

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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com

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opaWim
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# 11137

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Most of the reasons/arguments given so far for hating specific books seem to me perfectly applicable to The Bible.
Am I the only one? [Biased]

Posts: 524 | From: The Marshes | Registered: Mar 2006  |  IP: Logged
Heavenly Anarchist
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# 13313

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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
I have read Northanger Abbey and tried Sense and Sensibility but could not finish it. I found absolutely nothing of value in either, other than Ms Austen could string a sentence together rather well, it's a shame that talent was wasted on writing drivel.

You did realise that Northanger Abbey is supposed to be funny?
'No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.'

I think reading her letters to her sister is a fascinating revelation in just how observant and sarcastic she could be:
'Mrs. Hall, of Sherborne, was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, owing to a fright. I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband.'

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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669

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Heavens, this thread is depressing. Just because I don’t enjoy a work or it makes me uncomfortable, it has no place in the shifting canon of major novels which should be taken account of in assessing current culture.

I can’t say I particularly enjoyed or understood Joyce’s “Ulysses” but that doesn’t make it any less a major influence on C20 English language writing. Ditto, “Clarissa” for the C18.

If we don’t care for an author it probably says as much about us as the author. For example, I’m not going to bother with D H Lawrence any more. He’s working class, heterosexual, romantic and suffused with nonconformist high mindedness. I’m middle class, gay and suffused with an Anglican sense of camp.

Which is probably why Jane Austen is my joint favourite (with Dickens). If you are a sentimental, irony free straight you probably won’t get her – and be irritated at the amount of adulation she gets in some quarters.

Trollope’s period soap operas are not great literature.

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011  |  IP: Logged
Curiosity killed ...

Ship's Mug
# 11770

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Dickens is far better digested via the R4 Classic serial than attempting to read him, the episodic nature really works there. That no-one else likes him on here is really reassuring.

I read Far from the Madding Crowd for my GCSE as my inoculation against Hardy, which I really regret as the 1967 film (Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Peter Finch) was filmed around places I know really well, and I lived for a while in Tess of the D'Urbevilles countryside. I would like to be able to face reading Hardy again.

The other GCSE selection was Conrad. I have managed to blot out Nostromo but some of Heart of Darkness remains, particularly the unpleasantness of Kurtz. Conrad is definitely on the hate list.

I quite liked War and Peace, I read it around my A Levels (and Lord of the Rings around my GCSEs). And I would defend Gormenghast too, well, the first book in particular. I really like Austen, barring Mansfield Park and Jane Eyre but have struggled and failed to read Wuthering Heights.

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Curiosity killed ...

Ship's Mug
# 11770

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Too late to edit - I do know Jane Eyre is not by Jane Austen. I missed a crucial comma

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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat

Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
Pigwidgeon

Ship's Owl
# 10192

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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
How can The Old Man and the Sea go on and on and on if it is that short?

It's short for a novel, but still about 100 pages, depending on the edition. And I seem to recall* that about 90 of those pages were about the Old Man towing in a fish that was being eaten by sharks.

*Like most fish stories, this has probably grown quite a bit in my mind since I was last forced to read it.

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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf

Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged
Amanda B. Reckondwythe

Dressed for Church
# 5521

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quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Dickens is far better digested via the R4 Classic serial. . . . That no-one else likes him on here is really reassuring.

I love Dickens.

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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.

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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549

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quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
That no-one else likes him on here is really reassuring.

Dickens is uneven. There's only really two books that are consistently excellent all the way through (Bleak House and Great Expectations). But you don't read Dickens because he's consistent - George Eliot can be consistent. You read him because when he hits a peak he's brilliant.

I have a soft spot for Martin Chuzzlewit. That's the one where Dickens didn't know what to do so sent two of his characters off to America.

Like Austen, you have to realise that he's funny. There's nothing more fatal to either than trying to read them as if you're in an English lesson.

