10 Books You Can Do Without

[Idril]

Hear, hear!

I have read quite few of Hardy's books and I find myself liking them less and less by each book.

I've only read one Hardy book, Jude the Obscure but I felt the same way about that one. It was certainly a powerful book but at the same time I felt so manipulated by Hardy, all these horrible things happen to Jude and they happened because Hardy wanted them to, there didn't seem to be anything organic about it, if that makes any sense. The characters were so miserable but yet never did anything to improve their lot, they were frozen in their self pity and that is not enjoyable reading for me. I've often thought I should try another Hardy novel to see if perhaps another one will suit me better but it sounds like that's not going to be the case.

[Danika_Valin]

Ten "Books" You Can Do Without:

1. Cry the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
2. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
3. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
4. Dr. Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
5. Waiting - Ha Jin
6. Egalia's Daughters - Gerd Bratenburg
7. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
8. Candide - Voltaire
9. Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett
10. Call of the Wild - Jack London

[SleepyWitch]

hum, I tend to avoid the books i won't like in the first place... but there's still a handful of books i could do without (which doesn't mean that they are bad books)..
1. anything by Jane Austen (yep, she's a good writer and i like her irony, but the stories are sooo predictable and boring and i just don't care if the girl is gonna marry guy X or Y, it doesn't make any difference)
2. Da Vinci Code (never read it, to be honest)
3. what's her name.. Charlotte Link? Carolin Link? she writes crime stories.... boooooring
4. The Great Gatsby... it's a nice book but our teacher in school made us analyse it for about 10 weeks in a row... blabla American dream, blabla bla... green light, blabla... blabla

[Adelheid]

1. Da Vinci Code
2. War and Peace
3. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (the most BORING book i ever read.. never finished it, and took the longest to read to where I stopped)
4. Riding the snake (the storyline is stupid, although some parts may be true)

Can't think of any others.

[Charles Darnay]

Ten "Books" You Can Do Without:

1. Cry the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
2. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
3. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
4. Dr. Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
5. Waiting - Ha Jin
6. Egalia's Daughters - Gerd Bratenburg
7. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
8. Candide - Voltaire
9. Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett
10. Call of the Wild - Jack London

I'm surprised to see Three Musketeers on one of these lists.... I find that it was a ery good edition to 19th century French literature and an amazing novel, but everyone has their own opinion

[stlukesguild]

1. Steven Crane- "Red Badge of Courage"- I really like Crane... but was forced to read this thing 3 times in my years during my school years and never wish to see it again.

2. Anything recommended by Oprah- with the obvious exception of "Anna Karenina"... but that was an definite fluke. I want nothing to do with the sappy notion of literature as some sort of feel-good therapy.

3. Any autobiographies by (and almost all biographies of) popular icons: sports icons, rock stars, film actressed, tv actors. I think most Americans read this c*@p because they want to find out that the rich and beautiful are really having a horrible life. I can't be bothered.

4. Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, most of Ginsberg... I can't stand that gushing confessional ilk of modern poetry. Give me Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, or Charles Simic anyday. If I want confessions I'll turn to Rousseau, Montaigne, or Anthony of Hippo.

There's plenty more but I'll need to think about which ones I despise the most.

[mono]

3. Any autobiographies by (and almost all biographies of) popular icons: sports icons, rock stars, film actressed, tv actors. I think most Americans read this c*@p because they want to find out that the rich and beautiful are really having a horrible life. I can't be bothered.

. . . If I want confessions I'll turn to Rousseau, Montaigne, or Anthony of Hippo.

Though you specified you dislike autobiographies of 'sports icons, rock stars, and actors/actresses,' I find this interesting that you would enjoy Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which practically functions like an autobiography. Though he did not own all of the glamour and admiration of sports icons, and the like, he certainly had the fame during his time, particularly in politics and philosophy; many people of his time even called him a contemporary Voltaire.
Though I, too, loved Rousseau's Confessions, and tend not to read autobiographies of sports icons, rock stars, etc., I would never disdain the fact that they may have had equally interesting lives as Rousseau, for example.
Oh well, just a thought.

