10 Books You Can Do Without

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Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9

I strongly disagree with dull. Depressing, wordy and meandering are all accurate, but none of them mean 'bad'.

Conservative propaganda? That's interesting. It reads quite a bit more like anarcho-communist propaganda from where I'm sitting (and I'd know). Grapes is one long critique of capitalism, specifically the divisiveness of the property system. What feels like conservative propaganda to you?

Hope I'm not getting too political for the mod-squad here.

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Tomorrow's a better day, there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you work harder you'll succeed; these messages seem somewhat contrived to me. Of course, "Grapes" was written in another age, so I could be wrong.

I never meant to imply that this was a bad novel, by the way, merely one that I didn't personally enjoy reading. Outlooks and opinions are a dime a dozen, and every reader is free to express their own. Appreciation is not necessarily the same thing as enjoyment.

*David copperfield... Maybe i dont understand it
*Anything by Terry Pratchett (Except Good Omens, but Neil Gaiman wrote it too)
*Lotr- I never even finished them
*The Scarlet letter- Read it for English class and i wish i hadnt
*Anything by Virginia Andrews

Cant think of any more now...

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Originally Posted by Manfred

Tomorrow's a better day, there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you work harder you'll succeed.

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The way I remeber it they all *SPOILERS* starve to death at the end after working as hard as they possibly could.

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Originally Posted by Manfred

I never meant to imply that this was a bad novel, by the way, merely one that I didn't personally enjoy reading. Outlooks and opinions are a dime a dozen, and every reader is free to express their own. Appreciation is not necessarily the same thing as enjoyment.

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Fair enough, but I think one of us is interpreting this particular book very weirdly.

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Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9

The way I remeber it they all *SPOILERS* starve to death at the end after working as hard as they possibly could.Fair enough, but I think one of us is interpreting this particular book very weirdly.

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Really, I had no desire to interpret the novel, I just didn't enjoy it.
I've always found that trying to ferret out an author's meaning gets in the way of the flow of the story. It either comes to you as you read, or it doesn't. I never enjoyed this exercise when I was in school, and still don't. It gives me a headache.
Still, every novel is worth reading--or at least a glance. I'm glad you enjoyed this one.

By the way, have you read "Elmer Gantry," by Sinclair Lewis? That was a novel I enjoyed quite a lot; Lewis is great at scathing satire.

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Originally Posted by Manfred

By the way, have you read "Elmer Gantry," by Sinclair Lewis? That was a novel I enjoyed quite a lot; Lewis is great at scathing satire.

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Consider it on my list.

So many people dislike Stephen King. :eek: :confused: :eek:

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Originally Posted by Pensive

So many people dislike Stephen King. :eek: :confused: :eek:

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And reasonably so.

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Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9

And reasonably so.

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Oh well, not reasonably actually, ah well, it is a matter of opinions.

What I mean is that while King doesn't sink to the level of, say, Danielle Steele, he's hardly Dickens.

Well, at the moment there are just two books in our list at the moment. "Milkman of Mäeküla" by Vilde. (don't worry if you haven't heard of him, an estonian writer and not a very good one)
This book really rises to new levels of boredom. Thought and eye quite often slip to more interesting matters (door, wallpaper, ceiling for example) An awful read. There is much better estonian fiction around, so, if you can, don't read the beforementioned book.

There is a funny side-story to this book. In soviet times, posters of new movies were put up in bus stops in the country, but poster meant just the name of the movie and where and when.
So, these posters were written in russian and they misprinted one letter, so that it didn't mean "Milkman of Mäeküla" but "Savateur of Mäeküla" So, the local russians went to the cinema and expected to see some action, but instead they saw two hours of a man blating about "Should i take these milks or not?" and really felt like being foisted off.

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Originally Posted by Us

As for foreign terrains for us, we name "Love in the Time of Cholera" It should take advice from the quote: "More matter, less art!". We managed to hack us through the first chapter, but we don't want to read it again. It was glittery and sparkly with love, but we found no evidence of decent plot nor could we find much to think about. Foreign terrain, we are afraid

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"100 Years of Solitude " was much, much better.


There are other books that we misliked, but we wouldn't say that they are so bad.
"Red and black" could also belong in this list. The main reason why we disliked it was that we simply couldn't read it - you see, one usually empathizes most with the protagonist, but the protagonist there was such a hypocrite that we put the book down after 50 pages.

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Originally Posted by Pendragon

1.) Moby Dick by Herman Melville (You hope the whale swallows the author!)
4.)Anything writen by Stephen King! (Sorry, my opinion does not necessarily reflect, etc. etc.)

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I couldn't agree more! I'll be back with more though...

What about Tom Stoppard's "Travesties"? I'm not a big fan of such an radical display of postmodernism. However, I have the feeling that this is one of those books that you either love or can't stand... opinions please?

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Originally Posted by PistisSophia

100 people who are screwing up America.....biased and lousy.

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Agreed, that book's laughable.

10 Books you could do without (in my humble opinion)

1. Wuthering Heights ~ Emily Bronte(..ducks to avoid rotten vegetables being thrown..)

2. The Catcher in the Rye ~ JD Sallinger

3. The Iliad ~ Homer (..again with the veg..)

4. The Handmaid's Tale ~ Margaret Atwood

5. Mansfield Park ~ Jane Austen

6. The Da Vinci Code ~ Dan Brown (yeah, I know I voted for this in the best 10 as well, but i'm beginning to feel that this was a little misguided...it's all hype and no trousers, if you ask me)

7. ANYTHING by Keats

8. Mrs Dalloway ~ Virginia Woolfe

9. Romeo and Juliet ~ William Shakespeare

10. HARRY POTTER!! Yeah, I know, I know... :brow:

in the seventh grade (which i just finished..for those of you overseas im 13 if that helps to understand) we had required reading of a book called deathwatch..though i know it is not a classic or anything like that or even close to being called literature i had to mention it. this book was by far the most worthless waste of my time in my life. if you read this book you will want to burn it by the time your done.. the plot is so outrageous and dumb that i was just stunned..ill give it one thing..for about three pages it was suspensful and i was hoping it would get better..i was wrong...truly a worthless read..but i havent found many others like that and i love to read..right now im reading the brothers karamazov and its amazing :) dostoevsky is amazing..next im going to read brave new world..i hope its as good as the brothers and i know that it cant be as bad as deathwatch haha

::edit:: also..the da vinci code was thought provoking but it sucked..almost exact same plot as angels and demons (which i liked) but its all hype and is just not very good....but by the way im reading the inferno by dante(while im reading the brothers) and it too is amazing..epic poetry is amazing! :banana:

I hated Lolita by Nabokov. Can anyone explain to me the popularity of this book becasue I just never got it? I thought it was sick and so so very wrong.