=PROSE= I know its great literature but I SAY MEH!


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=PROSE= I know its great literature but I SAY MEH!

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9/7/2009 0:45:51

Falerin
Legendary Loremaster

We have a few discussions ongoing about popular fiction that is considered by many to be overated. This is not quite like that. However every one of us is an individual and many of us hold opinions counter to the masses.

What work do you HATE that almost every one else loves. Why? We are not talking simply popular literature here, where many people may dislike it for being overrated alone. I mean what work do you KNOW intellectually IS excellent literature but cannot bring yoursel to like anyway? Why?

Post #: 1

9/7/2009 4:03:56

alexmacf
Member

I know intellectually that The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a wonderful, ingenious work and all that jazz, but I don't like it. It's inaccessible to the casual reader due to its purple prose writing style and has actually sent me to sleep multiple times. I've yet to actually finish the thing.

I also HATE HATE HATE HATE The Old Man and the Sea. It's supposed to be awesome and a beautiful work and stuff, but honestly, I hate it. It's dead boring and I don't actually care all that much about the guy and this fish.

Post #: 2

9/7/2009 4:47:27

Fornever
Member

Jane Eyre. I know, I know, but I can't get into it. Downright strange to me.

Then, there's the second and third installments of the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker. The first one was good. Second and third... meh. Prior isn't really one of my favorite characters. I preferred Sassoon. Sassoon does have a moderately important role in second one, but I couldn't get past the first few chapters.
And in the third book... well, I was looking at each word individually. I tend to do that when I'm reading a boring book. I look at each word, understand what the word means, but I don't string them together to form phrases or sentences. Third chapter onwards, I think.

I think that's it.

Post #: 3

9/7/2009 6:14:52

Xirminator
Member

Well, I start to hate the books we read at school. We had to study John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman , Anthony Trollope's The Last Chronicle of Barset and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

Our teacher exalted them, complimented them, adored them, claimed the authors were true geniuses (and said the story didn't matter in great literature. We ended up skipping chapters here and there so we would see 'technique'. I started dismissing most of his opinions from that moment on.) Despite that, I tried to read them... but I never finished them. The French Lieutenant's Woman was mildly interesting but I had no interest in completing it. As for Trollope's, I barely got past the first forty pages. There were too many characters, most of which the author had introduced in previous books. I couldn't read it like that, not even for 'technique' (which was omniscient narrating, and therefore not what I was looking for.) I finished Of Mice and Men though, because that one is truly a wonderful book.

< Message edited by Xirminator -- 9/7/2009 6:18:11 >

Post #: 4

9/7/2009 6:52:54

Fleur Du Mal
Member

Well, with high hopes I grabbed the Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. He's won the Nobel Prize in Literature, so he has to be good, right? The book is on many classics-lists so there must be something worthwhile reading it. It was recommended by a classmate of mine at the time I read it. She gave a good presentation about it in our <insertMyNativeLanguageHere> class and told it had spiked her interest in reading again. That it had given her so much to think about. Totally new thoughts, even.

My reaction was the one in this thread title: MEH. I still can't percieve what is so original about it... There's the depressed guy and then we drag along with him to boring places which should be new and what-not, but no matter how I tried to search the depths of the book (it did have depth that I value), I found nothing new, nothing worthwhile the boredom it induced in me. I do realise the writing was good and concise, fitting with the theme. I do realise it portrayed the character's inner world well, in a non-obvious and inventive way (but original??). And still...

Another apparaised and also excellent book is Henryk Sienkiewcz's novel Quo Vadis. There's a lot of historical detail. An epic love story. Drama. Excitement. However, ever since I've read it, all I can think of that book is that it claims Nero gave the orders to burn Rome. This is not only unproven but infact /very unlikely/. And I blame the book for giving more roots to that silly historical leap of unproven bogus. I've met too many people believing that Nero did burn Rome is a /fact/.

I know the book is fiction, but it is acclaimed as a /historical/ book. The very extent of historical research Sienkiewcz did for that book shows, and that helps to turn such inaccurate presentations as Nero burning Rome to look like facts as well. And that is why, despite all the merits, all the good I've seen there is, I hate that book. Logically, I should understand that fiction is allowed to play out all sorts of theories, but I can't help thinking that this particular book should have a huge warning sticker on its cover that says the author has used his artistic liberties freely over history for the better of the plotline... =P

Post #: 5

9/7/2009 11:17:50

Poetic Melody
Member

Two words: Harry Potter. I've read the first two, and don't plan on reading the third in the near future, but I'm sure I will in my lifetime.

