Disappointment

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Originally Posted by Brian Bean

I have to second this choice. The book had received excessive praise in France so I decided to read it in French and discovered that it didn't have much to say about anything. I thought it might be that I was missing something, so I read it in German and discovered that I wasn't. Obviously, I didn't bother with the film.

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Yes,it just doesn't say anything original,not even a word.Further more it's easy to see that the writer intends strike the reader but everytime he fails.Its not about liking or not,it's just cheap.

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Originally Posted by Dark Lady

Oh man, I was going to buy Madame Bovary and read it before the end of the summer! Ah well, if it was the fact that Adagio loved Anna Karenina so much that spoilt it I might be okay. I thought AK was alright but nothing too special.

I'd have to say the three novels that have disappointed me most are Wuthering Heights, The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby.

For WH (if you haven't read my thoughts on it in another thread) I think I was hoping for something akin to Jane Eyre, which I loved. I found a copy in a second hand bookstore and couldn't wait to read it, thinking 'I loved Emily's sister's novel so if this is anything like it I'll no doubt love this too'. Instead, I found a number of horrible characters with no redeemable qualities, a melodramatic plot and writing style, and general disappointment.

To be honest I don't remember much about Catcher. I think that was the problem; it was just so nothingy. Not worth the hype.

As for Gatsby, I don't dislike it. My problem with it was that it had been hyped so much that I was expecting something more. My friend gave me the novel for Christmas just before I was going to start studying it at university. She told me that it was her favourite novel and I absolutely had to read it. I was really excited by the thought of reading such a highly recommended book but it didn't live up to my expectations. I kept waiting for a moment...some sort of epiphany or something...and it just didn't come.

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Don't give up on MB Dark Lady, (or shall I call you Dark :D?). It's excellent, but she (MB) is not a sympathethic character. Perhaps that was the problem for Adagio reading it so soon after AK. Whatever you think of the respective books, AK is a more sympathetic character to my mind, and perhaps it was reading them so close together which made MB come off worse.

I agree with you about Gatsby. I found it very disappointing, and I've only read some of Catcher, but it didn't appeal to me at all. However, I will defend WH to the death......brilliant book :D.

Poor Gatsby :( The main reason people don't like it because they try to guess what it will be and then they are disappointed when they aren't right. I love the mysticism of the Eggs and the stark reality of the Valley of Ashes.

Catcher in the Rye was disappointing. Was okay in places but he was a whiny little thing, wasn't he? And the word phoney, grr...

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Originally Posted by Dark Lady

Oh man, I was going to buy Madame Bovary and read it before the end of the summer! Ah well, if it was the fact that Adagio loved Anna Karenina so much that spoilt it I might be okay. I thought AK was alright but nothing too special.

I'd have to say the three novels that have disappointed me most are Wuthering Heights, The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby.

For WH (if you haven't read my thoughts on it in another thread) I think I was hoping for something akin to Jane Eyre, which I loved. I found a copy in a second hand bookstore and couldn't wait to read it, thinking 'I loved Emily's sister's novel so if this is anything like it I'll no doubt love this too'. Instead, I found a number of horrible characters with no redeemable qualities, a melodramatic plot and writing style, and general disappointment.

To be honest I don't remember much about Catcher. I think that was the problem; it was just so nothingy. Not worth the hype.

As for Gatsby, I don't dislike it. My problem with it was that it had been hyped so much that I was expecting something more. My friend gave me the novel for Christmas just before I was going to start studying it at university. She told me that it was her favourite novel and I absolutely had to read it. I was really excited by the thought of reading such a highly recommended book but it didn't live up to my expectations. I kept waiting for a moment...some sort of epiphany or something...and it just didn't come.

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I know we have had the Wuthering Heights conversation, but I'll just copy what I have posted on another thread recently for those who don't know my thoughts on the matter:

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I'd probably rate this as one of the greatest English novels of all time, if not the greatest.

