# The "Great Books" that you want poo all over and then wrap it up in a bag, then down the chute. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 11, 2011, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379 "2011-08-11T21:28:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/41 "2011-08-12T01:39:18Z")
Quoth **olivesmarch4th** : > [@](#): > > Naturally some of my all-time favorites are loathed. People always gotta hate on Catcher in the Rye. It’s one of the more convincing portrayals of PTSD I’ve read. I try to read it once a year. We are talking about the book about a 13 year old boy, right? He hasn’t really had any trauma in his life to post-stress about. **Lasciel** , if you hated _Lord of the Flies_, then you’ll love Heinlein’s _Tunnel in the Sky_. It’s basically the same book, except positive: When humans are left to their own devices, civilization spontaneously emerges. And **Morgyn** , I’ve always believed that Twain’s writings about Cooper were sarcasm-- Most of the things he criticizes about Cooper are also found abundantly in his own work. ---
**Author:** ![Ronald\_C.Semone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/cc9497/32.png) [@Ronald\_C.Semone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ronald_C.Semone)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/42 "2011-08-12T01:43:37Z")
I have read \*The Education Of Henry Adams \*four times, when I was 20, when I was 40, when I was 60, and recently now that I am 73. I keep re-reading it because I keep hearing what a great book it is. I just don’t see it. It is disjointed, poorly written, obscure, boring, and utterly with humor. If you haven’t read it yet, don’t. But tastes do differ. I loved \*Moby Dick \*and _The Grapes Of Wrath_. And I thought _Atlas Shrugged_, which I read when I was 22, was a fun book. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/43 "2011-08-12T01:44:59Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > …Twain’s writings about Cooper were sarcasm-- Most of the things he criticizes about Cooper are also found abundantly in his own work. First time I’ve ever seen this suggestion. Got an example? ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/44 "2011-08-12T01:56:05Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I can’t say I’d had a great deal of meaningful life experience when, during my junior year of college, I eagerly read and enjoyed several notorious high school yawn-inducers–_Oliver Twist_, _Look Homeward, Angel_, and, of course, _The Great Gatsby_, _Main Street_, and _Babbitt_. I also devoured any of Upton Sinclair’s “Lanny Budd” novels I could get my hands on. I can’t say these last were notorious for eliciting yawns in high schools, because I’m pretty sure that Sinclair’s works of fiction had been thoroughly purged from high school reading lists. > > Although I consider myself to have still been very much a kid in those days, perhaps it was the fact that I was living six thousand of miles away from home, in a country where English was a foreign language, that made this reading more appealing to me. No doubt, but when I say “appreciate” it’s a bit distinct from “enjoy.” I enjoyed Gatsby when I was in high school, but I can’t say I fully _appreciated_ it at the time. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/45 "2011-08-12T02:27:38Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > We are talking about the book about a 13 year old boy, right? He hasn’t really had any trauma in his life to post-stress about. I too am intrigued by **olivesmarch4th** saying the Holden Caufield is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But there’s no doubt he would be if some of the readers here could get hold of his snivelling ass. A dreadful, dreadful book. (Maybe it was a typo by olives?) I like _Heart of Darkness_, _Gravity’s Rainbow_, _The Glass Bead Game_ and one of Jane Austen’s novels (I can never remember which one, they’re all very samey in my recollection but one was a cut above the others). Am fully on board with the rest of the hate though, particularly for Joyce, I’m sure it’s all just an elaborate drunken prank. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Woodhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@Miss\_Woodhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Woodhouse)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/46 "2011-08-12T02:39:40Z")
_Wuthering Heights_ for me too. Not one of the characters is likable and the main characters are horrible, horrible people I have no sympathy for. If you ruin your own life, it’s all on you, buster. See also: _Madam Bovary_ and _Anna Karinina_. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/47 "2011-08-12T02:52:16Z")
Oh wait - I totally forgot that miserable pile of crap **Germinal**! I think that might actually top those others I mentioned. God almighty was that an awful book. I want that term of my life back, and it takes a lot for me to say that. On the other hand, I did get to name my first car Le Voreaux because of that book (it was a gas-guzzler on a highschooler’s extremely limited income - it was apt.) But damn, that was a truly horrendous experience. Boring AND depressing all in one endlessly long badly frenchified package. ---
**Author:** ![punch\_line\_loser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8e7dd6/32.png) [@punch\_line\_loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/punch_line_loser)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/48 "2011-08-12T03:05:44Z")
This thread is making me sad, because Thomas Hardy is my favorite writer, and _Tess_ perhaps my second favorite book. I haven’t read a work of his that I didn’t like, although I was let down by _The Mayor of Casterbridge_. _Wuthering Heights_ is another favorite… le sigh. That said, I do hate _Catcher in the Rye_, even though I absolutely adore everything else I’ve read by Salinger. Also, _Frankenstein_ is up there with the worst books I’ve ever read, along with _Gulliver’s Travels_. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/49 "2011-08-12T03:31:02Z")
