I was not expecting to like “Heart of Darkness.” It was one of the books I had to read for high school English Lit class, which had showered me with nothing but really, really, painfully boring novels. “Mill on the Floss,” … barf. “Moby Dick” … duck! “The Great Gatsby” … just fricking kill me now!
But “Heart of Darkness” was great, a gripping jungle yarn, really, only instead of the suspense being provided by lions and tigers and bears oh my, it was the crushing opprobrium of the savagery the protagonist encounters in Belgium’s nasty excuse for a colonial empire. Loved it! And … nothing else. My English teacher actually tried to tell me that “By the Waters of Babylon” was good SF. I had read a lot of it by then, and well … don’t respect English teachers any more … if I ever did.
Quite a bit more low-brow, but I had a fellow soldier trying to get me to read Glen Cook’s Black Company books. I had no interest in the fantasy genre, so resisted.
I finally got bored and picked up the first book. And that was that.
I also had a hard time getting started on Patrick O’Brian. Just wasn’t interested in that sort of thing. Or so I thought.
Salman Rushdie struck me as an obnoxious jerk, and while I greatly sympathized with him while he was being theatened with death by the Ayatollah Khomeini, I had no interest in reading ***The Satanic Verses ***or anything els he’s written.
But I just recently finished Midnight’s Children, and it was a great piece of work (and a lot FUNNIER than I’d anticipated).
I was once stuck in a rural B&B on a very wet afternoon. For the want of anything better to do, I picked up a copy of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones Diary from the bookcase in the room. Not my usual thing, being a chap and all that, but what the hell.
I loved it - very warm and funny. I ended up buying a copy when I got home so that I could finish it.
Hey, now, I must put in my two cents right here and say it was the EXACT opposite for me! I - and nearly my entire high school class - found “Heart of Darkness” impossible. Impossible to read or understand (the teacher passed out the book and said, here, read this. And that was it, left it to us dummies to make of it what we would. Huh??) I read an excerpt in an anthology from “By The Waters of Babylon” and was so entranced I sought out the book, all on my own. This was decades ago, but I will never forget how I loathed the former and loved the latter. Tastes in reading certainly vary!
Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. I thought Westerns were just a small step above pulp romances until my flatmate dared me to read this. Boy was I wrong, a great, great book that was made into a great miniseries as well.
Agreed. Unfortunately, with the possible exception of The Last Picture Show, McMurtry wrote nothing else worth reading. I learned this the hard way. I found it hard to believe (almost literally) that some of those books were written by the author of Lonesome Dove.
.
I have to confess I haven’t read anything else by McMurtry.
Another one from the same flatmate - Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides
Me: “It got made into a Barbra Streisand movie, it must be crap.”
Her: “Read it and see”
[Some days later]
Me: “Thanks for the great read got any more?”
Ninja’d by Poysyn and like her (him?) I suffered through Old Man and the Sea. In junior high! Worse, I spent my teenage hippiehood thinking ‘boring, monosyllabic, macho, gun-loving asshole.’ :rolleyes:
About 10 years ago, while reading everything I could find about the Great War, I picked up A Farewell to Arms and absolutely loved it. I read just about everything else he wrote that summer and now he’s among my favorite authors.
I was pretty much the same with Olivia Goldsmith: I picked up a copy of *Flavour of the Month * on holiday in a beach house where there was literally nothing else to read. I was only expecting trashy chick-lit, but found instead something smart, funny and satirical as hell. The lady could write.
In a moment of douchey-ness I assumed the Harry Potter books would be utter garbage because they were so popular but I found that I really enjoyed them.
Yeah, I remember thinking Hemingway was something I should read to expand my horizons, but was pretty sure I wouldn’t like. I was wrong, of course - I’ve read most of his novels now.
Same with Willa Cather - out of ignorance, the only thing I had to judge O! Pioneers and My Antonía on were the titles - the titles sound (to me, at least) like stuffy, almost Victorian novels. Really. Spelling “Oh” as “O” and putting an exclamation point after it? Antonía with the little thingie over the i? Sounded dusty and moldy. But I bravely picked up My Antonía, and wow! - what I had been missing! I’ve read most of her canon now, too.
If you’re as clueless about Willa Cather as I was, do yourself a favor and read something by her - my favorite horseback butch on the prairie.
Oh yes, The Master and Margarita for sure. My experience is almost identical.
I had a friend who was very fond of Russian literature - he raved at me about this book, finally bought a copy for me - and it sat on the shelf, gathering dust. I just figured it had to be boring despite the raves, and could not bring myself to read it - particularly being practically forced to. The description I got gave me the impression it was about some religious revival in Russia. Big deal. Not interested.
One day I was bored, and picked it up - wow, what a Sam-I-am, Green-eggs-and-ham moment. I had to admit to my friend he’d been right all along - it’s now one of my favorite books.
The description I got gave me the impression it was about some religious revival in Russia. Big deal. Not interested.
I had to admit to my friend he’d been right all along - it’s now one of my favorite books.