/lit/ - Literature

This book is garbage. A load of pretentious, modernist garbage. Literary experimentation is one thing, but for God's sake, at least make it readable. But no, a stuck-up author who is so full of his own self-importance would only want to write a book that only one of his most esteemed peers could "fully" appreciate. This is why people hate academics, and high-minded literature, and pretentious prick's like James Joyce.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/44688347

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

"It's not often that I rate a book I didn't finish but this screamed "crap" with such alacrity that I feel compelled to warn you. Don't waste those valuable seconds that it takes to pick it up and put it down again"

It seems like lots of the one star reviewers didn't like the writing, couldn't understand it etc. I found that you just have to keep going. I re-read the first 60 pages 3 times before I "broke-through" and found the novel to be the best thing ever.

Light in August

>You know, every few years I try to get intellectual and read one of the classics. I start to think that "okay, maybe I am now mature enough to understand the symbolism, to see the power and the story within a story." So I try to read Faulkner or Hemmingway or one of the other early 20th century American writers. And every time I do this, I struggle to maintain a good attitude through the first few chapters and then throw down the book in disgust. I realize that I am reading a very depressing book that is making me even more depressed because I am having to work too hard to figure it out. And that's wnat happenedn with Light in August. I put it down yesterday after realizing that it was doing nothing to lift my mood or distract my mind. Maybe I'll try it again later, but right now I've had enough of human foulability and gloom and doom!

Never fails to anger me.

Lolita
Review by Zeke

>Oh man, this guys name was humbert humbert. I want to say that I completely understand Humbert's preference, however I didn't find the guy to honestly be such an intellectual, but more of a person who is simply mixed up about his choice in women. A more normal person in his situation would marry a women that could make him feel loved, and masturbate to child porn in secrecy like an actual person, but there is not a single nymphet in the world that would actually be like any of the ones in this book. If you haven't actually met any five year olds yet, they are very small, very stupid, and they make fart noises for fun. They won't find anything attractive except for butterflies because they have no sexual urges. In fact had anyone met Humbert in real life, they'd probably just try to stay away from him, because most people don't put that kind of attention in women of that age. The book isn't bad it's jus- wait. Yes it it.

>I didn't finish it :)

>I did not even come close to finishing this interminable novel. I read the first volume in French and "Swann's Way" in English as part of my Comp. Lit. degree. I was sorry not to like someone who is considered a great French novelist, but I hated this almost as much as I did "Ulysses." Recently, I read abook by Jane Smily (13 Ways of Looking at the Novel), which explained this book more concisely than my instructor managed to. Still don't like it, but understand it a bit better.

>Hated A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu AND Ullysses,
>Comparative literature degree.

>I did not even come close to finishing this interminable novel. I read the first volume in French and "Swann's Way" in English as part of my Comp. Lit. degree. I was sorry not to like someone who is considered a great French novelist, but I hated this almost as much as I did "Ulysses." Recently, I read abook by Jane Smily (13 Ways of Looking at the Novel), which explained this book more concisely than my instructor managed to. Still don't like it, but understand it a bit better.

>Hated A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu AND Ulysses,
>Comparative literature degree.

1984

I did not like this book at all, if i could give it a less than 1 I would. This book is way to confusing and uses really big words. In the book, I think "Goldstein" has the views of the author. I do not like how when reading this book the author just has to confuse us more with putting another book into it! Julia and Winston's "love life" is fake and extremely uninteresting. Who loves someone before they met them? No one! And I think it is EXTREMELY not good that O'Brien is a traitor! I wish someone actually went against the party as well.
I would not reccomend this book to anyone, not even someone I don't even like! When I was told what this book was about I was actually excited, maybe a school book could actually be good! But then I realized it isn't like bombs and stuff bringing the world to an end, it is power, people and ways of life. I also don't like how the book thinks you actually know about their new languages, boundary lines and everything else they changed. I think the author should have just told you.

>>2807821


I hope it's a troll.

The Decameron

Yeah, I appreciate the historical side of it, and there are some valueable lessons to be learned from this frame tale, like what NOT to do. While it has some clean stories, it's basically a compilation of disturbing and perverted stories. The author does apologize though...and yet he still published it. Not that great.

>>2807821

>1984 is too cryptic durrr! y orwell no make a actual resistance like V4Vendetta dat would rock XD

Fucking spare me.

Darkness at Noon

1) Terrible. I hated every chapter, almost every sentence. Long passages are spent talking about abstract concepts related to the beginning of the communist revolution. The dialog is poor, but certainly less annoying than listening to the droning-on of the protagonist's inner-monologue.
There is very little action, and what action there is takes place in the main character's fuzzy, sentimental memory. At least the book is short.
I can't fathom why it's loved by so many critiques.

Read Orwell instead: he knew how to write novels.

(Also, why couldn't he just saw Stalin instead of No. 1? Why couldn't he say Russia or Germany? Perhaps his life was in danger from the Soviets or something, but the references are so painfully obvious, that the lack of direct references are weird.)

2) Had to read it for my ENGL 2600 class. Not the worst book I've ever read, but definitely not what I'd choose to read. Really boring about this guy's experience with some war or Russian revolution or something. :/

3) completely depressing

>>2807833

I always saw V for Vendetta as being 1984 but for the plebeian

>>2807836

He read Darkness at Noon in fucking English class but couldn't infer it's a fucking everyman novel about totalitarianism in general?

Which fucking school does he go to so I can slap his shit?

>>2807821
It must be a trol. The words are really big? that's ridiculous.

>>2807837
>>2807837
You're right, but you're also an asshole.

Holy Bible: King James Edition
>Too much sex and violence for me.

Respectable.

Murphy

"The first two sentences of Murphy are ones I will never forget:

"The sun shown, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Murphy sat out of it, as though he were free, in a mew in West Brompton."

