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20,000 leagues under the sea by jules verne was, to, me, the most boring book on the face of the planet. i tried very hard to finish it but gave up the fight about 3/4 of the way through. life is too short, lol.
Thanks for the warning. I thought about buying one of Jules Verne's books some weeks ago. Now I'm glad I didn't.
Ugh. The worst book ever is The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It stars off ok, but each page gets worse and worse. I didn't want to finish it, but my curiosity got the best of me! Awful Awful Awful.
The Catcher in the Rye was bad too; I just don't get it.
Oh, and Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein and 1984 by George Orwell.
Oh, and Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein and 1984 by George Orwell.
My husband is rereading 1984 right now and finding it very timely. I looked over the first 2 chapters (I didn't love this book when I was 17) and am eagerly awaiting my chance to reread it when he is done.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Mitch Album. I can't make myself read Tuesday's with Morrie after subjecting myself to the bubblegum The Five People you Meet in Heaven. Am I the only person who thought The Five People was just trash?
I think schools make a mistake in assigning "literature" to us to read. Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby" was assigned...and was a dreadful bore. I think it's better for students to develop a love of reading, no matter WHO the author is!
Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Anne Rice, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, David Baldacci, James Lee Burke, Michael Connolly, Stephen Hunter, Warren Sapir, Fred Saberhagen, Orson Scott Card, Edgar Rice Burroughs...no matter WHO you like reading, let you read it.
Even if the girls only want to read Barbara Cartland...what does it matter? Even if the guys only want to read Ian Fleming, or his successor...or John Saul.
Let them develop an enjoyment of reading.
It matters because you are studying the elements of literature, not reading for pleasure. If you were to take a film class, you would watch Citizen Kane and analyzing Mise-en-scene, camera movement, auteurism. You wouldn't watch Pretty Woman.
You should read for pleasure on your own time. I know many English teachers read Danielle Steele and Dean Koontz at home, but they're still reading quality literature in their post-grad classes. High school students need to learn elements of lit. to have a foundation for college. This is the point. Students who do not plan to go on to college learn advanced reading, writing, and logical thinking skills through their discussion, writing of, and analyzing of literature. Also, many students, of all levels, enjoy reading Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and Homer. We do read modern classics, like books by young adult writer, Walter Dean Myers and popular The Secret Life of Bees. There's a difference between popular fiction and literary fiction, but not all literary fiction has to be as dull to kids as, for example, Ethan Frome, and that is where I agree with you!
Wouldn't all writers choose from the same list of "ingredients" or, as you put it, elements in their writing? You're talking about things like metaphor, allegory, foreshadowing...allusion, character development, plot, et cetera?
Speaking of literary devices, can anyone remember the term for the literary device where a person writes a fictionalized account of someone's life--how can I put this?
The movie Citizen Kane was about William Randolph Hearst. Yet the writer never once used Hearst's name in the movie, so you would have to know something about Hearst to realize that--unless, of course, you were told that it was actually about Hearst.
There's a literary term for that. But I've seen this used numerous times in fiction--the character written about is given a fictional name, but you can see it's about a real person.
The absolute pits of the world bookwise for me was anything by Ayn Rand. She just could not write or think and being forced to slog through that nonsense should be banned by both the eighth amendment and the Geneva Convention.
After that, I hate Proust. Not because Proust is a bad writer, but because he bores the crap out of me.
I also think that Catcher in the Rye and just about anything by Philip Roth are completely overrated.
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