Amazon reviewers think this masterpiece sucks

[nmoira]

Amazon reviewers think this masterpiece sucks.

 

I'm more amused than shocked, especially by the Charlotte's Web review. What "classics" do you hate/intensely dislike? D.H. Lawrence puts me to sleep, "a real snooze," and I have a visceral reaction to Hemingway, who also "makes my eyes bleed." I posted this link on Facebook yesterday, but thought it might be of some interest here too.

[Dinsfamily]

I'm suprised that anyone would dislike Charlotte's Web. And Anne Frank? Really? However, I was reading some really negative reviews on Amazon about The Boxcar Children the other day and was suprised about that too.

 

I LOVE to read classics, but there are a few that I can't get through. Moby Dick for one. I've tried. I have a beautiful leather-bound copy on my shelf. I will try again, but no promises that I'll even get to the middle of the book this time. I also have trouble with some Dickens. Boring!! Now, A Tale of Two Cities is one of my all-time favorites so why can't I get into his other books?

[MissKNG]

I intensely dislike Pinocchio!!! I started reading that aloud to my big girl and it's a terrible book with terrible content!! She was freaked out by the "ghost cricket" and the cat and fox were called "assassins" and I changed that word to "bad guys". But I stopped reading it to her, and just in time because Pinocchio was about to reach a house where everyone inside was dead!

 

I don't care what age my kids are! That book is TERRIBLE!!! I threw it out in the garbage....I didn't even have the conscience to pass it onto someone else - that is how offensive I thought it was.

 

BUT LESSON LEARNED: PRE-READ ALL BOOKS!!!

 

ETA: I never read it nor saw the Disney movie.

Edited April 3, 2010 by MissKNG

[2cents]

I'm suprised that anyone would dislike Charlotte's Web. And Anne Frank? Really? However, I was reading some really negative reviews on Amazon about The Boxcar Children the other day and was suprised about that too.

 

I LOVE to read classics, but there are a few that I can't get through. Moby Dick for one. I've tried. I have a beautiful leather-bound copy on my shelf. I will try again, but no promises that I'll even get to the middle of the book this time. I also have trouble with some Dickens. Boring!! Now, A Tale of Two Cities is one of my all-time favorites so why can't I get into his other books?

 

I'm right there with you on Moby Dick. I read this aloud with my son many years ago. It was with this book that I found my hidden ability to read while half asleep. Several times my son would tell me I would be reading and then start babbling and spewing nonsense. I was sleep reading. Somehow we got through it but not very well.

[Dmmetler]

You gotta love the guy who thought that the disciples should have hired a ghostwriter ;) Talk about missing the forest for the trees!

[TravelingChris]

I really like the Grapes of Wrath. My girls heard the audio version last year on a long car ride. I like John Steinbeck's books in general. That said, I don't like all classics. I don't like Hemingway's Old MAn and the Sea. I never read Moby Dick. I did like the movie a lot. I also liked the novella Billy Budd.

[Kirch]

I particularly liked his last paragraph, and the Charlotte's Web review made me laugh too.

 

I'm with you on Hemingway. Even in high school, I just wanted to shout, "WILL YOU PLEASE USE A COMPLEX SENTENCE!!! Or even a subordinate clause!" Reading Hemingway makes me feel like I'm reading transcriptions of telegrams. FULL STOP.

[Perry]

Moby Dick

 

Lord of the Flies

 

Catcher in the Rye

 

:thumbdown:

[shinyhappypeople]

Faulkner. Blech. His writing is pretentious and nearly unintelligible. Why is he so famous? If you can make sense of the pages of rambling that he tries to pass off as a novel, you can make sense of *anything* and I salute you.

[justamouse]

Moby Dick is hell on earth.

 

Now, I loved Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies. *g* One person's classic is another's idea of torture.

 

And I love Hemmingway. The cadence of those simple sentences ..*swoon*.

 

I'm with you on Faulkner, though.

[joannqn]

Ok, I'll confess. My kids and I tried to read Little House in the Big Woods and just couldn't finish. I can't figure out why anyone over, maybe 6, would like this book. There's no plot!

[Just Robyn]

Moby Dick

 

Lord of the Flies

 

Catcher in the Rye

 

:thumbdown:

 

Oh no! I love Catcher in the Rye! I couldn't make myself finish The Great Gatsby. I picked it up at a garage sale in high school and really tried to finish it despite how much it bored me, but I just couldn't do it. Maybe I would like it now. I don't remember anything about it except that I hated it.

[FairProspects]

I actually agree with the reviewer on Grapes of Wrath. I couldn't stand it. I also really disliked anything by Hemmingway and Faulkner, and I was thrilled when they took Moby Dick off the school reading list (although my mother was horrified).

[Jen500]

Moby Dick. Ugh.

 

I almost got off to a bad start with MCT's Paragraph Town because of the Moby Dick theme.

[Daisy]

I intensely dislike Pinocchio!!! I started reading that aloud to my big girl and it's a terrible book with terrible content!! She was freaked out by the "ghost cricket" and the cat and fox were called "assassins" and I changed that word to "bad guys". But I stopped reading it to her, and just in time because Pinocchio was about to reach a house where everyone inside was dead!

 

I don't care what age my kids are! That book is TERRIBLE!!! I threw it out in the garbage....I didn't even have the conscience to pass it onto someone else - that is how offensive I thought it was.

 

BUT LESSON LEARNED: PRE-READ ALL BOOKS!!!

 

ETA: I never read it nor saw the Disney movie.

 

LOL. Our family loves that book. :lol:

[Charles Wallace]

Moby Dick is hell on earth.

 

Now, I loved Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies. *g* One person's classic is another's idea of torture.

 

And I love Hemmingway. The cadence of those simple sentences ..*swoon*.

 

I'm with you on Faulkner, though.

 

No pun intended, but I'm swimming against the tide here WRT Moby-Dick.

 

Seriously, how can you go wrong with this formula: Take a standard 19th-century adventure story about whaling, but add tons of Biblical allegory, a great deal of sardonic humor, unmistakeable homosexual subtext, and bizarre psychedelic imagery?

 

It's Richard Henry Dana crossed with Oscar Wilde and the Beatles, but only if John Lennon is carrying a college-level textbook on cetology.

[Daisy]

Hated, hated, hated Native Son by Richard Wright. I think I remember it so vividly because my college professor totally slammed my analysis, but I just didn't (and still don't) agree with the premise of that book.

 

Others I couldn't stand...

 

Catcher in the Rye

Steinbeck anything

 

and mostly because I just cannot get beyond the potty mouths of the above two authors.

[Dawn in Ohio]

Wind in the Willows

[Daisy]

Ok, I'll confess. My kids and I tried to read Little House in the Big Woods and just couldn't finish. I can't figure out why anyone over, maybe 6, would like this book. There's no plot!

 

We didn't like the Little House series either. I've tried reading them aloud several times. My kids just were not interested.

[5knights3maidens]

I have to say it. I have always disliked Charlotte's Web. :auto:

I don't know why. Even the cartoons; I can't stand them. I'll try to read it again with my younger kids. Maybe my thoughts will change. ;)

[KristenS]

Couldn't get it to load ... but it's always fun to see everyone's loves/hates with classics!

[The other Kimberly]

Gulliver's Travels.....YUCK!

Loved Moby Dick BTW.

 

I loved Les Miserables but DS could not bear it. Go figure.

[Crissy]

"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte:

 

 

Endless, pointless description. DESCRIPTION, DESCRIPTION, DESCRIPTION!!! The entire book is written in stupid metaphors. The few places where there is actually any dialogue bore the reader to tears. Honestly, i think that this is dubbed a classic simply because it is older than sand. Gee, maybe if I just go out and slop a few words down on a piece of paper, it'll be a classic in 160 years! It'll be required of every high school sophomore, like this idiotic "story." Excuse me now, I'm off to begin my masterpiece. I'm sure it'll be better than this.

 

 

As can be seen from the review of "Jane Eyre" above, spending too much time describing things seems to be a particular pet peeve, as I saw this complaint voiced many times about many different books. **** you writers and your overactive vocabularies!

 

Oh, gosh. That is hilarious. The review reminds me of a conversation I had with my mom a few years ago. She was complaining that an author I had recommended to her spent "half of every page describing things."

