Shit Books

50 Shades of Grey.

I've had it sitting on my desk for months now. I take it with work to me just to ignore it. It has a bookmark in it. And Post-It notes stuck all over it.

I can't even bring myself to read it just so I can make fun of it on this forum. It's so very awful.

And yet... all that $$$ was made and all those panties soaked.

I just don't get it.

 

This may qualify as an "easy answer" but it is the only book out of the series I have read - the fourth book in the Twilight series. My biggest problem was the "happily ever after ending", it would have been much better with just a dose at least of the "kill everybody" mentality that was used in the last Harry Potter book.

 

The only book that I've put down in years was Last of the Mohicans. The prose was so obtuse that I couldn't figure out what was happening. On top of that, very little seemed to be occurring. I've had less trouble reading Shakespeare and Dante, for crying out loud.

 

You know, I absolutely hate to put a book down once I've started to read it. I could only stand about 50 pages of this literary catastrophe.

I read a great review from a young woman on Goodreads. She said, after reading the whole thing, that she wished she had a time machine so she could go back in time and shoot Cooper before he ever wrote this crap.

 

I remember trying to read LOTM many years ago, but I just couldn't get into it, always figured that I was too young. In retrospect that might or might not be correct, my reading level was well above my age and I sometimes tried to read books that just didn't do it for me.

Jack London's Call Of The Wild was another 'classic' that I could never get into, despite several attempts. I don't know if it's a good book, I haven't attempted to read it in many years.

I can say that The Sea-Wolf was a shit book.

 

ok dont hate me here.

i know this is a an American classic but ive put down catcher in the rye about twice now and im up to the point where hes at home and calls the english teacher... Now i know i have no right to critique a book until ive finished it but the lead character Holden Caulfield really annoys me, i just don't like him and i cannot relate to him in any way, i can relate to the whole teenage angst and rebellion and thinking your smarter than anyone else. But him, as a person, i just.don't like.him

 

I've often thought that good literature requires (a) a good story that is (b) well told. Some works of classic literature meet one but not always both.

On top of that, the reading experience is intensely personal. An emotional connection must be made, or it just won't work for the reader

 

There's no rule that says everyone has to consider as a "classic" to be a good read.

I read The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner. IMO it reads as though it was written by several different people suffering from bipolar disorder while shooting-up crystal meth while drinking copious amounts of Everclear.

EDIT--Hmmm, I have CITR on my want-to-read-someday list.

Sometimes you just don't identify with the character(s).

I didn't like Portnoy's Complaint by Phillip Roth. I failed to see the humor (if there was any) and wanted to tell Portnoy(Roth), "Oh boo fuck you hoo hoo."

 

all i kept thinking was this has got nothing on Let the right one in by John Ajvide Lindqvist

 

The latest older book I forced myself to slog through was Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet.
After finishing it I was satisfied with the overall story, but getting through the middle part where the author visited America was just slow.

Speaking of The Last of the Mohicans. I tried reading that online from the Project Gutenberg website, and like you guys said, getting through it was torture.
I went into it thinking it would be like the Westerns I like to read, but it was a whole different animal.
Needless to say, I didn't finish.
Didn't finish Dracula either. Too bored with it.

I made it through A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but decided I would skip other Mark Twain works.

I have an idea that maybe because our entertainment values and expectations are so geared towards movies and tv's these days, that books, especially from two centuries ago just seem dull and boring.

Some of them have made me feel stupid and ignorant, as well, so that doesn't help.

 

I do recommend that you read Twain's Roughing It and Innocents Abroad.
They are travel writing at its finest, funny, smart and a perfect picture of the time.
You really understand why he got the reputation for being such a great humorist.

 

Dracula is a great example of a good story, poorly told, IMO. It's a great idea, but Stoker's writing was pretty bad as I recall.

 

Admittedly, I'm feeling relieved to see I'm not alone amongst folks here in my contempt for Catcher in the Rye.

Another potentially unpopular opinion—I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho for book club a few years back and couldn't fucking stand it.

Storytime: as a kid I somehow managed to sit through watching The Clan of the Cave Bear with my parents. Not long afterward I stumbled across my mom's copies of the written trilogy by Jean M. Auel. I didn't bother reading the first book, having seen the movie, but stumbled across the sex scenes in the second, The Valley of the Horses. I secretly squirreled the book away for late night enjoyment of those few passages, but the rest of the book was horribly written, IMO.

In high school, my girlfriend bought a cheap paperback romance novel—Fabio wasn't on the cover, but he might as well should have been—and dared me to read all the way through it. After I finished it, we burned it together in my fireplace. It's probably the one and only book I'll ever (justifiably) burn in my life, it was that bad.

 

I posted this another thread, so I'll give the condensed version.

The Holden Caufield character s a spoiled rich kid. I couldn't identify with him a few years ago, and certainly would have disliked him immensely when i was in high school. I don't see Catcher In The Rye being relevant today. Except maybe by kids who can afford to get expelled from numerous private schools.