It links to an essay in GOOD magazine (I don’t know it) where a guy discusses his asking a woman he wants to ask out what her favortite book is. She shares that 1984 was her favorite book and that she hadn’t read it since high school (in her late 20’s). He realizes at that moment that it’s going nowhere. I get the basic point about compatability, but it seems kinda Seinfeldian/jerkish to me.
HuffPo uses that launch point to list a few other books, like On the Road, Anna Karenina, Atlas Shrugged, the Simarillion, etc. as books that, if named, should be a red flag dating-wise, for different reasons.
Kinda funny, but otherwise just a goof. I might have a problem given my love for the Great Gatsby…
Thought that Dopers would appreciate the topic given our bookish nature…
I think the concept of the article is sound, even if the actual books are poorly chosen.
Not a dating situation, but my wife and I had made friends with a local couple. We visited their house and I used their bathroom, where they had an Ann Coulter book. I correctly surmised that the friendship was doomed.
I’ve seen these kinds of lists before and they usually include The Catcher in the Rye. At least this one doesn’t. One commentor has got the right idea:
[QUOTE=HuffPo Commentor]
HOW ARE THE “TWILIGHT” BOOKS NOT ON THIS LIST?
I think the HuffPo piece misses the point of the original story. The problem was not so much that this woman’s favorite books was 1984 – the author wasn’t impressed by this choice, but didn’t yet feel “it was over” – but that she hadn’t read it since high school. Since 1984 is commonly assigned in high school English classes, it’s fairly likely that this woman only read the book in the first place because she was required to.
This doesn’t sound like someone who cares much about literature, and looking at the full story on GOOD I see that the author says he was only interested in a relationship with a woman who was passionate about reading. What she read wasn’t that important to him: “A woman doesn’t have to have read—or even heard of—the books I love. She just has to read books, and read them for fun because she loves them.”
Oresteia - Wikipedia - a set of Ancient Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus. They are considered part of the foundation of modern Western theater. Everyone dies.
Oh, I am familiar with the Orestaia. What has me agog is the idea that the only reason one could possibly like it is because they want to kill their parents and furthermore, everyone most certainly does not die. Orestes survives. He survives because Athena turns into a mouthpiece for ancient greek misogyny but nevertheless, he survives.
I hear ya. I can see the inclusion on the list from the standpoint of portraying the Orestaia fan as too intense, caught up in the tragic side of things, but yeah, it is an a example of an entry that feels a bit contrived…
I’ve had at least three close girlfriends try to get me to read The Little Prince (one was even going to find me a copy in German, knowing that I can read the language).
Does it make me an insensitive cretin that, having read the first half-dozen pages, I have absolutely no desire to finish the book?
As for Atlas Shrugged, the author of that article was right on! I used to know a woman who was obsessed with the book, and she was the coldest, most scheming and conniving bitch I’ve ever known.
She gave me a copy to read, and I managed to get through it in the course of a summer. I thought the first two-thirds of the book were actually pretty cool, but the final third was absolute crap.
I don’t understand why The Great Gatsby is on the list. I read it once, and while I wasn’t exactly swept away by it, I didn’t actively dislike it either.
I would question the mental balance of anybody who considers Nietzsche their favorite author.
Anna Karenina is, as I’ve said before, not just excruciatingly boring; it has no literary appeal whatsoever, so far as I’m concerned.
Plus they center on infidelity, murder, and bloody revenge. Father kills daughter, wife kills husband (and his maybe his concubine too?), son and daughter kill mother and her lover. So is it your favorite because of the poetic language and powerful imagery, or because it reminds you of your own family when you were growing up?
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
Cassandra’s entire speech can basically be summed up as, “Goddammit Aggie, thanks for kidnapping me and dragging me all the way to this godforsaken rock just to be killed by your wife.” Clytie whacks the concubine, too.
Thank you, Inner Stickler. I don’t know if I’m pleased or what, but I haven’t read any of them (and I read a lot). Some of them I have made an attempt at, however.
