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MetalSeagull · 25th October 2006, 05:46 PM

Another board I read has this same thread going. It seems to evoke a great deal of childhood trauma. Having to read something seems to sap some of the joy from it.

But I was surprised at how many people hated Lord of the Flies. I loved that one. Perhaps it appealed to my cynical mind.

Another surprising one was Things Fall Apart. What a fascinating story of how our ever-changing world can leave us behind, and whether that's for the better or worse. As I get older, I like it more.

So from childhood, I dislike:

Dickens, Anything By: Maybe if he had an editor. Probably not, though.
Thoreau (Walden). Oh, did I drift off? To another room. To do something interesting?
Little Women. I was the only one to give this book a bad review in my seventh grade English class. I later found out that I was about the only one who actually read it.

From more recently:
Siddhartha. Have yet to finish it.

grayman · 25th October 2006, 06:34 PM

James Joyce: Anything by.

MetalSeagull · 25th October 2006, 09:51 PM

Originally Posted by grayman

James Joyce

I had to read two Joyce stories in college: Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I know I did this, because I wrote a 10 page paper about it. And yet I remember nothing about either beyond the titles and that it took place in Ireland.

grayman · 25th October 2006, 10:03 PM

Would James Joyce ever be read were it not for college?

The Atheist · 25th October 2006, 11:39 PM

Dickens.

No contest.

Children being given Dickens to read is a form of child abuse.

Kaarjuus · 26th October 2006, 12:50 AM

British:
Dickens, anything by.
Thackeray. I only had to read Vanity Fair.
Anything from the Bronte sisters.

French:
Balzac. Ugh.
Stendhal.
Flaubert.

On a more positive note, some of the classic literature we had to read in school was very, very good. Our curriculum concentrated heavily on Russian literature. It really is unique. I love Bulgakov to this day.

Chaos · 26th October 2006, 03:46 AM

Goethe
Schiller
whoever wrote "Treasure Island"

Lessing´s "Nathan the Wise" was pretty good, though.

geoman · 26th October 2006, 04:15 AM

Dickens, Anything By. Boy, he's really taking a hit today.

I thought for a while that maybe what made him so unreadable was the whole magazine publishing thing, one chapter a week or month or whatever it was. But Wilkie Collins did an OK job of the same thing (some of the time at least). So I was left with the conclusion that Dickens just sucks.

tkingdoll · 26th October 2006, 05:27 AM

Another vote for Joyce.

I'm sticking up for Dickens, with the caveat that he shouldn't be read pre-teens.

Mr Clingford · 26th October 2006, 05:36 AM

Well, it's the Bard for me. I did endless tragedies at school and I still haven't recovered 15 years later. Macbeth is, perhaps, the only exception.

Zep · 26th October 2006, 05:49 AM

Anthony Trollope; The Warden.

The only time a actually went to sleep in class was while trying to comprehend why this mass of boring, BORING, BORING! words was EVER allowed to be committed to print.

ChristineR · 26th October 2006, 06:13 AM

So far, I've seen two sorts of books mentioned here.

Books I loved.
Books I haven't read.

Thanks for the tips, guys!

bluess · 26th October 2006, 07:29 AM

Dickens: Read best by ignoring any paragraph which starts with a simile, and is therefore filler.

Thackeray: Are you kidding? Read Vanity Fair again. Its hysterically snide.

I dislike Hawthorne. The school board that thought 15-yr-olds should read "The Scarlet Letter" should have been soundly beaten. Tried "The House of the 7 Gables" recently, and there was no improvement. Bleech.

Kaarjuus · 26th October 2006, 07:35 AM

Originally Posted by bluess

Thackeray: Are you kidding? Read Vanity Fair again. Its hysterically snide.

I can't stand British high society.

andyandy · 26th October 2006, 07:48 AM

DH Lawrence Short Stories - an intermiable GCSE English lit book....

man goes to football match
sees man fall down a manhole cover
the end

bluess · 26th October 2006, 08:13 AM

Originally Posted by Kaarjuus

I can't stand British high society.

Neither can Thackeray.

Oh, another one. Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea'. Yeah, fishing stories are MUCH more interesting if they last a long, long time.

Doubt · 26th October 2006, 08:15 AM

I liked Siddartha.

