I’d never read any of his stuff until about a year ago. I’m a big science fiction fan, and I’d heard all my life what a great writer he was and how he wrote not only great stories, but even science fiction and disguised it as great literature.
So last year I bought a softbound volume that had Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions.
I read them, but I didn’t enjoy them. I thought they were boring, the characters were all unsympathetic, and I enjoy getting beaten over the head with the point as much as the next guy, but this was just painful. In a way, I felt kind of like I do about Michael Jackson. It obvious he’s got talent, but I don’t care for his style, his ideas, or his results.
I definitely feel kind of bad about it. Here is this guy who is widely hailed as one of the great authors of the 20th century, and I thought… eh.
Well, I wasn’t mean about it or anything, but i didn’t get “The long dark tea-time of the soul” when I was first exposed to it, and that seems strange to me because I like it so much now.
My parents got me a hardcover for christmas one year because I was such a big hitch-hiker’s fan. I remember reading the scene at Heathrow in the beginning, chuckling about the dream where there are storage trunks full of penguins and following some of Dirk’s adventures up to the i ching calculator and so on, but it never really grabbed me and I didn’t finish it. Dirk was a character that I didn’t like very much, and all the foreshadowing and allusions to Norse mythology were flying straight over my head, when they might have held my interest if I’d caught them. (I wasn’t a huge mythology buff as a kid, but I’m pretty sure I would have known who Thor and Odin were, and a few more details. Just didn’t recognize them in the story.)
It also helped that when I revisited the book as an adult, I had already been through the first in the series, which had Richard Macduff as a main character first, who I could thoroughly identify with, and introduced Dirk as his wacky, annoying friend who he tolerated. On that basis, I could accept him.
I liked Amelie and his other earlier stuff like Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, but did not really enjoy A Very Long Engagement which I thought was very aptly named. I mean, the story was kind of interesting, but I did not enjoy the feeling of having to experience the whole thing in what seemed like real time.
In a similar vein, most of the things I feel bad about enjoying are other works by a creator whose previous stuff I really enjoyed. The Man Who Folded Himself is one of my favorite books but I haven’t been able to get into any of David Gerrold’s other stuff probably because they all seem to be generic space operas instead of introspective personal stories. I suspect I might like The Martian Child because unlike his other stuff it seems similar, but I haven’t picked it up yet.
I really want to like Dollhouse because I love all of Joss’s other stuff and I’ve liked Eliza Dukshu in her other roles (including her stint as Lucy from Charlie Brown in a mental ward). I do kind of like it, but not in the big love way I had for his previous stuff. And Eliza is fine but doesn’t seem like the optimal casting choice for that particular role. The other characters have since grown on me, but for the first third of the season they mostly seemed a bit unlikeable. And the unaired final episode while very interesting in it’s own right or if it had been a series ender, feels like it’s taking away from whatever they can do next season.
Just out of curiosity, did you just read the first one (Over Sea, Under Stone) or did you read them all? The first one is by far the weakest - kind of “70’s Adventure Stories”, you know.
If not, hey, different strokes. One hopes you at least like Lloyd Alexander?
Just out of curiosity, did you just read the first one (Over Sea, Under Stone) or did you read them all? The first one is by far the weakest - kind of “70’s Adventure Stories”, you know.
If not, hey, different strokes. One hopes you at least like Lloyd Alexander?
Given the bolded portion, I don’t think I’d have recommended any of those three Vonnegut novels to you as a first one to read. I’d have suggested The Sirens of Titan instead, because if nothing else it is recognizably a science-fiction novel and you might enjoy it on that level even if you didn’t love it. Of course, you might have disliked Sirens of Titan anyway, but I think it at least would have been more along the lines of what you were expecting to get.
FWIW, although I loved Vonnegut when I was a teenager I haven’t felt the need to re-read any of his novels since college. I can’t say whether that’s a criticism of his work or just because my tastes have changed, but had you talked to me 10 years ago I’d have been gushing about what a great writer he was in a way that I wouldn’t do now.
I really don’t like Wally Lamb’s stuff. I Know This Much Is True was not interesting enough to convince me to read more than the first couple of chapters.
I freaking hate John Irving so much that I want to stab his books with a basilisk fang to make sure they are completely destroyed and no one else ever has to be exposed to them again.
Phillip K. Dick holds little appeal to me and I really didn’t like A Scanner Darkly at all. It was recommended to me by my drugged up cousin and after reading it I am not surprised that he liked it at all but I was not impressed.
