|
Post by En on Apr 11, 2003 11:09:43 GMT -5
What book would you never, ever read again because it was so horribly bad? What book would you never, ever recommend to anyone else, except to warn them away from it?
Or, what books made you feel nothing? What books were boring? What books do you wish you hadn't wasted your time on?
I wish I had never bothered with the Dolphins of Pern trilogy, or the Petaybee trilogy, by Anne McCaffrey. Everything she's written since the Menolly trilogy (although I don't know about Acorna because I haven't read those) either sounds exactly like the Pern stories she's already written, or has such stock characters that I could pretty much colour code them and match them to characters in her other recent books. Booooring. And so sad; the first few Pern books were so amazing.
|
|
|
Post by coldmercurywitch on Apr 11, 2003 20:26:57 GMT -5
I guess some writters run dry after a while and don't make the effort to go out and get new inspiration. That is kinda sad cos it amkes you wonder what they could come up with if they did make the effort again.
*has a long hard think*
You know, I don't think I have read any unworthwhile books yet. If I start reading a book and it hasn't pulled me in by a quarter of the way through it I abandon it. Those books are bad cos they haven't even given me enough to make me want to know what happens at the end. They are so bad I don't bother to remember their title or author.
|
|
|
Post by harry on Apr 22, 2003 11:15:00 GMT -5
to be onest the 3 books that i would never read again r the WIND ON FIRE trilogy by William Nicholson
i hated it it was the worst book id ever read
|
|
Evelyn
Gryffindor Alumni
Posts: 1,059
|
Post by Evelyn on Apr 25, 2003 18:05:51 GMT -5
I can think of two books that I would never want to read again, Great Expectations and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I hated having those two for English reading. Great Expectations was just so wordy (I guess that since he was paid by the word the longer the better but still). He couldn't jsut say that a table was dusty, no he had to go on and on about the spider webs and dustmites and whatever else was on the old table. Some of the chapters seemed as if they were put in just for the sake of making the book longer since they held very little relevance to the actual plot and a page or a page and a half would have sufficed. Tess just never captured my attention, to me the plot was boring and uniteresting, not much else I could say there except that it was also a bit wordy. Both were kind of clutter filled novels.
|
|
|
Post by Sara_Jayne on May 14, 2003 17:12:19 GMT -5
Anything by S.E. Hinton after "The Outsiders" Though if I had to pick a personal low for her it would be Rumble Fish or "That was then, This is now" I should have listend to Lindsay when she told me to not read it.
Anything by Nora Roberts is pretty bad though when Im desperate I do raid my Mom's shelves.
|
|
|
Post by En on May 15, 2003 12:16:24 GMT -5
Don't tell anyone I said this... but I have a really hard time getting into Thomas Hardy. It's just so... so... Masterpiece Theatre. Like, nothing ever gets any better. I know life is suffering, but hey... tee hee, ha ha. (that's a toad the wet sprocket reference)
|
|
Isbister15
Gryffindor Alumni
Mmmm...chocolate
Posts: 5,082
|
Post by Isbister15 on May 17, 2003 3:45:58 GMT -5
Doesn't get En's Toad reference but still loves their album Fear.One book that I absolutely hate, which I only read because so many people seem to love it, is The Catcher in the Rye. Yep. Hated it. Never had to read it in high school, as I know most people do. From what I'd heard about it, I expected something much more than what I got from reading it. Holden seemed like an overly whiny, ill-tempered kid from a privileged background who is just looking for more things to complain about. I didn't look at his rambling thoughts as "deep," but as annoying, pointless diatribes that never seemed to end. I'd probably have more to say about it if it was fresh in my mind, but I read it about a year and a half ago and don't really plan on reading it again.
|
|
|
Post by Sara_Jayne on May 17, 2003 11:42:16 GMT -5
The thing I've noticed is, most girls dont seem to appreate/like/get into Catcher and the Rye like most teenage males do. Like my cousin is a totally angsty "lifes a bitch and people are stupid" (hes planning on being a hermit, I keep asking him when hes going, Id like to mark it on my calander) and if possible he became MORE Angsty and pissed off after reading it. For that fact alone I've avoided it. I haven't read Of Mice and Men either. Donny would kill me if he heard me say this, but I find Hemingway really hard to take. Something about his personality... perhaps if I read it before I knew he was an abusive alcholoic misogynist... but he just strikes me as hella smarmy.
|
|
|
Post by En on May 17, 2003 12:14:16 GMT -5
I was just referring to the song with lines in that go "life is suffering / tee hee, ha ha / cruel and pummelling / tee hee, ha ha / but smile on little Buddha smile on / it's only illusion, then it's gone" which lately has been my mantra.
OK... so... I couldn't handle A Farewell to Arms for exactly that reason. What'shername (was it Katherine?) was so weak as a person. You want a story with a tough woman nurse person, read The English Patient by Ondaatje. It's great.
That said, I can appreciate For Whom the Bell Tolls if I try not to think about what a weenie Maria is, and I love The Old Man and the Sea, probably because it has no female characters, so I can concentrate on how good the writing is
|
|
|
Post by Sara_Jayne on May 17, 2003 12:53:19 GMT -5
See, I didnt mind the old man and the sea, but then I started reading things about him, trying to find the place he was comming from and it was just... yuck. I couldnt finish The Sun Also Rises. And the thing I really dont get, is how someone so over sexed could truely be a hater of women. He just.. bugs me. One of those things, you cant explain, and the he had just cause to have ego about his talent annoys me.... I love Sylvia Plath, for the most part, but sometimes... I just cant take her attitude towards life... And Emily Dickenson is one of my favourute poets, but... sometimes I feel like rewriting her rhym scheams, because the way they flow grates on my nerves. And my mothers obsesson with Tony Hillermin drives me insane.
|
|
|
Post by kaoru on May 17, 2003 13:17:05 GMT -5
Mmm... Abbi, last time I checked I was a girl and The Catcher In The Rye *is* my favourite book. I think it's equal to both. The thing is, since most boys are incults and just care about videogames and porn magazines, they get so thrilled when they read a book and understand it that they can't shut up about it. That's the truth.
