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

What are "corn snacks?" Lol.

ETA: are you referring to different kinds of "chips?" Because we usually don't specify. It's just a chip, whether it's made of corn or potato.

 

Oh, come now. Like you don't know.

 

Something I don't understand is calling fries, chips.

Because you don't chip the potato, you slice the potato. Thus, small pieces wouldn't be chips, they'd be slices. If you called them slices, I'd understand it. But you call them chips.

We just refer to the method of cooking them, so that's far less specific and confusing.

Now, crisps I can totally stand behind. That makes way more sense than chips, due to the above sentiment.

 

As long as you guys have Marmite for sale, I don't wanna' hear shit about what we eat or what we call it. That is some repugnant-ass shit to put in a jar and call food.

</derail>

ETA: And to address the "silly words Americans use for food items" part of the paradigm: Marmite is not a food word. Marmite is a good name for a construction material. Like some sort of industrial glue or perhaps a composite material used to create counter tops. Whoever chose that name for that item was not paying attention to naming trends in kinds of items. Lucite, Bakelite, uncountable names for naturally occurring minerals (bauxite, alexandrite, etc.)

But I guess perhaps it makes sense since Marmite does not quality as a food item. Maybe it's just that it's on the wrong shelf at the shop. It needs to be over in the area where they sell light duty home repair items.

 

I must admit, I've never cared much for Wordsworth. Or Jack Kerouac, really.

We have spotted dick and haggis. We are the superior race.

 

Here-here!

 

Things are a lot more generic here. Crisp are both potato chips and corn snacks, and chips are both fries and regular chips that you stick in a chip pan.

 

Add shepherd's pie to that list.

However, I can get down with bubble and squeak, though I think latkes are a better version.

 

Oh, here too. Just replace crisp with chip.

I've never heard anyone say corn snacks. Lol.

 

I have a friend who told me she got "into reading" through 50 Shades of Grey. Forget that the way she put that phrase was simply stupid, but might be the book appeals to certain members of society who would just enjoy its particular sexual description in a way they don't in other aspects of Literature. Mind, I'm clearly not one of those people, and I'd probably hate the books even if I started.

I tried Silmarillion too. Oh, the after-glory of the LOTR series! I could even relate some initial ideas to the Bible (which would supposedly make it more interesting), but I couldn't get further than the first 20 pages.

 

Sounds like the result of a one night stand with a two o'clock pick up.

 

Yeah, we just say chips or corn chips or, depending on location, sometimes we do that brand=everything deal and call them Fritos or Doritos (depending on shape) irrespective of actual brand name.

Corn snacks makes me think of those partially puffed nugget thingies that are super excellent for anyone trying to break a few molars.

Spoiler: Dental visit in a bag

 

Haha!

 

Living in Texas, I know "brand=everything" all too well.

"what kind of coke would you like with that?"

 

A Denis Leary rant about coffee just popped into my head. Cappuccino, Frappuccino, Al-fucking-Pacino!

 

Lord of the Rings - I managed about 100 pages when was a teen before I gave up. I haven't tried again since, but I did give The Hobbit a try as an adult. I didn't make it past p.3... It's not the writing would be bad or anything - I mean, nothing struck me as particularly spectacular but it was quite nice. I just couldn't stand the amount of pointless detail. Peeps tell me Hobbit's much lighter with a lot less detail than LOTR, so since I haven't made it past the first 3 pages of Hobbit, I don't think I'll be trying LOTR!

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - don't get me wrong, I liked it. But it was really quite ordinary. I've read my fair share of crime novels and it is a genre I enjoy, so no way was it cus I wasn't the target audience. I just really didn't see what's so special about it, and the twist was rather underwhelming... Like, not a bad twist per se, but one I was already considering the author might do all the way from the start of the book. Larson also had a habit of writing in excessive detail in places.

1984 - great all the way till the 20 pages of philosophy and took a whooping wallop at my head. I was bored to tears and those 20 pages took me an entire month to finish. I'd started just skimming so fast that I actually missed it when it went back to the present and the major climax came, meaning I had to retract, meaning all impact was lost. By that point I'd stopped caring about the characters in any case. I didn't get why Orwell had to spend 20 pages ruining an otherwise very good book, saying the same things I'd already got from reading the rest of the story!

 

I was thinking only yesterday of starting a thread like this- I guess it's true there are no new ideas!

LOTR, I tried to read it twice and watched the first two films but really: No. I just don't care enough about the characters to commit that much of my time wading through elven battles

I liked the Hobbit as a child... Not Jackson's mutilation of it recently!

I'm not huge on Victorian novels. I can handle a bit of C Bronte but Dickens has far much detail for me and I can never make it past chapter one of Wuthering Heights. Henry James, Wings of a Dove. Shudder.

I can't think of any modern ones...

 

The Hobbit is one of my all time favourite books, from childhood to now, and I make a point of reading it every year. But that's all because of nostalgia, and the memories it brings back. I'll not lie, JRR could not write great prose for love nor money.

