Charles Dickens is SO overrated in my opinion. I mean yes he wrote good stuff..but not THAT good...I don't remember ever really enjoying any of his works..they're so gloomy and always leave me with bitterness and a strange feeling of wanting to hang myself!
I'm the patron saint of the denial,
With an angel face and a taste for suicidal.
Lots of us folks up here in Maine look up to Stephen King. I really liked "The Stand". But, lately, I've really grown tired of the rehashing an a lot of going on and on ... kind of a pulp science-fiction pump. Seeing characters resurface in other books, while legit I suppose, seems somewhat distracting for me, anyway.
Whenever I read something that seems hard to follow, I have this thought that maybe other people would see it more clearly, that it is just my weakened perception, rather than outright, intentional obliqueness. But then, I wonder still.
Ничего нет лучше для исправления, как прежнее с раскаянием вспомнить.
Well, now that you ask, I definitely think George RR Martin is overrated. People are all excited that he writes about sex. I don't know, maybe including sex in fantasy is new and people get excited about it. Maybe adding a lot of realism and family intrigue is new and people get excited about it. I just didn't like, and a lot of people seems to praise is a lot that I just had to write his name here.
To me, his "Game of Thrones" (the book that seem to have made him really popular) appear so close to realism that I frankly preferred reading an actual historical book than that.
Uh, also, Dan Brown. He just took a taboo subject and popularize it, so no matter what he wrote, people were interested having a bite ofi t.
Taboo subject? That there was a fictional grail?
That Jesus and Mary were a couple and that she had his child.
I'd rather believe Jesus was involved in a sordid affair with Judas. Now that would make a great Hollywood blockbuster. Brokeback Mountain in Jerusalem.
"Dreams are the children of an idle mind." - Romeo and Juliet
I think writing off Jane Austen is a mistake. I read all of "Sense and Sensibility", only because it was referred to in the Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey. Elwood P. Dodd goes into his study finds his hidden liquor bottle and gets out Jane Austen's book and begins to read. I went out and got the book just to see if that was how it started.
"The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex.", see, I still remember -- I love that movie. And the book seemed a little dry. But 75 years ago this was a great unintended satire on the aristocracy, possibly?
See, this is a book that other people could see the great value of. My own lack of depth is the overrated part.
Ничего нет лучше для исправления, как прежнее с раскаянием вспомнить.
That's not taboo. It's bizarre.
Taboo means something other than that.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with Stephen King, too. I only started reading his stuff in March - I wanted to see how "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" compared to the movie and then read the rest of the books in that short story compilation and then read a couple other of his books.
I think why he's so popular is because he's such an easy read - just about anyone can read his stuff, that's it's appeal. Sure, his books are a million pages long, but they're not difficult at all and they borderline on simplistic. Did anyone read "The Library Policeman"? I mean, King seems like a rad badass dude and all and I'd like to meet him, but I'd swear a twelve-year-old had written that. And I was not impressed with 'salem's Lot at all.
Strangely enough, "Apt Pupil" is my favorite piece of his work, I really liked it alot.
I finished Four Past Midnight not too long ago and I think that'll do me for King books for the next couple years.
Oscar Wilde, Ian McEwan, Umberto Eco, Henry James, Raymond Queneau, Ian McEwan, John Updike, Sylvia Plath, Ian McEwan.
Each of them, irrefutably sh!t.
"Saw this friend the other day, I was like "HEY WHERE'S THAT FAX MACHINE YOU PROMISED ME, YOU SAID TUESDAY NOW IT'S FRIDAY, he was like "STOP PUNCHING MY SINCLAIR C5 AND I'LL TELL YOU" and then we wrestled for about 20 minutes".
The Turn of the Screw
William Faulkner. I still shudder at the _Sound and the Fury_
FRANCISCO
For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
Hamlet Act I Scene I
I am going to be reading The Sound and the Fury this year. What was it that you didn't like? Without giving anything away.Originally Posted by _JadeRain_
Chuck Palahniuk. Good movie, bad book.
"Do you mind if I reel in this fish?" - Dale Harris
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." - Ernest Hemingway
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I read the first three books and I enjoyed them I guess but the GRRM gushers that make their rounds on various literary boards need to get a grip. GRRM needs to tone down that big fish swallowed by a bigger fish story structure. I flipped through A Feast For Crows at the bookstore and think I found a bunch more psycho feudal freaks in chainmail. And yes, I just love reading dwarf smut every 20-50 pages. Pull-leeze!
I quite enjoy the Song of Ice and Fire books. And I appreciate them for what they are - good, fun, reads that are engrossing and an easy way to disappear into another world. There are plenty of books that can do that, and plenty of books that can do that a lot better than Martin. But it works for me.
grrrrrrrr!
"He was nauseous with regret when he saw her face again, and when, as of yore, he pleaded and begged at her knees for the joy of her being. She understood Neal; she stroked his hair; she knew he was mad."
---Jack Kerouac, On The Road: The Original Scroll
They're alright, nice flowery prose blended with gritty fantasy and medievel court soap opera nothing deep however. Personally, I liked Fevre Dream more. Much more. Not sure I can get back into world of Westeros if the flawed trends I spoke about in my post above continue. How many characters are going to die before GRRM realizes he has thinned the quality of the saga overall.
Last edited by Stieg; 06-01-2007 at 12:04 AM.
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