Amazon reviewers think this masterpiece sucks

[Daisy]

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

 

Blasphemy! I love Chaucer and Dante. :D

[stripe]

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.

The maid at the start of the book also makes some comment like, "I thought you'd be black!" Priceless.

 

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 read a new bio of LM Montgomery and it discussed her own anti-French Canadian feelings. Good analysis in that book, though.

[dansamy]

All the King's Men

 

The Return of the Native

 

Both were one-way tickets to snoozeville for me, and I really like to read.

[HRAAB]

I love Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald (oh, the dialog in The Great Gatsby). I struggled with Sister Carrie, and although I still think Dreiser is way too wordy, I ended up liking the book. All the King's Men is still at the top of my list. I'm having a hard time thinking of anything I would say I hate.

 

Pride & Prejudice grates on my nerves. The third time through the Little House books was difficult. But hate? No.

 

Maybe I need to read Moby Dick so I can have something to hate.

Edited April 3, 2010 by Ishki

[Mergath]

I love Faulkner. I think I've read The Sound and the Fury five or six times now. I love Dante and Chaucer, too. I can still recite the first thirty or so lines of the prologue to The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Being an English major in college was sort of useless in the financial sense, but very fun. :)

 

One writer I can't stand, even though one of my professors positively worshiped him, is Henry James. I've tried, and tried, and tried, but every time I start to read one of his works, I fall asleep, or just give up from boredom.

[Mrs Mungo]

Hm, I have some of the same annoyances with some of the authors but they don't necessarily make me dislike the books or the stories.

 

Moby Dick

 

Lord of the Flies

 

Catcher in the Rye

 

:thumbdown:

 

Moby Dick? Yes, Melville is something of an ego-maniac, I agree. However, this is a great story about obsession, race, religion, nature, and it's a modern Hamlet in some ways-is he sane, is he not sane? Is the answer to that question integral to the plot or does it not matter? What can we control? Why do humans feel the need to try to control things that we really cannot control?

 

The problem with Lord of the Flies is that it's not a book for children, it's not necessarily even a book *about* children, even though they are the main characters.

Catcher in the Rye-to me the redeeming value of this book is that grown-up Holden is the one telling the story. It's a story that says-see what a jerky, selfish, idiot teenager I was? I eventually turned out okay, I learned to be a better person, you can too. I will admit to calling people phonies when they tell me this is their favorite book. Sometimes, they don't get it. :tongue_smilie:

 

Gulliver's Travels.....YUCK!

 

WHaaaaaat!?

 

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

 

Have you ever read her treatise on Pride and Prejudice? That might help explain this book. She thought Austen was too constrained and stilted. Everything is wild in Wuthering Heights-love, nature-it's all-consuming. If you're not completely obsessed with the one you love, then you aren't in love. I see it more of a manual of what-not-to-do or why-obsession-is-bad but that is not what Bronte intended.

 

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

 

?! I don't get this one either, I've always loved The Pearl.

 

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.

Oh, I think Pride and Prejudice is meant to be read that way. I've explained before on this board that I see it as a young woman's book.

 

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.

 

 

Bingo.

 

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

 

Here is one I can actually get on board with. The characters in Great Expectations are SO whiny, I can't stand them!

 

The Great Gatsby was too dull for me to finish.

 

To me, the saving grace of The Great Gatsby is that everyone mostly gets what they deserve.

 

Walt Whitman was boring and weird ("I am a transparent eyeball"- 30 years later and I still remember that line.)

 

I loooove Walt Whitman.

 

Herman Melville.

 

Joseph Conrad.

 

I LOVE Heart of Darkness.

 

How about Chaucer? Dante?

I love both of those, but for totally different reasons. Chaucer is just so *clever*, the sarcasm, the wit, the hints of what lies underneath...love it!

 

I think you have to have a healthy knowledge of military history to appreciate Faulkner, but that's jmo.

[Mergath]

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

 

So there!!! :D :lol:

 

Bill

 

Lol.

