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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.
c. Faulkner (and for that matter most of the various "required reading" books from high school andcollege lit classes. Why oh why do so many teachers and professors love these horridly writtengarbage? If I wrote for my teacher the same way Faulkner wrote, I'd fail the class. But Faulkner is must reading?
d. Another series that has worn out for me is the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. The first books were really great. Tightly written, solid characters. But as the series has gone on, the books have gotten more and more pages in them, but the added pages don't say anything useful to the story. The last book I purchased, I only read two chapters and put it down; I knew if I forced myself to read the whole thing it would just ruin the previous decade worth of reading.
I can understand not liking Faulkner but "horridly written garbage"? Have you ever actually even read any Faulkner? Light in August? As I Lay Dying? Absalom, Absalom!? The Sound and the Fury? Etc.
OK I have to admit that I LOVED 11/22/63. I couldn't put it down.
I also really liked The Shining, as well as The Stand. Oh, and Hearts in Atlantis. But I agree that many of SK's books can be repetitive or just too weird and sort of silly for my taste.
But 11/22//63 - wow, I was glued to that book from start to finish.
"Two if by Sea" by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Saw it on the Best Book list in People magazine a few years ago. It's about a man who wife and children perish in the Indonesia tsunami and he find a young boy who is about to die and saves him. The boy appears to have some specialness about him.
Sounded good, however after page 40 I was forcing myself to continue reading it. I gave up at page 194, about half way through. Life is too short to have to read a boring book.
"Two if by Sea" by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Saw it on the Best Book list in People magazine a few years ago. It's about a man who wife and children perish in the Indonesia tsunami and he find a young boy who is about to die and saves him. The boy appears to have some specialness about him.
Sounded good, however after page 40 I was forcing myself to continue reading it. I gave up at page 194, about half way through. Life is too short to have to read a boring book.
Was this a novel or a memoir? I read a memoir called Wave by a woman whose children, husband, and parents were all killed by the tsunami while the woman and her family were visiting her parents and extended family. It was almost unbearably sad.
Im not referring to just bad books, but rather books you expected to be good that turned out to be disappointingly bad.
My list would include
Utopia, by Thomas More.
Suffers from 2 issues. First,extremely boring and dry writing. It is basically a dry third person description of life in an imaginary perfect society. They will do this,they will do that. No real characters or story. Second, some of the ideas are simply horrible. People are punished for traveling outside of their living area without permission, up to and including execution if I remember correctly. And not attending lectures by the authorities on how to improve and be a better citizen is grounds for suspicion and punishment. Yet it is regarded as a very influential book and gets high marks from many reviewers. I dont get it. Admittedly I found the book as so bad both in style and content that I gave up part way through, but unless the part I read was some sort of satire and the book completely changed in the parts I quit on, this book being highly regarded baffles me.
Second , The Deerslayer by James Cooper
Even more disappointing than Utopia. While I really didnt know what to expect from Utopia , I truly expected Coopers books to be great stories of life among frontiersmen and Indians in early America. But I have tried twice to get through this one and then on to the others of the series, but it simply gets so boring its unbelievable. And thats a shame, because the plot and characters should make for a great story . Coopers insistence on having Deerslayer talk in his ridiculous accept gets old, especially when he deliberately misspells words that dont change the pronunciation to try and depict a country accent. Envy becomes "invy", as if that matters any. And the girls just drone on and on. I cant for the life of me grasp why Cooper is regarded as a great writer, and its such a disappointment to me because again, these could be such great stories if written better. And yet there are book societies dedicated wholly to discussing Coopers books. It baffles me.
Good Topic! As my reading has increased in my later years, two "classics" that stick out.
1) The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway: This was his first novel and talks about the so-called "lost society" (which I think others, not Hemingway has labeled it). Anyway, it is about bored Americans with too much money living in Europe just after WWI. Their fighting among each other and the dialog just goes on chapter after chapter. I have to ask if people reading this book when it first came out, really enjoyed that. But, I do see why Hemingway is considered one of the greatest (this was my first Hemingway also). His description of traveling from Paris to Spain by bus was very vivid regarding the scenery, etc. And, so was how described the bullfights. I see the value of his travels now, and why it is so important. So, i can't say he's a bad writer, but my disappointment is in the babbling and dialog and the fact it went on so long and it wasn't what I expected.
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 .
Was this a novel or a memoir? I read a memoir called Wave by a woman whose children, husband, and parents were all killed by the tsunami while the woman and her family were visiting her parents and extended family. It was almost unbearably sad.
No it was fiction - although I think the writer borrowed from some of the true stories she read about. The boy he saved had some special powers or something. I just couldn't finish it so my book mark is halfway through. I'm going to donate it to the library.
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