"Must Read" books that you read...but just didn't get...

In My Humble Opinion
61

It’s really rare when I won’t at least finish a book. As I’m in china, and there is limited reading material, occaisionally I’ll find some obscure 30 year out of date airport bookstore imitation James Clavell novel - and read it at least once.

Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Keasey started great but I had to throw it away ¾ way through. 5 years later I found a copy in China, and actually finished it but the ending was lame. His later stuff went nowhere, but I really liked One Flew Over.

Ditto the Kerouac. Only one I sorta liked was when he went to an isolated cabin in Big Sur and was a big city kid freaked out by the ocean. Read Celine if you want long paragraphs with no punctuation.

62

I don’t care if it was the “style of the time.” Its a shitty style. Therefore, works written in that style are going to be less enjoyable. Don’t get me wrong, Many of their plots are great. But the way they tell their stories detracts from them.

Also (and this’ll probably come of as ignorant), its not as if “write less” was such a complicated and mind blowing concept that their excess should be excused.

63

To everyone who has been scolding me for disliking Huckleberry Finn:

I still don’t like Huckleberry Finn, and I never will. My mother is a junior high school teacher, and she told me that Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are hardly ever taught at her school. Here’s why: Every time Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer is assigned to some class at that school, soon afterwards there is an epidemic of white students calling black students “nigger.” Even if the book itself isn’t racist (and I still think it is), it provokes racism in some readers.

I don’t like the book, and I never will, and no amount of scolding or arguing will change my mind. If anything, I hate it more than ever now, because you people have been sniping at me on behalf of that book.

64

Man, I should read more. I’ve barely read any of these novels (and the ones I have are mostly high school required.) But here are my votes:

  • Last of the Mohicans: I got this one as a Christmas present, this Christmas - which I could say is “last Christmas” because it was technically last year, but it’s not the last last Christmas - on account of the fact that my hair is styled in a mohawk and my grandmother thought it would be funny to have this book, which it was, but when I started reading it, I couldn’t get past the first page, on account of the fact that the first sentence is reaaally realllly long; so long that the first page has about 2 paragraphs and 5 sentences on it, but I kept reading anyway, hoping it would get better, but then I flipped to a random page and the writing style was just the same; really long sentences, like this one, that don’t really explain anything and just get way off track so you don’t know what the hell’s going on by the time you finish so you have to go back and reread every sentence. Like this sentence here. I haven’t gotten past page 3 so far, and I don’t plan to.

  • A Seperate Peace: I don’t know if this is a classic book or not, but I had to read it in high school, and it sucked. The story is basically “Gene likes Finny, Finny dies, it’s partly Gene’s fault, and then Gene feels guilty” (Oh come on, don’t say I ruined the ending, it was so predictable.) That story isn’t so bad, except it took 196 pages to say what could’ve really been told in a short story. And throughout the whole thing, Gene is basically thinking “What!? What did that mean!? They’re all out to get me” in response to anything anyone says. It really makes it boring (A Yellow Raft In Blue Water was written the same way. I don’t know if it’s a classic book, but I didn’t really like that one either.)

I did like Of Mice and Men though. Partly just because it didn’t try to come off as one of those epically poetic books where you have to quote every single sentence. Just a simple book about two guys trying to make a living in California (despite the fact that I knew by page 5 that Lennie was gonna die.)

65

No one scolded you for disliking the book. No one said you had to like the book. You have every right to dislike any book or other work of art. Miller and I merely pointed out what we believed were flaws in your conclusion, and gave reasons for our disagreeing with you regarding that conclusion and the purpose of the specific scene you cited.

I’m not quite sure what you mean when you say that Huck Finn “provokes racism.” Do you mean that it makes students racist, or that it brings out racism that students already posess? I think the latter is far more likely, and in that situation, the book can hardly be blamed for attitudes that the students already posessed.

66

I’m not going to fall into the trap of “I don’t like this, so it must be bad”. (I mean, I could as easily say, “I like this, so it must be good”… but that would result in an erosion of critical standards too hideous to contemplate: I can, for instance, quote whole episodes of Battlestar Galactica verbatim, from memory…)

Anyway. I’m not going to fall into that trap. But, in terms of purely personal bad reactions to the classics… Henry James. (Yes, I know other people have whaled on James in this thread. It’s not going to stop me.)

I am prepared to recognise James’s position as one of the giants of English (=English-language) literature. I will concede the delicate beauty of his prose, the deep psychological subtlety of his characterization. Or, at least, I will take these things on trust… because whenever I try to read James, a grey tide of oblivion rises up before me, my eyelids droop as though a couple of professional wrestlers were hanging off each one, and Morpheus himself appears beside me, shouting “Steve Wright! I claim you for my kingdom of Sleep!”

I’ve been told that things happen in Henry James novels. I’m prepared to believe it. But I’ll never know, because they hit me harder than 20 cc’s of Thorazine. Just a personal reaction, but I think I’m better off with Battlestar Galactica.

67

To Number Six:

I still despise Huckleberry Finn, and I always will. I am asking you one more time: Please stop trying to change my mind about that book.

68

Speaking of people overreacting and distorting what people say…

69

Books that critics and English profs made a big deal of, but I hated:

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Egad.

Great Expectations
I, too, wanted to see Pip die a ghastly death.

