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/lit/ - Literature


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3084805 No.3084805[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Go to goodreads, search a book that you like, see the one star review and post the best here.

Philosophy in the Boudoir

"This is the worse book ever. I had no idea what it was about, and imagine my surprise and horror! What the hell was Sade's problem? An Oedipus complex or what?! This book sucks so much I want to puke! Get a grip! it's the story of how three grown-ups rape an innocent girl in every possible way yuck!!!"

>> No.3084823

Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

"Lest you think I put all my books as high stars, I added this one. I don't know that this is the worst book ever written, but it is most definitely the worst book I've ever read. It made Moby Dick look good, and that takes effort."

>> No.3084839

Lolita

I wasn't going to write a review for this story because I rated it so low and I was disgusted, disturbed, and revolted by the content. But after pondering on this for sometime I felt I needed to share my thoughts and feelings on this.

This was not an enjoyable read by any means. Why on earth this book would be considered a classic and why anyone would want to read about a sick twisted mans obsession and thoughts about a child is beyond me.

"I would not recommend this book to anyone and I don't respect in anyway what the Author was trying to accomplish or the ideas or thoughts he had to write this filth."

This is wrong in so many ways that I don't want to talk about it.

>> No.3084842

Beautiful Losers


"Couldn't get through it. He lost me around the explanation of why men giving one another handjobs wasn't gay. Or possibly when he equated the inability to take a shit to the loss of masculinity and therefore vitality. These metaphors seemed graceless and desperate. Please stick to songs, L. Cohen."

>> No.3084853

The Great Gatsby

This is my least-favorite classic of all time. Probably even my least favorite book, ever.
I didn't have the faintest iota of interest in neither era nor lifestyle of the people in this novela. So why did I read it to begin with? well, because I wanted to give it a chance. I've been surprised by many books, many a times. Thought this could open a new literary door for me.
Most of the novel was incomprehensibly lame. I was never fully introduced to the root of the affair that existed between Gatsby and Daisy. So they were in love...yeah..I've been in love too, who cares?
Several times I didn't even understand where characters were when they were speaking to each other. I also didn't understand the whole affair with Tom and Mrs. Wilson.. and something about her husband locking her up over the garage...? huh? then she gets run over by a car, then he sneaks in through the trees and shoots Gatsby? wha..? still..why am I suppose to care about all this?
Shallow and meaningless characters. Again, who cares?
I read this book twice. 2 times. I just didn't get it.
I can't believe this book is revered with the rest of the great classics. Truly unbelievable. Fitzgerald certainly kissed the right asses with this one.

What garbage.

Daisy quote:

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed.… “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.”

...sob..sob.. boo-hoo-hoo. oh Please someone shut her the fuck up

>> No.3084871

Invisible Cities

"I just don't get why this book received such high reviews on Goodreads. I consider myself an intellectual reader and although there were a few good phrases in the book (including the last sentence), it was plotless and dull. It had all the elements I love - Italy & Venice, historical fiction, an easy-to-read format and short chapters. But I just couldn't bring myself to like it."

>I consider myself an intellectual reader

>Valerie’s favorite books
>Harry Potter
>Agatha Christie

>5 stars to Breaking Dawn (Twilight #4)

>> No.3084877
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3084877

The subtle having it on the "kill-yourself-first" bookshelf is a nice touch.

>> No.3084886
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3084886

>>3084823
>it made Moby Dick look good[...]

>> No.3084889
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3084889

Seriously the best ones to read are for books like Lolita, those intellectual reviewers sure get mad.

>> No.3084900

>>3084889
The best ones are for the Bible, trust me.
These atheist sure are deep and edgy.

>> No.3084904

"Any identification or sympathy in any way shape or form for Humbert is only possible if you fall for his manipulations and/or you are clueless enough or ignorant about the life-time effects of this abuse on victims of pedophiles. To have sympathy for Humbert is the same as having sympathy for Ted Bundy or the BTK killer. At least they put an end to the suffering of their victims. Humbert's murder of Lolita's soul will endure as daily torture for as long as she lives."


>Literary PTSD

>> No.3084912

Not "surrealist" so much as boring. I didn't notice any special about the girl Nadja whatsoever. She wasn't that eccentric, not particularly interesting, and her drawings, which the author felt compelled to include, were mediocre for a child. Too bad. The real credit should go to whoever wrote the book jacket, making this boring little book sound intellegent.