The nothing new? What was that? Why did the sun have no alternative? What did Murphy sit out of, the sun or the nothing new? I read on, hoping my questions would be answered, but more arose. Soon, I fell asleep with the book on my lap.

I picked up the book on subsequent days, but each time I had to start over. I couldn't follow the plot, which was something about Murphy, a rocking chair, and maybe a void. I wasn't sure if Celia and Miss Counihan, the two females mentioned, were the same person. I tried again and again. But alas—the nothing new. Each time I cracked open the book, gaseous fumes emanated from the pages and knocked me out. The next day, I slipped Murphy into a dumpster.

Do not lay a thread of bookmark-fringe on Murphy —or do so only if you are brave enough to waken the destructive urges in your soul. Murphy made me do dangerous things, and I'm not confident that it would—or even could—allow me to finger its pages today."


>I wasn't sure if Celia and Miss Counihan, the two females mentioned, were the same person.

>I'm a dumbass who doesn't know how to read
>it's the book's fault

>>2807873
>There are some good parts I guess, like when Lot gives his daughters over to be raped by a frothing bisexual mob, or when God commits all that genocide in Canaan and surrounds, but generally, it is just a pastiche of boring genealogies, arcane dietary injunctions, and accounts of bad acid trips.

There's some real keepers in that review section.

Elizabeth wrote about Dune

>I am so glad I finally fulfilled my half of the bet.

>This book was so dumb it was a chore to get through it--and I haven’t pushed past the pain period in years. People riding worms, killing their grandpas, weird names for knives, bullets and don’t forget, everyone is addicted to Cinnamon. I thought it was lame. It felt really juvenile. The author seemed to be trying really hard to make everything really mysterious and mythical, and all I could think was how lame it was: all-blue eyes, a worms called a "makers," suits where you drink your own body moisture (disgusting).

I'm also annoyed that this book was read in exchange for Pride and Prejudice. Compared with a timeless classic the book seems like a 1st grade primer. Austen is a master of plot and suspense. You may not like the subject matter, admittedly it is a little girlie, but the woman can write. Herbert? Not even close.

Elizabeth rated

>Your Baby Is Speaking to You: A Visual Guide to the Amazing Behaviors of Your Newborn and Growing Baby

5 stars out of 5

This book is bloated old piece of crap. How this even got published in the first place is beyond me, much less how it has been considered a 'classic' for years.

I had read that this was 1400 pages of Tolstoy giving his readers a dry, boring recount of the French invasion of Russia but I didn't believe it. I wish I had believed it. Not only is War and Peace a sleep-inducing lecture on way too many perspectives of this war, it also comes complete with Tolstoy's never-ending butt-in chapters that he uses to force his opinion on us of France, Napoleon, Alexander, Russia itself, religion, politics, love, family, and anything else that apparently came to his mind.

This was worse than a textbook. This was a textbook that came with the annoying, opinionated professor built in! The only slightly interesting parts of this book were the lives of Natasha and Ellen and that only accounts for maybe 15% of the total. This book is so bad it has two epilogues. That right there should be warning enough to you to stay far, far away from War and Peace. Don't be as dumb as me.

I wish I had never picked this up. I am an angrier, more cynical person for it. If Tolstoy wasn't already dead, I would wish him so.

>the last Unicorn

>I just couldn't stick this book out to the end. The writing was too trippy. It was when I got to the line that said "the air hung shiny as candy." It was just way too psychedelic for me, which was a big disappointment because I had seen the Rankin-Bass cartoon as a kid and loved it (and still do). Maybe someday I'll pick it up again and try to finish it.

and

>The Last Unicorn book was not my favorite because nothing really interested me we'll we were reading this in class i don't really like fantasy books because i am not really a big fan of them. The only good part of the book was when the unicorn and the red bull faught and when mommy for tuna captured the unicorn and they were trying to escape that was the only good and exciting. Part out of the hole book i am not interested of magical creatures or magician or anything involved with magic i like every other kind of book be sides fantasy because fantasy just seems fake i know other kind of books are fake but when you first read a fantasy books. The first thing that comes to mind is real stuff happening in the book The Last Unicorn book dose not seem real at all that's why i did not like The Last Unicorn book SORRY to all those people who like fantasy I am not really into them over all the book was NOT AMUSING TO ME SORRY:(

I found the characters in this book to be incredibly stupid and of such low character that I lost interest within the first one hundred pages. The blurb on the cover states "..if it weren't so darned funny, it would be tragedy.", but with such weak minded and lowlife characters, it was just pathetic. And who needs to read about such lives? I did not find it 'uplifting' or enjoyable in any way.

I'm sorry, but this is not all that funny and it's not about a dog. If you want funny, read something by Bill Bryson, a funny man who also writes about real life. Anybody can write a silly story about nothing much.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Dog-South-Charles-Portis/product-reviews/1585679313/

Brave New World

>I'm 28% done with Brave New World: I am so not impressed with this book. It is completely unbelievable. I mean, such a world can never exist. People brainwashing others so happily, when they already know that they were brainwashed in the first place. Absurd!
Abandoning it for the time being.
"Every one belongs to every one else" - nonsense! And the descriptions are so horrific that I dont feel like continuing.
It is no way comparable to 1984. 1984 was a much better novel. There was a reason for everything and an explanation as to why it was a dystopia. The writing was bad at many places. In one of the chapters, three different conversations were interleaved.

Crime and Punishment

>Finally! it took me months to force my way though this book. Who decides what's a classic anyway?

>You killed someone... you know it, I know it and everyone else in the novel seems to know it... why did it take 600 pages to wrap the story up?

Going through these made me genuinely angry. Fuck you OP; I'm never doing that again.