Silas Marner
Now, there’s some tripe. I literally ripped the book to pieces in front of my English teacher.

Catch 22
Huh?

70

Oh yeah, and Women In Love and Men In Love and anything else by D.H. Lawrence. 10 weeks of college, wasted.

71

I went back and very carefully reread every word that I wrote concerning Huckleberry Finn, and I can find no place where I tried to convince you to like the book. I did, however, say this:

When you post a strong opinion, you should be prepared to accept that some people are going to disagree with your conclusions, which is the only thing I have done.

72

Tom Jones was the only assigned book for an English class that I never, ever finished. I got about half way through and bought the Cliff’s Notes. I might have been able to stand it if James had stuck to the story, but every other chapter was an essay on how he knew he was writing the “first real novel” (so sayeth my teacher of the time) and the deep philisophical meanings behind it all. I even found Portrait of the Artist to be more interesting than Tom Jones, although it was much less intelligible. (I still didn’t like it.)

Dickens I usually find too wordy, but then, he was paid by the word so I understand why he tended to go on at length. Still, I keep finding myself wondering if I’ve missed a point by the time I get to the end of one of his books.

On a less classical note, who here ever read Robert Holdstock’s Lavondys or Mythago Woods? I read both and found myself going “huh?” at the end of each. Unlike most of my books, I’ve never reread these two, and both were hailed as great works of imaginative fiction when they came out.

I guess I just don’t like stories that have no point, purpose, or goal to them.

73

I never said that I was unprepared for people to disagree with me. All I said was that I wasn’t going to change my opinion of Huckleberry Finn. I’m getting very tired of this debate. Can we agree to disagree about that book?

74

I never said that I was unprepared for people to disagree with me. All I said was that I wasn’t going to change my opinion of Huckleberry Finn. I hate the book forever and ever. I’m getting very tired of this debate. Can we agree to disagree about that book?

75

Really? What happened next?

I didn’t tear my copy of Silas Marner to pieces, but I did throw it against the wall of my room. It left a large dent in the spine of the book, but it didn’t chip the paint on the wall. This happened when I was fourteen years old. It wasn’t that I had anything in particular against the book. I was just in a bad mood.

I still have the book. Obviously I couldn’t re-sell it because the spine was dented.

As my screen name suggests, ny favorite literary period is the medieval period. I also like classical and Renaissance literature, and some works of Victorian literature.

76

Since I was the only one in my 10th grade class that liked Silas Marner, I thought it might get mentioned. :slight_smile: I can see how one might not like it, but I enjoyed it…

77

I’ve read (or at least attempted to read) about half of the books I’ve seen listed above and sadly have to agree with the inclusion of most of them in my “Mustn’t Read” list.

I did enjoy reading Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, so they won’t be found on my leave-it-on-the-shelf list. I also would like to think Silas Marner is a great read, but I haven’t been able to get more than a few chapters into it before the style of writing has me feeling like my brain is made of Malt-o-Meal.

I haven’t found much by Dickens, Hawthorne, Updike, Steinbeck, Hemmingway, or numerous other masters worth the paper it was printed on. And just for the record and only slightly off-thread, I could do without Stephen King, whose popularity alone should guarantee he’ll make it into the Novel Writer’s Hall of Fame. He’s got quite a talent for saying in 5000 words what anyone else can say in 50, but that’s just a surefire way to bore me.

78

ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE!!!

79

I’d be happy to add “Atlas Shrugged” to the bonfire.

Finally got around to reading this one after years of hearing it described as a masterpeice. Asinine political and “philosophy” aside, what a amateurish waste of paper. All the “heroic” characters are similarly described as being tall, chiseled-featured Fabios and all the “villians” come across as Frank Burns type buffoons.

I can’t say I agree with all previous mentions, however. I thought “Confederacy of Dunces” was.a pretty entertaining read and “Catch-22”? Now IMHO, that does deserve to be hailed as a classic.

80

I agree with a vast majority of the posts so far! Excellent decisions. The one “writer” (I would say fecal flinger) who I absolutely despise is William Faulkner. He is easily the most tedious, overwrought, melodramatic, long-winded, and just plain bad writer since the first man (or woman) put pictures of Bison on cave walls. Hemingway is a very close second.

There are three books mentioned that I must disagree with. I loved 'The Alienist." I realize that preferences for books are a personal taste, but to rank this book with the others in the list is, IMHO, unfair. It is, unlike a majority on this list, well-written. The language of the characters is appropriate, and the narration is quite good. I greatly disagree that it was not true to it’s time period. I thought that Caleb Carr’s writing was very authentic, which gave the entire book, a deep, rich story. the characters were believable and complete, and the plot was outstanding. I would put the Alienist up against anything written in the last decade.

Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’m not nearly so psyched to defend this book, but I thought it was a good story, with well-developed characters, that actually had something to say. It may have been a little pretentious in it’s subject matter, but I found that I got a lot of discussion fodder out of the ideas in the book.

Now for the tough one. I think Catcher in the Rye is a fantastic book, but one that is definately written for a specific audience. If you are not of that audience, you are going to hate it, but if you are of the group it was aimed for (and I was when I read it), it is fantastic. Very true to life, very touching, and extremely truthful. Of course Franny and Zooey was a ton better, give it a try!

And, as you can guess from my username, I will not allow anyone to disparge the greatest writer of all time, Shakespeare.