10 Books You Can Do Without

[spookymulder93]

The first 100 pages of One Hundred Years of Solitude is all you need to read. The next 300 are basically the same thing over and over again.

[Darcy101]

Anything by Thomas Hardy. Yes, he's a great writer, I don't dispute that. But his fatalism is just too hard for me to take. In a Hardy novel nobody wins.

hear hear

Far from the madding crowd ( i just dont care!!!! and dont like any of the characters) they are all miserable tits!!

[mikemaster70]

I pretty much only have four: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Killer Angels, The Pearl, and Johnny Tremain. The main reason I say these four is because I just found them completely and utterly boring. The only one I actually finished was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the other three i couldn't bear to finish, I'm just proud I was able to get a little more than half way through with them. Not that I have anything against the concepts in the books, because I think they're all very good, it's just the style that was, frankly, not my cup of tea.

[spookymulder93]

The Pearl is only 90 pages. It's like a short story.

[antiprefix]

Anyone who says The Catcher in the Rye is absolutely wrong.

[DanielBenoit]

These threads are interesting in that they emulate the subjectivity in our tastes.

Moby-Dick, One-Hundred Years of Solitude, Huck Finn I can do without? Hell no! And Hardy? I love Hardy. He is a better poet than a novelist, though his shifting between rural and Victorian settings in his novels are highly skilled and the creeping dark naturalism which underlines both his prose and poetry is quite appealing.

And yes, I know that Twain screwed up the ending of Huck Finn, but my God, only a handful of American writers have equaled the sheer beauty and humanity of the last 300 or so pages.

For me it is: anything by Rand, Dryden (both whom I find just obnoxious, the latter much less so), Kipling, Farenhiet 451 and some others. But I really can't say that they are so bad that I can do without them, even Rand has her virtues.

That said, here's a novel I think all of humanity can live without: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries

[Delta40]

Man I have to read 100 years of Solitude in second Semester - this sounds painful!

The Harry Potter series
Every Mills & Boon and Harlequin romance
War & Peace
Lord of the Rings
Peter Pan
Alice in Wonderland
Every Bryce Courtenay book (except Aprils Fool)
How to be a successful writer etc etc
Twilight series
Northanger Abbey

[Emil Miller]

Without naming specific books I would gladly forgo those about the following:

1. Vampires

2. Teenagers

3. Boy wizards

4. Beatniks

5. Spurious religious revelatory thrillers.

6. Regurgitated Norse sagas.

7. Most science fiction

9. All fantasy novels.

10. Celebrity biographies.

[DanielBenoit]

Without naming specific books I would gladly forgo those about the following:

1. Vampires

2. Teenagers

3. Boy wizards

4. Beatniks

5. Spurious religious revelatory thrillers.

6. Regurgitated Norse sagas.

7. Most science fiction

9. All fantasy novels.

10. Celebrity biographies.

Hahaha, that pretty much sums it up. No. 4 is probably the only one I can disagree with.

[IceM]

Candide is the first one that comes to mind. I'll update this as I sort through my bookshelves.

[Madame X]

Without naming specific books I would gladly forgo those about the following:

7. Most science fiction

Hey, the Dune series is actually pretty good. At least, the ones that Herbert Sr. wrote himself.

[mal4mac]

Anything by Thomas Hardy. Yes, he's a great writer, I don't dispute that. But his fatalism is just too hard for me to take. In a Hardy novel nobody wins. Nobody even has a chance. The universe is a cold, uncaring place

So reality is just too hard for you to take? Well you better - it's reality! In the end none of us win 'cause we're all dead eventually. Often by *really* nasty means that make the fate of Hardy's characters seem quite quick and easy (thinking of "Jude" and "Return" here...)

The temperature of distance sapce is 3 Kelvin, so it's definitely cold. I don't see cosmic gas bouncing any babies, so it's definitely uncaring.

That's what is great about Hardy! He faces reality squarely in the face and puts it on the page.

Having said that, he is a tough read, so although I want to read (and re-read) him, I don't really wan to read him every day.

I may have my illusions...but if they ARE illusions, let me keep them! T. Hardy is bad for my health.

Illusions are bad for your health. What happens if your son turns into Raoul Mota? Or if you get a serious wasting disease? As the stoics pointed out long ago, it's better to face these things, then you realise you *can* live through them. And how to live through them.

So one of Hardy's great attributes is that he provides useful exercises in stoicism, before you have to face the dark night yourself. Like practising sums years before filling in your tax form this is all very useful.

Hardy also, of course, provides so much more than this. Beautiful descriptive writing, for instance, which sort of reveals that it isn't *all* gloom and doom - even in the midst of gloom and doom - there is at least *some* beauty.

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... blabla

I'm reading Emma at the moment and it's going really well. Austen's not just a good writer, she's a great writer, and her irony is as good as it gets. I think you're right about predictability, at least in the broad sense, at least so far. But it's wonderful how she describes how the predictable occurrences come about. These create great suspense - you *know* that "so and so" loves Emma when she is trying to set him up with her friend and you *know* that's going to lead to tears - but she makes it all happen in such exceedingly funny and interesting ways that you are left in tenterhooks waiting to see *how* it is going to happen.

After my recent failure with a 'book I can *really* do without' - Ulysses - I'm trying to recover by reading classics famous for *not* being a hard slog - Emma fits the bill! (It follows on nicely from Huck Finn...)

[Three Sparrows]

Katherine Mansfield Short Stories. I can't believe I bought that thing. Any thing written by Dryden or Defoe.

[ariella]

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*)

TOTALLY AGREE..I know this is from years ago but 'the lovely bones' is just ridiculous and way too nauseating actually. I tried to imagine who would or could actually like & enjoy the whole thing.

[LMK]

A few of books I could do without, though I would not suggest others not experience them; Picture of Dorian Gray, Moby Dick, Water fo the Elephants, Don Quixote, House of the Seven Gables, Love's Labor Lost (among other but not all Shakespeare plays), there are others, but these are what came to mind without too much thought.