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Today I have finally put together my top 10 must-read books list (I am house-bound; too much free time at hand :p) and it made me wonder which books you could do without...
Here is my list so far:
1. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
2. Mrs Dalloway by Woolf
3. As I Lay Dying by Faulkner
4. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
5. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
In no particular order:
1. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown (poorly written and absurd)
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger (I've never identified with angst)
3. Flowers in the Attic, by V.C. Andrews (incest is not a good thing)
4. The Dark Tower , by Stephen King (the story lost me completely)
...And that's really all I can think of at the moment. I guess I've been lucky in choosing what I read.
In no real order:
1.) On The Road, by Jack Kerouac (makes little sense)
2.) Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger (I hate all teenager literature)
3.) The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Sparks (just wierd)
4.) The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (my 10th grade English teacher analyzed it to death, making me dislike it)
5.) The Lovely Bones, by Alice Seabold (sick, strange, and WRONG WRONG WRONG)
I saw an old copy for sale in a discount store, and on the cover it quoted the New York Times as saying: A compulsive book, to be read in one sitting.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArcherSnake
Now, in my mind, a reader may be compulsive, but a book may only be compelling.
Perhaps I am mistaken in my understanding of the proper usage of the word "compulsive".
A month later, I saw someone reading a more recent edition of the book at an airport. I asked if I might see the cover. Sure enough, they had changed the cover to "cover up" their original grammatical error.
I am searching with google on "compulsive book"
I encounter, so far, out of 800 links returnend, only one which uses "compulsive" to modify "book"
http://www.book-castle.co.uk/emma.php
Although American Heritage On-line Dictionary does sayQuote:
Originally Posted by google examples
Compulsive: Having the capacity to compel: a frightening, compulsive novel.
But I rather imagine that using "compulsive" to modify a thing has only been accepted fairly recently.
What would the difference be, then, between a compelling book and a compulsive book.
The word compulsive has connotes some kind of disorder. If I say that someone had "a compelling reason" to do what they did, I am not hinting that there is something chronically wrong with them.
This is interesting. If I google on "compulsive NOVEL" then I get 300 hits, all with the same usage. But when I search on "compulsive BOOK" then I get 800 hits, but only a handful are examples of "compulsive" modifying "book", while for the majority of hits, "compulsive" modifies a person (the buyer, reader, collector, thief... etc)...
Sorry to be cluttering this thread with a long post which is more about grammer and etymology.
Say, perhaps we should have a forum for grammar, etymology, usage. We could post the 100 most frequently misspelled words, the most common grammatical errors, and interesting things from manuals of style.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Strunk_Jr.
In the original edition, Strunk describes the purpose of the book as follows:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Strunk & White
The first one that comes to mind is Orlando by Virginia Woolf. I know there's more.......I'll be back!
Crime & Punishment by Dostoevsky is leading my list (still haven't finished reading that one)
Do I have to have read the book to make it a 'book I could do without'? I'm kind of keeping away from books that look/sound 'dangerous'.
Ah, I cannot think of any.. I know some books I disliked - but then I disliked them so much, because they hit a nerve. So they were actually quite good. Like 'Goodmorning, midnight' by Jean Rhys. A book that I absolutely loathed.. but I still want to reread it some day to see if it still knocks me out.
And many books don't do much for me.. but they are great for one trainjourney.. so I still like them to be written.
Hmmm, so difficult to narrow my list to ten, but here goes (in no specific order, of course) . . .
1. Creation by Gore Vidal,
2. The Celestine Prophecy Series by James Redfield,
3. any poetry collection by Billy Collins (please do not ask),
4. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein,
5. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein (sorry :p),
6. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling,
7. anything by John Grisham,
8. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell,
9. Flowers for Algernon by Keyes Daniel,
10. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (sorry again :p).
The Lovely Bones.
you know, i actually liked the beginning of the lovely bones, and i thought the whole idea of a story narrated by a dead person was sort of neat. plus the heaven in that book is the kind of heaven i'd like to have. ;) but i lost interest after suddenly years went by and the investigation was sort of halted/forgotten. i really thought that the whole story would be about how mr. harvey would get caught, but it became more of the family that was left behind moving on and stuff, and mr. harvey's end was unsatisfying.
i also thought the ending was corny and bad (because the narrator decides to have "you" as an audience), and my least favorite part was when susie for some reason fell down to earth and then instead of pointing out where her body was and stuff, she used the day to have sex with her junior high school crush.
which reminds me. the relationships are also too unrealistic. come on, with a sister murdered or not, it's kind of impossible for a couple fourteen-year-olds to have a relationship that actually last. and for susie and ray to have sex because they happened to have kissed way back when they were fourteen and the fact that susie was in ruth's body... it's just wrong.
i guess it's too happy-ending? i don't know, but apparently if you write about heaven your book is guaranteed to be a best-seller. (*thinking of mitch albom's the five people you meet in heaven and some other book about a near-death experience*)
::edit:: oh, and as for my list, i'll put digital fortress by dan brown for now. i'm sure there are many other books because i tend to read books that i don't like anyway, but my brain is all muddled up now. no wait, i can think of another one: dragonsong/singer/drums by anne mccaffrey. the trilogy was supposed to be good, but i read each one of them without any enthusiasm. :(
"Wicked" - by Gregory Maguire (The play rocks, though, so I was very disappointed.)