Hated: Death of a Salesman. Worst required reading assignment in school. At the age of 16, I was completely unable to relate to Willy. Now I just find him depressing and pathetic. Sort of a de-motivational story.

SwissSkeptic · 26th October 2006, 08:43 AM

French realism. Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant etc.

Bikewer · 26th October 2006, 09:43 AM

We were forced to wade through Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter, Heart of Darkness, and a variety of others I considered utterly painful.
All the while I was reading all the science fiction I could get my hands on...

headscratcher4 · 26th October 2006, 09:52 AM

Moby Dick....

Anything by James Joyce.

EvilSmurf · 26th October 2006, 10:08 AM

Anything by Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters.

NobbyNobbs · 26th October 2006, 11:02 AM

Definitely The Scarlet Letter.

I had a close call with To Kill A Mockingbird. It was assigned in 8th grade, and I knew that the teacher would assign a chapter at a time and then pick it apart to death. If that happened, I'd hate it. So I read it the all the first night, straight through, and it became the first book I actually appreciated as good literature. Despite the best efforts of my English teacher.

Timble · 26th October 2006, 11:17 AM

Anything by DH Lawrence, overwritten, tedious, pretentious...

Tricky · 26th October 2006, 11:35 AM

You guys are all forgetting the worst piece of Christian crap ever written: Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. I guess I'm showing my age though. These days they wouldn't dare assign such an overtly religious book. Well, at least some things have progressed.

I kinda liked "The Scarlet Letter", but my wife agrees with the majority here. Her classic comment is, "How could a book about adultry be so damn boring."

Spindrift · 26th October 2006, 12:02 PM

From childhood:
Silas Marner
Of Mice and Man - as an adult I do like most Steinbeck
Old Man and the Sea
The Jungle
Moby Dick
A Separate Peace
Canterbury Tales

I always had trouble being told what to read. I was a voracious reader, but for the most part I hated someone telling me what to read. About the only school assigned books I remember reading and enjoying were To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn

Recently:
The Hobbit - I could never get past the first couple chapters, I think I've started it 5 times.
James Joyce is simply unreadable to me. Your brain shouldn't hurt when reading for enjoyment.
Most Hemingway annoys me. The stories are good, but the writing isn't. I enjoyed The Sun Also Rises but it was a bit of a chore.
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.

Not exactly great literature but I tried to read Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe and it was dreadful. I wasn't surprised when the movie was horrendous given the source material.

Skeptic · 26th October 2006, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by Chaos

whoever wrote "Treasure Island"

That would be Robert Lewis Stevenson.

Skeptic · 26th October 2006, 12:09 PM

Originally Posted by Tricky

You guys are all forgetting the worst piece of Christian crap ever written: Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. I guess I'm showing my age though. These days they wouldn't dare assign such an overtly religious book. Well, at least some things have progressed.

I kinda liked "The Scarlet Letter", but my wife agrees with the majority here. Her classic comment is, "How could a book about adultry be so damn boring."

There's an S. Gross cartoon of two Plymouth colony women: one of them is walking around with an "A"; the other with an "A+".

zizzybaluba · 26th October 2006, 12:11 PM

Anything by Thomas Hardy. My high school british lit teacher had a hard on for Hardy. After suffering through Tess of the d'Urbervilles, I used notes from my buddy Cliff for the rest...

andyandy · 26th October 2006, 12:30 PM

ooh more....

Tess of the D'urbervilles - Hardy

A passage to India - Forster

Ulysses - Joyce

the first two utterly dull and the last utterly impenetrable

Dave1001 · 26th October 2006, 12:42 PM

Originally Posted by MetalSeagull

Another board I read has this same thread going. It seems to evoke a great deal of childhood trauma. Having to read something seems to sap some of the joy from it.

But I was surprised at how many people hated Lord of the Flies. I loved that one. Perhaps it appealed to my cynical mind.

Another surprising one was Things Fall Apart. What a fascinating story of how our ever-changing world can leave us behind, and whether that's for the better or worse. As I get older, I like it more.

So from childhood, I dislike:

Dickens, Anything By: Maybe if he had an editor. Probably not, though.
Thoreau (Walden). Oh, did I drift off? To another room. To do something interesting?
Little Women. I was the only one to give this book a bad review in my seventh grade English class. I later found out that I was about the only one who actually read it.

From more recently:
Siddhartha. Have yet to finish it.

