# Writers (or books) you Just...Don't...Get. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 28, 2002, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939 "2002-08-28T14:36:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2002, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/61 "2002-08-30T14:16:56Z")
😛 That was mostly a list of attributes 😛 ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2002, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/62 "2002-08-30T14:34:12Z")
Ayn Rand: Tripe. I think it reflects poorly on an author when you can blindly skip 50 pages and not miss anything from the plot. Jean M. Auel: I read _Clan of the Cave Bear_ when I was in 6th grade. I thought it was cool. The second book was like counting the fibers in wall to wall carpeting–interspersed with really insipid and flowery sex scenes full of phrases like “quivering honey mound” _gag_ Fred Saberhagen’s sword series: these were generated by a computer using a template. Try to prove otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2002, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/63 "2002-08-30T16:08:45Z")
> [@](#): > > I simply don’t get the attraction of Moby Dick (or most Melville). I can’t help it. I have to sneak this in. Try _Ahab’s Wife_ by Sena Jeter Naslund. You’ll like _Moby Dick_ without the pain of having to read it! 🙂 It’s an amazing story all on its own. Adventure, love, betrayal. And one of the best opening lines of any novel I’ve ever read. ---
**Author:** ![widdershins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f0a364/32.png) [@widdershins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/widdershins)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2002, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/64 "2002-08-31T00:44:39Z")
Another vote against _On The Road_. When I told people I was reading it, they thought that was so cool. Then I told them what I thought of it. It read like what it was, a drunk hopped up on speed telling rambling drunk stories. It should be performed by Eric Bogosian, rather than read. The only way I made it through it was to treat it like a teenage love story. Dean did this. Dean did that. Dean is so great. Dean disappeared. I miss Dean so much. I hate Dean. Dean came back. Dean was beautiful. Everything Dean does is great. I wish I was Dean. Dean is an artist, a poet, a maestro, a sorcerer. Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean… _Silas Mariner_. I still hate the teacher who assigned this in 9th grade. Endless pages of how miserable Silas was, broken up by pointless interludes of the locals chattering at the bar, whom Silas rarely interacts with because he’s a bitter hermit. The actual conflict over the little girl is so short, I summed it up as: “Give me my daughter back.” “No.” “Please.” “No.” “Okay. Bye.” A classic of literature my ass. George Eliot rot in hell. No wonder you wrote under a man’s name, I wouldn’t want my real name on that shit either. Faulkner gets on my nerves, to the point of angering teachers while railing against him. Thick slabs of unreadability served on a platter. But I love Cormac McCarthy, who people say is similar or even worse. Henry Miller read just like the way a girl I knew in high school talked, this is not a compliment. I hate all the Bronte sisters. D.H. Lawrence is like water torture for me to read. Dickens is fine in small doses, but he gets a little precious after a while. But I love Twain, Joyce, Conrad, _Catch-22_ (but not most Heller), and Melville. I’m going to give Delillo another book or two, before I make my mind up on him. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2002, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/65 "2002-08-31T05:05:24Z")
I absolutely couldn’t _stand_ Huckleberry Finn. Hated it, hated it, hated it. I reading that overrated POS in the eleventh grade and I keep asking myself: “how many GD ways does he spell ‘going’ ? Gawayne? Goin? WTF is up with all the wonky spelling? I don’t care if he’s being cute with the dialects, just tell the damn story, willya?!?!” A Catcher in the Rye was a piece of crap too. “God kid, will you just stop WHINING???” Had no problem throwing away _that_ one when the class was over, that’s for sure: After I took the test on CiTR, I took the book and, sitting at my desk, threw it 15 feet directly into the classrooms trash can. On a slightly less literary note, I hated with a burning passion Theodore Sturgeons “More Than Human.” God, what a waste of a book. Sadly, tragically, that’s 5 hours I’ll never have back again. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Mudshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Mudshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudshark)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2002, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/66 "2002-08-31T05:17:00Z")