>Lolita

I feel like a mental midget in trying to explain my feelings about this book. I struggle to understand why it is considered such a classic piece of literature. Am I jaded by my own time? Have I heard too often the world "lolita" used in modern contexts to refer to young girls who are attractive to adult men who should know better? I had to delve into some literary criticism in order to help me understand, and I think what Lolita tries to do is tell a disguting story about a disgusting man using beautiful language. I think it also speaks to our modern day inclination to want to explain ourselves, as if we could absolve ourselves from the horrors of the crimes we commit if it is understood why we did it. Listening to the audiobook, although fabulously read by Jeremy Irons, probably meant that the language was lost on me for the most part. Instead I was left with the story of this self-described monster who destroys a child's life and feels remorse only at losing her. Perhaps revolutionary in its storytelling at the time it was published, but too gross to read today.

>too gross to read today

From Amazon, but it still counts, Beyond Good and Evil

>The worst book on ethics I have ever read
>I bought this book for my daughter for her nineteeth birthday. She is busy at present studying the joys of philosophy, so I decided that this book - on the topics of good and evil - would be an excellent addition to her bookshelf. Was I mistaken. Luckily I had the chance to read the volume before giving it to her. Best left unread.

Hurf durf durf, I disagree with this book, so it should not be read.

10/10, made me genuinely angry

Madame Bovary:

Why are all the "great classics" lead by famed female heroines all too often about personal freedom thru means of sexual compromise leading to abject misery and ultimate demise? I realize it's an accurate depiction of culture and times, however why are Bovary and Moll Flanders the memorable matriarchs of classic literature? See my commentary on the Awakening for similar frustrations. Why aren't there more works about strong women making a difference in their own lives if not those of their families and communities? Why aren't we having young women read a work or 2 portraying a strong female who doesn't end up having an affair, committing suicided, or otherwise screwing up her own life and the lives of others as she sinks to the bottom where she inevitably belonged? Where are the strong, sentient heroines who might make feminists look slightly intelligent and/or inspirational?(less)

Georges Perec's A Void (aka La Disparition in french)

This was originally a novel written in French without use of the letter e, which was then translated into English under the same constraints. I sort of suspect that this little literary game was the main reason it was published at all. This was the kind of book I would have liked to read for a class, where someone would stop and explain what was going on every few chapters. It was far too tedious and heavy on the smug cleverness for my patience as a casual reader. I got about sixty pages in, then realized I was skipping and skimming more than I was actually reading, so I gave up.

>>2807906

>Thinks 1984 is better than Brave New World.
>IQ over 130

Choose one.

>>2807959
Little bonus
>Melissa Aug 03, 2009
>Melissa rated it 1 of 5 stars false
>sooo werid

>mfw the only people who rated Gargantua 1 star are women

>>2807775
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/85198575
"Prose-wise, this book is absolutely nothing special." about Nobakov's Lolita

>Moby Dick

>OK, so yeah, I have a master's degree in literature, and I must admit that I've never been able to finish this dreadful book. I respect that it was all symbolic and artistic and everything, but it was soooooooo plodding and pretentious--I couldn't stick it out. Obsession--blah blah blah.

>Moby Dick was a whale. Moby Dick was a white whale. Moby Dick was a large white whale. Ishmael was a man. Ishmael was white man. Ishmael was a small white man.And that was the report I turned in for Advanced Placement english back in highschool.

>I consider myself an easy-going person. I'm the type who sits in the back of the classroom, the last row of pews in church, the furthest corner in a restaurant--and I'll never make a peep. I don't send food back, I never engage in confrontation unless absolutely necessary, and I'll generally keep my misgivings to myself. So when I tell you that I hated Moby Dick with the burning fury of a thousand suns, I want you to grasp my full meaning.

>Call me Ishmale. Yeah, that's all I got out of it.

Make it stop ;_;

>>2807989

>but it was soooooooo plodding and pretentious

Moby dick is more poetry than prose. It reads like a drink of fine champagne.

>i could not finish the book as i thought it perverse. I do not deny that all those things have happened (a boy gets castrated by gelding and turns out to be a great homosexual lover in the end loved by Alexander the great), but the way it was written was really difficult for me to read. There are the darkest male homosexual historic fantasies in one book.

>Call me Ishmael? How about I "call you in the pail" - the garbage pail that is. This book is too long and too boring. A classic? Far from fantastics. Pass on this one, folks.

>>2807949
Really?
IMO -> Nietzsche's standpoint in his B.G.E (that all past philosophy was prejudiced) is inherently flawed as he in fact makes judgements more prejudiced than those of the philosophers he criticises!
That book is properly hate filled. I wouldn't buy it for my kid.

>I'm appalled of Nietzsche's idea that the great men of the world should walk all over the little, regular people to achieve their greatness. He says that the existence of the general population is justified only by the fact that there may come out of them a greater race (Hitler was a big fan of this view as well). He says that morality and ethics are not real, but merely tools to manipulate masses and hold back the elite. This guy must have been insane! (Turns out he was, being committed to a mental institution only years after finishing this work).

I believe George Bernard Shaw put it best, when he said the following about this book: "Nietzsche is worse than shocking, he is simply awful...Nietzsche is the champion of privilege, of power, and of inequality. Never was there a deafer, blinder, socially and politically inepter academician..."
>review of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
>mfw

not a review but

>Moby Dick
>3.32 rating

seriously? why the fuck do people use this piece of shit site again?

>>2808032
>George Bernard Shaw

>>2808047

I has a decent recommendations algorithm.

The Road

>A "masterpiece"??? You've got to be kidding! Come on, people, are you so afraid of going against the "masses" to say that this book was bad? The author couldn't even give his characters names ... "the man", "the boy" -- weren't they worthy of names? It must have been beyond the author's imagination, as is the "story" or lack thereof, and the non-ending. There was no story development. The book consisted of "the man" and "the boy" being hungry, finding food, being cold, finding rags, encountering humans, running away, being hungry, finding food, being cold, finding rags.... and on and boringly on. As someone else stated and I wholeheartedly agree: This book is the literary equivalent to The Emperor's New Clothes. I see it and tell it like it is: The book is not worth reading and was a waste of my time. I think Oprah takes the worst books ever written and plays the game of "Let's see how many people I can get to say this book is wonderful just because I say so" and laughs and laughs because people are so gullible. I'm delighted to not be part of that group.