 

I really enjoyed The Magician's Nephew, but after that... eh.

[Mejane]

Les Mis. Love the story, hate the novel - oh, the endless background information! Really, the book could've been about 500 pages shorter.

[Mrs Mungo]

Les Mis. Love the story, hate the novel - oh, the endless background information! Really, the book could've been about 500 pages shorter.

 

I felt this way the first time I read it, way back when. However, since I've read a lot more about the Napoleonic wars, I don't feel that way. Now, I think of the background military information as integral to the story. It's similar to Lord of the Rings. The history of the ring and the war going on around the hobbits are integral to the story.

[elegantlion]

 

 

?! I don't get this one either, I've always loved The Pearl.

 

Oh, I think Pride and Prejudice is meant to be read that way. I've explained before on this board that I see it as a young woman's book.

 

 

 

The ending in The Pearl threw me. I loved the language of the book, I wrote copious notes while reading then BAM! I guess I'm a Disney girl at heart, I want the happy ending. :lol:

 

Perhaps that is my issue with P&P, I couldn't stand that crud in high school. Plus I read it directly after reading Witch of Blackbird Pond, one of my favorites. The contrast between the hard work which Kit and her family did just to survive and then the Bennett girls who partied all day turned me off. :tongue_smilie:

[Jeannie in NJ]

I have tried so many times to read The Scarlet Letter, just can't do it. I ;give up every time. Oh, and I loved Moby Dick lol.

 

Oh, dh said that the worst book he had to read in school was The Last of the Mohicans.

[BigMamaBird]

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.

 

I completely agree with you!

[sassenach]

I really hated Jane Eyre.

 

Ducking!

[Penelope]

I really hated Jane Eyre.

 

Ducking!

 

Blasphemy!

 

And all of you that hate Wuthering Heights and Faulkner. That's crazy talk!

 

:tongue_smilie:

[littlebug42]

Anything by Charles Dickens makes me want to gouge out my eyes. The worst torture for me ever though was Middlemarch By George Eliot. 900 pages of misery.

[kokotg]

 

And all of you that hate Wuthering Heights and Faulkner. That's crazy talk!

 

:tongue_smilie:

 

well, I hated Wuthering Heights, but I LOVE Faulkner. And, come to think of it, that does seem a little odd. Perhaps I had a stronger stomach for unrelenting misery when I first got to know Faulkner (high school and, mostly, college) than when I read Wuthering Heights (last summer). Or perhaps the misery just seems more purposeful in Faulkner.

[justamouse]

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.

 

Ohh sure, now you tempt me to read it again. Clearly everyone else was appealing to my moral side when they wanted me to read it :D An excellent teacher you are. ;)

 

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!

 

 

We LOVE Pinocchio! My oldest called it Onoc a nuc and we still call it that. Fairy tales aren't all pretty, they're dark and wonderful.

 

We LOVE Alice in Wonderland, I love The Great Gatsby, and Chaucer. Lord, I love Chaucer. And Great Expectations. It's especially good when you're writing dystopian steampunk. :D And I love The Scarlett Letter, too. Anything that takes a well aimed sword to hypocricy in institutional religion is good with me. Love Twain, Whitman. Hesse.

[mommylawyer]

I love this thread!

 

Let's see...

 

I HATED Jane Eyre.

I read Wuthering Heights a few years ago.... loved the first half, hated the second - it was like reading two books with some of the same characters acting completely out of character.

I've tried reading All the King's Men and just can't make it through.

 

Here's another kids' classic (of sorts) I can't stand: The Cat in the Hat. I also don't get the fascination of One Fish, Two Fish once he stopped writing about the fish. And, normally, I love Dr. Seuss books - just not those!

 

I also don't get the fascination with Catcher in the Rye. Did you know that book "inspired" Mark David Chapman to kill John Lennon? It didn't inspire me to want to do anything but put it down. (And, is that the only thing J.D. Salinger is known for? Is he nothing more than a literary one hit wonder?)

