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CBW, your teacher said, "You never read to understand"??? *mouth agape* What a terrible teacher!! What other reason is there to read? Boy oh boy.
Well, it's not a book per se, but I was thoroughly bored when we read "A Doll's House" by Ibsen in school. At least there wasn't much of it.
Jane Eyre.
I was forced to read that dreck for highschool English. I found it hard to concentrate on the book for want of checking every 5 minutes to see if the paint on the walls had peeled a little further... it was THAT BAD...
oh gosh. I just had to read To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and The Portrait of a Young Artist by James Joyce for my Modern British Literature class and I hated them. I hated them with a passion. They were immensely boring, in fact so much so that I used them to cure insomnia. Okay I'll stop bashing them. I'm sure there are people out there who liked them. They simply weren't my cup of tea.
J.Sand "Consuela"
Bulgakov "Master and Margarita"
They were so boring that my efforts to finish them flew away and I threw those books too far from me.
There was one boring book else by Faulkner, but I don't know its correct name in English. But in translation it sounds as "private residence"
Dickens. Anything by him. I've never had the patience for it.
And Madam Bovary. Couldn't get past the first 20 or so pages for all the capitalization. Read what Sparknotes had to say about it, since it was for a class, and became very happy that I didn't actually read the thing.
Moby Dicks. And anything by Conrad and Henry James. Not that I ever read any of those completely, of course.
I agree with you on Joyce's `Portrait' :brickwall It just went on and on and on and on with no plot or point, I kept reading trying to find the pearl, the jewels of wisdom that would compel me to turn the page. I didn't finish it, and that rarely happens to me. Although I was reading it on advice of someone else who obviously doesn't know my interests or taste in lit at all.
I also can't stand reading `fiction' that is rife with endnotes. Of course for the version of Portrait I have it's helpful to have some contextual notes on pronunciation, meaning and /or background on some colloqialisms etc. to derive futher meaning. But put `em as footnotes for gawds sake! 56 pages of them for 272 pages of text, that's about 4 endnotes per page! Really distracting flipping back and forth when you're trying to `follow' the gist.
I'm reading Wild Animus now by Rich Shapero ... it was a freebie give away advance reading copy from bookcrossing.com and omg I can't stand it it's obvious it's his first book, very naive and so cliche ridden I keep tossing it aside.
It's about some guy who wants to be a Dall sheep, consumes daily amounts of lsd to `get into the spirit of' a ram, and goes to Alaska's Mount Wrangell to fulfill his `destiny', dressed up as a ram, cloven hoof shoes and all, whilst his hapless girlfriend waits tables to fund his `spiritual quest' to bring lsd-hazed enlightenment to the masses. :rolleyes:
Can you say flashback? Hello? The 60's called and they want their tired hippy flap-crap back. :lol:
But don't some of you feel compelled to read something sometime, because it was a book given to you? or you heard it was good ... I have to read boring dry scholarly journals and technical stuff for work, and I hated it in school being `sentenced' to reading certain books. I found Lord of the Flies boring too because we studied it in-depth for weeks on end, every comma and semi-colon. It was cool to see the movie though.
Give me Wilbur Smith, James Michener or Anne Rice any day ... when I have to read stuff for work, I need some good history-based escapism too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Love to Read
pride and prejudice. i read it in high school and detested it, but then again, high school wasn't so great on explaining literature that well. i had to read sense and sensibility for a british lit course in college last year, and to my surprise, it wasn't as bad as i thought it was going to be. there is a lot going on besides the soap opera aspects, so maybe i should give pride and prejudice a try again...not too likely anytime soon, though.
*wheedling voice
not even for the forum book club?
Diceman I'm with you, Jane Eyre was pitiful and just plain boring.
Same with you Mike Pride and Prejudice didn't do anything for me, nor did Wuthering Heights.
A lot of the books I read in school were really boring
Lord of the Flies
Contents of a Copper Cylinder
Thirty Acres
etc.
Anything else, I probably read and forgot that I didn't like. School books are just easier to recall because you talk about them so much.
That's a good point. But school does have a unique way of squelching the enjoyability of literature. Although I remember really enjoying Lord of the Flies.
I can't choose...
I agree with you, Diceman.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diceman
Jane Eyre was such a struggle to read that I didn't even finish it. I just couldn't engage with it at all.
Another vote for Jane Eyre..the story is very plain. i finished reading it though..