>>2807775
What's wrong with that review op? I happen to agree. Even Shakespeare's incredible skill with language couldn't help the shitty story. One of his worst works

>>2808047
It makes it simple to keep track of what you have read and what you plan to read

The rec's can be decent sometimes too

But stay the fuck away from the reviews on any marginally widely-read book

>>2808062
The review is stupid because it doesn't realize that the fact that Romeo and Juliet are morons is the entire point of the play. Yes, it's stupid for them believe they're in love after speaking for like a week, that's the point, that's why they kill themselves like morons at the end.

>>2808072
Well that's subject to eternal debate since old Will isn't here to tell us what the fuck he meant.

>Oh, what a useless play. Nothing happens in it. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I can usually learn something from plays or novels I read for class, but this was just - god, DUMB. Two guys sit and wait near a tree for some Godot person, and they just talk, and talk about nothing, and time passes - they go home, come back the next day, and do the same thing. I think I would've liked it if it was a bit shorter - but 60 pages of these two idiots doing nothing but stupid talk? Come on! The dialogue was so annoying. It was like the talk I have with myself when I'm procrastinating on some project. Just childish and useless and nothing comes out of it except a waste of time. Like this play.

Jimmies rustled.

Epic of Gilgamesh

>All the ladies want to get it on now that I’ve slain the demon. But I must decline. I’m a clean man these days.

I just can’t win with women. Before, nailing all the ladies was bad. Now I refuse to seduce, and the Gods send a giant bull to kill me?

>>2808091

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

I feel like rustling some childhood jimmies.

>Ham-fisted in its presentation of sentient animals. Some races of creatures are innately bad, and characters of these races are cartoonishly one-dimensional. Rats are evil because they're evil, and boy, do they enjoy being evil. The story and its narrative presentation seemed thoroughly, openly racist to me, which is especially disturbing in a story intended for children. I don't think the social implications are excused just because the characters are cute little forest critters.

>Other than that, the plot is that stock fantasy plot where a young warrior is destined to find a legendary sword and defeat an evil lord. Society seems exactly the same as if all the characters were humans. I think the novelty of non-human characters was wasted here.

>>2808102
Ok then, let's get started

>oh dear. I usually give books more of a chance than I gave this but I'm afraid it rubbed me up the wrong way right from the start. The entire premise was just dull and uninspired. Apart from the fact that I just can't get behind a world where absolutely everyone and everything has some form of special spell, and this includes inanimate objects too, I simply couldn't face an entire novel that begins with so much magic slashing around that it almost makes you vomit just thinking about it.

>Within the book's original context of the late seventies, perhaps this seemed more clever than it does now. But, now we have Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, who are much funnier. And don't rely on the cheapest possible puns, and don't write stories geared toward horny middle-school boys. One of the strangest phenomenons in fantasy, and perhaps in all of reality, is that Piers Anthony still sells tons of books. If anyone can shed some light on why, I'd love to hear it.

>I read Zombie Lover (Xanth #22) and liked it so much that I decided to go back and read the whole Xanth series! I made it about a quarter of the way into this book before throwing it out in disgust. Ugh.

>At Swim Two Birds

>Once the fairies started coming out, my interest dropped faster than the oxygen on a decapitated Boeing 747. The thing about these post-modern self-referential "meta" novels is that they're just so tiresome in terms of style and narration. I also found Flann's Irish nationalism and folklore rather alienating. I'll admit that it had some amusing sections, but it never elicited from me anything more than a smirk, and I was quickly growing increasingly restless and frustrated with each passing page.


>referring to the author by their first name.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

>After years of hearing about Nietzsche's contributions to western philosophical culture, and after reading countless texts that referenced, examined or quoted him, I finally decided to tackle one of his books in full. But now, having done so the only honest reaction that I can offer is "what the !@#$ did I just read." Call me a philistine, but I got nothing out of this book and it seems to me that the whirlwinds of hype surrounding Nietzsche could be a case of literary "emperors new clothes." The text itself was just a rambling stream of consciousness rant that I would expect from a sophomore philosophy major. It seemed to be page after page of words leading the reader nowhere. He frequently references or alludes to other works of world literature going all the way back to the ancient greeks, but that only proves that he was well-read not that he had anything worthwhile to say. Maybe I came in at the wrong time and if I started reading him at one of his earlier books I would have gotten a lot more out of it, but honestly, I'm not sure a gun to my head could convince me to read him again.

!@#$ straight back at you bro

A review of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe courtesy of Madeline
"How To Criticize Things Fall Apart Without Sounding Like A Racist Imperialist:

1. Focus on the plot and how nothing very interesting really happens. Stress that it was only your opinion that nothing interesting happens, so that everyone realizes that you just can't identify with any of the events described, and this is your fault only.
2. Explain (gently and with examples) that bestowing daddy issues on a flawed protagonist is not a sufficient excuse for all of the character's flaws, and is a device that has been overused ad naseum.
3. Also explain how the main character is a generic bully, with no unique characteristics that make him interesting to the reader. Crack joke about Achebe stealing Walt Disney's How To Create A Villain checklist and pray no one beats you to death for it.
4. Do not criticize the rampant misongyny present in the book. It is part of the culture, and is therefore beyond criticism by you because you are not in a position to understand or comdemn what you have not experienced directly.
5. Do not say that the frequent use of untranslated words and confusing names that were often very similar made the story and characters hard to keep track of at times. Achebe is being forced to write in English, a foreign tongue, because he is a post-colonial writer and the fact that the book is written in English stresses his role as a repressed minority, something that you are incapable of understanding, you racist imperialist! "

Th-thanks Madeline.

