Books You Cannot Stand

Discussion in 'Art & Culture' started by Prince_James, Nov 24, 2006.

  1. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

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    Let's discuss books we loathe.

    The following I cannot stand (or sit):

    "Heart of Darkness"
    "The Great Gatsby"
    "A Farewell to Arms"
    "Fight Club"
    "Catcher in the Rye"

    I also found "A Brave New World" to be one of the most disappointing books I have ever read.
     
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  3. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    I've read Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby, I totally agree.
     
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  5. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

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    SamCDKey:

    We share an odd similarity in literary tastes! Quite interesting, I must say.
     
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  7. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

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    I tried and failed to read "Heart of Darkness".
    Catcher in the Rye wasn't great, but I didn't mind it.

    Books I loathe:
    Wuthering Heights was excruciating. Excellent writing, but a deplorable and depressing plot, and I hated all the characters.
    I tried reading some Neitsche (might have been Thus spake Zarathustra?), and found it disturbing, and not in a good way.
    Jessica, Solomon's Song (Bryce Courtenay). These made me angry

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    . Solomon's Song was brilliant in one section, but hastily slapped together for the rest, with a very poorly resolved plot for what was a potentially wonderful trilogy. I think he set himself a deadline that couldn't be met.
    Jessica is an interesting case - I think the I loathe it more because of me than because of the book. I found it offensive, almost pornographic in its gratuitous depictions of violence.

    Hmmm...
    There's a few children's books I loathe as well, but nothing terribly memorable. Mr Brown can Moo, can you? is the only one of any popularity that I recall.
     
  8. Xerxes asdfghjkl Valued Senior Member

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    Pretty much any book dealing with Java. I would not use the unholy pages to roast even marshmallows.
     
  9. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

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    Xerxes:

    The country or the code?

    Pete:

    I don't know how I managed to slog through "Heart of Darkness". I could not stand "A Farewell to Arms" enough to finish, though.
     
  10. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

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    Don't get me started on textbooks!
    Publishers keep sending me texts to evaluate for courses. I'm using them to build an extension to my office.
    Finding a decent textbook for most courses in damn near impossible - I think next year I'll base it on Wikipedia articles, and give students assignments to identify and clean up suspect entries.
     
  11. sargentlard Save the whales motherfucker Valued Senior Member

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    Catcher in the rye: absolute whino, emo, bullshit.

    Old man and the sea: Annoying...boring and annoying. Copious amount of useless details.

    Heart of Darkness: way too hard to read.
     
  12. yuri_sakazaki iLikeMyWomenLikeMyBaldMen ;Bald Registered Senior Member

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    88
    The only books I've ever loathed were school assignments, pretty much. Coyotes, by I don't even remember who, was a very interesting idea but HORRIBLY written. House on Mango Street, again forgot the author (I don't keep track of authors I hate), was unbearable. Except I actually had to finish that one because we read it DURING class.

    I really liked Catcher in the Rye, but I actually haven't read ANY of the others anyone else mentioned because I'm an uncultured cur. Pete: Have you read The Power of One? I'm curious what you thought of it, because it was by Bryce Courtenay and it's one of my favorite books.
     
  13. Xerxes asdfghjkl Valued Senior Member

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    To really appreciate The Old Man and the Sea, you have to listen to the Charleton Heston recording ...


    Prince_James,
    The code.
     
  14. baumgarten fuck the man Registered Senior Member

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    1,611
    Huckleberry Finn
    Watership Down
    The Great Gatsby
    A Tale of Two Cities
    The Scarlet Letter
    Anthem (as well as, I suspect, anything by Ayn Rand)

    There are probably others that I have blocked out of my memories.
     
  15. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    10,167
    Some books I couldn't stand when I had to read them, but I can see their value now. The Old Man and the Sea is one. A few Steinbeck novels as well. Maybe some Ivan Southall as well.
     
  16. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

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    10,167
    Yes, I think that's what made me so angry - Mr Courtenay is a brilliant writer, but the two books I mentioned were horrible (to me, at least).

