Books highly prized you couldn't finish

gingerwoman said:

The Great Gatsby- What was so great about it? I remember it was painfully boring and I think I skipped parts and I can't remember ANYTHING about it.

Click to expand...

Me too. I used to have a rule: Whatever you start reading, you finish reading.

Well, The Great Gatsby cured me of that silly idea. And that's one book you shouldn't read if you have narcolepsy - won't help. At all.

I use Gatsby as a template for all novels. I thought it brilliant. It's so interesting...taste...isn't it.

I also try my best to finish reading anything I've started. That's why I painfully, agonizingly forced myself to finish Stephen King's The Stand last month. Can't understand how so many people at AW gush over that novel and claim to have read it multiple times. I mean, King is a polished writer, but his work is slick entertainment, not literature. With one life to live on this planet, I sure wouldn't waste one minute of it reading The Stand again, when there are millions of other books to read.

My local independent bookshop owner kept pushing me to read We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Maybe if I was a woman and a mother I might appreciate all the minute details and female angst, but I'm kind of forcing myself to read ten pages at a time, once every other month, then break for something I actually enjoy. I don't know why I can't just abandon reading it.

KTC said:

I use Gatsby as a template for all novels. I thought it brilliant. It's so interesting...taste...isn't it.

Click to expand...

No. It's shite.

scarletpeaches said:

No. It's shite.

Click to expand...

Yeah...like your opinion matters to anybody alive!

At least I'm not Canadian, ya damn freak!

scarletpeaches said:

At least I'm not Canadian, ya damn freak!

Click to expand...

Because Scottish people aren't the freakiest trolls in existence. HA!

No, that's the Americans.

says the Scot.

Says the spaz.

checkmate.

My first glimpse of flaming on this board.

Maybe if I was a woman and a mother I might appreciate all the minute details and female angst (of We Need to Talk about Kevin), but I'm kind of forcing myself to read ten pages at a time, once every other month, then break for something I actually enjoy. I don't know why I can't just abandon reading it.

Click to expand...

Um as a mother I didn't feel I had anything in common with Eva. Once you get used to high flown language and get past the boring pre-Kevin's birth stuff you'll be hooked and unable to put it down

Flaming? Good god no. It's our way of showing affection.

Billingsgate . . .That's why I painfully, agonizingly forced myself to finish Stephen King's The Stand last month. Can't understand how so many people at AW gush over that novel and claim to have read it multiple times.

Click to expand...

I'm an on again/off again fan of Stephen King, so I see where you're coming from. He says of himself that he is the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries. His best books are very entertaining, but I doubt anyone looking for a stimulating literary read would consider them.

Since you like literary fiction, I'm interested to know if you've ever read Old Man (a short fiction) by Faulkner. Maybe the symbolism went right over my head, but that was one of the most boring stories I've ever read. Having made a deal with someone, I was forced to read it all the way through. Was it just me?

How do people feel about The Scarlet Letter? I read this book in one sitting and I absolutely fell in love with it.

Everyone else in my junior English class (high school) detested it. So far I don't think I've met anyone else who loves that book as much as I do.

Loved Pearl, hated the adults.

www.donaldmichaelplatt.com

absalom, absalom :faulkner
great expectations :dickens

put both down happily. f* dry classics where the narrator waxes in a lofty voice his characters wouldn't even understand. if you're writing about poor, simple folks write in poor, simple language. ...imo. (pet peeve, sorry)

Oh, I'm with ya on Great Expectations. Had to read it for school and haven't gone back to Dickens since. Just couldn't take it.

I read it in four days when the BBC Big Read programme was on. It was an edition that only cost me 99p!

For some reason I loved Great Expectations even when I first read it at age 13.

I freaking love Great Expectations. I've read it no fewer than 20 times. Hey Ginger...try Anne Rice's Feast of All Saints. It is, IMHO, today's Great Expectations. If you despise her vampire novels...have no fear...it is leaps and bounds beyond them. It's a brilliant novel and very very Great Expectationsish.

I finished Great Expectations only because I had to read it for school. I also had to read Hard Times and disliked it as well.

Then as a challenge to myself (since the rest of the world seemed to love Dickens) I read A Tale of Two Cities. It became one of my favorite classics, and I cried like a baby at the end.

The Da Vinci code, with all the hype i expected a cracking read....couldn't finish it....DIRE!

KTC did you see the Gwenth Paltrow all green Great Expectations?
You know I found the begining of the first Harry Potter book two cutsie the first couple of times I tried to read it but then I started reading the series to my son. We are only up to the third book.
I think The Chamber of Secrets was a much better book than The Philosopher's Stone. That was so amazing.

RLB said:

I finished Great Expectations only because I had to read it for school. I also had to read Hard Times and disliked it as well.

Then as a challenge to myself (since the rest of the world seemed to love Dickens) I read A Tale of Two Cities. It became one of my favorite classics, and I cried like a baby at the end.

Click to expand...

Yay! I thought I was the only one person who liked A Tale of Two Cities but hated Great Expectations. Most people seem to be the opposite.