Yes he did spell intelligent like that

>> No.3084924
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3084924

L'etranger
This one's a doozy, but at least he can unto english

>> No.3084927

This is for Swann's Way

After reading any number of page long sentences or paragraphs that stretch over several pages, I would stop and ask myself, "what did he even just say?". Most of the time I came to the conclusion "nothing". It spends a lot of time to give absolutely nothing to the reader. I honestly didn't know how to feel about it because it was like there wasn't anything there to have an opinion on. I was just practicing the motions of reading.

Gave Atlas Shrugged 5*

>> No.3084936
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3084936

"Unfortunately the detail and scrutiny with which the author focuses on the relationships, public opinion and culture of memory made this a very boring read for me"
>It is a history book about mnemonics but it didn't give me magical memory powers

>> No.3084948

>The Odyssey
This is the oldest story we have as a race, and it has got to be the first and oldest Mary Sue. So....Odysseus is gone ten years battling at Troy and FINALLY the war ends but it takes him another ten years to get back. He is "brave and heroic" but really came across as a braggart and d-bag. He EXPECTS people to offer him hospitality and offer him presents, he is a CONSTANT liar. Even when he gets home, he lies about who he is to Minerva until he realizes who she is. (Never trust a man that can lie so easy.)

He is cursed for having blinded the cyclops son of Neptune. (one of his heroic deeds) But, he gets to the island of this cyclops because of his own curiosity. His men had originally landed on a neighbor island where they ate wild sheep and goats. When they see the giant's house and treasures, he wants to wait for him to see if he can get presents, then he tries to bully him telling him that if he doesn't, Jove, the guardian of travelers will punish him. WTH? if I was the cyclops I would have killed the little d-bag too. Here the poor cyclops is minding his own business tending to his pets and this guy wants presents? Well, Odysseus blinds him after getting him drunk and escapes, but not before bragging to the giants. This is why he is cursed. The cyclops prays to his father, the sea god for punishment. He deserved getting punished, if u ask me.

But what a horrible punishment too, he wanders the ocean to and for landing on islands that always seem to have beautiful Nymphs, or Princesses, or Enchantresses that are just dying for some hunky loving and end up head over heels for him wanting him to stay. (calypso MAKES him stay on her island, living as a god with her forcing him to eat her food and have sex with her for years...)

>> No.3084982

Do these retards ever focus on anything other than the plot?

>> No.3085042

It distresses me how many of the negative reviews are by people saying they couldn't relate to the characters. It also disappoints me to see that the main complaint of the reviews I've looked at is length. Are people really that lazy?

Brothers Karamazov:

I. HATED. THIS. BOOK. There is a possibility that the awesomeness of this so-called masterpiece alluded me, but I just found myself screaming in my head at the characters: "Grow a pair!" Talk about drama kings. Ugh. I have never read so much dribblage from a load of whining men. Long, long, long, long, long moaning dialogues where you literally want to shoot him to end his misery and mine. If you like swimming through swamps of dispair then its perfect.

>> No.3085049

Valis by Philip K DIck

Ursula LeGuin describes him as science fiction's own home grown Borges. I've never read Borges, and on the evidence of this nonsense, perhaps I shouldn't...

>Pleb

>> No.3085050

When red is black

"This book reads like a very stilted translation. The conversation does not seem natural and the flow of the characters thoughts also seem stilted. The mystery was not satisfying at all: I found I didn't really care who committed the murder and I wasn't surprised at the conclusion. I read the book to try to get a flavor for China, but didn't really get what I was looking for. I guess I'll stick with British/Scottish mysteries."

>> No.3085063

Orlando

I'm as shocked as you may be that I'm giving Virginia Woolf 1 star. It just feels wrong, but I have to be honest...

I got almost halfway, and I'm giving up. Her physical descriptions are tedious and the narrator's voice is so distant from the characters and action that even I am not engaged (and that's saying a lot since I like a little distance). Orlando is not a sympathetic or complex character, and since he's the only real character in the book so far, that's a problem. Next time I'll try reading one of her books so I can skim through the boring stuff. I'm afraid the audio accentuated the slowness of its pacing.

>> No.3085081
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3085081

Read it in 2004 because it was an Oprah bookclub pick. I knew a little about it and it wasn't on my list to read.
Can't give a complete review because of the time lapse but am pretty sure that I thought it was just OK. Since it is considered a classic and is on many lists of great books, I have to at least think I thought it was OK. I do know that it was a lot of the same Southern, small town, poor as dirt, racism, depair, depression, etc. that is written in many of these books deemed classics. Some I like more than others.
This book should be read by young people who still think despair and depression is romantic or in a literature class where everyone discusses everything to be really enjoyed. I've been around a while and have read many of these and by the time I read this one, I just felt sad and didn't get any real pleasure from it.
It is well written but I'm not sure if she was a genuis or just depressed and from what I've now read of her life, I would think it was a combination of the two.