The Sailor who Fell From Grace With the Sea:
"Read it for IB, I appreciate it, very strong message about society... but I cannot help not liking it. The main adult male character is filled with testosterone (but in the pathetic sense) while the only female character is like a fragile damsel in distress. And the kids are cruel, as they should be... "

Not even sure what to say to this one.

Come on people, share the profile links;I want to see the many faces of imbecility..

The Picture of Dorian Gray

>When I just read some chapters of this book, I didn't realized anything wrong with it. However, I talked it over with others and realized that the book was full of allusions to the "worst side of life," something that might remind you of Hyde in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

Oscar Wilde, the author, was gay, so there are even allusions to that. This book was considered "immoral," and the people during that time who read this book were extremely surprised. This book was the evidence given in Wilde's trial for his homosexual liaisons.

The Major Works of Sir Thomas Browne
>lowest rating is two stars
>not even a review
>my literary taste is accepted by my peers

The Name of the Rose

>What a didactic, tedious, prolix piece of trash! Eco writes whole paragraphs in Latin and then leaves them untranslated, because he's such an awesome polyglot that chicks want to do him. Readers are also expected to know Dutch. Eco likes to hear himself talk, too. Want to hear pedantic 14th-century theological arguments that stretch on for pages and have nothing to do with the plot? You've got it! Want a lame Dan Brown mystery, with the same stilted dialogue, but embellished with entire chapters of the author showing off how much trivia he knows about ancient Arab codices? No problem! The guy is such a tool that this is how he describes himself on the jacket: Umberto Eco is a world-famous specialist in semiotics, a distinguished historian, philosopher, aesthetician, and scholar whose interests range from St. Thomas Aquinas to James Joyce to Superman. I'm going to hurl. Aesthetician? Please. More like assthetician.

What a fucking idiot. What a complete fucking cunt. It's made worse by the fact that he evidently thinks that he's the bees knees when it comes to literature analysis.

Also,
>Thinking that Umberto Eco wrote the fucking 'About the author' bit on the jacket

Holy fucking shit this motherfucker is dumb.

>>2807798

I've been wanting to read this; can you explain what you mean so I won't be turned off when I first read it?

>>2808348
Different poster, but I found that at first the writing style is unexpectedly dense (not to mention abstract in some parts as Wolfe tries to imitate the feeling of being on LSD).

It's a fun book though; well-written and informative. Really gives you a feeling for the hippies.

>Review of The Day of the Locust

I guess this is a study of the artificial, depraved and disillusioned populations of early 20th century Hollywood, but I took very little from the book. There didn't seem to be much point to the story or even much of a plot. It was definitely not an enjoyable read for me. I'm sure this is partially because there weren't any likable characters in the story, but I didn't like any of the characters in Gone With the Wind either, and yet loved the book. I think this is because Mitchell's characters, for all their faults, seem like realistically flawed human beings while West's characters are shallow caricatures and Hollywood stereotypes.

>West's characters are shallow caricatures and Hollywood stereotypes.

THAT WAS THE GODDAMN POINT YOU STUPID FUCK

A review of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

>One of the most annoying books I've ever read. I usually don't do this, but I literally couldn't bring myself into finishing it.

>How come a character who doesn't believe that someone could predict the future, believes him to be present at Jesus' execution, while both of them are living in the 20th century?

>And, what's the use of having a cat in a book, when everything it does is human? To name a few: drinking vodka from a cup while hold it with its paw, walking on its hind legs (ugh), steeping into a bus and paying the fare, and the final blow: talking!

>Bulgakov may have had an above average story, but his characters were extremely unbelievable and irrational in a bad way. And let's not forget the incredibly lengthy prose.

The book reviews on Amazon are even worse.

Anyone who prefaces a book review with "I was forced to read this for class" should be shot into fucking space.

>>2807892
ok, i lolled at this.
>>People riding worms and killing their grampas
>>Addicted to cimmanon
>>I burst into laughter at what she was imagining in her brain, this book sounds hilarious

>Jascollins rated it
>The Wikipedia page listed controversies about the book: is the main narrator imagining things? Are her interpretations of what she sees true? Are the children complicit in The Evil involved in consorting with the dead?

>Meh. What all those controversies mean to me is that even people who read PROFESSIONALLY don't have any idea why the hell James wrote this.

>It really reads like it was a children's fairy story... only duller than that. Much MUCH duller. So children couldn't be expected to finish it. I am NOT a child, and I had a hard slog, which is quite something for as short as it is.

>Here's the point of the book: "WOO, SCARY! if you come from a family that isn't careful, your children will be followed by pedophiles from BEYOND THE GRAVE! Ones who are so evil and debased that they'll make your children LIKE THEM! Woo!!"

>Yeah, not too likely. It's so Gothic as to be an effective parody of the genre, so vague and afraid to express itself that, as I said, it is almost completely opaque, and so overwrought that until the last sentence of the book its protagonist truly seems the only horror to be found in the whole volume.

>I'm sure that it was more scary to previous generations, but today, to me, it looks like rather a lot of pointless handwringing, followed at the VERY end with the author dropping an anvil on the victim... No denouement, no reaction, nothing


>even people who read PROFESSIONALLY don't have any idea why the hell James wrote this

u wot m8

It's The Turn of the Screw btw.

Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

>I didn't finish it. I made it halfway through the Adam papers and was somewhat confused who was narrating. The first book, narrated by Satan, was funny and kept my attention but the next parts weren't bus-reading. I needed to sit down and devote time to it and I didn't have the urge to do that.