[Scheherazade]

Updating my list (in no particular order):

1. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

2. Mrs Dalloway by Woolf

3. The Alchemist by Coelho

4. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

5. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

6. The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass

[mal4mac]

Updating my list (in no particular order):

1. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

I read that last month. It was wonderful! Is it a general Hardy phobia, or just that novel? If the latter I can't see why, it seems to stand up well against the others. He does come on rather strong with the classical references in "Return", and I was glad I was reading the Norton critical edition. The footnotes were essential...

2. Anything recommended by Oprah- with the obvious exception of "Anna Karenina"... but that was an definite fluke. I want nothing to do with the sappy notion of literature as some sort of feel-good therapy.

Reading Anna Karenina made me feel good...

[dafydd manton]

Not sure I could come up with ten, but there are four that stick out like a nun at a Guns 'n' Roses concert.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy. (Life just isn't long enough to read anything whereby the author never uses one word where fourteen will do.)

The Harry Potter Series (Pass the bucket!)

The Da Vince Code. (Almost as daft as Winnie The Pooh, just as believable but not as well crafted.)

The Book Of Mormon. (Funnier than Spike Milligan, but that's all.)

If, in a moment of manic depression, I think of anything else, be assured I shall bore you with it.

[Scheherazade]

I read that last month. It was wonderful! Is it a general Hardy phobia, or just that novel?

It's a little bit of both. Instead of typing it all over again, I will copy what I said in previous page:

I have read quite few of Hardy's books and I find myself liking them less and less by each book. Hardy spent a great a deal resenting his own life and it is possible to feel the same in his books and characters. They are, in my opinion, written so that the reader will not help saying 'Aww, poor thing(s)'. I find their helplessness and fatalistic attitude depressing (if not annoying).

Native is the last Hardy novel I have read and for me it was rock-bottom as far Hardy was concerned.

[acdouglas92]

Here goes (these really are my all time favorites at the moment, and they are ranked in order from best to worst):

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
1984 by George Orwell
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson
Watership Down by Richard Adams

HAHA...well I do believe I read this incorrectly!! As those are the books I CAN'T do without, I will now come up with a few that I CAN live without! Sorry!

The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (overrated in my opinion)
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Two Towers [Lord of the Rings Trilogy] by J.R.R. Tolkien (dulls in comparison to the other two)
Anything with Jane Austen's signature on it! (I apologize to those Pride and Prejudice fans)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoevsky
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Beowulf (Seamus Haney translation?)
The Canterbury Tales by Goeffrey Chaucer

[PrimordialBeast]

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (I understand Vonnegut as the great postmodern satirist but in my personal opinion his stories are awful)

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky ( I enjoyed it all the way up to the courtroom drama and couldn't take anymore of it, also his single person 6+ page long uninterrupted and unbroken dialouges kill me)

Franny and Zooey by Salinger (felt like I was reading a bad episode of some teen drama like Degrassi)

War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (not even half way through it but I'm so bored with it)

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (the over abundance of Yuppie lifestyle is brutal itself)

Also couldn't get past the first 10 pages of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce

The fact that everyone here has hated on Dickens relentlessly has me nervous I picked up both David Copperfield and Great Expectations from Goodwill not too long ago because I'd like to see what Dickens is like but now I don't know, I'll try I geuss.

[spookymulder93]

For Whom the Bell Tolls. It took me like 3-4 months to get through that novel and that's only because I don't like giving up on things. That is definitely the most boring book that I have ever read. Even my Economics textbook was more interesting than it.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Hmm, some books I'm not keen on (apart from the obvious trash):

10,000 Years of Solitude (or so it seemed trying to read it)
Beloved by Toni Morrison, postmodern rubbish
Nights at the Circus by Anglea Carter, as above
Pamela by Samuel Richardson, or anything by Samuel Richardson I suppose, dull
The Secret History by Donna Tart, rubbish
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, completely overrated
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, forced to read this junk!
The Island by Victoria Hislop, as above
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, silly

Ian Rankin, Philip Pullman, Paulo Coelho and the like, rubbish, overrated.