[Mergath]

I also don't get the fascination with Catcher in the Rye. Did you know that book "inspired" Mark David Chapman to kill John Lennon? It didn't inspire me to want to do anything but put it down. (And, is that the only thing J.D. Salinger is known for? Is he nothing more than a literary one hit wonder?)

 

I never liked that book either. I wanted to slap Holden. He was so unbelievably whiny. I think you must have to read it for the first time as a teenager or something.

[PollyOR]

I didn't like Catcher in the Rye, but it did something which I thought was scary. How do I explain this? My inner dialogue started sounding like Holden. It was weird. It took a week of concentrated effort to not sound like that in my head. :001_huh:

[Tangerine]

Has anyone bemoaned Heart of Darkness yet? The subtlety! The subtle subtlety? Just SAY SOMETHING CONCRETE. Lordy.

[Guest Cindie2dds]

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.

 

Yikes! I just bought this for 1st grade. Note to self: Pre-read books. Thanks for the heads up.

[Danestress]

overrated.

[Matryoshka]

I didn't like Catcher in the Rye, but it did something which I thought was scary. How do I explain this? My inner dialogue started sounding like Holden. It was weird. It took a week of concentrated effort to not sound like that in my head. :001_huh:

 

:iagree: I hated, hated, hated Catcher in the Rye. I felt assaulted, I felt violated. It did affect my inner dialogue, and I wanted those words out of my head ! I can barely remember what happened in the book - it just seemed like a long string of foul, foul language strung together by random other words. :ack2:

[lighthouseacademy]

I love this thread. I laughed out loud many times. I too HATED The Handmaid's Tale. What an AWFUL story! Blech. Recently I read Sister Carrie. I kept reading it waiting for it to get better and it never did. I hated every single character by the end and was so disgusted by the whole outcome. While I don't remember a thing about it, I enjoyed Wuthering Heights back in 8th grade. I have never managed to get through anything Jane Austen.

[PollyOR]

The best way to experience Charlotte's Web is to listen to E.B. White read it on audio book. He has a lovely accent. Listening to it is soothing to my soul. :)

[Charles Wallace]

I'd like to offer this idea: Have you ever tried your "hated" classic on audio???

 

It makes a HUGE difference. I used to detest all Dickens until I heard his work read aloud on CD. Much of what I found annoying became charming. It was like magic.

 

NOTE: David Copperfield is still a whiny little toad, though.

[Crissy]

I'd like to offer this idea: Have you ever tried your "hated" classic on audio???

 

 

It wouldn't help in my case, as I hate to be read to more than I hate Virginia Woolf. ;)

 

NOTE: David Copperfield is still a whiny little toad, though.

 

:lol:

That makes me laugh, even though I disagree.

[DarlaS]

The best way to experience Charlotte's Web is to listen to E.B. White read it on audio book. He has a lovely accent. Listening to it is soothing to my soul. :)

 

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

 

My kids like to listen while reading the book to themselves. Now when I read anything by E.B. White, I hear his voice in my head. :001_smile:

 

The same thing happened with anything by SWB books now that I've listened to a couple of her lectures.

[Guest Cindie2dds]

I love this thread!

 

Let's see...

 

I HATED Jane Eyre.

 

No way! Okay, it was pathetic at the end, but I loved it!

 

I have never managed to get through anything Jane Austen.

 

:lol: Well, I have every book individually and as a complete collection. I carried them on the airplane when I go back and forth to work if I don't have anything else new. They are like old friends.

 

This is hilarious!

 

Speaking of children's classics, Beatrix Potter, one of two of her books make me go :001_huh:. What was she thinking?

[Mommyfaithe]

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.

 

This is really funny! I love Amazon reviews too...and I am often amused.

 

I admit...I HATE Jane Austen...and I loathe "what's her name" who wrote Little Women...eeeewwww...ugh!

