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There are certain books that we have all been told are classics. They are amazing. Everyone should read them. Yet some few I just cannot figure out for the life of me why anyone likes them and why they are considered to be classics.
For this thread I am looking for two things.
A book that you just can’t stand that everyone else tells you is great.
Other explaining to us what you are missing (“you” being the person who hates the book).
I’ll start:
The Grapes of Wrath
I was made to read this book in high school (among many others) and boy-oh-boy did I hate reading it. Deadly boring. The whole thing was a slog. Yet many will tell us this is the “great American novel”. Why? I was not thrilled with all my required reading in high school but this one was the worst by far.
The writing bored me to tears. I could not get over the pretentiousness of the author that came through his writing. And the plot was not the Great Read that the teacher and many other people told me it was. I found it to be predictable tripe. And, yes, I was forced to read it in high school. Luckily, I transferred to adult ed. before I had to do anything other than read that crap in class.
Well, some people like the movie “Apocalypse Now” which was loosely based on that book. Also, the movie “Hearts of Darkness” was pretty good too. It was a documentary about the making of “Apocalypse Now”. One messed-up production.
But yeah…this is about books and not movies but it still might suggest a reason why the book is well regarded if only by association.
Well, to start with, I wouldn’t say that no one seems to like that book. I read “The Grapes of Wrath” for the first time in my 20s, for my own personal pleasure, and I liked it a lot.
As for the books I actually was forced to read in high school, it was a mixed bag. I hated “Heart of Darkness” but liked “Crime and Punishment”.
Which is just to say that tastes vary, as we all know.
“Great Expectations” This was required reading in 9th or 10th grade English, but I got bored about halfway through and never finished it. Still have no idea how it ends.
If “no one” liked a book it is hard to imagine it becoming required reading in high school.
So, I guess, it at least had to impress a few people.
Anecdotally, when I am out and about and a topic like this comes up, I have yet to meet anyone who likes “Grapes of Wrath”. But maybe people who like it are not fun or social.
I just read somewhere of someone’s experience trying to read “Ulysses”. They said they gave it a few false starts and could never get in to it. Then they just decided to bull through the whole thing and then they finally got it and it was a revelation.
I used to read fairly fast, back when I had 80/20 vision. And I knew guys in school who could read at around 1000 words per minute. When you read faster, slow books happen a lot faster, at action-hero speed. Pages of description are like a glance around the room. So that’s one thing.
Another thing is, when you read a lot, you become able to recognize really crap writing. “Grapes of Wrath” may be a complete waste of time, but the writing isn’t crap – it’s just unpleasant and not very interesting. Some people who really want to read, get sick of crap writing, and are happy to read even slow/unpleasant/boring books just because they are well written.
My GF (I keep referencing her because she is someone I know who is a voracious reader…she is also a professional editor) tells me that good writing is paramount to her. Unfortunately, no one can discern what she thinks is good writing but her (which makes buying her books very difficult even though she loves books).
For me, I like well plotted books and books with big ideas.
Others like character driven novels. It’s all about the people in the books.
Of course, there is a lot of overlap here. You usually cannot only do one thing well and fall apart on the other points and expect a good book. But an author can certainly lean in harder to any of those.
But for something like “Grapes of Wrath” I just cannot see good writing carrying the book. It is a looong book and it is so boring. Telling the story well does not matter if the story itself sucks.
This thread is enticing me to re-read Grapes of Wrath, which I remember reading as a teenager, not necessarily assigned in high school. I wonder if I’d find still as gripping as I remember. We did have to read a lot of Steinbeck in junior high school: The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl–all novellas, all pretty easy reading.
I’ve always detested Heart of Darkness, and most of Conrad, which is odd since he seems to have been idolized by many writers I admire: Fitzgerald once went out to visit him in Oyster Bay and paid him the strange homage of dancing on his lawn (or something of the sort). I find him unintelligible, and I’ve tried that book in particular on numerous occasions.
Sometimes, I think, the books they choose are wrong for the age group. I first read The Great Gatsby for a book club when I was roughly 32. I loved it. I probably wouldn’t have in high school because I wouldn’t have understood that Fitzgerald didn’t want you to like anyone.