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

Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Sarasa
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# 12271

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Love Austen, including Mansfield Park , but find DIckens a struggle, despite my Mother in Law's attempts to educate me. I find brief passages amazing, but find it really hard to get past the silly names.
My mother is always going on about Madame Bovery, it's her favourite book. I read it as a teenager, but have no desire to read it again.

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'I guess things didn't go so well tonight, but I'm trying. Lord, I'm trying.' Charlie (Harvey Keitel) in Mean Streets.

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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549

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quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
If we don’t care for an author it probably says as much about us as the author. For example, I’m not going to bother with D H Lawrence any more. He’s working class, heterosexual, romantic and suffused with nonconformist high mindedness. I’m middle class, gay and suffused with an Anglican sense of camp.

I believe Lawrence was bi. I gather that the only reasons his stories aren't slashable is that it's too easy.

quote:
Trollope’s period soap operas are not great literature.
Trollope wrote something like forty books, and probably only had about six or seven in him. But two of those books were Barchester Towers and The Way We Live Now, so it doesn't matter.

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

Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
anoesis
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# 14189

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quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Making someone read something for GCSE is a great way to spoil it for them for life.

This is why I nominate Pride and Prejudice. Have been put off anything by Jane Austen for life.
I had to read The Bell Jar for the NZ equivalent of A levels, and I haven't wanted to touch anything by Sylvia Plath again, that's for sure. Though there were some course-material books, from both school and university, that I liked very much indeed.

I also don't rate Katherine Mansfield at all, but disclosing that fact to my compatriots tends to get me very funny looks and a slight shrugging away from my vicinity, as though this makes me not only vulgar and tasteless, but sort of suspect in my loyalties to the country. Or perhaps I'm just imagining it...though I have been told, out loud, that as a woman, I ought to like her work. WTF?

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The history of humanity give one little hope that strength left to its own devices won't be abused. Indeed, it gives one little ground to think that strength would continue to exist if it were not abused. -- Dafyd --

Posts: 993 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2008  |  IP: Logged
ArachnidinElmet
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# 17346

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quote:
Originally posted by Heavenly Anarchist:
quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
Why has no one mentioned Dickens?

A couple of us have mentioned Hard Times, which I consider one of the most depressing and tedious books I ever failed to read.
Good Lord yes. You could use it as cheap anaesthesia.

Reading Brave New World made me understand the difference between a sad ending and a depressing one.

Can someone explain the point of Death of a Salesman to me? Utterly unsympathetic, uninteresting characters. Sometimes life is a grind? No kidding. I'm glad you told me. I love The Crucible so it's not an anti-Miller thing, but I just can't bear it.

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

Posts: 1887 | From: the rhubarb triangle | Registered: Sep 2012  |  IP: Logged
venbede
Shipmate
# 16669

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Little Dorrit is brill, also.

I will admit I give Conrad and Thomas Pynchon a miss now.

I have really wanted to like Henry James since I was a teenager and read and re-read him. But the penny hasn't yet dropped.

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011  |  IP: Logged
Leorning Cniht
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# 17564

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I was compelled to read Steinbeck's "Of mice and complete eyeball-stabbing tedium" at school, which has rather put me off the man. I did try to read "Grapes of Wrath" much later, and gave up. Three times.

He's just unutterably dull.

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Albertus
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# 13356

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I thought Death of a Salesman was great. The Crucible, on the other hand, is right there next to To Kill A Mockingbird on the worthy and pi English teachers' bookshelf.
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Ariel
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# 58

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quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Dickens is far better digested via the R4 Classic serial. . . . That no-one else likes him on here is really reassuring.

I love Dickens.
So do I. "Hard Times" wasn't his best, I agree.
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Firenze

Ordinary decent pagan
# 619

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I love Dickens. Particularly as I find in myself a growing identification with Flora Finching.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
mousethief

Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953

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quote:
Originally posted by M.:
Crime and Punishment. The crime was the author's, the punishment the reader's. That is all.