As someone who plays DND and loves fantasy, I have never been able to read (in fact, just to listen to) Tolkien. I find him boring and no fun. As for the movies, I enjoyed the first one a lot, the second one was eh and the third was boring and terrible to me.
As a related tangent, I appreciate what E. Gary Gygax did but don’t like his fiction. I use Forgotten Realms, created by Ed Greenwood, but don’t like his fiction much either. I do like Ed’s gaming stuff and appreciate what EGG did for DND but am glad it’s moved on from him.
I bought the Kim Harrison books and read two and a half of them and never liked the main character or her situation. My wife loves them, goes on about them and is really bummed that I don’t like them.
This probably doesn’t count but I have never been interested in reading “classic” science fiction, such as Vonnegut, because dated science usually snaps me out of anything they might create. Asimov I could read but not in years. I used to get the Years Best Science Fiction from many different decades and some of them were so tough to read. No interest in Frankenstein, Dracula or other 19th century Victorian prose.
Wow. I thought I would have more but had to stretch for this much.
Ugh, yes. I read this about 5 years ago and hated it. I suppose if an educated someone explained the subtext and whatnot to me, I might appreciate it more, but I’m still not going to like it.
In one of the “Recommend me some books to read” thread, someone had suggested reading Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. I’d heard of it, and knew it was considered a classic, but I just gave up halfway through. It just seemed so damn tedious. Ditto Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven.
I made it into the second book, I think, before I realized I didn’t much like any of the characters. In fact, I wanted an asteroid to hit, vaporize the oceans, and steam them all like lobsters.
Yes! I had the same experience with Confederacy of Dunces, as well as Russian Debutante’s Handbook and The Corrections. I read all three of them cover-to-cover, and never cared for any of them. They all struck me as similar stylistically as well, particularly Russian Debutante’s Handbook and The Corrections. My conclusion was that I simply don’t care for the contemporary American humorous novel.
Yeah, I read the whole thing, and I still don’t get what’s so supposedly great about it. The protagonist is clearly a self-centered little prick, and I couldn’t find any appeal in the book.
I really expected to enjoy T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone when I was assigned it the summer before my freshman year of high school, but I hated it. I might’ve enjoyed it when I was younger, but it struck me at the time as juvenile and simplistic.
My grandmother sent me a copy of Little Women when I was in middle school. I made it to page 16 before I gave up in disgust. I just couldn’t stand the characters, the stilted dialogue, or the overly simplistic writing style.
FWIW, there are two different versions of The Sword in the Stone. T.H. White originally wrote the book as a stand-alone novel, then significantly revised it for the compilation edition of The Once and Future King. Both versions are still available; if you were reading The Sword in the Stone as its own book then you were almost certainly reading the original. I have never read that version, but that’s the version upon which the Disney film was based. It’s my understanding that the revised version is darker in tone, has stronger moral/political themes, and omits some of the fantasy elements like the Madame Mim character. So maybe you’d have liked that better…although maybe not. I don’t hate it or anything, but the revised version of The Sword in the Stone isn’t my favorite part of The Once and Future King.
It was mentioned up thread that Ignatius J. Reilly (not O’Reilly) is one of the most polarizing characters in fiction. Holden Caufield has got to be one of the other ones. I personally loved the book (and Confederacy of Dunces), even though I didn’t really identify with Holden particularly strongly (and not at all with Ignatius). I just think Salinger did a brilliant job of crafting a convincing character portrait.
The biggest literary disappointment for me was On The Road. I read it in my late teens, when I was adventurous and full of wanderlust, and I could never get past the first chapter or two. I’ve tried several times to pick it up–before I began traveling by myself around the world, while I was doing it, after I had done it. And, always, the book bored me to tears. I don’t understand what people see in it.
Thank goodness I’m not in your book club. Wonder what they would say if they ever found out Lolita is my absolute favorite novel.
and following some of Dirk’s adventures up to the i ching calculator and so on, but it never really grabbed me and I didn’t finish it. Dirk was a character that I didn’t like very much, and all the foreshadowing and allusions to Norse mythology were flying straight over my head, when they might have held my interest if I’d caught them. (I wasn’t a huge mythology buff as a kid, but I’m pretty sure I would have known who Thor and Odin were, and a few more details. Just didn’t recognize them in the story.)