Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I've had quite a few I don't like, often for various reasons that sometimes kill what should be a very good story.
b. Dune. Like all college students in my generation I read this. Just such an incredibly long, overly complex, over written book of nonsense. Dune isn't so much a SF story as the bible for a drug cult. I mean you'd have to be high on "spice" to think it made sense.
I am with you on the Dune hate. Being a sci-fi fan, I bought the first book since it is lauded as the "ultimate sci-fi masterpiece," the series every sci-fi reader has to read, blah, blah, blah. What a boring waste of time that thing is. I actually tried to read it a few times and couldn't get past page 75 or so. It had long and dull dialogue between this and that character that led to more long and dull dialogue between other characters. Perhaps I'm lowbrow (actually I know I am, since I like zombie apocalypse novels,) but I couldn't care less what happened to House Atreides, the Harkonnens, the giant sand worms, and the legendary spice
Good Topic! As my reading has increased in my later years, two "classics" that stick out.
2) The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald. This would have been better if I read it in 1935 when it was first published and considered shocking, but in modern times, there isn't much too it. I just didn't get it and I didn't see what was so Great about the Gatsby. I think I need to write a paper for my English Teacher on it, I probably have one that's overdue anyway .
I was also disappointed in that one. The writing was very long winded and the characters were quite despicable to me. The book could have easily been half the size. I read blah, blah, blah, lol.
Wow, reading tastes are so subjective. I read The Great Gatsby when I was an older teen and loved it. Reread it a few years ago and still loved it.
Here's just one example of what I think is beautiful writing style:
Quote:
“I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Oh, and this one - I love this:
Quote:
“His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
I thought the movie with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow was a good rendition of the book and very well cast.
Don't count him out based on one of his later books. His early books were fantastic, and he could write good endings to them. That changed with It. I thought that book was really good until I felt there was a perfect place to wrap it up, but he went another three or four hundred pages and ended with the most ridiculous thing. (I won't say what, but it was really dumb).
The Stand, however, is so good it would be on my list of books I must have if I was stranded on a desert island or something. The Shining was really good too, as was Firestarter, The Dead Zone, Christine, Pet Semetary, etc. All very good books, but horrible movies. Don't judge King by his movies because you only get a quarter of the story in the movies, and the best parts are hard to portray without getting too cheesy.
Last edited by katygirl68; 04-02-2017 at 09:57 PM..
I also read it for a book club and utterly despised it. Most of the book club didn't care for it, either. I really don't understand all the love for that book.
I have found that what is most helpful, on amazon and goodreads, is to look at the one and two star reviews. If I can get a sense of why people who didn't like the book didn't like it, I feel like I have a better sense of whether it will be worthwhile.
I only read reviews after I read the book. I don't want other people's criticism in my head the whole time. Taste is subjective, and what one person loves another will hate. Sometimes I will read reviews after I read the book, and find that annoys me too because people will be ultra critical.
I only read reviews after I read the book. I don't want other people's criticism in my head the whole time. Taste is subjective, and what one person loves another will hate. Sometimes I will read reviews after I read the book, and find that annoys me too because people will be ultra critical.
I find it depends. Lots of people aren't critical enough. And some people who are self-admitted non-readers will give effusive praise for some books - those make me skeptical.
I'm usually better off going in with low expectations, and then being pleasantly surprised. If I have high expectations, more often than not, I'm disappointed.
I was super disappointed with "A Man Called Ove"...I couldn't get through it.
I haven't read it, but a friend in my book club read it for her other book club, and she loved it. She recommended that we read "Britt-Marie Was Here" by the same author. It didn't do a thing for me. For what it's worth, she admitted that the other members of her other book club didn't like Ove either.
I haven't read it, but a friend in my book club read it for her other book club, and she loved it. She recommended that we read "Britt-Marie Was Here" by the same author. It didn't do a thing for me. For what it's worth, she admitted that the other members of her other book club didn't like Ove either.
That seems like a, well, not so nice thing to do -- recommend reading a book that everyone in the other book club hated. Most of my neighborhood book club didn't like Ove, either. I thought it was terrible.
That seems like a, well, not so nice thing to do -- recommend reading a book that everyone in the other book club hated. Most of my neighborhood book club didn't like Ove, either. I thought it was terrible.
I think she honestly loved it so much that she didn't understand why the other members didn't like it. She was hoping we would be different.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
.
