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

Not sure why I feel like being argumentative tonight. Maybe I'm becoming a troll?

I've never really cared for the bible. Yeah, it has a few good lines that you can pull out and put on a T-shirt or bumper sticker, but the stories over all are a bit meh. I honestly don't think it deserves the fandom it has, and its super saturated with fan theories about what what really means.

 

I've had that on my Kindle for years and never been excited enough to open it.

 

Honestly I find the dictionary quite pretentious. Imposing definitions on all
the poor words without their consent. Mariam Webster you sadist you.

 

I feel the same about a thesaurus. They come in handy from time to time, just can't sit down with a nice cup of chocolate, and a warm blankie on a cold winter's day and read cover to cover.

 

I know! I had really high hopes for it when I bought it, though.

 

My Hitler example was just a thought plucked from the top of my head. I'm not actually smart enough to respond to this...

Better tech? I'm afraid I might not understand. When you say tech, do you mean technology as in literally or metaphorically? As in, better equipment or just generally more advanced? Anyways, a lot of things about high fantasy would likely be different were it not for Tolkien from elves to dwarves to orcs. The dwarves in Tolkien's world, from what I can tell were still honorable despite being very greedy but in most mythology and folk tales, they could be considered downright evil.

I like his wizards and how they're presented as sort of other-worldly beings. It explains a lot of early questions I had concerning Gandalf. I also have to give credit to his language skills. I think he really pioneered creating new languages in order to add depth to a fictional world. Star Trek could very well still be a thing without Tolkien but would we still have the Klingon language?

No! Your opinion and your interests are wrong!

 

Aha! Conlanging: another major topic of interest for me . Conlanging has actually been around for a long time, but Tolkien was the first to really get his languages (Quenya, Sindarin are the two major ones) known. After all, this was before the Internet. But I don't see why Klingon wouldn't have been made; Tolkien didn't invent Conlanging, he was just a major proponent of it.

 

That is beautiful. Well done.

 

Please don't take it to heart. It comes from a place of angst that I should have outgrown by now.

 

I've tried Gravities Rainbow several times. I used to think it was because I wasn't enjoying it because i wasn't 'smart enough' or didn't have the concentration to pay attention to a book that long with so many characters, but next to it on my bookshelf is Infinite Jest, which is equally long but I absolutely stormed through.

I can't help but get the impression that Gravities Rainbow (and other Pynchon books) are kinda just cases of a writer showing off, rather than saying something, I even read Inherent Vice which is shorter and simpler and wasn't that into it.

Oh and yeah I agree with Lord of the Rings, I think Tolkien was a great world builder but an awful writer. When Tom Bombadil appears in Fellowship of the Ring it genuinely feels like he's trolling the readers.

 

I read Gravity's Rainbow when I was nineteen and thought I understood it, but at forty, it seemed like gibberish.

Go figure.

 

It is out of place.

 

I've never read Infinite Jest, but I've read the first page of Gravity's Rainbow several times and have enjoyed it immensely. I'm training hard to tackle the rest of it some day!

 

Catcher in the Rye.

I had to read it in junior high, and tried it again years later when a copy came to hand.

My initial impression was supported the second go-round: pointless. The MC was unlikable, and nothing really interesting happened. He was just a whiny little bug.

 

It's probably a boomer book.

 

I'm a boomer. I would say it was at best an early boomer or pre-boomer book.