Harper Lee. Maybe I should read "To Kill a Mockingbird" again someday, but that book was torture to get through.
I don't agree with Hemingway being overrated. Perhaps he just takes a little more thought to get through, I think he is tough.
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Harper Lee. Maybe I should read "To Kill a Mockingbird" again someday, but that book was torture to get through.
I don't agree with Hemingway being overrated. Perhaps he just takes a little more thought to get through, I think he is tough.
Lee 'torture to get through'? Surely you're thinking of someone totally different.
Nope, I think reading her book was the only thing that ever made me fall asleep in class. But maybe reading it with a classroom is what did it for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by ennison
That's interesting. I really liked To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm kind of surprised that you found it so soporific; I thought it was pretty interesting, and a lot easier to read than Hemingway (for example). Maybe it wasn't enough of a challenge for you. I wouldn't consider Harper Lee a "great" writer, though, because, as far as I know, TKAM is the only thing of note that she wrote.
I loved Harper Lee. I think that it is really hard to read anything in a school setting, on a deadline. Literature is to be enjoyed not assigned. I hated almost all the books that I read in high school, but when I read them now I love them. (Some of that might have to do with personal growth and a mature(er) mind, but I can't read in a hard desk, under florescent lights, with a clueless student teacher telling me what the text is about. BLAH.
I have to agree with Hemingway. He is not the easiest person to read. I find a lot of his books to be quite tedious and though I'm interested in the story he is telling, its hard to push myself to actually get through them.
Hmm yes you have a point. Maybe I will reconsider putting her on that list until I can take her book at my liesure (sp?) one more time. Shouldn't be bitter I guess for the author surely didn't ask to be read in a classroom :D Hah!! you have swayed me!Quote:
Originally Posted by Adudaewen
I've never despised an author more than James Joyce, but I've only read a few of his books (and those many years ago). I know I've matured as a bibliophile, so I'm considering giving him one more chance. "Portrait" will definitely not be my choice, but I'm considering "Finegan's Wake."
My other humble choice is Tolkein (please don't all attack the newbie at once!) I appreciate fantasy, but he bored me to tears!
i find that among my peers i ahve the msot open mind as to what constitutes a good book. just becuase i disagree with the author does not mean that the book is bad. for the most part i read Sci-Fi and fantasy but i can enjoy almost any topic. I have many books from Valdemar, Darkover, and WoT as well as the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. LotR had like 400 pages of walking, walking, walking, but it was still an interesting story with a well-explored history. The other 3 authors arent considered great but they at least get credit for not having each succeeding conflict be agaisnt a more and more massively powerful enemy, a sad trend in modern SF/F.
Ive gotten many comments on the variety of my reading, although msot of it is SF/F: David Brin, Isaac Asimov, Lackey, Zimmer Bradley, Jordan, David Eddings etc.
Yet i still manage to have interest in Austen, Tolstoy, Twain, Kafka, and the rest of that massive list of "classical" authors. I find it vastly amusing that many people confine theselves to such a small number of topics in stories.
Certainly as a male ive been teased quite a bit about Austen. I might actually be around this forum a lot as i am sadly at a loss as to any sort of lterature discussion in school or with peers.
I noticed that not a few people did not see much value in Catcher in the Rye.
I understood, certainly, why many people found value in it, but for myself, i really cant see how it is so popular. The same goes for Steinbeck. I was very happy, however, when we read quite a bit of Bradbury.
As for Dan Brown and Rowling, the number of people i have met who think them quite talented as authors is highly disconcerting. Honestly, i read the books and took what value they had, but the character and story deveoplement left quite a bit wanting.
Aww, but you have to give her a break, considering she was only sixteen when she wrote it! A good number of people her age don't have that much insight.Quote:
Originally Posted by bluevictim
Okay, credit where credit is deserved, I did not know she was only sixteen at the time she wrote TKAM...Quote:
Originally Posted by *Classic*Charm*
heh, still, age only gains you so much credit. but for 16 thats a pretty good book.
