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Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
17,330 posts, read 33,018,915 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jess5
I have quite a few, but don't remember them all right now. The book I always think of when I hear this question is "The Pilot's Wife." The only reason I finished it was because I wanted to know if something was resolved at the end. The ending, along with the whole book was stupid. Talk about being able to predict a book from the beginning, this is it. It was so bad I can't even bring myself to look at another book Barbara Delinskey has written.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CA4Now
Anita Shreve wrote The Pilot's Wife.
Akin to what I was saying about one person's trash is another person's treasure, our tastes also change -- dramatically -- over time. I read The Pilot's Wife when it first came out -- in 1998 -- because I liked Anita Shreve's stories. That was 16 years ago. Now, the synopsis of the plot would have my eyes rolling and my nerves twitching with revolt. I haven't read an Anita Shreve book in more than a decade. But back then? This book worked for me.
When I joined the ranks of tablet owners I thought, "Maybe I've never been much of a reader, in part, because I've not litle to lug around those cumbersome volumes..." My wife reads with every free moment she can get. So, I resolved myself to turn over a new leaf (figuratively and literally) and read a novel. But what to read? A classic, something that has survived the test of time and since they'd be in the public domain, attractively priced. Since I was familiar with some famous sentences from Thomas Hardy novels, I decided on "Tess of the d'Urbervilles." Once I got into the speech of the era, it moved along okay and I rather enjoyed some of the scenes he paints...but the story - kill me now. -SPOILER ALERT- Good Lord Tess coould you make up your mind? 300 pages of "I love him, I hate him, I love him, I hate him." then in 25 pages Oh, poor me, guess I'll give up on him, what he's back - kill my husband, run away, oh, they killed Tess....What the heck happened there? I'm guessing whoever was paying him said, "we'll buy another 25 pages, but you gotta wrap this snoozer up."
So, now that you know my said encounter with literature, feel free to message me with your suggestions that will save me from a life of television.
Oops. My apologies to Barbara Delinskey. She must have written one where I couldn't stand either. I don't look at any books by her or Anita Shreve. They write the type of books where I'm always thinking "How did they get these published?".
I really enjoy literature and a very long time ago I tried to be a writer. It didn't work out. It always surprises me since then (about 2000), how many bad books there are. What books do you think are terrible?
I thought the first Sookie Stackhouse novel was just terrible.
The Last Juror. I couldn't even finish it. The Sun Also Rises.
Haha...I hated The Sun Also Rises in school. Now I like Hemingway, and I'm currently reading A Farewell to Arms and I like it. But I still hate the characters in The Sun Also Rises. Just super unlikeable. Actually, a lot of Hemingway's characters aren't great people.
I always thought Water for Elephants was extremely overrated. I liked the circus aspect and the research that went into it, but the main character was really boring and I hated that the villain was only villainous because he was mentally ill. HATED that. Plus, the writing style was blah.
Shutter Island, mostly because of the deceptive way the book was presented. I read the book thinking I was picking up a mystery/detective novel when it is nothing of the sort. Part way through the book I started figuring it out and was actually ticked off. I had no interested in reading a book about mental illness and it should have been advertised as such.
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. It's required reading in many Canadian high schools and has been for decades... and I have no clue why. It's abysmal. There are so many other novels that would be better on a school curriculum. Sigh.
Shutter Island, mostly because of the deceptive way the book was presented. I read the book thinking I was picking up a mystery/detective novel when it is nothing of the sort. Part way through the book I started figuring it out and was actually ticked off. I had no interested in reading a book about mental illness and it should have been advertised as such.
Yes!
I actually consider myself a Dennis LeHane fan. I've loved most of his other books. But I thought Shutter Island was horrible. There is a twist about halfway through the book (you know the one I mean) that makes no sense whatsoever. The whole book is attempting to be the literary equivalent of a slight of hand trick, and it just doesn't work.
Maybe every great author has to write at least one dud. Shutter Island is definitely a dud from an otherwise great writer.
Location: The High Desert of the American Southwest
214 posts, read 230,659 times
Reputation: 364
Quote:
Originally Posted by NWGirl74
"Catcher in the Rye"-which I read a few years ago for the first time, and so far, "Great Expectations" just about puts me to sleep every time I try to read some of it. (Hmm...a cure for my insomnia?). I've been reading "The Secret Agent" buy Joseph Conrad for about 5 years. I apparently don't appreciate the Classics!
I absolutely hated "The Mermaid Chair" by Sue Monk Kidd (yet loved "The Secret Lives of Bees").
Really!?
Man, "Catcher" is my all-time favorite book. I first read it in high school about 20 years ago and have probably re-read it 10 times since. To each their own, I guess.
As far as so-called "classics" that bored me to tears: first and foremost I always mention Gabriel Garcia-Marquez' "One-Hundred Years of Solitude" which I thought to be nonsensical, self-indulgent crapola.
Also: "The Recognitions" by William Gaddis; I had to read it in college and it almost killed me with boredom.
Anything by Dickens is a chore.
I have always found Hemingway to be absurdly over-rated. Always seemed to me like high school level prose.
"The Great Gatsby" may have been profound back in the day as a commentary on society but is now badly dated.
"Moby Dick" is simply terrible. Life's too short to wade through all that obscure allegory, man.
"Finnegan's Wake." Probably the most over-rated piece of literature ever known to man. Some so-called literary experts claim there is deep and profound meaning in all that gibberish language, but in reality Joyce wrote it as a joke, after making a bet with his brother that, since he was such a critically-acclaimed, renowned author, he could write 600 pages of psychotic babble, while drunk, and they would still wet themselves.
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