> [@Charlie\_Tan](#): > > De-lurking to point out that you don’t know what you’re talking about. The Nobel is not awarded for a single work. Never has, never will. It’s a lifetime achievement award. So it seems. I guess that doesn’t stop book publishers from advertising a particular book as Nobel Prize Winning. Assuming that the book is representative of Hesse’s work, though, the point remains. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/50 "2011-08-12T03:46:41Z")
Confederacy of fucking dunces. Heartily recommended to me; heartily detested. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/51 "2011-08-12T03:49:46Z")
Anyone who refuses to acknowledge Faulkner as an unmitigated genius is off my Christmas card list. OK, _Requiem for a Nun_ was not his best work. And maybe _Pylon_ was a little weak (although it includes a woman giving a stunt pilot a handjob while he is flying, so that counts for something). OK, OK, and sometimes he goes a little overboard. Maybe he could have settled for sentences of a mere 1000 or 1500 words in _Absalom, Absalom_. And, alright, he wasn’t exactly a progressive on racial issues. But, other than _that_, the guy was pretty awesome. I like Thomas Hardy’s poetry quite a bit, but I thought his novels were heavy-handed. I also thought _Middlemarch_ was an affront because it gives the reader no credit whatsoever. One chapter begins with a few lines about how the scratches on a polished mirror will appear to be in neat concentric circles when you hold a candle to the mirror, even though the scratches are in fact random. And when I read that, I thought, “Hey, that’s a neat bit of symbolism about the way the characters view their world.” Then, Eliot feels the need to spell it all out for you, writing, “These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person.” Gee, thanks! For a moment there I had the brief joy of perceiving some subtle thing for myself, but you went right ahead and banged me over the head about it. I don’t know how I could have enjoyed the book without you there to explain everything to me every step of the way. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/52 "2011-08-12T04:53:26Z")
> [@Sateryn76](#): > > The Grapes of Wrath. Just awful. You ought to read [Sanora Babb’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanora_Babb) _Whose Names Are Unknown_. Babb worked for the Farm Security Administration, dealing with those displaced by the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck borrowed her notes and wrote _The Grapes of Wrath_. She finished her novel and it was going to be published by Random House, but _The Grapes of Wrath_ came out first and was a massive success and hers was shelved. It didn’t get published until 2004. I really enjoyed her _An Owl on Every Post_, a memoir of growing up dirt poor in a dugout in Colorado. ---
**Author:** ![JessMagic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c0e974/32.png) [@JessMagic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JessMagic)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/53 "2011-08-12T05:02:54Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > Confederacy of fucking dunces. Heartily recommended to me; heartily detested. This! Also, **The Unbearable Lightness of Being**. Just, well, unbearable. ---
**Author:** ![Invisible\_Chimp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f05b48/32.png) [@Invisible\_Chimp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Invisible_Chimp)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/54 "2011-08-12T05:22:08Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > Confederacy of fucking dunces. Heartily recommended to me; heartily detested. I just wanted to punch Ignatius in the face. Most annoying protagonist since Holden Caulfield. Gladly joining the “Catcher in the Rye” pile-on. “It hurts like the Dickens!” You bet it does. There is good reason Dickens is a euphemism for the devil. Excruciating. ---
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/55 "2011-08-12T08:39:53Z")
> [@Bayard](#): > > Anyone who refuses to acknowledge Faulkner as an unmitigated genius is off my Christmas card list. OK, _Requiem for a Nun_ was not his best work. And maybe _Pylon_ was a little weak (although it includes a woman giving a stunt pilot a handjob while he is flying, so that counts for something). OK, OK, and sometimes he goes a little overboard. Maybe he could have settled for sentences of a mere 1000 or 1500 words in _Absalom, Absalom_. And, alright, he wasn’t exactly a progressive on racial issues. But, other than _that_, the guy was pretty awesome. > > I like Thomas Hardy’s poetry quite a bit, but I thought his novels were heavy-handed. I also thought _Middlemarch_ was an affront because it gives the reader no credit whatsoever. One chapter begins with a few lines about how the scratches on a polished mirror will appear to be in neat concentric circles when you hold a candle to the mirror, even though the scratches are in fact random. And when I read that, I thought, “Hey, that’s a neat bit of symbolism about the way the characters view their world.” Then, Eliot feels the need to spell it all out for you, writing, “These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person.” Gee, thanks! For a moment there I had the brief joy of perceiving some subtle thing for myself, but you went right ahead and banged me over the head about it. I don’t know how I could have enjoyed the book without you there to explain everything to me every step of the way. Reading Eliot (and I’ve bounced off a few of her books since Mill on The Floss, trying to find out what all the fuss was about) I always had the feeling that she was taking me by the wrist and making me trace the lines of her writing word by obvious tedious word “A parable see!” ---