>> No.3085084

Good Omens


Abby
Feb 20, 2012
Abby rated it 1 of 5 stars
This book was an absolute flop. It started out slow and grew even more so. There were literally ENDLESS descriptions leading off into nowhere, about random side characters that were never heard from again, locations that had no relevance to the story, and odd sideplots that didn't move the story along. The book often sounded as if the authors were trying way too hard to be funny by simply being as random as possible. It didn't work. There were occasional interesting parts, but they certainly didn't make up for hours of wasted time. I definitely would have put the book down, but it was a book-on-tape, so that wasn't really an option. I would be mourning the lost twelve hours of my life if they hadn't been spent in a car anyway.

The book was basically completely meaningless and failed in its efforts at humor. There may have been some deeper message I was supposed to glean from the odd (and once more-random!) ending, but if so, I sure didn't see it. There were very blatant preaching parts about global warming, fast food, and the need to take care of the environment, but the authors didn't seem to see the need to actually work these subtly into the story. So, I suppose that may be one of the messages of the book, but it felt a bit more like someone hitting me in the face with a shovel than trying to carefully show me something. Avoid this book if you like interesting novels, or if you enjoy Terry Pratchett's typical work.

>> No.3085095
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3085095

Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco

What we have here is x amount of pages that can be ultimately distilled down to "yes, all conspiracy theories are for real, haha". In the meantime, you get to experience the lives and times of three very cardboard ciphers named Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon as they oh-so cleverly dick their way around northern Italy and the world. Vapid inconsequential human parodies.

Mind you, this is "literary fiction", which means, inter alia that it's a free-form exercise in cramming as many pages as you can with verbose workouts about nothing in particular. Even translated from Italian. I think the idea is you're meant to take a glass of sherry in hand, purse your lips and find a good leather chair in front of a fireplace to read it. Bollocks. It's a tiresome and dreary doorstop masquerading as a work of higher intellectualism. It's a cult item written for a cult audience.

The story itself has potential - a potential possibly realised by the dozens of authors who have written about the Illuminati, Knights Templar et al, before and since. But there's no true story here. None at all. It never gets the chance to shine.

>> No.3085103

>>3084900
They can be so incredibly obnoxious, and that comes from their fellow atheist.

>> No.3085120

"Wow. This book might've been pretty good if it hadn't been so misogynistic. There isn't a woman in this collection who isn't a slut, a tease, a one-dimensional character who is pined after for no good reason, or a body with a forgotten name for a protagonist to sleep with and then discard. Two women are raped but one of them was the tease, so I guess that makes it okay according to Ellison. I like the idea of the super-computer in one story who takes over the world & keeps a few humans alive so he can mess with them. I also like the idea of a creepy ant-like race who is part of a gestalt mind or something like that, a premise that takes a backseat to the tease and her rapist and the other guy who feels bad about the rape but not bad enough to do anything about it. Each intriguing premise gets buried under all the hatred towards women. Yuck"

My hate is strong, so strong

>> No.3085125

>>3085095
at least yours realized it was fiction.

I am not a believer in grand conspiracies. And Eco posits something much grander than Osama bin Laden and right-wing survivalists could dream of putting together. So filled with these thoughts, when I finished the book, I walked over to the fireplace and warmed my toes by its fire of this book. Bye bye.

>> No.3085132
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3085132

>> No.3085138

>>3085084
Oh, found another great one. He hated it because it huwt his feewins.
>
>
>
Admittedly, I only got through the first few chapters before I stopped reading it. I was disturbed by this book - it makes a mockery of all things religious, quasi- and otherwise. Really, the only reason I started reading it was because it was dedicated to .G. K. Chesterton. (Unfortunately, that dedication was made by the main demon character from the book.)

I'm sorry, but I just don't think you can make a humorous, satirical book about the end of the world, especially if you're an admitted atheist with no regard for actual theology.

>> No.3085151
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3085151

Ill admit "The Passage" has its flaws,, but fuck me if i could hate someone to death

>> No.3085170

Galapagos by Vonnegut

"Once again, I have to wonder how this book ever was chosen for publication. Maybe the editor didn't read it to the end.

It was dreary, and a bit jerky, from the beginning. Told from the perspective of a ghost one million years in the future? What, was this premise picked out by a 5 year old?