 

I also think the Red Badge of Courage really stunk, and I won't make my kids read it no matter how many curricula use it in their Civil War and American Lit studies. PHEW~ That was cleansing...LOL.

 

Thanks for the link. It was a fun read.

 

~~Faithe

[Jenny in Atl]

All the King's Men

 

I liked the movie better... a rarity.

[katilac]

(And, is that the only thing J.D. Salinger is known for? Is he nothing more than a literary one hit wonder?)

 

No, he is also known for his short stories. For Esme, with Love and Squalor is particularly common on required reading lists, and shares with the famous novel an, imo, creepy obsession with innocent little girls.

[kalanamak]

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.

 

A Rose for Emily is unintelligible? (True it is not a novel.)

 

I loved the Sound and the Fury. I try to "speed read" novels like that and I was so caught up in it, I missed my subway stop (only time in 10 years of living in NYC). The chapter "by" the DD brother was like entering another world.

You don't try to make sense of The Sound and the Fury, you just FEEL it.

 

Surrealistic novels I read at "half-speed read" (e.g. 100 Years of Solitude). However, I am not huge fan of either genre, and have only read what is considered "the cream".

 

However, I do not claim all people will like FEELing a book rather than understanding it. I prefer the understanding-type books myself. However, I reply to you just so you might see why he is famous. Some brains are attracted by things that give them strong feelings. I find books a "safe" way of living many more lives than I dare to in the flesh and blood world.:)

Edited April 4, 2010 by kalanamak

[Melinda in VT]

I felt this way the first time I read it, way back when. However, since I've read a lot more about the Napoleonic wars, I don't feel that way. Now, I think of the background military information as integral to the story. It's similar to Lord of the Rings. The history of the ring and the war going on around the hobbits are integral to the story.

 

Hmm. I'm firmly in the "Hugo Desperately Needed an Editor and Has No Idea about Pacing" camp, but now you have me wondering if I'm just not seeing the larger picture.

 

I guess Les Mis can join Anna Karenina on the "Books I Should Really Re-Read" pile. :glare:

 

Not that I plan on getting to that pile anytime soon. :D

[PollyOR]

Hmm. I'm firmly in the "Hugo Desperately Needed an Editor and Has No Idea about Pacing" camp, but now you have me wondering if I'm just not seeing the larger picture.

 

I guess Les Mis can join Anna Karenina on the "Books I Should Really Re-Read" pile. :glare:

 

Not that I plan on getting to that pile anytime soon. :D

 

When I read Les Mis I vowed to read the whole thing. At times I found it was like the words were going into one eye and coming out the other ;). I'm glad I read it, but I know I can never read it again.

[nmoira]

 

I guess Les Mis can join Anna Karenina on the "Books I Should Really Re-Read" pile. :glare:

The translator can make a tremendous difference. I don't know about Hugo, but the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of Karenina is far more accessible than older ones. The team deserves every ounce of the praise heaped on them, and not just for Tolstoy: After numerous attempts at getting through the work, their translation of Brothers Karamazov was something of a revelation for me.

[Melinda in VT]

The translator can make a tremendous difference. I don't know about Hugo, but the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of Karenina is far more accessible than older ones. The team deserves every ounce of the praise heaped on them, and not just for Tolstoy: After numerous attempts at getting through the work, their translation of Brothers Karamazov was something of a revelation for me.

 

Thanks for the tip!

 

Brothers Karamazov is the only book I was ever assigned to read that I didn't finish. Didn't even come close. And 20 years later I still regret that.

 

As for Anna Karenina, I know a big part of the issue was with me. I read it as a senior in high school. Not only had I never been married, I'd never had a boyfriend. So I, was, uhm, not very sympathetic. :lol:

[kalanamak]

Hmm. I'm firmly in the "Hugo Desperately Needed an Editor and Has No Idea about Pacing" camp

 

 

:lol:, however, I've loved everything I've read by Tolstoy. I've reread Anna K. recently, because I have the luxury of working with a literate man from Russia who loves to flesh out reference for me.