I have to defend Orwell here, and the bit about 'The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism'. I've seen people say that is how Orwell wanted society to be, too, which I just find completely baffling. It's explaining the world of Oceania and the Thought Police from the perspective of The Party itself, and why their power structure is the way it is.

With Winston reading that, and the reader reading it along with him, the reader is being expected to notice something Winston clearly does not. It gives away the ending in a way. Winston is literally reading The Party's manifesto, it's not supposed to be philosophy, it's the end of the cat and mouse game played between Smith and Julia, and the Thoughtpolice. The Thoughtpolice, headed by O'Brien, are finally turning over their cards and showing their hand - so to speak. And if you don't read the afterward, 'Principles of Newspeak', it's how Winston ends up knowing he'll never win.

 

So what is it that Winston did not notice that the reader should've through the philosophy chunk?

Because of the great reputation of the book, I'd be willing to give it another chance. But I dunno, couldn't the philosophy part be writtein in a more interesting manner? I just find straight philosophy/ideology so dull. It's honestly not just Orwell - give me anything similar by anyone and it wouldn't matter how well written it is. I'd still get bored after the first 2 pages or so.

What's wrong with Tolkien's prose? I haven't honestly read enough to know lol. The opening of the Hobbit though was indeed rather charming. His poetry is supposed to far surpass his prose though I think.

Oh carrying on with the thread topic - famous books I've never cared for: Anything by Shakespeare Not the guy's fault at all. I just honestly don't understand the style of English it's written in, and since I'm not an incredible fan of meandering speeches, prose or poetry, that takes a while to get to the point, I've never had the patience to dig through it.

 

Winston doesn't notice, which the reader is being expected to, that what is being read is literally a 'theory of Oligarchical Collectivism'. What better phrase could you use to describe the Big Brother society Winston lives in? It's not the Goldstein alternative, we never find out what Goldstein's politics were, what he is reading is literally The Party's Manifesto, that's why you get the whole thing of War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery explained as how someone in the inner party (like O'Brien) would understand those slogans.

It isn't philosophy or political theory in terms of theory you should actually use - it's basically 20 pages of O'Brien saying 'Winston, mate, the game is up, and you lose. Too bad'. I'm sure Orwell himself would be willing to say he could have done that bit better, but it's not without reason that that part is so slow and not completely engaging. It's supposed to be a slow build the reader is supposed to see something odd in, but then as they read on (like Winston should have himself - you don't get a lot of The Book, but what you do get is just enough) they would have seen and understood everything about the world, and how The Party is able to keep functioning. And be so seemingly impossible to tackle.

For some of the reason you gave, it's overly descriptive, harking on boring details only interesting to him; and he's verbose, and does not really have an ear for sentences not in the style of an Icelandic Saga. Honestly, if you took a page of Tolkien and a page of a well-translated Saga, took out the names, and gave them to someone else, I don't think that person would be able to tell them apart.

 

Again, my lack of knowledge in philosophy and politics (I'm not into politics either lol) is a major factor - I don't even know what oligarchical collectivism is, so how would I be able to appreciate the apt title? It was obvious that the Book was the party manifesto, I don't see what's so enlightening about that. It is, as I said, 20 pages explaining everything I have already understood from reading the rest of the novel, which for me renders the 20 pages pointless. I have no idea if it's supposed to be slow, so I will take your word for it, but to me it sounds a bit like when a writer is trying to show the mundanity of life by so effectively and realistically portraying it that the reader is bored to tears. The fact that it's 'supposed' to be that way doesn't make it better lol.

I don't even remember who Goldstein is. I only read 1984 once and that was... let's see, 6 years ago?

 

Spoiler: Spoiler Alert

This keeps happening as you get older. It's not just a child-to-adult dynamic. Books that I once loved as a younger man have lost their glow. Not all of them, but some that I revered and loved. Sometimes it's about a certain style taking off and that one novel becomes just the first in a series of similar novels within the vogue and when you try to go back to it, nope, it doesn't shine anymore. Sometimes it's just that as your experience as a reader/writer grows, you become more critical and the story that you loved becomes less than it had been to a younger, less critical self, because you now see the writing is lack-luster and it was you, the reader that was really supplying the meat of what was going on in your head as read.

 

Wait till book two. THAT'S fucked up.


If you want me to spoil it for you I will

 

Why thank you for that lovely mental image. So wonderful and fine. You, sir, are truly the master of words, the next J.R.R. Tolkien. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to bash my brains out against a wall to remove that image.

EDIT:

I always found the Harry Potter series to be a bit dull. Chosen Ones, a pure good/pure bad storyline, and the fact that 1/4 of a entire student body is dubbed evil because their icon is a snake, they're ambitious (Oh noooo!) and their equivalent of Hitler came from that group. There were times I've actually rooted for Draco because when your entire school think you're automatically evil because of the house some stupid hat puts you in, you're going to want to push back.

 

Feel free. Getting through book one has been like pulling molars with my own fingers. Put it in a spoiler wrap.