No offence to guys here though. This is just me stereotypizing the Portuguese guys who're like the biggest prevets on the planet. There are those who're wonderful and I happen to know one or two.
So, books I can't stand... Our Only May Amelia was boring and I so so hated that Nathaniel Hawthorne book which I can't even remember the name now. It was so horrible. I couldn't even pass the first chapters.
Hemingway... the only thing I read of him was Old Man And The Sea at school - my 7th grade teacher was a Hemingway freak so she made us read it instead of the book we were *supposed* to read - and I didn't like it. Too fastidious. He's a wonderful writer and everything, but... I don't know, I just didn't like it.
I guess it's the sort of thing that happens with authors like Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens - because Kira said something about Great Expectations. Maybe they're great writers, they write wonderfully but there's something there that doesn't appeal to us. That's not my problem with Dickens, though. I love his books.
So back to my good ol' J. D. Salinger. In short: I'm a huge addicted of his books, everytime I see one I buy it and I think I own everyone except Nine Stories ((can't find it anywhere)). So, about The Catcher In The Rye [this is just my opinion, so yeah, since I'm not intelligent or anything]:
I think that, to understand it and get it's ... let's call it "essence" you sort of have to feel like Holden when you read it, or been into his mood once in a while. I happened to read that book during my nervous breakdown and, not wanting to sound corny, it helped me get over it a lot. Maybe you'll be asking yourselves why, since it's such a ... I hate this-I hate that book... and I guess I have no answer for you. It just helped me. It just related to me like nothing else. It's OK if people hate it, it's an over-pessimistic mood but you have to see that he's a troubled teenager, completely lost in life, angry at the world. We've all been there once in a while. Salinger just decided to write about those "once in a whiles".
Izzy, you once said something about the book relating to John Lennon?
|
|
|
Post by Sara_Jayne on May 17, 2003 13:24:21 GMT -5
Rita darling it was a generalsation, of what I'd noticed amoung my peers, and lets face it, the girls I know in real life, are not... unhappy or angsty. I think the reason it has mass appeal to guys is because it something adressed to them, their issues, their feelings, writen by a man who understood. In my experance, with the teachers I had, lit was aimed heavily at the female population. But then I live in the sticks where boys are expected to sew their wild oats and play football. *shrug*
|
|
|
Post by kaoru on May 17, 2003 16:00:17 GMT -5
I understood it was a generalisation. I just didn't think "just kidding" would fit in what I said. Well... I'm unhappy and angsty. Mostly unhappy and angsty. Unhappy because I have serious lacking on self-esteem, I never believe in what I do, in myself and everything related to... well, me. Angsty because I hate the society we live in. I call it "cattle". Like, one person says the sky is red, the other person says the sky is red. One person says "liking this band is stupid", majority of the population goes like "this band is so dorkish, come on!". If it isn't like that where you live, it's like that where I live. And then there's a poor little person who tries to stick to her ideas which are so different from the "cattle" ideas and what does the cattle do? Push that little person aside.you have three guesses to know who that little person is. I know I'm not perfect and I can be quite a bitch sometimes when things don't go my way, but... this is turning to be all about me and I don't want it to be.
And I'll stick with the idea that I live in a town where most males are preverts and spend their money buying Playboy and Penthouse and all that crap, listen to Techno all the time [techno is something I hate] and only date pretty girls just to show off and... get what they want. I know a few exceptions. But those few exceptions are too busy being angry at the society, like I am. In the boards, though, I don't know any guy who's like that. Any. That's why I'm always thinking my country's the problem.
And about literature being aimed heavily at the female population... I sort of agree. Depends on the kind of literature, though. My friend João [one of the exceptions, and what an exception, I adore him] loves reading. I don't know what sort of books he reads, but he's always talking about it. But it all depends on the books... I think there's books aimed for girls and books aimed for boys. Sci-fi is mostly aimed for the male sex. And all those James Bond books and everything. We get the romances and life experience books.
I just know that without literature, we were nothing.
|
|
|
Post by j.s.p. on May 17, 2003 16:21:00 GMT -5
I do have to say that The Sun Also Rises is one of my all-time favourite books. It's got everything you could ever want...including a strong female character and a weak male character. It's just so...it's one of those books like Orwell's 1984 that is frsutrating to read because you know how it's going to turn out and you can't do anything about it.
I read Catcher in the Rye two years ago, in one day. I liked it, though I was disappointed slightly as it had been built up. While technically I was still a teenager, I probably would have liked it more had a read it a few years before then. It is Agnsty in someways, but I think it's supposed to be: the way I read it, Holden looks around him and sees that everything is fake...and all he wants is one thing real.
|
|
|
Post by Sara_Jayne on May 17, 2003 17:38:43 GMT -5
I hate frusterating books that dont end right. For all my procolmations of Angst, Anger and independance, damnit the right guy ought to get the girl. Like I think thats what I hated most about "That Was Then, This Is Now" because in the end, afting having turned in his borther for dealing drugs because it screwed up his girlfriends little brother, he leaves his girlfriend, and ruins his life, so hes miserable. Its just not how its suposed to be to me. But then some people would argue happy endings are not realistic. For me, the thing about reading is it needs to be pleasurable, because Im doing it for fun. I dont want to walk around giving myself ulcers from frusteration.
|
|