She wanted the author to "quit telling me what the room looks like and get on with the story!" :lol:

 

 

As for me, I have never been able to read Virginia Woolf.

I tried a number of times with different titles, and hated every one.

[5forMe]

Faulkner. Blech. His writing is pretentious and nearly unintelligible. Why is he so famous? If you can make sense of the pages of rambling that he tries to pass off as a novel, you can make sense of *anything* and I salute you.

 

 

 

:smilielol5:

[stripe]

My kids received Mary Poppins as a gift -- when I started reading it, they got upset and asked me to stop. She was just so nasty!

 

I have to confess that Anne of Green Gables was one of my favorite books as a kid, but I recently reread it and was shocked by all the descriptions/slurs of Italians, French Canadians, and so on, several of which apparently were beliefs held by the author -- yikes! Same thing with The Secret Garden -- I totally didn't realize there was a whole racial component to that book.

 

I find reading Winnie the Pooh to be rather funny; it seems nothing like the cartoons and so forth, as it's this rambling sort of narrative that took a while for my kids to decide they liked (getting a hardcover with color illustrations seemed to be preferably to reading a paperback -- which struck me as curious).

[Mommy22alyns]

I wear my Moby Dick scars with pride because I will never touch Melville EVER again!

 

I also really disliked Wuthering Heights. What was the point of that again?

 

But I usually love classics.

[stripe]

I also really disliked Wuthering Heights. What was the point of that again?

 

Funny you should mention this -- I tried to read it, as part of self-improvement. I got really confused and decided I'd watch the movie first. Let's just say, I never bothered to return to the book. But my kids came in the room while I was watching it and saw a few minutes and every once in a while they'll talk about the scene with the man smashing everything or the woman who had her hair cut off.

 

I'm not a big Steinbeck fan, but I enjoyed Travels with Charlie.

[elegantlion]

The Pearl, hated it. I literally threw it across the room at the end of the story.

 

Ducking as I say this, Pride & Prejudice. It reminded me of high school antics, only if a different time period. I read Sense & Sensibility and liked it slightly better.

[Impish]

I loathed The Handmaid's Tale. And Taming of the Shrew. I don't like Where The Wild Things Are, and hated Catcher in the Rye. Lord of the Flies always leaves me feeling ill...which is probably one of the emotions the author was wanting to evoke. Not a bad book, in that it was well written, but one I avoid because of how it makes me feel.

 

To Kill A Mocking Bird is one of my all time favourites though.

[TXMary2]

I love to read Amazon reviews for perspective. It's mildly entertaining at times. Recently I read a review by someone who admitted they hadn't read the book, but could tell by the cover that it was horrible. It went on and on about the book ......that the reviewer didn't read.:001_huh:

 

WTM has some pretty harsh 1 star reviews! There are some haters out there.

 

As for classics I can't stand:

 

Moby Dick

Jane Eyre

Wuthering Heights

[coffeefreak]

I'm with you on Hemingway. Even in high school, I just wanted to shout, "WILL YOU PLEASE USE A COMPLEX SENTENCE!!! Or even a subordinate clause!" Reading Hemingway makes me feel like I'm reading transcriptions of telegrams. FULL STOP.

 

NO DOUBT!!!! I've never watched a movie based on his books either. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

 

I have to confess that Anne of Green Gables was one of my favorite books as a kid, but I recently reread it and was shocked by all the descriptions/slurs of Italians, French Canadians, and so on, several of which apparently were beliefs held by the author -- yikes! Same thing with The Secret Garden -- I totally didn't realize there was a whole racial component to that book.

 

 

 

We read The Secret Garden last year and discussed why the little girl said and thought the things she did. By the end of the book, she knows better, but there really are some adult themes. Anne of Green Gables is still my all time favorite. We started reading the first book this year, and dd caught the slur on the Italians. I believe Marilla or Rachel Lynde said whatever was said. Since these characters are "hard" and judgmental at the beginning of the book, it was a great opportunity to discuss prejudice. I mean, they even judge Anne because of the color of her hair!