We have similar tastes, in that I find Dickens to be corny puffery. I like it less the older I get.

bjb · 26th October 2006, 12:54 PM

Awful books I've read include "Heart of Darkness", "The Stranger", "Stranger In A Strange Land", and "Flatland". I only read "Flatland" because of Carl Sagan and it was dreadful until the last third. It almost made up suffering through the first part of the book. "Stranger In A Strange Land" started off well but turned into a huge disappointment. The ending was garbage since it negated any useful lesson that might have been learned in the rest of the book. I can't understand why the book is considered a classic but I can understand why hippies liked it so much.

hgc · 26th October 2006, 01:29 PM

I knew when I read the thread title that I should not wade in. I am steaming over seeing such great writers dissed -- especially you EvilSmurf for Austen, and you Chaos for RLS.

But I have to agree about DH Lawrence. Tough going there.

kittynh · 26th October 2006, 01:47 PM

well, the kids at the school where I work are forced to read "The Education of LIttle Tree". They all hate it.

It's so terribly PC.

I suffered through "Moby THE Dick" (as I like to call it)

Dickens "A Christmas Carol" is good reading.

But his women characters are awful.

Skip Charles and go to his granddaughter Monica Dickens and read "One Pair of Hands"... if you like it get "One Pair of Feet" (about the war years).

Hilarious! Hard to find, but well worth finding!

Fitter · 26th October 2006, 04:27 PM

Another Dickens hater here. As well as Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge" although I did enjoy "Jude The Obscure". I learned to love Joyce when a Prof taught me the trick of reading him aloud to pick up the rhythm. The best Irish writers always seem to me to have a sing-song pacing and once I pick it up I'm hooked.

grayman · 26th October 2006, 04:50 PM

His books may be a hard read, but I do enjoy a Dickens Cider.

BillC · 26th October 2006, 05:06 PM

Franz Kafka: The Trial
Impenetrable and almost completely eschews the use of paragraphs.

Dave1001 · 26th October 2006, 05:21 PM

Originally Posted by bjb

Awful books I've read include "Heart of Darkness", "The Stranger", "Stranger In A Strange Land", and "Flatland". I only read "Flatland" because of Carl Sagan and it was dreadful until the last third. It almost made up suffering through the first part of the book. "Stranger In A Strange Land" started off well but turned into a huge disappointment. The ending was garbage since it negated any useful lesson that might have been learned in the rest of the book. I can't understand why the book is considered a classic but I can understand why hippies liked it so much.

The funny thing about Heinlein is you'll be reading this interesting science fiction and suddenly it will turn into hard core erotica with incest, 100 year old people having sex, bisexual experimentation, etc. His books turned me from a nerd to a dirty old man at the impressionable age of 14.

TragicMonkey · 26th October 2006, 05:37 PM

I hated most of the books we read in school precisely because we didn't read them: we vivisected them at an agonizingly slow pace, drawing out and concentrating on the most boring aspects and being told what the curriculum thought it meant, forbidden to actually think about the work for ourselves. Nothing says "learn to love literature!" like having to answer paragraph-long "essay questions" that required parroting back what the teacher said that afternoon. Any deviations, conjectures, theories, or opinions not specifically stated to you will result in points deducted. They start with the Greeks and desecrate their way all the way up to the 1940s, then literature stops.

There's a line in Terry Pratchett somewhere about Susan "who hated Literature; she much preferred to read a good book." I feel exactly the same.

I'm very grateful that I never had to study certain writers in school, else they'd have been ruined for me. The ones that were spared include Pearl Buck, JD Salinger, all the best stuff by Poe, and all the best of Twain. (The last two have two or three stories everyone's forced to endure in junior high, and I invariably skip those now.) I don't like any of the Shakespeare that was vomited upon by the school system (fortunately we never had to read MacBeth or Othello, the two best). The only two books I managed to like despite school were To Kill A Mockingbird (and that was only after rereading it two years ago) and Madame Bovary which shouldn't count, since I read it as an optional extra in a laissez-faire "World LIt" semester course "taught" by a lady who was retiring after 35 years of teaching. She just let us read books then make a presentation on them to the class.