[kalanamak]

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

 

 

The Old Man and the Sea was a decent movie. Spencer Tracy held my attention for 90 minutes all by his lonesome, but I will admit to having a fondness for slow movies and monologues, and a fondness for the elderly in general. I liked how I wasn't sure whether to root for him or push him overboard.

 

Haven't seen the Anthony Quinn version. He would have been a good actor for the part, but movies take more than that to be tolerable.

[kalanamak]

I can barely remember what happened in the book - it just seemed like a long string of foul, foul language strung together by random other words. :ack2:

 

I advise you avoid Last Exit to Brooklyn.:lol:

 

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you."

 

Not random to me, but a good non-adult description of why I've loved going to the Nelson Art Museum over and over for decades.

[Charles Wallace]

The translator can make a tremendous difference. I don't know about Hugo, but the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of Karenina is far more accessible than older ones. The team deserves every ounce of the praise heaped on them, and not just for Tolstoy: After numerous attempts at getting through the work, their translation of Brothers Karamazov was something of a revelation for me.

 

 

YES!!! This again and again.

 

That's one reason to love Amazon: their "Look Inside!" feature. When we had read the Marcus Sanders/Sandow Birk adaptation of The Inferno, we wanted a more...well, traditional look at the text. We browsed through a ton, including the Sayers (oft-recommended), but ultimately chose the Zapulla. Why? It "felt" best. It was the most comprehensible and accessible to us. To someone else, it may hork big donkey chunks - who knows? If I had only realized what a difference a translation made, I might have loved a great deal more literature and philosophy.

[Spy Car]

YES!!! This again and again.

 

That's one reason to love Amazon: their "Look Inside!" feature. When we had read the Marcus Sanders/Sandow Birk adaptation of The Inferno, we wanted a more...well, traditional look at the text. We browsed through a ton, including the Sayers (oft-recommended), but ultimately chose the Zapulla. Why? It "felt" best. It was the most comprehensible and accessible to us. To someone else, it may hork big donkey chunks - who knows? If I had only realized what a difference a translation made, I might have loved a great deal more literature and philosophy.

 

The Marcus Sanders/Sandow Birk adaptation is a lot of fun if one is open to a surfer-dude R. Crumb-esque re-telling. It certainly isn't the "definitive" Inferno (not by any stretch) but it is an inventive comic.

 

Bill

[Laura Corin]

I've tried several times to read Don Quixote and I just can't do it.

 

Laura

[bluemongoose]

The one I remember hating the most from school days was The Giver. Is that even considered a classic??? Anyway, it gave me nightmares. LOATHED it.

[Mergath]

The one I remember hating the most from school days was The Giver. Is that even considered a classic??? Anyway, it gave me nightmares. LOATHED it.

 

Really? I adore The Giver. It was one of the few books they made us read in school that I didn't actually hate. If you haven't read it since school, you should really give it one more go. It's an amazing book.

[jazzyfizzle]

Great thread! :thumbup1:

 

 

 

 

The Martian Chronicles. Gag Gag and Gag :ack2: Oh, and pathetic, Tell me how it could be a must read.

[Ellie]

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.

"sleep reading" :lol::lol::lol:

 

"Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates" was much the same to me. And I haven't been able to get through "The Wind in the Willows," or "A Tale of Two Cities," either.

[Angie in VA]

I haven't read the linked article or all the responses yet, but you all are cracking me up! I hope Ellie will reply w/ whatever book it was that made her want to "jab her eyes w/ a hot poker." (I hope I got that quote right.

 

Thanks for the laughs! I'll read more tomorrow.

[nmoira]

I haven't read the linked article or all the responses yet, but you all are cracking me up! I hope Ellie will reply w/ whatever book it was that made her want to "jab her eyes w/ a hot poker." (I hope I got that quote right.

Oh my. Not even Hemingway does that to me.

 

:lurk5: