I've never seen it on stage, but it was a damn good movie. I've had that one on my to read list for a while. Is it really that bad? People love that book. It's on a bunch of WF members' favorite books lists. I've seen it all over the place.
Go to goodreads or Amazon, it's the sort of book that has all one or five star reviews, nothing in between.
Yeah, some people love A Confederacy of Dunces, some don't. It's—as the British would say—Marmite. (You love it or hate it.) I actually did like it a lot, but I wasn't forced to read it. I read it years ago and it was fun to read about a character who was self-delusional and NOT likeable in any way. I kept going ooourghh, but kept turning the pages. The author made the seedy side of New Orleans seem real and not particularly attractive, which I also found entertaining. I also re-read the book more recently, and still liked it a lot. But it's not a book I would ever force somebody to read, if I was still a teacher. I don't know what teaching is like these days, but back when I did it we had SOME control over what books we taught, but there were other books that were part of the curriculum, and we had to teach them, like it or not. If it was me picking the school curriculum, I would concentrate on books that are well-written, but more relevant to modern students. The purpose of the exercise is to get students reading, to enjoy reading, and to enjoy thinking about and discussing the books with other people afterwards. Even if they are books about history, they should be lively and readable and not Middlemarch-y. Middlemarch is a book that was very worthy in its time (and I liked it), but the social/religious/moral pressures that drove George Elliot's characters don't exist in our modern life, so it becomes tedious to read about their dilemmas as if we still share them—the way her original readers did. Same way a lifelong unbeliever like me squeaks in pain when forced to read Milton or Dante. That subject matter is just not relevant to me at all. The last thing an English teacher wants is to send their students away HATING to read!
Yeah, that's one of the benefits of getting older and maybe 'more mature?' You can read something you think you might not like, and actually get something from it. Or at least you'll be able to figure out why you don't like it much. I still don't necessarily like everything I read, but I now have a better idea of why that is. This has been a fun year for me, thus far, when it comes to reading (the silver lining of this lockdown cloud.) A new Facebook friend of mine has pushed me way outside my comfort zone, and got me to read stuff I would never have looked at before. And it's opened my eye to different kinds of writing and different ways to look at writing. You're never too old, I reckon... Our forum book club will have the same effect on me, I reckon. Even the stuff I don't like, I'll still be glad I read it.
I can't imagine how tedious Milton would have been if I was forced to read him. Dante ... I love Dante, genuinely love him - I try to reread The Divine Comedy every year - but Milton is way too much. Something in Dante just clicked with me - and I read Inferno in a day, Purgatorio (which is my favourite part) in two, and Paradiso took longer because of all the theological knowledge you'd need to even begin knowing what on earth he's yammering on about. (Something about the dark parts of the moon are a reflection of the times God's grace is weak? Huh? Did I even understand that right?) But by then the previous two books had been enough to make me push on to the end. Even when I was an atheist the religion in those books didn't bother me. I've never really thought like that. There's an amazing book by the scholar Barbara Reynolds, Dante the Poet, The Political Thinker, The Man, that I highly recommend to anyone interested. In it she theorizes that Dante may have smoked marijuana, which I find kind of funny, and also that he probably wrote The Divine Comedy while performing it on the streets - as a way to make money when he was exiled from Florence. There's a lot places in the language that could be taken as quite showman-y, and it's written as if it's a big adventure, full of danger and suspense, which I guess is why it clicked with me. Milton, though, he's ... yeah. And trying to teach Milton to a class of students ... I think I'd probably hate reading too after that!
HA! Brilliant. That's pretty interesting, actually. I can see a logic to that. I might have to give it another read (or watch) and see if I can see that myself.
I read this one cos people kept saying it was the funniest book of all time, but I didn't find it very funny. Notes from the underground is great. Most people at some point in their life have felt like underground man. He captures isolation brilliantly. I can't remember if he was likable. I think this book actually was funny as well. Then again, I don't have problems with unlikable people if they're interesting characters and I found underground man pretty damn fun to read about. Shakespeare I mean, we all go through that thing of finding Shakespeare really boring. It isn't fun to read. I remember in highschool watching the Di Caprio Romeo and Juliet. Everyone loved that. It had an impact on us all. Then we watched some weird modern version of Macbeth with gangsters and guns, which we also liked. Romeo and Juliet is great for highschool students I think cos it's about not having freedom to do what you want as well as illicit love. When you're young, all love feels at least a bit illicit. Macbeth is also damn appealing to a 13 year old. It's a lot to take in! The witches, the murders, the guilt of it all. It connects.
Some are okay with it, the same way some fourth grade teachers are okay with constantly humiliating the kid with the learning differences. Some people are just in the wrong profession. I should say though that as much as I hated reading in junior high and high school, a few of my favorite teachers were English teachers. My senior English teacher was big on finding your own voice and taught more writing than literature. I loved that class.