I started reading these books last year, expecting this amazing, suspenseful, magic, and wonderful book. I finished the first book, and I admit it, Rowling had me anxious to read, waiting for a huge POW! or plot twist or something, so I keep reading, and reading, and then it ends. I figured, okay something big 'oughta happen in the second. So I read, and read, and read, and then it's over again. Maybe I'm missing the exciting moments since I've seen the movies (up until the fifth) and know what will happen, maybe it's because I've heard everything that happens in the epilogue and don't have to find out about the relationships and things, but whatever it is, I can not find myself to like these super hyped books.

Post #: 6

9/7/2009 11:46:55

Helixi
Member

No authors like that spring to mind, but a poet does; Seamus Heaney. He is massively overrated, in my opinion.

Post #: 7

9/7/2009 13:31:44

The Extinguisher
Member

The Great Gatsby. It's just so... boring. There's no substance, and I would have been better off not reading it.

Post #: 8

9/7/2009 15:24:54

ringulreith
Member

The seventh Harry Potter book. I mean, I read the entire series, and I liked most, if not all of the first six books. But the seventh one... The writing is excelent, the description is fluant, I have nothing against the presentation. The plot, however... The ending was just horible, hands down. And Rowling left so much loose ends... I felt it could of have been better.

Another book is LoTR. The beginning was very boring, and I couldn't get through it. I'm giving it another shot, however. Maybe this time it'll seem more interesting.

Post #: 9

9/7/2009 15:25:22

Firefly
Lore-ian

I admit that I, as I was saying only minutes ago on IRC, don't understand why anyone can dislike Harry Potter if they approach it with the right mindset. It's definitely flawed, but it's extremely entertaining, well-plotted, and meaningful, which is more than I can say for many, many things... And you can't read a book for shock value like watching movies (well, you can, but those books are rare). Books are... more subtle. Though I can see why someone might be disappointed by HP if they walk in expecting perfection. Raise the bar too high for any book, and you won't enjoy it no matter how good it is.

Anyways, I should stop sounding like I'm paid to advertise Harry Potter, XD.

Let's see... I was hounded by nearly a horde of fanboys (and I don't mean this as a derrogative term, they're my friends, some of them from L&L) into reading Wizard's First Rule. My reaction? What it says on the title: Meh. Solid fantasy, nothing special, characters who cried way too much... Last 1/3 was pretty good, but still... I couldn't see what was so awesome about it. The hero godmodded so much that I started to think of it as... Eragon for adults.

*runs for the hills* I know I am going to get blasted by the fans of two blockbuster fantasy series now! To clarify, I don't hate Goodkind or Paolini. I think they're solid writers who have solid reasons of why they're selling. But they share some common flaws, and a godmodding protagonist is one of them.

PS: Of Mice and Men was a wonderful book.

AQ	Post #: 10

9/8/2009 16:04:49

r0de0b0y
Member

Crime and Punishment. War and Peace. ...Silence of the Lambs. Also, nearly everything by Tolkien or Hemmingway. My brain meats, saturated in fast-paced movies and games, can't process walls of text or simple actions.

Post #: 11

9/9/2009 8:47:42

Falerin
Legendary Loremaster

quote:

ORIGINAL: Flame Master Axel

The Great Gatsby. It's just so... boring. There's no substance, and I would have been better off not reading it.

Yes! I fully agree.... This is suppoused to be the classic American Novel. I had a lengthy discussion with an english professor once and we both ended up concluding that almost anything by Samuel Clemens was a better rival for that title the Fitzgerald's... Soap Opera. And beyond all of that Gatsby is mired in its own time. Unlike Clemen's works which have a timeless quality Gatsby is so fixed its almost a historical novel now, and it was never intended that way.

For my part, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and.... I know I risk lynching here, but I have said it before. The Lord of the Rings.... I will take Harry Potter any day over LoTR. In both Jordan and Tolkien's case they are guilty of having no awareness that sometimes less is more. There is no economy of worlds, little is left to the imagination, and lengthy details about trivial minutiae are so prevalent as to kill my enjoyment utterly.

And ont that just goes to show how variable opinions are. In my opinion the seventh harry potter is entirely elegant and it is the trans-formative bow for the entire series. I did not want the loose ends cleaned. Yet we agree on LoTR go figure.

< Message edited by Falerin -- 9/9/2009 8:50:57 >

Post #: 12

9/9/2009 21:35:48

Prator the Legendary
Member

Anything by Herman Melville, Scott F. Fitzgerald, Thomas Hardy, and especially AYN RAND*.

*Rand ruined humanism forever. I hate her writing style and her philosophy with the passion that only a dedicated collectivist can bring to bear. Whenever I read anything she's written, I like to fantasize about executing the protagonist (or the author) with a guillotine in front of a cheering crowd of french revolutionaries.