Thanks to libraries and a willingness to explore them, I was always finding books that used to be fashionable "classics" but are now forgotten by the school systems. WH Hudson's Green Mansions and almost everything by Jan de Hartog for two. Those I liked, although one of my English teachers (the same one who made us spent a month and a half on Moby Dick --that's more than ten percent of the school year) actually commented that she couldn't stand Green Mansions because she had to read it in school!

Elizabeth I · 26th October 2006, 06:43 PM

My vote also goes to "anything by Dickens," but especially A Tale of Two Cities

Anything by Faulkner

The Old Man and the Sea

Silas Marner

The Scarlet Letter

Paradise Lost

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

Les Miserables

MOBY DICK!!!!

Wuthering Heights (it wasn't assigned, I started it one summer and just never finished it)

MetalSeagull · 26th October 2006, 07:11 PM

Originally Posted by bjb

"Stranger In A Strange Land" started off well but turned into a huge disappointment. The ending was garbage since it negated any useful lesson that might have been learned in the rest of the book. I can't understand why the book is considered a classic but I can understand why hippies liked it so much.

I'm trying to read it right now. It's been a year so far. I'm at the part when Michael become an instant love-god and the priggish Jill goes traipsing off with him.

I pick it up. Read a chapter or two and feel the frustration build:

Why? Why would she do that? That makes no sense.
Oh, great. Another rambling smug-fest.
Yet another woman with the depth and self-perception of Cheez Whiz.
I am sick of every last one of you.

Put book down.

I'm also reading A Confederacy of Dunces, which always get preference. So that slows it down even more.

25th October 2006, 05:46 PM	#1
MetalSeagull Critical Thinker Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: NC Posts: 369	Classic literature you hated Another board I read has this same thread going. It seems to evoke a great deal of childhood trauma. Having to read something seems to sap some of the joy from it. But I was surprised at how many people hated Lord of the Flies. I loved that one. Perhaps it appealed to my cynical mind. Another surprising one was Things Fall Apart. What a fascinating story of how our ever-changing world can leave us behind, and whether that's for the better or worse. As I get older, I like it more. So from childhood, I dislike: Dickens, Anything By: Maybe if he had an editor. Probably not, though. Thoreau (Walden). Oh, did I drift off? To another room. To do something interesting? Little Women. I was the only one to give this book a bad review in my seventh grade English class. I later found out that I was about the only one who actually read it. From more recently: Siddhartha. Have yet to finish it.

25th October 2006, 06:34 PM	#2
grayman Happy-go-lucky Heretic Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Casa del Whacko Posts: 6,142	James Joyce: Anything by.
	__________________ Stupidity is a condition. Ignorance is a choice. - Wiley All great truths begin as blasphemies. - George Bernard Shaw God is evil. As soon as you accept that, it all makes sense. - Sledge

25th October 2006, 10:03 PM	#4
grayman Happy-go-lucky Heretic Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Casa del Whacko Posts: 6,142	Would James Joyce ever be read were it not for college?
	__________________ Stupidity is a condition. Ignorance is a choice. - Wiley All great truths begin as blasphemies. - George Bernard Shaw God is evil. As soon as you accept that, it all makes sense. - Sledge

25th October 2006, 11:39 PM	#5
The Atheist The Grammar Tyrant Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Within smelling distance of the Grammar Death Camps Posts: 13,928	Dickens. No contest. Children being given Dickens to read is a form of child abuse.
	__________________ Jeff Wagg, Communication and Outreach Manager for the James Randi Educational Foundation posted: It is my job to inform other JREF employees about people who wish to do the JREF harm, and you [The Atheist] are one of those.

26th October 2006, 12:50 AM	#6
Kaarjuus Critical Thinker Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 252	British: Dickens, anything by. Thackeray. I only had to read Vanity Fair. Anything from the Bronte sisters. French: Balzac. Ugh. Stendhal. Flaubert. On a more positive note, some of the classic literature we had to read in school was very, very good. Our curriculum concentrated heavily on Russian literature. It really is unique. I love Bulgakov to this day.
Kaarjuus Critical Thinker Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 252	__________________ If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.

25th October 2006, 09:51 PM	#3
MetalSeagull Critical Thinker Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: NC Posts: 369	Originally Posted by grayman James Joyce I had to read two Joyce stories in college: Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I know I did this, because I wrote a 10 page paper about it. And yet I remember nothing about either beyond the titles and that it took place in Ireland.

