I read that for a college literature course. I loathed it so much, I’ve managed to block all memory of it out of my mind other than the title with a big, flashing tag on it that says “Unclean!”
Everything I can think of has been said, but I really need to chime in with my hatred of Confederacy of Dunces. Very few books I start end up unfinished. This makes that elite short list. I can appreciate farce and unlikeable protagonists. I found nothing redeemable about this book before I gave in. If I had seen a glimmer of it getting better, I would have stuck with it, but I stopped, figuring life is too short.
James Michener has written many a doorstop, though I don’t know if any of them are considered ‘great’. I read and re-read and re-re-read “Hawaii”, loved it. The second tome I picked was “The Drifters”, and I should have gone with something else because this one was about filthy bored hippies lolling around Europe getting shit-faced on drugs and I so hated every single one I wished they would all die. :mad:
I would like to read “Madame Bovary” sometime. Is this good, or another impenetrable dull antique? I read where Flaubert took ages to write it, trying to find exactly the right words for every sentence, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s enjoyable to read now.
Nobody has picked it as a hated classic yet. Of course YMMV, but I loved it.
Continuing to pile onto The Catcher in The Rye. I quit Gravity’s Rainbow after 150 pages, not because I hated it, but because I had no idea what was going on. I’d like to announce my hate for Other Voices, Other Rooms, by Truman Capote. It was incredibly boring, and all of the characters were unlikable. All of them.
Dr. Righteous: Perdido Street Station is a bitch to get into, but it’s great after the first 100-150 pages. It really picks up if you can just get through the intro.
The best analysis of Hemingway I’ve ever heard came from cartoonist Dave Sim, who pointed out that he was part of that same Paris crowd that included Picasso, and that both found a style that allowed them to get done with their work as early as possible and get on with the real job of schmoozing with influential people and convincing them the stuff wasn’t as bad as it seemed on first glance.
Argent Towers (or maybe I should call you Agent Foxtrot, since he gets annoyed when people confuse him for you, so maybe I can get you annoyed by confusing you for him), could you give us a few examples of older books that you think shouldn’t be assigned in school and a few examples of newer books that you think should be assigned in school?
I am neither of them, but my recommendation is to get the damned kids to read, be it Twilight <hrack ptui> or unexpurgated Chaucer or Sports Illustrated. It does not have to have any sort of deep inner meaning, just words in a row with punctuation and some resemblance of grammar.
What is the purpose of making kids read books they have absolutely no interest in? It certainly can not be for sentence structure, that is taught separately. It is for interpretation practice - you can get that whether you are reading
or
In the grand scheme of getting kids to understand words strung together does it matter if it is some geriatric fisherman or some tweenie yearning for a pedophile with fangs? You still use the same skills to read
as you do to read
I think that you should have a number of books assigned, not which books assigned. Heck, schools have libraries - make them check out a book a week on Monday and write a report on it due on Friday. Give each student 15 minutes with the teacher sometime during the week so they can follow up with the kid for some one on one reading to make sure they are actually reading.
I like Ken Follett, but the way he interacts with his characters is horrible. He loves to write about people living in oppressive societies, but he never manages to portray the weight that such societies apply to their members. His characters never behave slow, or tentatively when breaking the social norms - they just run off and do whatever it is they want to do.
His books feel like the work of three people. The first person creates creates a great setting for a story, while the other two daydream about what they would do if they were a nun or a builder in that period. The result passes the time, but it makes all of his character’s accomplishments seem unearned.
Follett does a better job of villains. I particularly liked the mother and the Meranda family in A Dangerous Fortune. They achieved their goals following the rules of their society. The best part of a Follett villain is waiting until the end to see how they will be punished.
That depends on what level kids we’re talking about. By the time they get to high school—at least if they’re the kind of kids who take the advanced English classes and who plan to go on to college—they should be beyond the “just get them to read something” stage.
On the other hand, what is the purpose of making kids read books they would have read anyway? School is the place to have them read books they wouldn’t have found on their own and which they might well need some help to understand and appreciate at least with some guidance.
That means that it’s the English teacher’s responsibility to make sure they get that help, and to select books which are within their abilities to read and appreciate.
Reading is more than just understanding words strung together, and “great books” do require more from the reader than pop lit or magazine articles.
But then you lose the opportunity for class discussion and common experience.
Anything by Joyce. I think he just loved pandering to the critics to hear their praises.
I thought I was the only one who read that!
I’ll heap some more abuse on “Catcher in the Rye”. I just wanted to beat that whiny brat.
Has anyone else here read the dreck that is “Winesburg, Ohio” or “My Name is Asher Lev”? I don’t know if they qualify as great books but I know I hated both of them when I had to read them in school.
As I type this I remember that I had to read all three of those books my freshman year in high school. I wonder if it was my dislike of that particular teacher that made me dislike these books. I’m not willing to re-read any of them to find out.
Oh, yes, yes, yes. I had to read it for school and have never recovered. Why do I remember it as being 5,000 pages long, though?
Reading all the hate for Heart of Darkness makes my heart soar like an eagle! 
We had a typical mixture of students in that class, but a large portion were children of immigrant goombahs with spoken for jobs at the steel mill the day after high school. What they must have made of that book, tossed onto their desks with no explanation, no background, no CLUE as to what they were supposed to be getting from it, just “here’s your required reading, read it”…
aruvqan, thank you for your answer, but I really need an answer from Argent Foxtrot or Agent Towers or whatever his name is. He said that it would be better to teach recent books rather than older ones. astorian asked if that means they should be taught Twilight. AT or AF or whatever said that there were lots of other recent books beside Twilight. O.K., what recent books are there, AF/AT, that you think should be taught in high school? What older books do you think shouldn’t be taught in high school? I know other people have an opinion on the same question, but I’m trying to find out what AF/AT means with his post, so I’m hoping he will reply.
I can’t believe there has been only one mention of this horrid book. My junior year English teacher had us read it and tested us on it. Then he gave us a list of phrases to find and complete, effectively forcing us to read it again. And then we read it aloud, for the third time through, in class. Fuck me running. And even after all that, the only thing I remember about it is that it concerned a sad old man with a bum leg walking through a lot of snow.
No love here for War and Peace either, although I admit to reading it as a teenager and being sufficiently bored/depressed by it that I haven’t attempted it again.
I didn’t enjoy Heart of Darkness, nor did I enjoy Silas Marner. Based on my notebooks from both of those, I think I disliked *Silas Marner *more. It didn’t help that, after Heart of Darkness, we read Things Fall Apart, which I absolutely loved.
But Silas Marner? Bleh.
I was going to make this very statement, but you beat me to it.
I love Moby Dick, P&P, A Separate Peace, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I’ve read Gravity’s Rainbow more times than I can remember. I mention this to establish my credibility with respect to reading long, rambling books.
But how is it that now one has mentioned Far From the Madding Crowd?