I have to read **The Scarlet Letter** for school. Normally I don’t mind reading books for school since I read books regularly. **The Scarlet Letter** has to be the worst book I have ever read. I just can’t seem to find anything good about it. I don’t see why people find it so interesting. I would have much rather have read anything else. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2002, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/67 "2002-08-31T11:55:06Z")
**The Scarlet Letter** could have been a 20-page short story if he’d have just gotten to it already instead of describing every damn thing until you were pulling your hair out. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2002, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/68 "2002-08-31T13:05:28Z")
I read The Scarlet Letter. I liked it more than The Old Man and The Sea, Daisy Miller, Turn of The Screw, and Siddhartha. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2002, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/69 "2002-08-31T14:51:49Z")
Gee, my first thought was “Sue Grafton.” Does anyone actually try to read her “A is for Alibi” etc mysteries. She is totally unreadable. And Ed McBain was (and is) doing a set of alphabet mysteries, started before Ms. Graton was even a thought in her parent’s minds. So the idea isn’t even original. And McBain is a million times better. Sad to think she’s getting 26 books out of it. ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2002, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/70 "2002-08-31T22:33:55Z")
Trying to read Joyce makes my head hurt. I like _A Christmas Carol,_ but anything else by Dickens is like beating your head against a brick wall. I could finish only a couple chapters of Milan Kundera’s _Unbearable Lightness of Being._ William Gibson’s fifteen minutes have deservedly expired. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/71 "2002-09-06T15:52:50Z")
I read _The Second Sex_ while I was in Spain. I really wanted to like it, I really did, and the first, oh, 15 chapters or so were rilly good. An excellent portrait of the status and psychology of the “standard” woman in 1950s France. (Well, with the exception of chapter 13 - “The Lesbian” - which we could just skip entirely.) But the last half of the book was an unrelenting hammering of all men and a revelation of all women as pathetic sheep, and it was just so tedious and obviously false that I just couldn’t deal with it. I had a bad feeling after the first, oh, seventy or so times I had to say, “Hey, that happened to me too and I’m a boy, and I know lots of women who aren’t like that!”. Another candidate: _All Quiet on the Western Front._ Very well-written, but it permanently traumatized me since I was forced to read it when I was fricking THIRTEEN. And a very sensitive thirteen at that. Not pleasant to have to read about the Russian soldiers and their testicles blown off, over and over. ---
**Author:** ![zweisamkeit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zweisamkeit/32/4360_2.png) [@zweisamkeit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zweisamkeit)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/72 "2002-09-06T18:21:50Z")
I wanted to add something about Nathaniel Hawthorne: I first encountered him with **The Scarlett Letter**. I detested that book, as many fellow Dopers also seem to. 😃 I’ve sort-of avoided him for a few years. But in the spring, I had a class called “American Lit to 1900”, and we had to read Hawthorne in it. The result? I have a newfound appreciation for Hawthorne. _Not_ his novels, but his short stories. He is much more palatable (and even enjoyable) when he is able to limit himself to 15 pages (well, however long 15 pages of size -100000 font is :D). So my recommendation is that if you couldn’t stand **The Scarlett Letter** (and I _still_ can’t), at least try some of his short stories. ---
**Author:** ![burundi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3ec8ea/32.png) [@burundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burundi)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/73 "2002-09-06T19:21:14Z")
You say “tomayto,” I say “tomahto.” 🙂 I really love reading all the different opinions on this thread. I liked _The Awakening_, and I think that both Twain and Dickens are great. I recently read _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_. It’s great, a lurid mystery complete with opium dens, etc. Of course, Dickens died before he finished it, so you’re left hanging just as things start to get really good. **OpalCat** , I’m right with you on Jean Auel. A lot of SF fans I know really like Dan Simmon’s _Hyperion_ series, which I just can’t get into. I read the first one, and while I dug the Chaucer-esque style, it didn’t make much of an impression. ---
**Author:** ![fruitbat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/58f4c7/32.png) [@fruitbat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fruitbat)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/74 "2002-09-06T19:42:34Z")
For some reason I keep coming back to Saul Bellow. I made my first attempt ten years ago and keep coming back to assure myself that his prose remains as dull today as a decade ago. I really can’t explain it, I usually leave an author alone when my distaste is this strong. Bellow could put a hummingbird into hibernation with his prose. Really painful. ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2002, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/75 "2002-09-07T12:00:58Z")