26th October 2006, 03:46 AM	#7
Chaos TAM Chocolate Dispenser Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: The Heart of Old Europe Posts: 9,810	Goethe Schiller whoever wrote "Treasure Island" Lessing´s "Nathan the Wise" was pretty good, though.
	__________________ Grand Master, Knights of the Question Mark Illusion: too good to be true - Reality: too true to be good Authors build castles in the sky, readers live in them and publishers collect the rent. - Maxim Gorki Folks enjoy a witch-hunt as long as they are on the blunt end of the pitchfork. - Suezoled You can't use logic to talk a man out of a position that he didn't use logic to get himself into - passed down by Nyarlathotep Kids these days are better than their parents since they constitute the newest edition, the beta version of our societies - Cleopatra YouÂ´ll have to accept the fact that some people are just plain nuts. - Paul C. Anagnostopolous

26th October 2006, 04:15 AM	#8
geoman Doctor of Rock Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: X marks the spot Posts: 251	Dickens, Anything By. Boy, he's really taking a hit today. I thought for a while that maybe what made him so unreadable was the whole magazine publishing thing, one chapter a week or month or whatever it was. But Wilkie Collins did an OK job of the same thing (some of the time at least). So I was left with the conclusion that Dickens just sucks.

26th October 2006, 05:27 AM	#9
tkingdoll AKA TEEK Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Up Myself Posts: 12,471	Another vote for Joyce. I'm sticking up for Dickens, with the caveat that he shouldn't be read pre-teens.
	__________________ www.stormmovie.net Official website of Tim Minchin's Storm Movie

26th October 2006, 05:36 AM	#10
Mr Clingford Graduate Poster Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: UK Posts: 1,691	Well, it's the Bard for me. I did endless tragedies at school and I still haven't recovered 15 years later. Macbeth is, perhaps, the only exception.
	__________________ God is my copilot. But we crashed into a mountain and I had to eat him.

26th October 2006, 05:49 AM	#11
Zep Banned Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 26,985	Anthony Trollope; The Warden. The only time a actually went to sleep in class was while trying to comprehend why this mass of boring, BORING, BORING! words was EVER allowed to be committed to print.
Zep Banned Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 26,985

26th October 2006, 06:13 AM	#12
ChristineR Illuminator Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 3,189	So far, I've seen two sorts of books mentioned here. Books I loved. Books I haven't read. Thanks for the tips, guys!
ChristineR Illuminator Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 3,189	__________________ Avatar (c) Neopets.com

26th October 2006, 07:29 AM	#13
bluess Illuminator Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Dithering between book choices in a shop somewhere. Posts: 3,431	Dickens: Read best by ignoring any paragraph which starts with a simile, and is therefore filler. Thackeray: Are you kidding? Read Vanity Fair again. Its hysterically snide. I dislike Hawthorne. The school board that thought 15-yr-olds should read "The Scarlet Letter" should have been soundly beaten. Tried "The House of the 7 Gables" recently, and there was no improvement. Bleech.
	__________________ 'Lord Emsworth, that amiable but bone-headed peer, stood at the window drooping like a wet sock.' -PG Wodehouse, The Crime Wave at Blandings

26th October 2006, 07:35 AM	#14
Kaarjuus Critical Thinker Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 252	Originally Posted by bluess Thackeray: Are you kidding? Read Vanity Fair again. Its hysterically snide. I can't stand British high society.
Kaarjuus Critical Thinker Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 252	__________________ If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.

26th October 2006, 07:48 AM	#15
andyandy anthropomorphic ape Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: up a tree Posts: 8,213	DH Lawrence Short Stories - an intermiable GCSE English lit book.... man goes to football match sees man fall down a manhole cover the end
	__________________ "Contentment is found in the music of Bach, the books of Tolstoy and the equations of Dirac, not at the wheel of a BMW or the aisles of Harvey Nicks."

26th October 2006, 08:13 AM	#16
bluess Illuminator Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Dithering between book choices in a shop somewhere. Posts: 3,431	Originally Posted by Kaarjuus I can't stand British high society. Neither can Thackeray. Oh, another one. Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea'. Yeah, fishing stories are MUCH more interesting if they last a long, long time.
	__________________ 'Lord Emsworth, that amiable but bone-headed peer, stood at the window drooping like a wet sock.' -PG Wodehouse, The Crime Wave at Blandings

26th October 2006, 08:15 AM	#17
Doubt Philosopher Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 5,484	I liked Siddartha. Hated: Death of a Salesman. Worst required reading assignment in school. At the age of 16, I was completely unable to relate to Willy. Now I just find him depressing and pathetic. Sort of a de-motivational story.
Doubt Philosopher Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 5,484	__________________ Doubt world tour locations: Mostly home for now. No international travel scheduled other than the Galapagos trip in March. Disclaimer: Not a high energy scientist!

26th October 2006, 08:43 AM	#18
SwissSkeptic Critical Thinker Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 390	French realism. Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant etc.
	__________________ You need to think before you resort to hitting yourself with a fish. -Ali

26th October 2006, 09:43 AM	#19
Bikewer Philosopher Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: St. Louis, Mo. Posts: 9,615	We were forced to wade through Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter, Heart of Darkness, and a variety of others I considered utterly painful. All the while I was reading all the science fiction I could get my hands on...

26th October 2006, 09:52 AM	#20
headscratcher4 Philosopher Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: USA Posts: 7,759	Moby Dick.... Anything by James Joyce.
	__________________ Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals ... except the weasel. -- Homer Simpson

26th October 2006, 10:08 AM	#21
EvilSmurf JREF Bowl Pool Champion Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: The USA Posts: 1,552	Anything by Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters.
	__________________ Ah, Australian animals. If it isn't venomous, carnivorous, or has foot-long claws, it's a tourist.

26th October 2006, 11:02 AM	#22
NobbyNobbs Gazerbeam's Protege Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: The Mended Drum Posts: 5,631	Definitely The Scarlet Letter. I had a close call with To Kill A Mockingbird. It was assigned in 8th grade, and I knew that the teacher would assign a chapter at a time and then pick it apart to death. If that happened, I'd hate it. So I read it the all the first night, straight through, and it became the first book I actually appreciated as good literature. Despite the best efforts of my English teacher.
	__________________ I wish someone would find something I wrote on this board to be sig-worthy, thereby effectively granting me immortality.--Antiquehunter The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted years on earth the time spent eating butterscotch pudding. AMERICA! NUMBER 1 IN PARTICLE PHYSICS SINCE JULY 4TH, 1776!!! --SusanConstant

26th October 2006, 11:17 AM	#23
Timble Muse Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Wisteria Avenue, Huntingdon Posts: 934	Anything by DH Lawrence, overwritten, tedious, pretentious...
	__________________ We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

26th October 2006, 11:35 AM	#24
Tricky Briefly immortal Moderator Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: The Group W bench Posts: 42,405	You guys are all forgetting the worst piece of Christian crap ever written: Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. I guess I'm showing my age though. These days they wouldn't dare assign such an overtly religious book. Well, at least some things have progressed. I kinda liked "The Scarlet Letter", but my wife agrees with the majority here. Her classic comment is, "How could a book about adultry be so damn boring."
	Last edited by Tricky; 26th October 2006 at 11:37 AM.

26th October 2006, 12:02 PM	#25
Spindrift Enturbulator Extraordinaire Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Right here! Posts: 8,661	From childhood: Silas Marner Of Mice and Man - as an adult I do like most Steinbeck Old Man and the Sea The Jungle Moby Dick A Separate Peace Canterbury Tales I always had trouble being told what to read. I was a voracious reader, but for the most part I hated someone telling me what to read. About the only school assigned books I remember reading and enjoying were To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn Recently: The Hobbit - I could never get past the first couple chapters, I think I've started it 5 times. James Joyce is simply unreadable to me. Your brain shouldn't hurt when reading for enjoyment. Most Hemingway annoys me. The stories are good, but the writing isn't. I enjoyed The Sun Also Rises but it was a bit of a chore. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. Not exactly great literature but I tried to read Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe and it was dreadful. I wasn't surprised when the movie was horrendous given the source material.

26th October 2006, 12:07 PM	#26
Skeptic Banned Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Behind the chessboard Posts: 18,361	Originally Posted by Chaos whoever wrote "Treasure Island" That would be Robert Lewis Stevenson.