I wouldn't call this terrible, more or less a disappointment from a favourite author - Darren Shan. Loved his Demonata series, check 'em out if you dare! It was his Zom-B series, I had a go at reading books 1 and 2. I only read the second one in hopes of the story getting better but it didn't. Essentially, It's about B - Not me you goober, they (For some reason Shan wanted to keep the gender a secret until the end of the first novel, so out of respect I won't spoil it here) live with their racist dad and victim mother, B tries to stand ordinary days mixed with conflicted feelings and the need to do things in order to impress their dad 0 by being a racist jerk - oh yeah, and there are Zombies. The novel is short but there are 12 books in total, the first instalment felt rushed with little research put into it, it is obvious this was just Shan's opinions churned out in a badly written character/narrator The story, for me, just didn't work well. How can anyone take this supposed story seriously when the title is itself a pun? I just hope his future works are better. Apologies for the babble! B x
Mervyn Peake was a master of literary fantasy and widely regarded as a world-class illustrator, but the third book in the Gormenghast trilogy is a travesty. It's by far the worst book I've ever read and I don't think it'll ever be beaten. And that's not just because it ruined the first two astonishingly good books. Mental illness took its toll on Peake and it's well known that the third book shouldn't have been published. It's nonsensical in the extreme. The plot undoes almost everything set up in the first two books and makes a mockery of the theme and message of what came before. It's not even set in the same universe. Whereas Titus Groan and Gormenghast are set in a gothic tragi-comedy world, Titus Alone is set in a rushed nonsensical sci-fi world that has genuinely no connection with the brilliantly depicted titular castle and its environs. It's incredible how truly bad it is. I only finished it because I held on to my love of the other books. To this day I've never been more sorely disappointed in a book. Of course the prose isn't as bad as some random self-published e-book from a novice writer--it is still Peake--but the story framework, motives, pace and almost everything else is atrocious. The only good thing about it is the individual words taken by themselves. It's difficult to get across how different this book is from the preceding two if you haven't read the entire trilogy. I risk going on a rant here so I'll stop...
I felt a teensy bit like this with, of all people, China Miéville and the last of his Bas Lag novels, Iron Council. Thing is, it's not remotely a shitty book - at all. What it was, though, was me caught in China's enticing web, ready to drop trou (have you seen him?) and he uses this last book to go fullbore political on me. Like, heavy-handed politics. Metaphors that are so blatant, do they even qualify as metaphors? I knew China was a political animal, even throwing his Trotsky hat into the game, and it was in evidence in the first two novels. Have to be thick as two short planks to miss the meaning of the handlingers, but there was no subtly at all in the last book. It was the ravishment I never wanted from China. He misread my letter.
Can't say I've read any of Mieville, but I knew he was inspired by Peake. That's a shame. I also dislike when writers do this. Okay, for some reason I feel like I need to give a broad contrasting overview of the differences in the Gormenghast Trilogy and I might as well include it in this reply. First two books: -Never-ending castle environment written by a masterful visual writer with a background in the arts -Characters like the melancholic book-loving lord Sepulchrave, the well-rounded maniacal Steerpike, the genuinely hilarious and kindly doctor Prunesquallor -We watch as Titus Groan grows up and is bound to the castle and its meaningless traditions -A blend of poignant introspection on tradition and monarchy with supreme farce Book three: -Sci-fi city with pompous unlikable characters -Flying spy-orbs, helicopters, and a cheetah man who drives some sort of living car (if I remember correctly, which I don't wish to) -Titus Groan as an obnoxious fool with no redeeming qualities -Every mention of castle Gormenghast or its inhabitants brings another smack of disappointment and nostalgia of the worst kind I'm still in shock to this day to be honest.
I don't understand this. You need an optimistic ending for a novel to be good? Of my top ten novels that i enjoy only one has a proper optimistic ending, one has a bit of a downbeat ending, one has kind of optimistic but that's debatable ending, and the rest are pretty bleak. But they're amazing. Books are considered classics simply because they are still being read and enjoyed decades to centuries after coming out. Same with movies. Same with furniture (antique).
Alistair Macleans Death Train (actually written by Alistair Macneil) ... i bought and enjoyed this book as a teeager, but trying to read it again we have Male gaze as the author spaffs over the female protags figure and looks A female protagonist who opens by telling us that shes unsure about feminism because men don't give up their seats on trains (this is a female arse kicking special operator) A black protagonist straight from the stereo type mine and a square jawed American campus hero who "did the right thing (tm)" on a previous mission putting his country before his family They then engage in the most cliched possible maguffin hunt pursuing some plutonium which the KGB are shipping across europe in beer kegs (like you do) The back protag is so fucking stupid that he doesn't notice that the worlds most obvious femme fatale is leading him around by the cock Then in the finale the female protagonist nearly blows the mission because shes frightened of rats what a pile of shite
My Favourite bad book is: Masters of the Fist by Edward P. Hughes. I found it on a free book shelf in a small dingy cafe in a remote region of Nepal, of all places. Oh boy, that was fun. It's sooooooo bad it's super entertaining. Well, I guess it was at the time.
Yeah, read it a long time ago, although I think it may have started life as a short story? Don't remember anything other than what we've discussed in this short exchange, however. Still, your review will save me some bucks the next time I go on a nostalgia kick, thanks! ETA: The title also sounds a lot like something you'd encounter in the "behind the black curtain" section of your local video store, back when such things existed.
Lol. That's why I grabbed it. The title just screamed "you gotta read this". And that cover is soooo machismo. Low angle of hero in army gear, tank, distressed voluptuous woman in need of rescuing.
The Scarlet Letter is set in Puritan Massachusetts in 17th Century. We are now a lot more free to be who we want to be and own our mistakes than it was back then in that specific setting. The novel allows to experience a different kind of society (yet fundamental for American history and culture) based on their principles, that now we have a hard time conceiving.
Does a depressing ending make a book bad? You know, actual life does not end that well for many of us. Not everyone is reading to be comforted. Do literary novels need to have simplistic 'villains' ? You have marvel comics for that. There are no 'villains' in the Great Gatsby and that's one thing that makes it such a compelling work of fiction.