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/56 "2011-08-12T08:45:07Z")
> [@Myrnalene](#): > > Catherine is no genius but she has other good qualities (loyalty, determination and kindness) and Austen seems to have affection for her (she gets to marry my favorite Austen hero after all), so your feelings seem overly hostile in proportion to the work in question. OK, so the heroines and some heroes are exempt from the spite fest and some of my Persuasion hate was leaking in there. I always felt sorry for Anne’s sister Mary: give birth to three children in that era, be in poor health and complain about it. Ask her unmarried (and, lets face it, idle) sister for help. What a selfish malingerer! ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/57 "2011-08-12T09:57:52Z")
Another Hardy hater here. I like Thomas Hardy’s poetry but ye gods, his novels are dire and _Return of the Native_ a thousand times so. I didn’t like _Catcher in the Rye_ the first time but understood it better upon a much later second reading. You’re not supposed to like Holden; he’s a disaffected teenager who thinks he understands the world and yet is spectacularly clueless, like most teenagers. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/58 "2011-08-12T10:10:47Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > In high school we had to read Hemmingway’s _The Sun Also Rises_. A brief plot summary: > > And that’s about it. I understand that the same criticism can be applied to pretty much everything Hemmingway has written, but I have no urge to confirm that for myself. I am with you. I honestly have no idea why some guy doing juvenile macho crap and writing thinly veiled self wanking books about it is so revered. I disliked almost every single book that was assigned throughout school for various reasons. Supposedly we were to get valuable life lessons from shit like [My Darling My Hamburger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Darling,_My_Hamburger), numerous selfwanking Hemmingway novels, [Old Yeller](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Yeller) and so on. Mainly I got bored silly and totally turned off. I was reading a book a day or two days from about 4th grade onwards on my own, chewing through my parents library and the public library, and getting books of my own for birthdays and christmas. I can not imagine how many kids got totally turned off of reading from being forced to read crap with ‘deep inner meaning’ instead of learning that reading can also be for ENTERTAINMENT. Give them some damned book abut Babe Ruth, or horses, or anything that is entertaining. Who really needs to read deep inner meaning crap every single book? Hell, if it would get them to read, Sports Illustrated and Glamour magazine works for me. ---
**Author:** ![Double\_Foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85e7bf/32.png) [@Double\_Foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Double_Foolscap)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/59 "2011-08-12T10:49:12Z")
The only book we had for required reading which I never got through was _Great Expectations_. After the first third I skipped to the last chapter, read the summary online and bullshitted my way to an A - luckily all of the pertinent points for my essay were in the first third 🙂 I’m a pretty uncultured reader in general, but Dickens and the Bronte sisters are particularly unsavoury to me. I like adaptations when I see them on TV, normally, but there’s something about the prose. I just can’t get into it, and spend more time calculating how long it will take me to finish the book (“OK, it’s taken me five minutes to read 10 pages, and there are 250 pages to go, so that’s five minutes for a fiftieth of the book, so that’s another 125 minutes - wait, is that right? Or do I need to work it out as a percentage? OK, start again… so there are 25 more 10 page chunks, so that’s another five minutes times 25, so that’s 125 minutes, yeah, just over two hours. Call it two hours to account for chapter endings because they don’t take up a whole page, and it’s three hours until dinner, so I could give up for an hour and still finish the book this evening…”). ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2011, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379/60 "2011-08-12T11:22:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Quoth **olivesmarch4th** :We are talking about the book about a 13 year old boy, right? He hasn’t really had any trauma in his life to post-stress about. He’s 16 or 17, and yeah, he’s had trauma. His little brother died of leukemia and he found the dead body of his roommate splattered all over the stairs after he was bullied into committing suicide. Then his trusted professor tries to molest him. He is surrounded by dysfunction and nobody gives a shit. The kid’s just trying to make sense of the fucked up world he lives in, and I’d be bitter too. (J.D. Salinger has PTSD. It was a recurrent theme in his work. There are pretty clear examples in _The Catcher in the Rye_ of dissociation and fixation, notice certain stories keep re-emerging time after time again but he displays little emotion in recounting them, whereas his emotion spills out of control in response to seemingly trivial situations.) When I read that book at his age, I didn’t understand why I related to him so well, but I do now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-books-that-you-want-poo-all-over-and-then-wrap-it-up-in-a-bag-then-down-the-chute/592379.md?page=4)