On "The Diary of Anne Frank"

>I realize that this book is supposed to be about the true suffering that took place during the Holocaust, but give me a break. The Franks and the others in the Annex were practically living in luxury! All Anne did was complain. Yes, I get that many of your privileges were taken away, and essentially your freedom to roam. But you are alive! Doesn't that account for anything? On another note, maybe this is because I hang out with guys for the most part, but the way she talked about other girls really freaked me out. Perhaps that is WHY I don't hang out with girls is because I'd start ogling them while they slept too! AH! Plus, did anyone also find it strange that Peter was always in his room, alone, for hours, playing with his cat? Yeah. That's all I have to say.

All in all, Anne: shut up. You whine too much and, really, too much information

Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges

>Borges is supposed to be a surrealist wonder. I say leave surrealism for the painters my friend. I don't have time enough in my life to plow through and digest REAL, USEFUL theologies and philosophies that not only exist but also have meaning in my life...so what is the point of wading thru a fictional anthropological study of a people that were in fact INVENTED by others! This is the context of his first short story. Apparently, others shorts were much better. However, after the first two were such a pain with no payoff in my opinion...I fed him to the fishes...

Jesus fucking Christ...

>>>I know history is rarely kind to harsh criticisms about super nebulous or "difficult" authors , but dig this --

This book is horrible. After reading The Crying of Lot 49, Slow Learner and now this, I'm convinced that Thomas Pynchon is a hack, and the reason we don't hear from him is because he has nothing to say and knows that if we gave him a microphone and fifteen minutes he'd be found out.

90% of the people who pick up this novel won't finish it, and 90% of those who do won't like it. But 100% of them will pretend they do because Pynchon has the rare reputation of being one of those authors you "have to read". We're all convinced Pynchon is the possessor of some private, hidden genius -- that buried somewhere between the rambling nonsensical plot and the long winded, super cerebral, jargon riddled diatribes on "the Rocket" and the sexual implications of its trajectory and its relation to the symphonic form is a message of some import.

But for all the hype, someone please point to a passage in this novel that overreaches or couldn't be approximated by the efforts of anyone else who lived a super reclusive, hermetic lifestyle, owned a library card, and was given nearly a decade (the length of time between the publication of this novel and the author's previous one), and around 900 pages to do it in.

Seriously though, don't read this book. Aside from the small flutter of accomplishment I feel at actually finishing it, I've found it to be little more than a super frustrating and ultimately hateful reading experience.

Well, I'm not going to say the criticisms are totally groundless, but I feel bad for this guy for not enjoying the great Gravity's Rainbow.

The Metamophosis

Technically I read this book in German, and if I could give it zero stars, I would. I read the first sentence (in German, mind you) around 3:30 in the morning earlier this semester, and was convinced I was loosing my mind and that I couldn't be translating it right. It read: "Gregor Samsa awoke on morning to discover that he had somehow transformed into a giant cockaroach". After typing the sentence into freetranslation.com and finding out I actually had read and translated it correctly, I thought for sure the author had lost
his mind.

I'm sorry, but all this stuff about him being a symbol for Jesus and struggling for mankind is a bit over-the-top I think. He's a cockaroach. There's no explaination for it, and his family is only mild freaked out at the fact that he suddenly turned into a giant bug. If the family tried to take him to the doctor, or sell him to the circus, or perhaps even give a damn at all, the story might have kept my attention for more than the first few pages.

>Lolita
>Sensitive people using the same reasoning of "I have a 7 year old cousin/daughter/godchild/son..."

Sweet syntax, brah

To the Lighthouse

As the first section to The Sound and The Fury is, this book was a tough read. They're both stream of conscious classics that have accomplished much (Note: Other writers were experimenting with this style of writing before they were), but, for a contemporary reader like myself, the freshness of that immediacy to thought is stripped of its power in an age where I can send my professor my essay with my phone. For me, as a writer, it's extremely difficult to write in this way, but it's a risk. Most of the times it's poetry, with all of it's abstraction and complications, to earn a few of its beauties. With that said, this book is far worse than The Sound and The Fury (the second part is worth the read just in itself; and those were complex ideas executed wonderfully) because it isn't really about anything, I guess, in a circumstantial condition. It's literary, so it is about internal conflict, and Our Characters-to-The World, but that gets lost to me with scant dialogue and lengthy prose about painting. By the end of the book I really didn't care if they made it to the lighthouse or not...

>The Old Man and the Sea

>"I know this is supposed to be some great classic bit of American literature but I hated it. I get that it is supposed to be written in the voice of the uneducated Santiago but to me it just reads like a Dick and Jane primer. I was ready to sell my soul for a multisyllabic word or a complex sentence."

What.

>>2808052
To be fair, I don't think The Road was Pulitzer worthy, and McCarthy has much better books.

I mean, that review is inexcusable, and The Road is still an excellent work of literature, it's just slightly overhyped.

Othello
>Othello by William Shakespeare is a play that focuses on the themes of racial prejudice.

I stopped reading there, my blood pressure was already rising.

>>2809455
Woop, wait found a better one.
I love it when people say they hate something and then list the reasons it's so great. That really gets me mad.

>I hope my Shakespeare teacher sees this rant because I did NOT enjoy this play! The only character I semi-halfway like(d) is Desdemona, but she ends up getting killed! Iago's a total nub who messes with everybody's head and Othello's got some serious issues. The man can't even trust his freakin wife and immediately assumes that only because "honest Iago" tells him so, his wife is cheating on him. First off, that's a load of bull. Seriously, someone should gag Iago with dirty socks and make him listen to Swedish yodeling(no offense to those who are fans of or actually perform Swedish yodeling). And Othello ought to take some marriage counseling classes because the poor guy can't even believe his poor wife when she's telling the truth. Seriously, Othello sucks, like, fo'real. This play had many a good topics to discuss, about duality and what-not, and racism, but it just got tiring with the same themes that are totally repetitive. Maybe it's because our class, over-analyzes every single freakin line in the play that I dislike it so much. However, I am glad we are done reading about the Moor and his lying, back-stabbing compadre whose name resembles that of a certain parrot in a certain animated film about a certain street rat and a magical lamp!