Richard Brautigan. In his case, it isn’t a matter of not liking his stuff; I just don’t understand it. I like Twain, Hemingway, and _On the Road_, but I agree on _Catcher in the Rye_. I spent the whole book wanting to slap Holden. The book seemed to be written as if I’d automatically have some sympathy for him, but I never had a drop. _Silas Marner_ was the bane of my 10th grade existence. I couldn’t get through it, so about halfway through I went out and bought the Cliff’s Notes. (I still have them somewhere.) A friend of mine who finished it early was then given _Death Be Not Proud_, and he warned me against letting the teacher know that I had finished _Silas_, since it was only downhill from there. Dr. J ---
**Author:** ![Burnt\_Sugar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee59a6/32.png) [@Burnt\_Sugar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Burnt_Sugar)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2002, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/76 "2002-09-07T13:26:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by GKW \* > \*\*Anything written by Charles Dickens. It’s just contrived, sentimental claptrap to me. \*\* I had to read “Great Expectations” for English, we had an in-class essay on it. I couldn’t finish it, and I’m a reader. The book takes 2 pages to say what could have been said in half a page. I don’t care if he looked out the window and saw a rose bush with three roses on it, four buds and a morose caterpillar! It was a bizarre book. The story was so implausible. An old woman lived in a dilapidated castle and wore her wedding dress her whole life? And so many unlikely co-incidences… ARRRGHHH! Was he on some sort of medication when he wrote it? Or are the rest of his novels like this too? Anyway, I couldn’t finish it, so I bought the “Brodie’s Notes” on it for 20c and aced the exam. 😃 Perfectly legal! ---
**Author:** ![Agrippina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8797f3/32.png) [@Agrippina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agrippina)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2002, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/77 "2002-09-07T15:01:12Z")
I’ll throw in another vote for LOTR. Like most in this thread, I do understand why it’s such a materspiece. But I could never get into it, even though I wished I could have. The same goes for **Watership Down**. Maybe I just don’t like “journey” stories. I really hate Hemmingway. Now him I cannot understand why he’s so popular. ---
**Author:** ![Nocturne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9fc348/32.png) [@Nocturne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nocturne)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2002, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/78 "2002-09-07T19:51:54Z")
I hate Flannery O’Connor with a pink and purple polka-dotted passion. I hate her books. I hate how wonderful she thought she was. I hate her name. Blah on that woman. I don’t care very much for Faulkner either, nor Hemingway. Dickens–well, it depends on the book with him. Not a fan of _Great Expectations_. I also despised _Catcher in the Rye_, but I read the whole thing, just say I’d given it a chance. ---
**Author:** ![Wumpus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8c91f0/32.png) [@Wumpus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wumpus)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2002, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/79 "2002-09-07T21:06:24Z")
Clealy Hemingway’s punishment for his sins is to be remembered by generations of students for one of his worst stories, The Old Man and the Sea. One writer who leaves me cold is E.M. Forster. Meticulously crafted, closely observed, richly ironic, yes, yes, yes, fine. Yet if all of his tedious, self-absorbed characters were to be slaughtered by effervescent Italian bandits midway through Chapter 3, I would haven’t cared one bit. Give me the sentmental, contrived clap-trap of Dickens any day. ---
**Author:** ![furthur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecccb3/32.png) [@furthur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furthur)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2002, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939/80 "2002-09-07T21:42:46Z")
Another vote for Henry James and D.H. Lawrence. Henry James was emotionally constipated and it came right out in his writing. He just couldn’t commit to any individual plot point or detail without 5,000 words, preferably in a long, spirally, meandering sentence-structure. B_st_rd. D. H. Lawrence, aargh. If I had read “the cry of the peewit” one more time… Lady Chatterly’s Lover wasn’t as bad as Women in Love, but still. Reading him is like falling into a swimming pool of rotten, greenish marshmallow creme. Mrs. Furthur [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-or-books-you-just-dont-get/125939.md?page=5)