So, I gave it a chance. Okay, there are these people, fated to converge on a trip to the Galapagos islands. Some with noble goals, some not. There is a worldwide threat. Oh no, now the trip is canceled. But what about all these people who already showed up? Maybe they can escape and find a safe haven.

Well yes they do - escape. Safe Haven? I don't think so. Not enough men to go around? No problem, we jump by generations now, and children are breeding with their elders - but it isn't called pedophilia.

And the mutant japanese girl - blind and covered with fur - well she's a great breeder.

Now, a million years in the future mankind is evolved into some sort of intellegent seal race. Is this our curse for bombing Japan?

Wait, is this a mystery, a disaster story, an evolutionary tale or a political statement against nuclear warfare.

Whatever his motivation, Kurt should have been fined or publically scorned for this work, not rewarded with publication and royalties."

Sigh.

>> No.3085190

I Shall Wear Midnight


Jennifer
May 14, 2012
Jennifer rated it 1 of 5 stars
Shelves: young-adult
Terrible! Supposedly for young adults, but WAY too inappropriate! Incest, daughter pregnant by father, daughter loses baby by beating from father, father hangs himself, mom comes to lynch...all in detail. I was horrified at my beloved Terry Pratchett ending a beloved series (which had been beautifully appropriate thus far!) with this horror of a book!

>Implying that there was even the slightest goddamn suggestion of incest
>Implying that the mother joined the lynch mob
>Oh no this book is too reel no rainbows and butterflies I hate it

>> No.3085205

Complete Stories and Poems
By EAP

"Edgar Allan Poe reminds me of Hemingway; both intrigue me as people, and both lead interesting lives, yet their writing is a drag and bore.

A couple of stories were okay, don't get me wrong. But, he was terrible at writing prose. Just terrible. The flow of his clunky sentences gave me a headache; no real buildup or suspense was ever created, even in the better stories such as The Tell-Tale-Heart. A few of the stories were plain boring, without a plot to interest the reader. No wonder Twain said he could only read Poe's prose on a salary.

His poetry is ordinary. The standout poem; 'The Raven' is just okay, but only because it borrowed its flow from an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem. Without the flow, it's just a bunch of dark bland imagery thrown together for the sake of it, lacking any real depth or merit. 'A Dream Within A Dream', 'Annabel Lee', 'Alone'? Give me a break. It's doggerel, complete with awkward flow and inconsistent meter."

I hate people sometimes

>> No.3085244

>>3085205
>hating Annabel Lee
What the fuck it's the perfect poem

>> No.3085270

The Counterfeiters

Ich habe mich vorm Lesen nicht mit der Geschichte beschäftigt. Den Titel fand ich aber sehr interessant.

Nach den ersten paar Seiten war mir klar, dass das Buch Quälerei wird. Für mich sind da zu viele (verwirrende) Nebengeschichten drin und der Hauptstrang ist nach 80 Seiten noch nicht mal so angedeutet, dass ich neugierig hätte werden können.

Ich machte dann den Fehler, den Wikipedia-Artikel zum Buch zu lesen. Da wars dann leider vorbei. Die Geschichte und ich passen nicht zusammen.

Also: Der Roman mag (literaturgeschichtlich) wegweisend sein. Ich find ich langweilig und zerfasert. Und darum kommt es ins Regal und bleibt dort ungelesen stehen.

u wot m8

>> No.3085278

Infinite jest

"I must be missing something. Each page is like hand-to-hand combat. Extremely hard to digest. Like a meal of twigs and berries, might be good for you, but you want to push it aside nevertheless."

>> No.3085301

Old Goriot

Zach
Balzac sucks a ball sack.

>> No.3085307

get lives

>> No.3085318

I Am Legend.

>This is one of two instances I can say the movie was better than the book, MUCH better .

>Truly, truly awful. I can't think of anything else to say. It was that bad.

>Meh. Although I knew the book was different from the movie, I didn't expect it to be as slow and... technical as it turned out to be. I would never have gotten through reading. Glad I listened instead.

>I found the hero incredibly gross - but this book is good if you want to laugh at the social mores of the 1950s. This is a good example of why I dislike reading older sci-fi, actually.

>I got about 19% into this one and I just couldn't take it anymore. Nothing was happening. It was such a dry book.

>I actually enjoyed the movie better. (this hardly ever happens)

>Maybe I'm completely missing the point here but this is the first time I've ever preferred a film to the book. The ending was horrendous and disappointing. The great Robert Neville who survived the vampires and the germs to outlive the human population turned out to be a massive let down.