>The only character I semi-halfway like(d) is Desdemona, but she ends up getting killed!

I don't even wanna smack her, I wanna smack her english teacher, because she clearly didn't get this book at all.

>>2808378
No no no nononononononono

I wish I could hate people to death.

Wind-up bird chronicle

>This is a classic example of a person using intelligence to justify own flaws. The author describes an aspect of an ailing human nature in a typical sadistic and almost romantic way and in the process paints Japanese as innocent victims of the past wars in Asia. These wars, which mostly instigated by the Japanese aggression by the way, had brought out the worst and the most cruel sides of humans, and the most cruel of the most cruel crimes were carried out by none other than the countrymen of this author. I am not sure if the author had intended to do that. Mr. Murakami, you are a gifted writer, but using such gift to conceal one's own defects only disables any chance of recovery

He remembers the part where the people saying the murakami were saying they were fucked with no wool, but they still are staying there due to the army pride?

>>2809467
>He does remembers the part where murakami was saying the soldiers were fucked with no wool, but they still are staying there due to the army pride?

Fixed

>>2808378
>And, what's the use of having a cat in a book, when everything it does is human? To name a few: drinking vodka from a cup while hold it with its paw, walking on its hind legs (ugh), steeping into a bus and paying the fare, and the final blow: talking!
Every fucking time, I posted this last time we had one of these threads but it still angers me

Here's a combination of several Tale of Genji 1 star reviews, this will take multiple posts

>Oh yes, I totally want to read about all the affairs Genji, the "shining" prince, had with dozens of other women. Not to mention most of these women looked like his mother in some way or another. (Freud would be esctatic.) One of these women wasn't even a woman at all, but a small child he pretty much abducted. Of course, this young girl looked like his mother.

>The thing I read, I *think*, is about a decadent quasi-royal slut, but it's hard to say because the intimate encounters are all implied. On the other hand, there wasn't much of anything else. It mentioned he had a sword once, but that was probably a double-entendre. So no swash-buckling, no comedy, no suspense. Mostly I read something that's like listening to a person on a phone describe a trashy chick-flick they're watching. It had that "once removed" feeling to it. I never felt like I was reading the story, just what somebody who had read the story felt like telling.

>genji is the wimpiest, rapiest protagonist ever

>This is the first novel ever written, supposedly, and it shows. The writing is dense, laden with poetry [not that I mind that], dated allusions, and blatant misogyny.

Not rage-inducing, but funny.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Far too traumatizing for an 8 year old to read. Small children have very vivid imaginations and can visualize the scenes in the book with frightening detail. If you make your child read the classics, leave this one out or wait until they are around 16. Or even read the book yourself and decide if it's appropriate for your child. I refuse to watch the movie nor touch this book again because of how disturbing it was, and I know I still have not forgiven my parents.

>>2809503
CONT

>>It is a chauvanistic story which includes, rape, molestation of children, multiple wives and a series of men "having their way" with women. For those of you who don't know, part of my job is to educate youth about the dangers of sexual exploitation. This book is just filled with men taking advantage of women. Genji brings in a young child because he reminds him of his fathers concubine who he once had an affair with and basically raises her until she is maaaybe 14 and forces her to become his lover. This is what he says of the situation "A man can shape and mold her as he wishes and becomes fonder of her all the while" . And here is another quote when he rapes one of his many loves. "He would make his way past the most unblinking of gatekeepers and hav ehis way with her"

>In truth, I made it to about page 200. But the stories were all pretty much the same and I lost track of what 10 year old Genji was raping that week. Once I realized it was edited off the 1001 list I felt less bad for giving it up, however I would not have picked it back up anyhow.
>Purely read for the sake of it's age in my opinion. Although one story was decent, I cannot see how the volume is worth anything. But someone must like it!

I love how once even a hint of rape sets everyone off on the 1 star train in an effort to distance themselves from it.

This book pissed me off so bad! First of all, nineteenth century lit just isn't my scene (literature for me starts in the twentieth century, sorry). Secondly, the character is just such a fool that I can never get with it! First he's just innocently stupid, but as the book progresses he becomes a stupid asshole instead. Also, I think there may have been some problems in translating Flaubert, because I hear that he's beautiful to read in the French. My English translation was just very long and very dry. Such are the difficulties of being a comparative literature student.

So while yeah, I know it's a classic and I guess I can see why, I guess, that doesn't stop me from hating this book. Seriously, I threw it across the room when I finished.

>First of all, nineteenth century lit just isn't my scene (literature for me starts in the twentieth century, sorry).

I threw in a picture of the reviewer.

It seems like a lot of people expect stories to have these grand resolutions where everything is solved and the protagonist and possibly a romantic interest live happily ever after. If at the end of the story the central character ends up no better or worse off in some sort of quantifiable way than they were at the start of the novel then in their eyes "nothing happened."

>>2809534
>literature for me starts in the twentieth century, sorry
Dumb bitch.

>>2809540
yeah, probably the effect of teachers focussing too much on "character development"

The Sun Also Rises:

>Wow, this book was a dud. A handful of people traipse through France and Spain -- no, wait, they don't traipse, they more sort of slog, it's so dull and slow. They go fishing. They sit in cafes. Trysts are hinted at. They argue. Nothing happens. Oh yeah, and THEY DRINK ALL THE TIME. They also attend a bullfight. Whoop-de-frickin-do. The dialogue read like a bad play, and the descriptions of scenery and so on were really direct and simplistic, which to me suggested a paucity of actual writing ability. Plus, Hemingway decided to over-describe things that didn't matter, like diving into the water, while under-describing things that perhaps should have been described more thoroughly so that there could have been a plot.