"The Color Purple" - by Alice Walker
1.) Moby Dick by Herman Melville (You hope the whale swallows the author!)
2.)Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Then only "great expectation" I ever hoped for was that the book would mercifully end!)
3.)David Copperfield, ibid. (To quote Dorothy Parker "This is not a book to be lightly tossed aside. It should be thrown with great force!"
4.)Anything writen by Stephen King! (Sorry, my opinion does not necessarily reflect, etc. etc.)
5.)The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Unless, mayhap ye be a thesbian! Love to watch a play performed, hate to read them!)
6.)The Poems of Carl Sandberg (Can you say "boring")
7.)Anything by Stephen Crane (He makes Sandberg look interesting!)
8.)Anything by the sisters Bronte (Whole family couldn't write!)
9.)Art Bushwald's so-called humor (He's no Dave Barry, that's for sure)
10.) Upton Sinclair The Jungle Yuck! (I still have a stomach, and the dry heaves aren't funny!)
....Gosh!This question is too difficult for me to answer right now!I'll have to take at least a week to think about this!lol ;)
Considering that there are millions of books I have not yet read or will never get to read it's really hard to pick a top 10!Maby there is a number 1 still lurking somewhere and I will read it in the near future-I may discover my favourite book tomorrow...:)
1. (Die Kalvierspielerin) The Piano Player - Elfriede Jelinek
2. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
3. (Das Parfüm) Perfume - Patrick Süskind
4. Any book written by Stephen King (I had to read some for class and I really hated them)
5. (Die Verwandlung) The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
6. Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy (and generally, books by Tom Clancy)
7. The Chamber - John Grisham
8. (Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) The Count of Monte Christo - Alexandre Dumas
9. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
10. (L'étranger) The Stranger - Albert Camus
Books I could do without (in no specific order)
1. Great Expectations- Charles Dickens (sorry Dickens i usually like your books but...)
2.The Ox-Bow Incident- Walter Van Tilburg Clark (got on my nerves)
3. The Scarlet Pimpernel- Baroness Orczy
... that's all I can think of right now =)
I can't stand to not finish a book, but I know there have been several which were so bad I could not bear through them. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view) I cannot seem to remember their names. I suspect I blocked them out as they were so bad.
I agree with most of the choices listed here, a lot of that being books I would never read in the first place. But, the author that comes to my mind as being unreadable for me was Ernest Hemingway. I read two of his books. The first because everyone said I should and the 2nd to see if it was as bad as the first. I simply could not get into his strange style of conversation. I kept thinking "people do not talk like that".
Another book that pops into my head just now is a children's book I read to my daughter, Fury of the Broken Wheel Ranch. We stuck through it just to find out how it ended, but the descriptions were rather fantastic and the entire story turned into a silly play between us. Great fun and a bonding moment, but not really worth the read.
1) Tale of 2 cities -dickens
2)Color Purple-Alice Walker
3)The Handmaids Tale--Attwood
4) Lovley bones-- Seabold
5) Gone with the wind
6)his dark materials Trilogy -- philip pullman
7) Lord of the Rings
8)A Lady of Quality-- Frances Hodgeson Burnet (the only book/story of hers that I hated)
9) Regeneration trilogy-Pat Barker
10)Jane Eyre
and ive only just started the list tis could go on and on all night
mhm..."Harry Potter" would surely be on top...after that... :"Harry Potter". And then...mhm..."Harry Potter", I'd say.
Oh, and "The Alchimist" by Paulo Coelho and "Bonjour Tristesse" by Francoise Sagan, wish I hadn't read these...
LOL @ Harry Potter.
However, I loved Jane Eyre.
The da vinci is a great book and so is great expectations! well i thought they were good and i'm 13 and most 13 year olds would turn there noses up at great expectations
I also like harry potter but then again most people love harry potter so i'll shut right up
It seems I should strictly avoid Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, Harry Potter and Jane Eyre!
I read and liked Jane Eyre. Note I said I liked the book, I didn't love it however. I found the 1st ten chapters dull!
Haven't read any of Virginia Woolf, but plan to read some Dickens. Wouldn't consider Harry Potter!
The biggest waste of time in my mind is Lorna Doone by R.d Blackmore. Boring, it drags and I ended up stopping halfway through as I fell asleep!
Fortunately or not, I have very peculiar needs and after a page or two, I know well enough to put the dern thing down!!!
Know thyself?