I tried to read Crime and Punishment 3 or 4 times, each in a different translation, and gave up each time. Finally when I found Pevear and Volokonsky, I could not just get through it, but devoured it. Constance Garnet should be resuscitated so she can be taken out and shot.

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
Why has no one mentioned Dickens?

I read Copperfield. Dear God, what a whole lot of nothing. And the guy who is a total failure at life, then goes to Australia and becomes a magnate of industry? Puh-leeze. The only good bit in the whole story is when the undertaker tells Copperfield he regrets that due to his profession he cannot ask after young David's mother lest it seem he's hoping she'll die soon. That was clever.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I don't like [To Kill a Mockingbird]. It's all about how white liberals are more wonderful than anybody else, with a special subplot to show that if black people don't wait for white liberals to sort it out for them they'll get shot. (I exaggerate. A bit.)

At that time and place that was in fact true.

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
quote:
Originally posted by M.:
Crime and Punishment.

I must protest. This is quite possibly the best novel ever written.
After Brothers Karamazov, maybe, which towers above it. (IMHO)

Frankly, I thought Pride and Prejudice was brilliantly funny. And I adore Lord of the Rings, but realize it's not for everybody.

The book that I nominate for throwing across the room is Ulysses, but it didn't invoke so much rage as it did contempt. I got about a third of the way through it and realized what he was doing, and that I could do it just as well or better. At which point there was no reason to continue.

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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Heavenly Anarchist
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# 13313

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quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
I thought Death of a Salesman was great. The Crucible, on the other hand, is right there next to To Kill A Mockingbird on the worthy and pi English teachers' bookshelf.

I also preferred Death of a Salesman but that might be because my English lit teacher was fabulously enthusiastic and reading it out loud in class was a joy.

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Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged
Jane R
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# 331

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anoesis, on Lady Chatterley's Lover:
quote:
I suspect that this will lower my credit in the minds of people who are Supposed To Know About Such Things, but I'll just put my hand up and say, I actually like this book. Also, I want to bang my head against a wall every time someone talks about the sex in it. So, it was controversial at the time. Big deal. Anyone who can read this book and think it is in any way about sex is right up there with the folk who watched the Southpark movie and complained about the bad language.
Well, I have never read it; the opinion I quoted was my father-in-law's. I never got far enough into any of his books to find a sex scene; I read the first page or so of Women in Love and didn't like his writing style. And I don't often give up on a book that early.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Jack the Lass

Ship's airhead
# 3415

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I don't know if he's really considered contemporary 'classic' but I know he has a huge following, and I can't bear him - 'he' being Paolo Coelho. The only good thing I can say about "The Alchemist" is that it was better than "The Pilgrimage", which is the closest I've ever come to throwing a book across the room. Pseudo-spiritual willy-waving mumbo-jumbo, ugh.

I never managed to get through "The Hobbit", and as a result have never tried LOTR, although having now seen the films I might give them a go at some point. But my experience of trying with "The Hobbit" isn't making me rush to do that, I must admit.

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Posts: 5767 | From: the land of the deep-fried Mars Bar | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Enoch
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# 14322

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quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Dickens is far better digested via the R4 Classic serial than attempting to read him, ...

Virginia Woolff is also far better as Ginny Fox in Gloomsbury than in her own books. Did anyone else hear it?

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Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008  |  IP: Logged
Cottontail

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# 12234

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quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Dickens is far better digested via the R4 Classic serial. . . . That no-one else likes him on here is really reassuring.

I love Dickens.
So do I. "Hard Times" wasn't his best, I agree.
I love Hard Times. It may be my second favourite Dickens, after A Tale of Two Cities. Not that ToTC is his literary best (although it is jolly fine), but because I fell in love with Sidney Carton aged 13, and I won't hear a thing against him. But David Copperfield now ... I have tried twice, and failed twice, to read it. I get half way, note there is another 400 pages to go, and lose the will to live.