Just one point for all those who hate the characters, this novel repeatedly narrators through double narration, i.e. we come at this story through a narrator, who in turn is having events narrated to him. What's more this narration is so flimsy and based upon threads of long remembered, biased, events that we can't really be sure who is who or what they are really like. It's probably the set text of unreliable narration. So how can you dislike someone who you only have loose fragments of?

Its real success however lies not in the characterisation but in the wild fabric of the novel itself. The eerie moors and the strange and so "un-Victorian" feel to the book. It has been compared critically to the wildness of nature in King Lear and after reading it you can see why.

This is not a novel you can pick up over coffee and read and say "yeah, I've read that". It is a novel that demands so much more attention, maybe like Henry James in that sense, you can hardly do James justice by skim-reading him and in the same way a cursory reading of this novel means little.

As for Jane Eyre yes it is certainly a nicer read, and has more admirers, but Wuthering Heights is certainly the better text and Emily the better writer.

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As for The Catcher in the Rye and Gatsby I rate them both highly as well. :thumbs_up

Catcher in the rye was alright for me. Great Gatsby I do think is excellent.

That last paragraph always stuns me when I read it.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Just sums up the whole book. Everything about those last lines is amazing.

I'm a big Gatsby fan myself. Those last lines of the book, meh!, were my signature here for a while.

For me - "The Grapes of Wrath."

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Originally Posted by wessexgirl

Don't give up on MB Dark Lady, (or shall I call you Dark :D?).

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I was going to say 'you can call me anything you like' but then realised that, written down, the tone is left very ambiguous!! ;)

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Originally Posted by wessexgirl

It's excellent, but she (MB) is not a sympathethic character. Perhaps that was the problem for Adagio reading it so soon after AK. Whatever you think of the respective books, AK is a more sympathetic character to my mind, and perhaps it was reading them so close together which made MB come off worse.

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That's okay, despite how I might've come across talking about WH I can enjoy and appreciate books with unsympathetic characters. I'll definately still give it a try. I just have to finish Tristram Shandy. (And maybe buying MB would help.)

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Originally Posted by wessexgirl

However, I will defend WH to the death......brilliant book :D.

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I think WH is like marmite; you either love it or hate it! Although it just occurred to me that I don't know if that ad campaign was used outside the UK so a lot of people might not know what I'm on about...

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

Poor Gatsby :( The main reason people don't like it because they try to guess what it will be and then they are disappointed when they aren't right.

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Yes I do think that was part of the problem for me. I had an idea of what I thought the novel would do for me and kept expecting that to happen. When it didn't I was disappointed.

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Originally Posted by Neely

As for The Catcher in the Rye and Gatsby I rate them both highly as well. :thumbs_up

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Of course you do. I'm yet to find a text that I dislike and you agree with me on! :D

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Originally Posted by Adagio

Having just finished Madame Bovary I cannot help but feel disappointed. I came to the book with such great expectations and I was left not caring at all for the novel. Now, the previous book I had read was Anna Karenina. Both novels deal with similar themes. I absolutely loved Tolstoy's novel. Perhaps then, that's why I was disappointed with Madame Bovary, because it, for me, doesn't compare to Tolstoy's work. Flaubert's novel just seemed a little overrated.

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I have always connected Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary in my brain as well. In terms of plot development, I preferred Anna Karenina - a fantastic story; in respect to character development, psychology, and writing styles, I strongly prefer Madame Bovary, and call it one of the most epic novels in Realism. Flaubert wrote about topics nobody dared speak of, let alone publish, explaining why he had to bypass French laws in order to even distribute it - who can deny the pretentious, neglecting, self-loathe of Emma Bovary, the passive, push-over nature of Charles, the passionate (yet eventually heartless) ways of Léon, the manipulative, frivolous Rodolphe? On the surface it can seem a dull novel, but the profound quantities of psychology, especially behavioral, overwhelmed me with fascination - only in few novels have I felt so soaked into the pages, saturated with its characters.
Oh well, different tastes for different readers. As Neely mentioned, perhaps you read a poorer translation, as in its original French form, Flaubert renowned himself in finding and writing "le mot juste."