That you're 13 and reading the classics is admirable. I have several books by Dickens in my library and have never once been inclined to read any though I obviously planned to when I bought so many of his books. One day I'm sure I will but for now I'm neutral though I'm partial to the Harry Potter series, find 'em quite entertaining and I'm considerably older than 13.Quote:
Originally Posted by gumption
Essentially to each his own. No one ever agrees with everyone but it's so commendable everyone's reading. Btw, I'm really enjoying this thread, it's confirmed some of my own suspicions regarding some author's and books I could do with out though I am rather partial to the Brontë's and Dumas and Tolkien! Lol!
OK, I know this is your opinion, but COME ON! The Harry Potter books are kinda overrated, that I know, but the writing's OK, and John Grisham is a terrific writer!Quote:
Originally Posted by mono
Themis beat me to these, and because of my loathing for King, Koontz, and (K)Clancy (the KKK of literature) I am way over ten!Quote:
Originally Posted by Themis
A Tale of Two Cities, bring me the Cliff notes....zzzzzzzzz
The Power of Now...Tolle, yeah, Zen rehashed.
100 people who are screwing up America.....biased and lousy.
The Botany of Desire....Pollack...got it for my spouse; a biology major; says the author must be smoking the draperies...ahem.
I would like to remove As I Lay Dying from my list.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
I don't think there's a list here that doesn't have at least one worthwhile book in it - Heart of Darkness? On the Road? Dorian Gray? Please people - all of these (and Harry Potter too) have either moved me, made me think or entertained me. In fact, all of these (except Potter, which merely entertained) have done all 3.
I could certainly live without James Patterson though - there is a worthless author.
[QUOTE=Beaumains]Flowers in the Attic, by V.C. Andrews (incest is not a good thing)QUOTE]
I think that incest is an horrible thing. That was the reason which made me not to read its second part. When I started Flowers In The Attic, I found it really interesting but then what happened, I found it yucky....and wanted to stop reading the book but then I was curious for the end....but I will not call it a worthless novel though it was really very sick.
I didn't mind Wicked, I didn't love it, but I didn't hate either...however...his take on the Snow White tale, Mirror, Mirror I most definately could've done without. That book was just bizarre and not in a good way. :rollseyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Aramis
And I could've done without the two extra Amy Tan books I bought. I loved Hundred Secret Senses so I got a couple more but I discovered that if you've read one Amy Tan book, you've read them all so the the second two were completely superfluous.
Leo Tolstoy
Alexandre Dumas
Jane Austen
George Elliot
Dickens, save Oliver Twist
That should be more than ten books :yawnb:
Also anything by Ayn Rand.
Ulysses - James Joyce (pretentious crap of the worst kind)
100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (meh. It wasn't as bad as some of the other books mentioned here, still deserves a place due to its rep which is unwarranted in the extreme)
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky (Dostoevsky is one of the wittiest authors I have ever read and I refuse to believe this piece of cow turd was penned by him)
Silas Marner - George Elliot (I love Mill on the Floss. This book is about as interesting as watching paint dry, needless to say, it's one of the best cures of insomnia out there)
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (Unlike a lot of others I love reading Hardy's prose. His characters, OTOH, are a totally different kettle of fish)
Crossroads of Twilight - Robert Jordan (self-explainatory, really)
Misery - Stephen King (I love most of King's works - this, IMO is the weakest)
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (This is one of the only of the only two novels, which as a child looking to devour anything and everything I could get my greedy hands on, wasn't able to finish)
Emma - Jane Austen (Seriously, Emma works much better in the movie format. Austen was a wicked satirist but this one is way too surcose ladden even for the likes of me)
i have one and i am sure no one has heard of it...
It is a relief, I guess, that your name won't appear in this thread then! :pQuote:
Originally Posted by cateye515
I was just going to ask about that. I just finished reading it a week ago, and found it absolutely fascinating.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
- The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (still reading it, but don't actually know why, it's quite boring)
- Die Schachnovelle (Chess) by Stefan Zweig (partly because I had to read it for German class and I'm not good at German, but also the story is awfull. I somehow am not interested in somebody learning complete chess games by heart and playing against himself ("Ich Weiss, Ich Schwarz"))
I can only say that I did not understand the book when I first read it many many moons ago. Yet second time round, I really enjoyed it. I think Faulkner has a twisted sense of humour.Quote:
Originally Posted by davoarid
There is a thread devoted to Faulkner if you would like to check out:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=16086
I'm suprised so many people in here have read Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein... It was given to me by a girl I work with, she said it was soooo good, so I read it and absolutely loathed it. I don't think I even finished it. Bleh. I didn't realize it was such a widely read book, I didn't know the author so i thought it was just some random crap book you would find at a used bookstore. (Actually, now that I think about it, it is.)
I also really disliked A Handmaid's Tale by Atwood. IMO, a lot of fuss about nothing.
Let's see... what else... oh yes, Silas Marner put me to sleep on numerous occasions...
It's kind of shocking to read that we can do without "Crime and Punishment", "Idiot" or "A Hundred yeras of solitude". All three are among my favorite books ever.
Yeah, why all the Dostovesky hate? I'd be careful of laying the blame at his door and not the translators.
Topic? Um, The Bible, probably.