26th October 2006, 12:09 PM	#27
Skeptic Banned Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Behind the chessboard Posts: 18,361	Originally Posted by Tricky You guys are all forgetting the worst piece of Christian crap ever written: Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. I guess I'm showing my age though. These days they wouldn't dare assign such an overtly religious book. Well, at least some things have progressed. I kinda liked "The Scarlet Letter", but my wife agrees with the majority here. Her classic comment is, "How could a book about adultry be so damn boring." There's an S. Gross cartoon of two Plymouth colony women: one of them is walking around with an "A"; the other with an "A+".

26th October 2006, 12:11 PM	#28
zizzybaluba sultan of zip Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: glen burnie, md, usa Posts: 383	Anything by Thomas Hardy. My high school british lit teacher had a hard on for Hardy. After suffering through Tess of the d'Urbervilles, I used notes from my buddy Cliff for the rest...

26th October 2006, 12:30 PM	#29
andyandy anthropomorphic ape Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: up a tree Posts: 8,213	ooh more.... Tess of the D'urbervilles - Hardy A passage to India - Forster Ulysses - Joyce the first two utterly dull and the last utterly impenetrable
	__________________ "Contentment is found in the music of Bach, the books of Tolstoy and the equations of Dirac, not at the wheel of a BMW or the aisles of Harvey Nicks."

26th October 2006, 12:42 PM	#30
Dave1001 Illuminator Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 3,717	Originally Posted by MetalSeagull Another board I read has this same thread going. It seems to evoke a great deal of childhood trauma. Having to read something seems to sap some of the joy from it. But I was surprised at how many people hated Lord of the Flies. I loved that one. Perhaps it appealed to my cynical mind. Another surprising one was Things Fall Apart. What a fascinating story of how our ever-changing world can leave us behind, and whether that's for the better or worse. As I get older, I like it more. So from childhood, I dislike: Dickens, Anything By: Maybe if he had an editor. Probably not, though. Thoreau (Walden). Oh, did I drift off? To another room. To do something interesting? Little Women. I was the only one to give this book a bad review in my seventh grade English class. I later found out that I was about the only one who actually read it. From more recently: Siddhartha. Have yet to finish it. We have similar tastes, in that I find Dickens to be corny puffery. I like it less the older I get.
Dave1001 Illuminator Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 3,717	__________________ I'm here to discuss ideas, not to get personal. I won't criticize you personally, please don't criticize me personally. I won't direct ad hominems at you, please don't direct ad hominems at me. I won't attack you or put you down, please don't attack me or put me down. Thanks.

26th October 2006, 12:54 PM	#31
bjb Graduate Poster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 1,079	Awful books I've read include "Heart of Darkness", "The Stranger", "Stranger In A Strange Land", and "Flatland". I only read "Flatland" because of Carl Sagan and it was dreadful until the last third. It almost made up suffering through the first part of the book. "Stranger In A Strange Land" started off well but turned into a huge disappointment. The ending was garbage since it negated any useful lesson that might have been learned in the rest of the book. I can't understand why the book is considered a classic but I can understand why hippies liked it so much.
bjb Graduate Poster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 1,079

26th October 2006, 01:29 PM	#32
hgc Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 13,140	I knew when I read the thread title that I should not wade in. I am steaming over seeing such great writers dissed -- especially you EvilSmurf for Austen, and you Chaos for RLS. But I have to agree about DH Lawrence. Tough going there.
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26th October 2006, 01:47 PM	#33
kittynh The Hupsu Detective auctioneer Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: If I told the aliens could find me, and you know they read this forum Posts: 22,726	well, the kids at the school where I work are forced to read "The Education of LIttle Tree". They all hate it. It's so terribly PC. I suffered through "Moby THE Dick" (as I like to call it) Dickens "A Christmas Carol" is good reading. But his women characters are awful. Skip Charles and go to his granddaughter Monica Dickens and read "One Pair of Hands"... if you like it get "One Pair of Feet" (about the war years). Hilarious! Hard to find, but well worth finding!
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26th October 2006, 04:27 PM	#34
Fitter Illuminator Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Where the pavement ends Posts: 3,519	Another Dickens hater here. As well as Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge" although I did enjoy "Jude The Obscure". I learned to love Joyce when a Prof taught me the trick of reading him aloud to pick up the rhythm. The best Irish writers always seem to me to have a sing-song pacing and once I pick it up I'm hooked.

26th October 2006, 04:50 PM	#35
grayman Happy-go-lucky Heretic Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Casa del Whacko Posts: 6,142	His books may be a hard read, but I do enjoy a Dickens Cider.
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