Another tried-and-failed-twice book is Henry James' Portrait of a Lady. I like Henry James in general, but in this book he is totally in love with his vapid heroine, and that never bodes well for a novel.

My last nomination is Moby Dick, which others have mentioned. I love the opening line, which sends shivers down the spine. But then it seems to turn into some big weird gay whale romp, with an awful lot of penes and semen being splashed around. I am probably missing something - I want to like it - but I just can't get there.

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Twilight

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quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
Ethan Frome.

That is all.

No, there's more.

I didn't think I would have much to say on this thread, 19th Century literature being one of my favorite things.


I love Tess so much I've read it four times and Jane Eyre about ten times. I think George Elliot and Tolstoy are brilliant and to a slightly lesser degree, Dickens.

Moving into my second favorite period, turn of the century, I adore Henry James, E M Forster ( a bit later on) and all of Edith Wharton with the huge exception of Ethan Effing Frome.

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Pomona
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Hmm, most of those mentioned so far I love! Does this mean my taste is very pedestrian? [Frown]

Interesting point about books you did at GCSE - I still love most of what I studied at GCSE (Of Mice And Men, Macbeth, Carol Ann Duffy, I can't remember what else aside from a poetry anthology), especially the poetry, but it took me a long time to like Robert Frost after studying him at A Level.

I'm not hugely keen on Hardy and Lawrence as novelists but they're redeemed by their poetry. I hate reading Dickens, but his books make such good TV dramas. So there's not many books that I don't think can be redeemed in some way. Over-description in a book often makes for a really well-done TV drama or film. Also, I love both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, although I love The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall too (poor Anne Brontë being so overlooked, and being buried in Scarborough). Austen is much better if you read it with satire-goggles. Northanger Abbey is hilarious, and I say that as someone who loves ridiculous Gothic fiction.

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Roselyn
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I loved Emma; loved Nostromo, loved Jude the Obscure and Lawrence's poetry and other Lawrence's 7 Pillars...Phantastes was good but came to a halt in middle of LOTR book 2. As I did not care about anyone in the story I stopped reading it; the first work of "literature" I just did not finish! Do not read much good literature at all these days finding non fiction more enchanting.
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anoesis
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quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
anoesis, on Lady Chatterley's Lover:
quote:
I suspect that this will lower my credit in the minds of people who are Supposed To Know About Such Things, but I'll just put my hand up and say, I actually like this book. Also, I want to bang my head against a wall every time someone talks about the sex in it. So, it was controversial at the time. Big deal. Anyone who can read this book and think it is in any way about sex is right up there with the folk who watched the Southpark movie and complained about the bad language.
Well, I have never read it; the opinion I quoted was my father-in-law's. I never got far enough into any of his books to find a sex scene; I read the first page or so of Women in Love and didn't like his writing style. And I don't often give up on a book that early.
I wasn't having a go at you. I guess I was just being generally defensive because the sort of criticisms I hear made of the book are all missing the point by miles. I do get that his circuitous, wordy, adjective-laden style is not everyone's cup of tea. I rather like the sparse and austere style of prose down the other end of the spectrum myself, but the rider to that statement is that I think (as with other kinds of minimalism), it's exceedingly hard to do it well and still engage people.

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LeRoc

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quote:
Jack the Lass: I don't know if he's really considered contemporary 'classic' but I know he has a huge following, and I can't bear him - 'he' being Paolo Coelho.
I live in Brazil, but I totally agree with this.

(BTW The name is Paulo Coelho. I've seen it spelled wrongly a lot of times.)

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Golden Key
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Re "Brothers K" and "Women In Love":

If you have any interest, there's a good film of each. "Brothers K" has a very young, glowing William Shatner as Alyosha, and he's actually good. "Women In Love" has Oscar Reed as one of the male leads.

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L'organist
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The Mill on the Floss - just awful.