AQ	Post #: 13

9/10/2009 8:55:02

Fleur Du Mal
Member

I'd like to point out a little detail about The Lord of the Rings:

quote:

Original: J.R.R.Tolkien, Foreword to The Lord of the Rings

I desire to do this for my own satisfaction and I had little hope that other people would be interested in this work. Especially since it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of history for Elvish tongues.

To my knowledge, dislike towards LotR is fairly common. Three votes against it this thread. My friend --a bookworm-- has never gotten past chapter 1. My other friend is of an opinion that The Hobbit was far better literature. (My brother refuses to touch it because of the genre in general.)

I do get that it is occasionally dreary to read and that the characters talk in a manner that is totally unrealistic to modern interaction. Yet I personally find it very interesting that the book is mostly critised for its language and details (when asked why it was boring =P). Because in my honest opinion, writing a linguistic-inspired book of history and mythology related to florid Elven languages would probably fall a little short of its original purpose were it a contemporary and fast-paced fantasy-adventure book with little detail.

**
A passing thought: What is the definition of great literature, anyway? That the volume ends up to a reading list of some educational institute?

**
Speaking of the Russian classics mentioned in this thread, I devoured Crime and Punishment by Dostojevski but writhed in pain with War and Peace by Tolstoi. I have later discovered this was because poor little me isn't compatible with Tolstoi's style as I writhed in pain also when reading Anna Karenina. Otherwise, the huge walls of text one often finds in classics aren't a problem for me...unless it's Kafka...never force me to read Kafka*) again... =P

EDIT: *) Just to make sure...I might've made it sound like Kafka were Russian, which he was not. He just popped into my mind when I thought of huge walls of text , beacuse of his sentences that don't fit on one page...

< Message edited by fabula -- 9/10/2009 13:33:24 >

DF	Post #: 14

9/10/2009 20:59:21

alexmacf
Member

A passing thought: What is the definition of great literature, anyway? That the volume ends up to a reading list of some educational institute?
Yeah, pretty much.

Post #: 15

9/11/2009 5:13:18

Xirminator
Member

Personally, I think great literature is literature that can make me enjoy the story, love or hate the characters and see the world within the pages. Most of the stuff that ends up being taught at school fails to make me do that.

I think some schools do it wrong. They focus too much on technique and symbols that appear within the book (even though most symbols are unintentional) and which part of society do characters stand for and what they represent, not the characters themselves.

Post #: 16

9/11/2009 10:55:10

Prator the Legendary
Member

By my definition, Great literature is Progenitor literature.

Some authors' stories are so well-recieved that, for generations afterwards, they are copied or immitated or plagiarized on a regular basis. They are so well-known that their works and their names are common knowledge to anyone who speaks the same language the author wrote in. Quotations from their work can be found in all sorts of literary works that they had no hand in creating.

Some progenitor authors I know of include William Shakespeare, J.R.R. Tolkien, H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Allen Poe.

This is not to say that literature that isn't "great" can't be fun to read. On the contrary, I find that most of the most enjoyable literature is stuff that will probably be forgotten within a few years of its being published. Then again, that might just mean I have no sense of taste...

AQ	Post #: 17

9/11/2009 23:04:06

alexmacf
Member

^ In that case, I have no taste either. Most of my choice lit isn't actually all that deep, and it's certainly forgettable.

Post #: 18

9/12/2009 1:06:37

illusion99
Member

Silas Marner
I HATE HATE HATE it!
our teacher keeps on telling us one how damn good it is and blah blah blah but
it's just so so so so lifeless! T_T me and my classmates well probably alot of us barely made it to reading the first chapter.
my english teacher said that "what do you think about it? it's okay me me what if you think it's bad" Bah!
after she found out the we gave it bad reports she's like you what's wrong? do you not apreciate it? and blah blah she goes on about how damn good it is but it's soo boring! I really don't see why she likes it e___e
no offense people out there who like it

< Message edited by illusion99 -- 9/12/2009 1:07:35 >

Post #: 19

9/12/2009 6:59:55

Arthur The Brave One
Member

Oh good grief, this is perfect...
'The Pickup', Nadine Gordimer. Won, like others on this list, the Nobel prize for literature. So here I was, foolish me that I am, thinking: "hey, that's bound to be good stuff." Reckon my amazement when I actually read it: it was the biggest piece of crap I'd ever seen in my life! It was completely messy, as it was never clear whether someone was speaking, thinking or describing stuff, and there really wasn't any plot in it, as far as I read. Description also just got dumped between brackets on multiple occasions, something that I found very, very annoying, and much more of all this nonsense. The only book I've ever started and not finished, just because it was absolutely WORTHLESS. Beware.