>from this book: if you can't think of a convincing way to explain something scientifically, do not explain it at all. Otherwise you end up with gems like "Bacteria can mutate" (you don't say?) for a final punchline. And the best part? Spoiler: Our hero is the the last human survivor because a bat infected with vampiricus/vampirius/whatever bit him (thought nothing of that at the time) and because of that he is immune.

>> No.3085546

>>3085190
Oh my sides.

>> No.3085587
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3085587

>this is AWFUl! its funny that such a great writer can write such a silly book. it must have been a quickie for cash. make sure not to read it.

>> No.3085591
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3085591

>>3085307

Cool post on 4chan.

>> No.3085599

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this thread.

Defaulting to the ol' standby: frantic masturbation.

>> No.3085604

>>3085599

It's the catch-all response to most of life's situations.

>> No.3085671

I can't choose one.
They're all so terrible and stupid.

This isn't even about difference in taste.
Those people are just dumb as shit and haven't even
remotely read enough books to make any judgement.

>> No.3085686

These reviews make me a little bit sad.

>> No.3085703

>>3085270
Hier kann niemand Deutsch lesen.

>> No.3086708

All the Bible reviews are too long to post. It's just Edgy Atheists trying to be funny. But here's a summary of most of them.

"YHWH is a dick. lol it's like there's multiple writers XD. It's a shitty piece of FICTION. Did I mention FICTION? This FICTION doesn't compare to other FICTION."

>> No.3086719

Flowers for Algernon


Absolutely horrible book. This book should never be read in schools and encourages bad morals in children. People are born the way they are for a reason and you should never, ever want to change yourself into a different person. This book was badly written, and the characterization was just as bad as the ideas it tries to preach. Parents, keep this book away from your kids unless you want them to come to you wanting to change everything about themselves and with no self-confidence.

>> No.3086720

short but sweet

Lie Down in Darkness by Willam Styron

"couldn't finish, horrible, didn't make sense, what was the point?"

>> No.3086725

>>3086719
I personally didn't like this book because it was really hard to understand. Everything isn't spelled right and it was a little sad.

>> No.3086732

>1984

This is a boring polemic that provides absolutely no insight into actually existing models of state repression. In any case, everybody's moved over to the American model, so Orwell's scrawlings would do well to stick around on their crusty little island.

>> No.3086735

Infinite Jest:

david foster wallace was a peddler of tired banalities; fittingly, his suicide did little for his literary credibility. you're no cobain, champ . . .

oh, the book sucks too. as banal as it comes. anglo writers are the worst.

>> No.3086749

Apathy and Other Small Victories

Paul Nielan had no business writing, or more like attempting to write a novel. I first spotted Apathy and Other Small Victories here on Good Reads. The title caught my interest and I was persuaded into ordering the book when I read all the good reviews here. Boy was I disappointed! AAOSV was awful and that is really saying something since I wasn’t expecting it to be any kind of literary genius. But I at least thought it would be entertaining and funny. The author does a terrible job at developing the plot, which is pointless and wholly unrealistic, and at creating his characters, which are very one dimensional and lacked any kind of depth. Worst of all are his cringe worthy metaphors. Neilan fails miserably at trying to be funny by using humor at best appropriate for pubescent middle school boys. The cheap deaf jokes were insulting and annoying, along with the rest of his jokes. There is nothing clever or unique about his writing style. There is also no one I would recommend this book to. If you are not easily amused by crappy mass produced comedy flicks, don’t bother reading this book

>> No.3086751

Blood Meridian-

God I hate McCarthy. He's painfully artificial, with nothing insightful to say. Yeah yeah, pretty language, who cares? Cormac can suck it.

>> No.3086757

>>3086751
I don't entirely disagree with this, and I like McCarthy

>> No.3086759

>>3086751

>3 different reviews

1. I hated this book. I was forced to read it in college by a male shovenist professor. It's just gross (one of the characters is a pedafile), and I got the impression that it was a "dude" book - not for everyone in my opinion.

2. I didn't even finish this book, it was that uninteresting. I threw it across the room, because life is too short for this kind of gimmicky bullshit.

3. The translation into Spanish is very well done, but the book itself was quite miserable. Violent to the point of making me nauseous, and without a solid ending.

>without a solid ending
>wut

>> No.3086766

>>3086765
I thought this would be a more classic rendition of King Arthur's story. Instead it was a 'contemporary' telling of this tale, as in contemporary for the mid 60s. Too many references to Freud, free love, and feeble attempts at mimicking Monty Python style humor for my liking.