Golding's To the Ends of the Earth - how to make what should be a great adventure so dull it could be marketed as a cure for insomnia.

Anything by Conan Doyle - makes good B movies but not A or B grade literature.

Absolute worst: Cranford: a load of snobbish old biddies spend their dull days gossipping about nothing, looking back over lives filled with nothing and forward to more of the same.

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Pomona
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As for Lady Chatterley's Lover - I read it when I was 14, and to someone discovering their sexuality the anti-lesbian stuff was pretty hard to swallow.

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mousethief

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quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Re "Brothers K" and "Women In Love":

I assume you mean The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, and not The Brothers K by David Jones Duncan?

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Golden Key
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MT--

LOL, yes. Have been around too many lit majors. "Brothers K" = "The Brothers Karamazov". Don't even know what that other book is.

(I think that's primarily to get around all the myriad ways of pronouncing "Karamazov".)

[ 28. November 2014, 04:44: Message edited by: Golden Key ]

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Sarasa
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L'Organist said:
quote:
Absolute worst: Cranford: a load of snobbish old biddies spend their dull days gossipping about nothing, looking back over lives filled with nothing and forward to more of the same.

I think Cranford is one of the best books of all time. The characterisation the gentle humour, Miss Matty wearing a widow's cap when the man she should have married but didn't due to her interfering family died. Wonderful, but each to their own I guess.

If I could invite anyone I liked to a dinner party Elizabeth Gaskell would be first on the list.

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Galilit
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I was a 10 year old book-worm who "people" were trying to wean off science fiction in the 60's. My teacher suggested to my first Spiritual Director a.k.a. Mum that I read Dickens.

I was in New Zealand. It was sunny and clean and fresh. We had food. We had parents. We had a house. We had a garden. We had the bush and the beach. We had a school. We had friends. We were loved and looked after.

It is a life-long trauma to have been forced to read those books. I did not need to be exposed to that kind of cruelty and deprivation at that age AND to be told it was "literature".

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Enoch
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quote:
Originally posted by Galilit:
I was a 10 year old book-worm who "people" were trying to wean off science fiction in the 60's. My teacher suggested to my first Spiritual Director a.k.a. Mum that I read Dickens.

I was in New Zealand. It was sunny and clean and fresh. We had food. We had parents. We had a house. We had a garden. We had the bush and the beach. We had a school. We had friends. We were loved and looked after.

It is a life-long trauma to have been forced to read those books. I did not need to be exposed to that kind of cruelty and deprivation at that age AND to be told it was "literature".

Not sure I agree there. Dickens may not have suited you, but if you've grown up in a garden where everything is lovely, for which God be thanked, a sharp encounter with the fact that not everyone has those blessings is itself a blessing. That is so however traumatic the exposure might be.

IMHO, the opportunity to encounter other peoples' life experience in a way that engages a person's ability to imagine themselves into someone else's life is one of the more valuable reasons for including literature in school curricula.

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venbede
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quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:

Absolute worst: Cranford: a load of ... old biddies spend their dull days gossipping about nothing, looking back over lives filled with nothing and forward to more of the same.

You make it sound like a feminist version of "Waiting for Godot".

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Albertus
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It's a light piece of some charm, with some good funny moments (e.g. the story about the cat swallowing the lace). It keeps its place on my bookshelf, although for that kind of thing I'd rather have Barbara Pym.
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venbede
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I was thinking Barbara Pym as well. "Quartet in Autumn" could fit that negative description of "Cranford", but it is a wonderful coming to terms with mortality.

For those who don't like Jane Austen and don't know Barbara Pym, I'd say "If you didn't like that, you'll loathe this".

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

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Sioni Sais
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quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:

Absolute worst: Cranford: a load of ... old biddies spend their dull days gossipping about nothing, looking back over lives filled with nothing and forward to more of the same.

You make it sound like a feminist version of "Waiting for Godot".
I don't think "Waiting for Godot" pretends to be anything other than what it is.

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