Can I hate Thomas Covenant if I wear something skimpy?
I think CITR is a good book, but not for the same reasons many people do. I get very impatient with those who don’t see the humor in it, and don’t realize that Holden is pathetic, not a hero. But then, so many of them are like him, and are the hero in their own drama, so there you go.
I realized Holden was a moron, and I still hated it. I’m generally not interested in reading the allegedly comic misadventures of a character that has no redeeming qualities.
I think too few people get the point of CITR: Holden Caulfield was supposed to be an immature self-obsessed dickhead, not an existential anti-hero, and Salinger skewered him perfectly.
Exactamundo!
I think Salinger tried to have it both ways, with teenage readers identifying with Holden and older ones mocking him as a pathetic joke. Sort of like Archie Bunker - half the audience saw him as a buffoon, the other half saw him as a role model, but everybody watched the show. Salinger, though, was less sucessful: in general, the book’s only real fans have been kids and assassins.
That may be the root of my disaffection. When we had to read it in high school, it was presented as an example of Salinger capturing the teenage zeitgeist, or something. I was simply offended that someone would think I’d identify with that twit, Caufield.
Even more offended when I was handed Franny & Zoey, and told I’d like that better. Ugh.
Are you a hot chick?
Then yes.
And being a Rob Schneider look-alike does NOT count.
More or less. Probably a lot of people would put me into the “someone give that girl a sammich!” or “wouldn’t hit it, knees too sharp” groups.
Ah, yes-books that suck. I have a long list–although longer is the list of books that are “meh” to me.
Bonfire of the Vanities sucks. I never got past about page 7 or so–once the main character makes his young daughter hold his hand because it makes him look like a good dad. After that, I had no interest in what happened to him or why.
Haven’t read Covenant and probably never will.
have read Jemima and She’s Come Undone and I can agree that both suck, but for different reasons. J is just bad writing with implausible characters and situations, SCU is written by someone who knows fuck all about women, self esteem, body issues and obesity.
Other books that suck: where to start? I agree that there are books that are very well written but just aren’t my cup of tea, but to me, “sucks” implies bad writing, poor character or plot development etc.
Read alot of mysteries that are bad, but can’t call the titles to mind. There’s a book, written by a militant Southern female writer about incest and god knows what else–it was out recently (last 5 years). For the life of me, I cannot recall the title or the author’s name, but trust me–this book sucked.
great thread.
Bastard out of Carolina is more than five years old, but is that the one you mean? I didn’t like it either. Got about fifty pages in and realized I was looking at 100 pages of story in a 300 page book.
I hit a button on my Macbook and god knows what happened to your quote–I added the end tags, sorry.
Bastard is it! It’s more than 5 years old? Time flies when you’re disgusted with “literature”.
I used to have guilt when I didn’t finish a book–now that I am middle aged, I am more irked that a poor writer is wasting my time. I tend to purge all memory of sucky books from my brain pan, which can lead me to checking them out again in a few months. Luckily, I have a fairly decent visual memory, so I remember book covers, rather than titles and authors.
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the crap from Piers Anthony. I loved his books in high school, starting with the Xanth series. I also like the Adept series and the Incarnations of Immortality series.
His Cluster series left me a little cold, but it was when I was half-way through the Bio of a Space Tyrant series that I put whatever book I was reading down and said to myself, “This is complete crap.”
I then realized that the same was true of his Xanth series. I quit around Book 10 or 11. (His little autobiographies were getting weirder and weirder, too. And as I got older, all that glurge about young girls and their underwear was getting progressively more creepy. I couldn’t believe it that he actually entitled a book, “The Color of Her Panties.”)
(I guess my post was more about an author than a book, but I clearly remember putting that one book down and giving up on it. This was back when I was blowing through a paperback like that in a day or so.)
Last year I took an African Lit class. I loved every book we read except for the last one: Pillar of Salt by Albert Memmi. It’s a semi-autobiographical novel about a boy who Gets An Education to Escape the Crushing Poverty of His Youth. I closed it firmly and chucked it down the hall before finishing it and wrote a scathing response to it for my class. I remember I had just finished a chapter about the main character’s birthday where he was upset that his family wasn’t rolling out the red carpet and kowtowing to him because he was the Educated One and it was His Birthday. The next chapter started out with a description of how his female relatives looked cheap when they dressed up. I decided I wanted nothing more to do with such a self-centered jackass who didn’t appreciate the sacrifices his family had to make for his Oh-So-Important-and-Freeing Education and swore off Albert Memmi for life.
Got an A in the class, too. The professor liked it when we challenged the books.
I’m calling sig line on that one.
I know most people have been talking about fiction here, but I read a book by Arnold Ludwig, called “King of the Mountain”. It’s a look at political leadership…the author looked at a whole lot of leaders and tried to find out what traits they had in common…what makes someone a leader.
Anyway, he was talking about some dictator somewhere, and pointed out that he was uneducated…that he only had had 4 or 5 years of schooling. And Ludwig used him and that fact as an example to prove the point he was making.
Later on, he mentioned the dictator again, and said that he was a college graduate, and used that to prove some other point he was making.
I was just impressed that the dictator had gone so far educationally in the time it took me to read 20 pages.
Oh god, Anthony. He’s fine, if you want to read Anthony (I like many of his books). But he’s completely unable to write truly evil characters (somebody told me it’s because he doesn’t believe in evil. I still don’t like it). I like the Incarnations series, but the last two books are weak and contradictory to the rest of the series.
I think his main problem is that he doesn’t bother to stick with the rules of his own series - the first two books will be great and then they get more and more silly.
Xanth books aren’t stories anymore, they’re a string of puns.
His non-series books are best, but only if you like Anthony. He tends to be absurd and lets his readers influence him too much.
As far as Thomas Covenant goes, the first series is bad enough - try to wade through the second one! ::shudder::
My favourite Thomas Covenant line is still "They were featureless and telic, like lambent gangrene. They looked horribly like children. ", because it still gives me fits of giggles despite not having a clue what it actually means, if anything. If anyone does, answers on a postcard please.
I had to look it up.
Translated, it runs “They were featureless and purposeful, like glowing gangrene.”
I was not aware that gangrene could glow or have a purpose.
Now the “They looked horribly like children.” bit has me more baffled than ever.