I have to say that Nabakov is over rated.... I did not find Lolita to be a ove story, I found it slow and disturbing...Sorry if I offend anyone
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Originally Posted by grace86
Ah, I'm so glad. :)
Guess it rests on what you consider to be a "love story"-some people may classify the relationship between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet as the perfect love story, some may prefer Heathcliff and Cathy as the perfect love story etc. Lolita can (at times) be slow, but literature is supposed to talk about and analyse the "disturbing" parts of the human mind and human nature-I do not really think that a book can be rightly criticised for being "disturbing", though even then Lolita is not particulalry disturbing in comparison to other "great" books.Quote:
did not find Lolita to be a ove story, I found it slow and disturbing
Although she began writing at a very early age, I'm pretty sure Harper Lee didn't write To Kill A Mockingbird when she was sixteen. She was 34 years old when it was published in 1960, and she had worked on the novel full time in the years immediately prior to its publication. It's possible, though, that she carried the germ of the story with her for many years, especially considering its autobiographical bent. :nod:Quote:
Originally Posted by *Classic*Charm*
'I've never despised an author more than James Joyce, but I've only read a few of his books (and those many years ago). I know I've matured as a bibliophile, so I'm considering giving him one more chance.'
I suggest you try the brilliant short stories and 'Stephen Hero'. The later stuff could be called novels for novelists rather than for readers. But it would be fair to admire his belief in his artistic calling.
That was how I felt when I first read "Lolita" 2 years ago. I was on the verge of :crash: the book after he set me up so painfully for the night of the Enchanted Hunters and, well, glossed over the fornication in one line while accusing me of being a beast for daring to wish for some nice erotica. The rest of the book just became a drawl that, annoyingly, refused to end.Quote:
Originally Posted by Domer121
I reread the book a year later, knowing fully what to expect, and it is now one of my all-time favourites.
So I would give Nabokov another chance:p
Nabokov is a brilliant writer. And like all brilliance can be hard to look at for long. Try 'Pnin'. The Viking portable Nabokov will give you a good selection too. If you can get a hold of his translation of Lermentov then you'll see another side to Nabokov's genius.
Nabokov has a masterful tough with the English language. Lolita rings with wonderful linguistic turns. Can't say I agree that he's overrated.
Sartre...
I've read The Nausea and I found it like a palace build on nothing.
The best thing he did is to refuse the nobel, he knews that he didn't deserve it!!!!!!!!!!
Care to explain why you think he is over-rated? I didn't like "The Age of Reason" much, but "Nausea" was brilliant, in my opinion.
Ok, I'll explain my reasons with my bad, bad english...:pQuote:
Originally Posted by Inderjit Sanghe
Sartre is considered a brilliant philosopher and writer, and one of the founders of existentialism. I've only read "Nausea", in which the protagonist show his disgust for the pathetic aspects of his existence and the existence of the other men. Trying to simplifing, he's disgusted by the existence itself, which he found totally meaningless. Sartre took trough his character in the entire book like a severe judge of all the feeling and behaviors of the humans, and i'd admit i agree with many of his thoughts, but what's the result of his cruel exam of the meaning of the life? The author have an answer to the question that had asked himself?
Yes, and the answer is in the banal end of the work: the only think that make the life worthy of being lived is the creation trough art, that set free the individuality of the man from the chaos of the mere mass.
It's without dubts a true statement, but is 3000 years old!!!!!:D
I have read many other works of the existentialists, like Camus's "The Plague", for example, and I found it most intersting that sartre, 'cause they took about the existence's vacuum and absurdity WITHOUT find a reason or a solution, that, as heidegger himself think, cannot exist 'cause the existence itself can't be totally knowable. But I haven't a deep knowledge of the philosophic aspect of existentialism and I'm not a philosopher, so maybe I'm totally wrong...:blush:
Sartre is boring, dull, bunkum. He took his own nonsense too too seriously. Camus is better but neither are really novelists. They've got the art back to front: It's story first then ideas. They in their sophisticated French way go Ideas first then graft on some story or other - well Sartre does
Truman Capote
Wasn't Duchamp's toilet a urinal?
If you are going to consider J.K. Rowling overrated, please then concur with me in calling Christopher Paloni overrated (although I believe Rowling is not.) I mean, it was basically a bit of Harry Potter, a bit of Lord of the Rings and a bit of the Chronicles of Narnia with other fantasy series tidbits thrown in.
People are going to absolutely hate me for saying this...
I don't like Dickens.
Well, that isn't entirely true. I love Pickwick, but that's it. Dickens' humor is nice and enjoyable; Dickens' tales of gloom not so much.
Probably been said, but Christopher Paolini. Eragon/Eldest are just bad.
Tolkien, Koontz, and King!
D. H. Lawrence, Booker Prize winners and nominees (the ones I have had the misfortune to read), Orhan Pamuk, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir. Not so much that I think they are overrated, but that I didn't like them.
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Originally Posted by Stieg
Tolkein, no. Koontz and King, yes.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
shoutgrace, lemme guess, you are located in Indonesia.
because you're quoting in Malay
F. Scott Fitzgerald is very overrated. His writing seems sloppy, almost like a trainwreck. And it's always about rich people whom I can't relate to.
Why is everyone naming Fitzgerald?
It's not about rich people, although they figure in it. I always thought it was more about how you might think that a materialistic life might be a fulfilling one, but how empty and pointless it really is. His characters usually end up with nothing and in a way have wasted their lives. Gatsby is poor but accumlates wealth in the hope of winning his girl, who, it eventually turns out, didn't really care that much for him and is a shallow coward. Dick Diver fights interal rage due to the responsibility of his wife's deteriorating mental health and feelings of guilt and frustration. In the Beautiful and Damned, they eveutally win all the money, but only to end up miserable creatures, and even after all they go through, they have their priorities wrong. Their best friends abandon them, and out of the three men at the start of the book, only one of them acheives critical success with their book - the one who was least likely to have, only to then succumb to writing rubbish for cash. The married couple gain wealth, but that is all, and they are miserable. sorry if i'm inaccurate, haven't read any of those for a while. But it is also supposed to be an portrayal of the jazz era and the whole new money versus old money thing (in Gatsby anyway, I think). He didn't finish the last tycoon, but apparently the main character is supposed to die. He is a good person who gets swallowed up by the greed of the industry. Or something like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert Jordan
I suppose some of his writing might seem sloppy, but he has some great passages, esp. when describing a loving relationship gone sour. I think he puts across feelings of hopelessness, dejection, suffering, angst, humiliation (which can be applied to most people, although perhaps in different circumstances), etc. quite well. I like the passages when the characters are falling in love less.
Anyway, my point is that it's not just about rich people, although perhaps I haven't explained very well. My memory is like a sieve.
But it's a truth universally acknowledged that he's bad. :PQuote:
Originally Posted by Matt the Man
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Originally Posted by masterlibrarian
:lol:
That might be an indication that he is overrated. What writer deserves their own holiday? :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9
well, except maybe Shakespeare... :D
John wrestle-with-the-bears Irving. That Scots twit whose name escapes me but supports the Hi Bees. Marilyn pain-in-butt French. Kurt stuck-in-a-time-warp Vonnegut, Harold Now-I'm-famous-I-can-have-an-opinion-on-everything Pinter, James gee-whizz-how-do-they-swallow-this-bunkum Ballard and many dozens of others who get their temporary fame in the literary rags
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Originally Posted by aydin
Well, I haven't been able to read Fitzgerald since torturing myself through This Side of Paradise. Now that was one giant pile of rubbish. The main character had NO LIFE, NO LIFE AT ALL and he deserved every worst circumstance he suffered. What a pompous jerk and meanlingless meandering story. I am not sure I can read this author again.