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Originally Posted by sixsmith

Madame Bovary is one of the bigger disappointments of my reading life. I could barely summon enough interest in the eponymous heroine to make it through. Much the same can be said for Crime and Punishment. Where others see a deep and layered psychological exploration, i see an intellectually shallow, one - note flop.

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Ouch! :eek:

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Originally Posted by Dark Lady

I'd have to say the three novels that have disappointed me most are Wuthering Heights, The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby.

For WH (if you haven't read my thoughts on it in another thread) I think I was hoping for something akin to Jane Eyre, which I loved. I found a copy in a second hand bookstore and couldn't wait to read it, thinking 'I loved Emily's sister's novel so if this is anything like it I'll no doubt love this too'. Instead, I found a number of horrible characters with no redeemable qualities, a melodramatic plot and writing style, and general disappointment.

To be honest I don't remember much about Catcher. I think that was the problem; it was just so nothingy. Not worth the hype.

As for Gatsby, I don't dislike it. My problem with it was that it had been hyped so much that I was expecting something more. My friend gave me the novel for Christmas just before I was going to start studying it at university. She told me that it was her favourite novel and I absolutely had to read it. I was really excited by the thought of reading such a highly recommended book but it didn't live up to my expectations. I kept waiting for a moment...some sort of epiphany or something...and it just didn't come.

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Ouch again!
Wuthering Heights seemed a very unique novel in its time, and continues to prove its sharp genius even in contemporary times. With my favoritism for Emily Brontë over her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, I always called her the "Brontë with a brain," feeling relieved when reading her novel over her sisters, all of which I have read, too. In order for publication, female authors got stuck in this genre of higher-end romance, something along the lines of a worker-class-woman-usually-a-governess-or-servant-or-heiress-of-the-family-estate-is-lonely-may-not-realize-it-falls-in-love-with-mysterious-man-finds-happiness-in-societal-conformation-marriage-and-children template, copied and pasted by writers like Jane Austen and Charlotte and Anne Brontë; Virginia Woolf would later poke fun at this fact, too, in her lifetime. Authors like Emily Brontë, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), George Sand (Amandine Dupin), and Kate Chopin, some of whom took up masculine pen-names to avoid the stereotype that "women ought to write this-or-that way," dared to step out of that impeded creativity. Indeed, while having to read Wuthering Heights, I expected something similar to Jane Eyre, too, which I also enjoyed most parts of, but thought it a beautiful work of genius.

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Originally Posted by Madame X

Try Klingon next. :nod:

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Excuse my ignorance, but what does Klingon mean?

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Originally Posted by Brian Bean

Excuse my ignorance, but what does Klingon mean?

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Klingon is a language and alien race from Star Trek (wikipedia link here).

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Originally Posted by Drkshadow03

Klingon is a language and alien race from Star Trek (wikipedia link here).

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Thank you, that it explains it. I never watch trash TV.

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Originally Posted by Brian Bean

Thank you, that it explains it. I never watch trash TV.

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Heh. If you think Star Trek is trash TV you don't ever want to watch Jerry Springer. ;)

Cool posting Mono. :thumbs_up

Certainly nobody can call WH run-of-the-mill romance, quite the opposite it is a highly unique work. I think it is often a misunderstood text. Also Madam Bovary becomes a great novel due to the writing style alone.

Another writer I am disappointed in is Dickens - and Great Expectations is highly overrated (go on Dark Lady, that is one you love yeah?;)) Nobody can dispute the fact that he is a master of constructing good sentences, but pphhfff, there is no real substance to the greater picture; the result is simply tedious.

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Originally Posted by Neely

Another writer I am disappointed in is Dickens - and Great Expectations is highly overrated (go on Dark Lady, that is one you love yeah?;)) Nobody can dispute the fact that he is a master of constructing good sentences, but pphhfff, there is no real substance to the greater picture; the result is simply tedious.

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What didn't you like about Great Expectations? You don't think he had anything to say in that novel?

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Originally Posted by Drkshadow03

Heh. If you think Star Trek is trash TV you don't ever want to watch Jerry Springer. ;)

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Who's Jerry Springer?