 

As for the classics from High school, a lot of why we "hate" them is, we're forced to read them. I also think it depends on the person teaching them. I still have never read To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. My 10th grade English Teacher was an idot! She was a dry as dirt, had no control over the class, and made us learn things like, "who is the Christ figure in this book and why?" Huh?! I once told her Mark Twain was laughing in his grave over the way she taught his books. I read every book in 11th grade because, even if I hated it, the class discussion was fabulous! Lord of the Flies - blech, but I learned so much!

 

The worst classic I ever HAD to read? Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. I joke with dh, I'll make my girls read it as punishment if they cross me their senior year.:lol:

 

dorinda

[TXMary2]

Ok, I'll confess. My kids and I tried to read Little House in the Big Woods and just couldn't finish. I can't figure out why anyone over, maybe 6, would like this book. There's no plot!

 

I assigned "Farmer Boy" to my son and he flat out refused to finish the book and said he'd rather eat cat p**p. It was the first book I didn't make him finish.LOL He LOVES to read too so it must have been really, really bad for him.

[NancyNellen]

Yes, Pinocchio is a perennial family favorite here.:001_huh:

[PollyOR]

HATE Madame Bovary...I think.

 

I picked it up a few years ago because it is listed in The Well-Educated Mind. I skim read it one night (bleh!) and shelved it for 5+ years. Recently I decided to actually read it before I donated it to Goodwill. I started reading it with the hope that maybe it wasn't as bad as I remembered. Depressing! I was relieved when I finished and threw it in the give away box. But, the more I think about it the more I believe that young women would benefit from reading it. Young women need to realize that the men in romances are fictional characters. I think it is a great book to show how unrealistic expectations may lead to unhappiness.

 

I'm considering retrieving Madame Bovary from the give away box and re-shelving it.

[nukeswife]

Those are interesting reviews. I have read some but not all of them. My favorite in a sense of humor is

 

"This book is 3 words over and over again: MY LIFE IS BAD. 500 pages and that's all it says."

 

Well I'm not going to put much stock in that review considering they can't even count. :lol: Last time I checked "MY LIFE IS BAD" was 4 words not 3.

 

I do have quite a few "classics" downloaded to my Kindle but haven't started any yet. I will say I've tried to read many things by Jane Austin and just cannot get into them. I'm not sure what it is but they just don't draw me in enough in the beginning to make me want to keep reading.

[juelle]

We gave up on Pinocchio last week. Too depressing when the weather was dreary. Maybe it'll look better in the sunshine, but I doubt it!

 

Alice in Wonderland is way too weird for dh, though he has tried to read it with the kids several times. He suspects Lewis Carroll was indulging in inappropriate pharmaceuticals.

 

He adds that A Separate Peace is the most empty, meaningless, depressing waste of time ever written and he detests Red Badge of Courage and Billy Budd. This from a man who reads Time magazine as literature now!

 

I love Tale of Two Cities, but can't get through Great Expectations.

 

And I love Pride and Prejudice. Wouldn't it be fun to know how to speak so clearly?

[Catherine]

I have suffered through some classics I didn't like, I suppose. But I loved Charlotte's Web more than life itself, and the Little House books too. I think, though, that these reviews illustrate the problem with making kids read books without much support or guidance or discussion.

[Pixie]

I had to read Dangerous Liaisons in 11th grade and I think that is the only book I was never able to finished. I had to put it on my list of book for the French baccalaureat exam at the end of that year (I attended high school in France) and I was just hoping I would not have any questions on it. Instead the examiner picked a text from Madame Bovary which was the only other text on my list I couldn't stand (but luckily we hadn't been required to read that book, we only did extracts).

And add me to the list of poeple who hated Lord of the Flies.

[nmoira]

 

We didn't like the Little House series either. I've tried reading them aloud several times.

We do read them, but I very much prefer Caddie Woodlawn and its sequel Magical Melons (aka Caddie Woodlawn's Family) to Little House.

[nmoira]

Oh, another one I won't permit in the house is a CanLit classic: As for Me and My House by Sinclair Ross. I remember my teacher explaining how its monotony was meant to convey the family's sense of monotony and hopelessness. Oh, and it didn't neglect that hallmark of "classic" CanLit: endless description of landscape... uggggh. We also read Camus that year, and The Plague was an uplifting experience in comparison. Enough said.

 

Oh, and while I'm on CanLit, I'll be happy never to read Bliss Carmen ever again. In spite of his fantastic name. :tongue_smilie:

Edited April 3, 2010 by nmoira

[DarlaS]

I'm suprised that anyone would dislike Charlotte's Web. And Anne Frank? Really?

 

I took the Charlotte's Web review to be a pretty good satirical joke. It was actually so over the top it was clearly not intended to be taken seriously. The reviewer states that it has "has changed my life forever" and thinks "this book should be banned from every school, library, and bookstore in the Milky Way." :lol::lol:

 

Of course, that's not the purpose of amazon reviews but it's not the first time some bored individual has used them in such a way (remember the tanks and wolf shirts?).

[DarlaS]

Ok, I'll confess. My kids and I tried to read Little House in the Big Woods and just couldn't finish. I can't figure out why anyone over, maybe 6, would like this book. There's no plot!

 

 

Must be the same reason people read My Antonia. It also has no plot--but lots of poignant moments and lovely descriptions. Lots of them. :tongue_smilie:

[Wheres Toto]

I loved Lord of the Flies and Charlottes Web. I enjoyed Dante's Inferno and liked Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. I liked the Scarlet Letter. I definitely lean toward the Science Fiction-type classics - 1984, Picture of Dorian Gray, Brave New World. I liked the Iliad and the Odyssey (I love Bulfinches Mythology).

 

I could not stand Pilgrims Progress (the most boring thing I've ever had to read). Walt Whitman was boring and weird ("I am a transparent eyeball"- 30 years later and I still remember that line.) I think the early American writers were by far the hardest for me to get through.

 

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass I enjoyed as a kid but as an adult - Lewis Carroll was definitely doing some heavy drugs.

 

I agree about Pinocchio - even the Disney movie is scary and depressing.

 

I never had to read Moby Dick and probably never will at this point - I know enough about it to understand literary references.

 

I never read any of the Little House books but I loved the television show. :)

[Penelope]

Herman Melville.

 

Joseph Conrad.

 

Anything by those two. Boo, thumbs down.

 

How about Chaucer? Dante?

 

Oh, wait.

 

Paradise Lost. That would be my big winner, in the loser category. :P

[Tree House Academy]

One classic I really dislike is Alice in Wonderland. I just don't get it. My take away from it was "don't smoke crack and write Children's stories." It has no plot, no plan, no real rhyme or reason to the madness. I guess that is what makes it "fun" for kids. I always thought it was boring, weird, and a little creepy...even as a child.

[FairProspects]

On Alice in Wonderland, this NY Times op-ed piece suggests it was really written about advanced mathematics at a time when theoretical math was new.

 

I know advanced math (can you say imaginary numbers?)makes my brain feel like its on drugs :lol:!

Edited April 3, 2010 by FairProspects

[kokotg]

To Kill a Mockingbird, though my reasons are a good bit more nuanced than those in the linked article (or so I'd like to think ;))

 

Wuthering Heights

[Spy Car]

No pun intended, but I'm swimming against the tide here WRT Moby-Dick.

 

Seriously, how can you go wrong with this formula: Take a standard 19th-century adventure story about whaling, but add tons of Biblical allegory, a great deal of sardonic humor, unmistakeable homosexual subtext, and bizarre psychedelic imagery?

 

It's Richard Henry Dana crossed with Oscar Wilde and the Beatles, but only if John Lennon is carrying a college-level textbook on cetology.

 

Thank goodness for a man of taste!

 

Moby Dick is one of the greatest novels in history.

 

And I love Faulkner and Hemingway. And I must stop reading this thread :D

 

Bill (feeling queasy :tongue_smilie:)

[Daisy]

We do read them, but I very much prefer Caddie Woodlawn and its sequel Magical Melons (aka Caddie Woodlawn's Family) to Little House.

 

:iagree: We found Caddie Woodlawn to be a much better read.

[Spy Car]

The Chronicles of Narnia. Now there is an over-rated series!

 

So there!!! :D :lol:

 

Bill