And on the subject of literature itself, I just decided my English teacher is an idiot. Why? Because he went on a rant how Harry Potter isn't literature, how he can't believe that it got so popular, how it's not something an adult should read, and if they do, "that's saying something about those adults, then." etc, etc. Which, in my eyes, is /utterly/ ridiculous. Sure, it's meant for adolescent audiences, but that doesn't mean they aren't some of the best books written in the past few years. So there ya go, my 0.02$

Post #: 20

9/12/2009 11:55:16

Firefly
Lore-ian

quote:

I do get that it is occasionally dreary to read and that the characters talk in a manner that is totally unrealistic to modern interaction.

This particular reason is probably why I didn't love LotR. I did, however, get through all three books plus The Hobbit, so I don't really /dislike/ it. I respect Tolkien for paving the path for secondary world high fantasy. Maybe I'll reread the books with the right mindset and learn to enjoy them. As of now, though, I'm just... neutral about LotR.

AQ	Post #: 21

9/14/2009 13:39:07

Cain12
Member

quote:

*Rand ruined humanism forever. I hate her writing style and her philosophy with the passion that only a dedicated collectivist can bring to bear. Whenever I read anything she's written, I like to fantasize about executing the protagonist (or the author) with a guillotine in front of a cheering crowd of french revolutionaries.

No! But that's not what Ayn Rand is about! She is/was not a humanist! She was an objectivist. She actually created the theory of Objectivism. This is basically saying that capitalism is the right idea. She says that if you can make money, then that is your duty. Your duty is not to muddy your own ability by catering to those less talented. She says that humans should strive to be all that they can be! Every man has a place in the world.

While I agree that collectivism is perhaps the exact opposite of objectivism, I applaud your reading of Ayn Rand anyway. I find her writing to be excellent. I mean, while I found the Communist Manifesto to be a load of crap, I thought that Marx's prose was pretty good. I mean come on, who doesn't love WORKING MEN OF ALL NATIONS, UNITE!?

And, while it seems to be in direct contradiction to a few forum posters, I quite like The Great Gatsby. As well as Tolkien. He did so much for the Fantasy genre as well as crafting the perfect epic. (Although secretly, by the end of Return of the King, I am ready to be done.)

Anywho, I really hate any novel by Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice is not very good at all. I also hate A Separate Peace by John Knowles. And while I like Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, I can never understand what's so horrifying about it. I never thought it was that dark.

Post #: 22

9/14/2009 17:06:36

Anon Y. Mous
Creative!

I am going to make this theme reoccur again and say that I didn't like LotR. It was just a bit lifeless. Plus, I was in 5th grade when I read it, so that was magnified some...
Oddly enough, though, my friend read it at prolly around the same time and loved it. So I dunno.

DF	Post #: 23

9/14/2009 17:29:17

Eukara Vox
Legendary AdventureGuide!

I had to read a lot of books that were considered great literature in High School. One of which that was on the list was Doctor Zhivago by Boris Leonidovich Pasternak.

It is one of the few books that I struggled through. It was so difficult for me that I do not even remember any of the details. I have thought of rereading it, hoping to find what it was that I had so much trouble with.

AQW

Epic

Post #: 24

9/14/2009 18:18:59

Prator the Legendary
Member

quote:

No! But that's not what Ayn Rand is about! She is/was not a humanist! She was an objectivist. She actually created the theory of Objectivism. This is basically saying that capitalism is the right idea. She says that if you can make money, then that is your duty. Your duty is not to muddy your own ability by catering to those less talented. She says that humans should strive to be all that they can be! Every man has a place in the world.

While I agree that collectivism is perhaps the exact opposite of objectivism, I applaud your reading of Ayn Rand anyway. I find her writing to be excellent. I mean, while I found the Communist Manifesto to be a load of crap, I thought that Marx's prose was pretty good. I mean come on, who doesn't love WORKING MEN OF ALL NATIONS, UNITE!?

Duly noted. Ayn Rand ruined OBJECTIVISM forever. What I hate about her writing style is that she sets up all the collectivists, socialists, and anyone who is the least bit community-minded or altruistic in her books as strawmen to be set on fire. They're all either complete idiots (Jimmy Taggart) or secretly motivated by entirely selfish desires (Ellsworth Tooey); there is absolutely no one who is genuinely patriotic, altruistic, or compassionate about their fellow humans. I hope that if I ever write any literature in favor of collectivism, I will treat the opposition's point of view with a bit more respect. ("You are mistaken, and here's why" as opposed to "YOU'RE WRONG! (censored) YOU (censored)!")

As for Marx... I didn't understand the communist manifesto, myself. I got the impression while reading it that the target audience was supposed to be composed of people who already had a decent understanding of communist ideology, which I lacked then and still lack now.

quote:

... And while I like Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, I can never understand what's so horrifying about it. I never thought it was that dark.

Horrifying? Maybe not. Incredibly racist? Hell yes.

AQ	Post #: 25

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