Famous books you never cared for/understood the appeal of?

I know many will disagree, but for me it's Stephen King. I tried reading several of his books, and they were Anne of Green Gables without the interesting characters. I gave up on him.

I forgot about this. Actually, I forget about most books I don't like. All I can remember, is I gave up long before even a hundred pages.

I never made it that far.
I gave up when Sue Collins had the President/Dictator, doing girlie talk in Katkiss's bedroom. It was just one round of pathetic too far.

 

The Divine Comedy... man, that's the heaviest book I've ever tried to read. It's so fucked up that I had to pick a sinopsis... and the story is not that good. It's mostly about appreciating poetry, ancient poetry.

Does anyone have an opinion on MACE RUNNER...? I tried to read the first book but got the impression that I was reading a 12 years old wanna-be author. It looked incredibly retarded, but I may be wrong... am I wrong? What do you guys think of MACE RUNNER...?

 

I got that as a gift from a relative who thought I'd "like" it. Bah - but mum's family has never been really close nor observant of others not in their immediate family. Within the 1st chapter I wrapped it up and when my family had our routine bonfire in the fall - burnt it. If I wanted to read something of that grossly unimaginative level of writing, I'd pull out my 8-year-old niece's books.

I have never really had a problem with the classics. In fact the bigger the book, the better.


I have problems with some of the modern books - 50 Shades of Poo, Divergent, Harry Potter, etc.

I like complex writing with complex characters - Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen are the ONLY recent books I have not been able to put down [most others of the modern genre, I can't be bothered to pick up]. I can't stand books that feel as if it is a movie script was placed between the pages the characters are so shallow and the plot something that feels like a child wrote it.

Fancy writing - or the big word disease - in a shoddy book doesn't make it worth reading.

 

Burning it, eh. That's taking things to a whole new level!

 

Weeeell... call me crazy but I did enjoy 50 Shades more than Hamlet.

 

What is that book about? Someone who carries pepper spray on their morning jog?

 

A teenager who wakes up in a mace... and an author who went rich and already got a movie deal.

 

woops...!

It was (The) Maze Runner... with a "Z".

 

Ya know?

I'd read that

 

Maybe yes, maybe no. I felt good afterwards. And in the old days people have burnt books which are highly more valuable than that utter tripe. If I didn't burn it - it'd have come to line the bird cage.

That book was ... something else ... and not in a good way. Didn't want anyone else to suffer through the agony.

 

I think using the pages for toilet paper would have been more appropriate.

 

That's the really good thing about romance books. If they don't get you hot one way, they can get you hot in another way.

 

I love Mark Twain's quotes and quips and respect him greatly but I just could not get more than a few chapters into Tom Sawyer. Makes me feel incredibly guilty that I didn't like something that is a classic.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a book I struggled about halfway through before wanting to hurl it across the room in frustration. I guess I just can't read philosophy although I did like Atlas Shrugged which is equally overly verbose. I'm astounded to this day that anyone thought Persig's near-insane rantings were worth publishing.

 

I found Lolita to be merely a good book. Maybe most of its famed wordplay went over my head (in addition to all the intrusions of French), or maybe I am just not into the kind of writing that shows off the author's cleverness and cultural knowledge for the sake of showing off the author's cleverness and cultural knowledge.

Still, it is a well-told story. Very good at setting the right mood for any given scene.

 

I wouldn't call it a classic but The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton was god awful. I remember friends and Oprah waving it about at me, telling me what a great read it was, sure to be a modern classic, etc. It was supposed to be "realistic and gritty". I like realistic when it comes to literature, but this book was downright dreary and I felt it would of ended on a much more positive note if the MC had killed herself 1/4 into the damn story. I was praying on my knees for a hanging or a head in the oven trick half way though the book.

Written well enough though. Gave a copy to my mother...

 

Anything by Oscar Wilde. I find his style unbearably pretentious.

 

I've only read The Picture of Dorian Gray. I liked that one.

 

I wouldn't call him pretentious - then all the classical writers would be.

His writing is convoluted which compared to the simpler writing styles of modern authors makes his work hard to grasp. He also was a literature styled writer [like Dickens] - not a fantasy based genre writer [which is the average style of writing nowadays - escapism writing] - though Wilde more thoroughly grasped the ugly side of human nature by the horns.

Dorian Grey is a good one. He was better as a poet than a story writer on that note.

 

It has nothing to do with the age of the writing. I like Dickens. I like many classics.

It has to do with the conceited, self-satisfied, smug nature of Wilde's writing.

 

Books I won't ever lay a finger on:
- 50 Shades of Grey
- Twilight
- Warrior Cats
- basically any Holy Scripture of whatever religion

Books I tried to read, but ended up putting away after a few chapters:
- Die Leiden des jungen Werther by Goethe
- Ruby Red

 

Same. There's so much "look at me and how witty I am!" that you can't help but remember with each page that it's Oscar Wilde's work. I want to forget that a book is a book and get immersed into it, not have the author nudge me and wink at me constantly.

 

I've found myself slowly starting to hate HP Lovecraft, despite having used themes similar to his in my own work.

It was a complete accident, by the way. I'd always loved the mystique of dreams and alternate states of consciousness, insanity, insidious forces... so my mom bought me an anthology of his work for my birthday a couple years ago. I've been picking through it rather slowly.

What gets me is the "nameless" "shapeless" "formless" "unfathomable" horrors he refuses to describe. After nearly 300 pages, I'm bored. I'm exactly halfway through the anthology now, and I no longer care about the stories themselves. I'm using the physical act of reading (when I bother to pick the book up) as a means to turn off my brain so I can sleep... and only when I'm desperate.

I understand there is allure in the unknown, re: old horror movies "It's what you don't see!" but Jesus fucking Christ. He goes out of his way to not describe things (and yes I know that that's the point, the things are vague and alien and difficult to describe) ...I just don't like it anymore.

I suppose, in short, HPL just gives me blue balls.

 

^ That sounds like The Ancient Enemy in Dean Koontz's Phantoms. One of the least scary monsters ever.

 

When I was in my early twenties I read most but not all of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I really should go back and finish what I started but I remember thinking at the time that it was repetitive to the point of tedium. A product of its time perhaps?

 

I think Lovecraft is one of those authors whose reputation has grown somewhat out of proportion to his ability. I enjoy his work too, but you're absolutely right that he tends towards repetition and melodrama.

His strength was in his ideas (i.e the whole Cthulu mythos and eldritch-horror gestalt), which were truly groundbreaking. He's one of the foundational figures of the entire horror genre mostly for that reason.

So I think this weird sort of transposition has taken place, where people know how influential he's been and therefore imagine that he must've been a good writer, when he was really only an average writer. Just really inventive.

On a personal note, I'd recommend that you not read the whole anthology at once, but break it down. Read a couple stories, wait a few months, read a couple more. I've found his work to be more enjoyable that way.