>I read The Old Man and the Sea in high school, and here is my summary based purely on what I vaguely remember from reading it:

>"Duuude, I'm a fisherman. Duuude, I'm in this boat at sea. Oh, score, I caught a tuna. Lemme strap it to my boat. Oh crap, I'm having trouble getting back to land. This tuna is huge. Other fish are eating my tuna. Duuude, my tuna is now worthless. I'm ditching the tuna. My life sucks. The end."

>Why is Hemingway so famous again? "Classics" are a lie.

>>2807775
I don't know, OP. There were some nice parts in the play but both Romeo and Juliet are brats and stupid characters all around. Being a tradegy, I think it was intended.

>people think that disliking the characters is a reason to dislike the book
Fucking plebs.

A few about The Sun Also Rises

>In typical Hemingway fashion, Ernest draws out an unreasonably lengthy story with wan diction, dull sentence structure, and a tedious plot line. The authors distaste for women slips through the text, serving as one of the few interesting ideas Hemingway communicates. Some may laude the uncluttered language, but it ultimately draws from a story with great potential.

>I'll probably rot in some awful English major hell, but I hate Hemingway and this book is just the epitome of everything that I loathe about him. Repeat after me: complex sentences are your friend.

>This was the biggest pile of snore I have encountered in a long time. There are so many scenes of just dialogue and no descriptions and other scenes where too much background is discussed (do we really need a paragraph about some secondary character's new fishing rods?!).

>>2808226
>The main adult male character is filled with testosterone (but in the pathetic sense)

Confirmed for never having had any feelings of glory or beauty

Lord of the Flies

>I hate this book with a passion! It's borring and it sucks. I can't believe I read this though. In the beginning it never really did talk about how these British boys ended up in this island. Most of the characters in this book really annoyed me, especially Jack and how crazier and crazier he got from the beginning all the way to the end. There were parts in the book that had gore and blood in them but how the auther discriped the way he did was confusing and bored me to death. Most of it didn't really made any sence first they ended up in this island and then they discover a "beast". Every other time I finished reading each chapter I had the urge to burn this book and all the other copies, then again its best not because I'm just speaking through my own oppinion. For those who've liked this book it's fine by me.

gotta love these harrypotterhungergamefags who don't understand what artistic expression is.

>>2809674


ya it's funny how some people don't realize that other people read for different reasons

>>2809681

Yeah, there are the right reasons and the wrong reasons.

>>2809622
>implying feelings of glory and beauty have anything to do with testosterone

back to /r9k/ with yoi

>>2809719
Well what other 'pathetic' feelings did the main character have that would have been caused by testosterone?
You need to learn to read context asshole.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/25020642
>rewriting the first page and asking for a nobel prize

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19194366
>"bookshelves: crap-that-actually-got-published
Recommended to Mister Jones by: Art and Fart Crapper
Recommended for: Drunken frauds "

>Pretty basic things, really. By focusing on the external side of things, and by never allowing his characters to speak for themselves (the dialogue in the book amounts to about five pages, if that), Marquez keeps his reader from getting to know his characters, and from understanding why they do the things they do. The lack of characterisation is such that the story basically reads like an unchronological chronicle of deeds and events that go on for ever without any attempt at an explanation or psychological depth

WAY TO MISS THE POINT COMPLETELY

-Arthur C. Clark is obsessed with exposition.
-He loves the idea of first contact with aliens to the point of sickness.
-He thinks that humans (who matter) are essentially rational technocrats, making their behavior both boring and puppet-like.
-The only female characters in this book were ape-men [sic] and two stewardesses.
-There were several pretty problematic passages, like the following:

"Yet already...the warmth and frequency of the conversations with their girls on Earth had begun to diminish. They had expected this; it was one of the penalties of an astronaut's way of life, as it had once been of a mariner's.

It was true---indeed notorious---that seamen had compensations at other ports; unfortunately there were no tropical islands full of dusky maids beyond the orbit of Earth. The space medics, of course, had tackled this problem with their usual enthusiasm; the ship's pharmacopeia provided adequate, though hardly glamorous, substitutes."

Look, I know Larry Niven is always talking about ship's whores and Robert Heinlein would get around it by having the ships fuck each other or having the crew be a bunch of nymphomaniacs or something, but something about the dry, dry pedantry of Clarke's writing makes this stand out as much worse. And I count six (though interrelated) distinct pieces of sexism/misogyny along with the one piece of racism in the four sentences.

I'm glad that I can leave this dude behind now and take a non-fiction break.

At least my English teacher had the decency to tell us that killing yourself out of grief for a dead loved one isn't romantic. He really drilled us on how it was a tragedy rather than a romance.

>Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

>Absolutely trite and unconvincing. A bloodless and conceited bore, organized as though by a severe autistic. The assumptions about cognition are laughably archaic, and the popularity of this work is a thorn in my throat.

>>2810745
Lol, I wrote that review! Really though, how can you not argue that the only way Wittgenstein got any play is because he got to publish Tractatus, using his parent's money no less, before von Neumann and Turing demolished his pretensions?

>>2810745
as a fan of Late Wittgenstein I think that's true enough

How do people make that leap from "I didn't like the book" to "It's utter shit"?
When I didn't like a book it was always my problem, not the book's.
I mean, there are a few exceptions, but usually, it's just that I, personally don't like it. How does that say anything about a books overall worth?
When did people get such a high opinion of themselves?

>>2810765

Uhh... Since Adam?

The Castle by Frankie Kafka
1)
>His stuff is SO WIERD! Only read cuz we were going to Prague. What torture! (the book, not Prague!)
2)
>Sorry, I just had to give up this book.
I couldn't stand the punctuation style, the very stupid way of thought...
and then when I sneak peaked at the last page of the book... it's UNFINISHED...!??!