Yes, Kafka can be a handful. Yet his writing, by moments, is simply brilliant and that is still not adequately expressed actually. or at least it is in German anyway. Kafka can be very dry though, and I would understand that some people will find him insufferable, but he's got this great irony and I think once one gets it, he is absolutely hilarious.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
I don't know if I would say I hated these two but I found them pretty disappointing for "classics".
Dracula - good parts and some of the themes and conversations were pretty interesting but for me it just became really tedious at points.
The Invisible Man (Note: not Invisible Man) - all I can say is meh.
http://www.cbc.ca/wiretap/index.html?copy-audio[/URL]
For those of you how have never heard CBC's Wiretap, The best of season four has an episode called: 'The Lives of Bugs and Men', which has a great skit with Gregor Samsa and Dr. Seuss are penpals. Really funny. Sorry if my link doesn't work correctly.
Last edited by Night_Lamp; 07-15-2010 at 10:13 PM.
I think the Man who was Thursday to be a very strange and unpredictable novel.the first page aof the path to Rome gives a clue that G.K. is highly creative and individual.I didn't understand(I mean notice) the decadence in the novel.Originally Posted by Adolescent09
What do you think of Chesterton's politics?Is he pro law and order or not?
Do you like the path to Rome?
I like Vanity Fair because of the way Becky seems to polite but is really rude because she uses
french and Long words.
Last edited by qimissung; 03-16-2013 at 02:14 AM.
1) Les Miserables (tried reading years ago and then abandoned it out of sheer boredom. Maybe I'll try again...)
2) One Hundred Years Of Solitude (took my YEARS to finsh this one. While I liked it immensely in places, and I REALLY like Marquez otherwise (The first Marquez I read was Love in the time of Cholera at age 12 and I had lovely sappy dreams about it for weeks! I was one obsessed 12 year old...), This book, however, dragged so much it gave me a headache!)
3) Vilette (meh)
4) Mansfield Park (Thought it was very appropriate for its time, and probably much more accurate in that respect than P&P will ever be! But god, it was an awful read!! I don't usually take an instant dislike to protagonists unless their as goody-two-shoes, priggish, judgemental and moralistic and dear Fanny Price and Cousin Edward)
Incidentally, I really liked Catcher in the Rye- it reminded me of my brother who is 16 and going through this VERY angsty teenage the-world-is-****-hole phase right now
LOVED Streetcar (very very sexy!)- though seeing Brando in the role soon after reading the play might have helped in that regard.
Catcher in the Rye is just terrible imo.
I love Fielding, but I find Tom Jones to be an excruciating read. Joseph Andrews and Shamela are quite readable though, and the Author's Farce is one of my favourite plays.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Ulysses, "the" Bible
The Grapes of Wrath. What's the appeal?
I agree with mal4mac except that I haven't actually read Joyce's Ulysses and so I figured it doesn't count in my case. I did get through the first chapter, about 50 pages, and enjoyed the first 20 pages or so--well, maybe the first 10 pages. I skimmed through the rest--quickly--enough to convince myself that it didn't get any better and stopped.
The classic that I actually read and love to hate and label as the "worst" is Eliot's The Wasteland. If I were an expert and more well-read, I'd probably be able to come up with many more titles to hate.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
I wouldn't actually apply the word hate here, but I found it pretty hard to enjoy Tristram Shandy.
I also thought Gulliver's Travels was a shoddy bit of writing. So was Ivanhoe.
I think that "100 anos de soledad" is one of the best novels ever written.1) Les Miserables (tried reading years ago and then abandoned it out of sheer boredom
2) One Hundred Years Of Solitude (took my YEARS to finsh this one. While I liked it immensely in places, and I REALLY like Marquez otherwise (The first Marquez I read was Love in the time of Cholera at age 12 and I had lovely sappy dreams about it for weeks! I was one obsessed 12 year old...), This book, however, dragged so much it gave me a headache!)
3) Vilette (meh)
4) Mansfield Park (Thought it was very appropriate for its time, and probably much more accurate in that respect than P&P will ever be! But god, it was an awful read!! I don't usually take an instant dislike to protagonists unless their as goody-two-shoes, priggish, judgemental and moralistic and dear Fanny Price and Cousin Edward
Incidentally, I really liked Catcher in the Rye- it reminded me of my brother who is 16 and going through this VERY angsty teenage the-world-is-****-hole phase right now
LOVED Streetcar (very very sexy!)- though seeing Brando in the role soon after reading the play might have helped in that regard.
But then I skipped every alternate chapter!
Exit, pursued by a bear.
"Worst," of course, is a silly word. Rather, here are some undeniably great works that I personally did not enjoy:
War and Peace (first half had me hooked, second half was a slog)
The Grapes of Wrath
Paradise Lost
Catcher in the Rye
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Naked Lunch
The Trial
The Castle (honestly, I don't like Kafka...which is strange, since I like everything he's associated with...maybe it's a translation issue)
The Power and the Glory
Sister Carrie
1984
Dubliners (other than "The Dead" - which was amazing)
Walden
Kafka is an acquired taste.
What was wrong with it? If it was slogging, heavy, looooong, repetitive, bad/turse in style (not really beautiful, he doesn't care about that, it's factual), chaotic (wanting to cram everything and anything in one sentence) and weird and surreal, then it wan't a translation issue.
In fact, most parts of Kafka translations I have read, tone it down a fair bit. He can go on and on and on and on and on and, oh yes, ON. But he can be hilariously funny (that story of Momus there, for example, about the little grain in the mill was hilarious because he was telling K that in fact he had unmasked them all, but sadly K was asleep by then). Sometimes, the officials remind me distinctly of Sir Humphry in Yes Minister. For themselves, they make perfect sense, and looking at it from their point of view, it also makes sense, only their sense isn't really the rest of the world's.
His short stories are better though. As he doesn't have so many pages he is free to fill, he remained concise, if that exists in Kafka.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
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