    I have almost all his books, and love most of them.
    My favourites would be:
    The Power of One
    Four Fires
    Smoky Joe's Cafe
    Matthew Flinders' Cat, and
    The Potato Factory and Thommo and Hawk. These are the first two in the Solomon trilogy, and were excellent.
    April Fool's Day is also worth reading, if for no other reason than to deep insight into Bryce Courtenay's background.
     
  17. Redefine91 I piss excellence Registered Senior Member

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    The Catcher in the rye was pointless and an all around terrible book.

    Our town is the worst play I have read.

    And the Da Vinci Code sucked too.
     
  18. It's a damn good job you're supposedly Royalty old man - apparently you have no soul. Brave New World is hysterically funny, Catcher In The Rye funnier. Heart of Darkness had me rolling around for months afterwards and The Great Gatsby - have you no sense of irony?

    Can't say I've ever bothered with either the other two, but are you absolutely positive you've actually read any of the others?
     
  19. sargentlard Save the whales motherfucker Valued Senior Member

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    6,698

    Or rip page by page and watch it burn away in a fire.
     
  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    (Insert Title Here)

    I admit I can't cope with Hemingway; two books already mentioned are on my list (Old Man and Farewell). But in general, I don't go near books I don't think I'll like. For instance, I won't touch those LaHaye novels about God. In fact, I have a weird thing about "Christian" pop fiction, anyway. I read the plot summary once for Dead Air, by Bob Larson (my curiosity was piqued by the fact that dishonest, hatemongering Christian preachers pique my curiosity) and decided it wasn't worth the time. Something about the way the jacket summary pitched the idea that only faith in God allowed the protagonist to solve the mystery made the book unpalatable.

    William Shatner's Tek novels also turned me off: you can't judge a book by it's cover, but the first page of one or another of those tales grated on my nerves because it seemed as if the word "was" infested every damn sentence. I couldn't fathom dragging myself through the story.

    Of late the issue I have comes with writers I respect. Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown and Abby Frucht's Polly's Ghost both failed to grab my interest. Especially in Frucht's case, this is puzzling. I figure the issue is with me; I have great respect for both their writing, but I couldn't focus on the narrative approach taken in either volume. The flip side of that, though, would be Anita Shreve. I was enamored with her novel Eden Close, and haven't been able to tolerate anything of hers I've encountered since.

    But, rather than simply avoiding titles and author's I don't expect to hold in a certain esteem--few can live up to expectations set by an adoration of writers like Clive Barker, Ray Bradbury, Steven Brust, and Jack Cady--I simply try to avoid things I expect to dislike. Deviation from this approach can be agonizing.

    I recently forced myself through Margaret Truman's Murder in the CIA on the grounds that as critical as I am of spy mysteries and such, I read so few of them that I may be missing something important. Besides, a bestselling novel by the daughter of a U.S. president? Something about the prestige of expectations was tempting. And, since the book was given to me by a neighbor clearing his library before moving, the only thing I stood to lose was a few hours. And lost they were.

    I would call the novel a "chick story", but it would be unfair to suggest that only women read this kind of trash. There was, indeed, a strong appeal to a certain feminine archetype, and the story is only a couple degrees above the tepid notion of a romance novel. But even the cliches were thin and clumsy. In the end, this bestseller is a testament to the poor taste of the American mass market. I can't believe people tolerate this degree of bad writing; it is a blatant violation of the tacit contract between storyteller and audience (lend me your eyes, mind, and time, and I will tell you a good story).

    I try not to loathe any particular book. Which is why there are some books I simply won't take a chance on. Murder in the CIA should never have been published, and further suggests that the entire genre would best serve humanity from the rubbish tip.
     
  21. Alva Urbanus et instructus Registered Senior Member

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    Anything by L. Ron Hubbard
     
  22. infoterror Registered Senior Member

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    I think you should re-read those with a qualified instructor. On the others, I agree!

    Books I cannot stand:

    Anything by Barbara Kingsolver.
    Anything by Ayn Rand.
    Anything by Bertrand Russell that's not about math.
    Anything by John Barth.
    Anything by Phillip Roth.
    Anything by Kurt Vonnegut.
     
  23. Lord Hillyer Banned Banned

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    1,777
    Fat novels by women with three names.
     

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