>> No.3086765

The Once and Future King

One star isn't low enough. An author can be a satirist and can deal with important issues without utterly destroying someone else's story (and, please, do not start in how the Arthurian legend isn't any one person's story - that makes it even worse).

Take my distaste for the above practice and add my HS english teacher mocking me for my "romantic notions" about the Arthursian legend in front of the class and this book becomes forever dead to me.

The fact that there is a copy of it currently in the house (even if it mine) makes my skin crawl.

>> No.3086770

>>3086766
>mimicking Monty Python style humor
>written between 1938 and 1941
that's just damned impressive

>> No.3086787

Genealogy of Morals, filter, 1 star, all 1 star comments are women


Strales (woman)
Apr 27, 2011
Strales rated it 1 of 5 stars false
i hated this book with a passion.


Farren (woman)
Feb 04, 2010
Farren rated it 1 of 5 stars false
Nietzsche, you turn my stomach.

Briana (woman)
Feb 21, 2012
Briana rated it 1 of 5 stars false
Shelves: torrey-johnson-soph-fall
I only read the first half...one of the most depressing things I have ever read. The world looks infinitely more ugly and cold after Nietzsche is done analyzing it.

Laura (woman)
Mar 30, 2010
Laura rated it 1 of 5 stars false
I had to read this for school but I thought it was worth noting that I'd give it two negative stars if it was in my power.

Erica (woman)
Sep 23, 2011
Erica rated it 1 of 5 stars false
Shelves: textbooks
U G H. that is all.

I will fucking hunt these whores to the ends of earth and bury these cunts, and then go on my merry way

>> No.3086797

>>3086787
2 star ratings

Jill

"...they sound closer to Korihor's philosophy (and what a sad end he came to - hmmm, very similar to Nietzsche's), because they're all recycled stories from the same author, the devil. Oh wait, but there is no devil, right? THere is no good or evil, we're just told that so we're more tame, easier to control...funny, but anyone who ever goes down the path of carnal indulgence never finds happiness."

Mauricio

"I was interesting, good -not great."
>he's right

>> No.3086817

>>3086787
nerd

>> No.3086819

I, Claudius

"Terrible! I don't know why I thought this sounded interesting, because it was so incredibly boring!!!"

>> No.3086833

The Sound and the Fury:

"This book was the most confusing and boring book I've ever read. I read the entire thing, and now I feel like I've wasted my eyeballs. The Quentins really confused me (ohhhh, there's two Quentins?!?!). The random ball that showed up from nowhere confused me. I didn't understand why Luster had to find a quarter. I didn't even know Luster was black until 3/4ths way through the book. But I kept reading it to find the plot. Halfway through it, I couldn't find it. By the end, I thought something happened, but nothing did. So after I closed the book, I pretty much made up my mind that this book is horrendous."

>> No.3086869

>>3086751

>Blood Meridian
>nothing insightful to say

Hah, fucking please.

>> No.3086902

>>3086869
What was so insightful about it?

>> No.3086940

>Slaughterhouse Five

FIRST REVIEW: Everyone has sung the praises of this book to me -- as well as those of Vonnegut in general -- for as long as I have been aware of reading. However I found both it and Vonnegut tiresome and excessively labored. He tries SO HARD to be hip and quirky and ironic, but the humor (such as it is) and the commentary (such as it is) just wind up feeling like dated relics of their time. The book has not aged well. It lacks the timeless feel of great literature, and doesn't even function for me on a nostalgic level. I think the only genuinely original and creative aspect of this book that I recall was the description of the aliens. Otherwise it was a complete waste of my time and brain cells.

SECOND REVIEW: Nope. This book is the literary equivalent of easy, empty calories and heartburn disguised as a full four-course Italian meal. This book is so convinced of its own cleverness and depth and meaningfulness, but is utterly lacking in all three. The aliens, while neat, also turn much of this into a less-ambitious Stranger in a Strange Land -- and while i have many complaints about Heinlein's manifesto-cum-sci-fi-novel, i cannot deny that it is ambitious. The characters here are weak and thin; the pacing is dreadfully slow (making a tiny book feel as long as "Stranger" actually was); and the "messages", such as they were, are hollow, smug and facile. The fact that this lost both the Hugo and the Nebula to The Left Hand of Darkness proves that there is some justice in the world. This book is literary Frito pie -- but without the seductive tastiness of that dish.

>> No.3086939

On Donald Barthelme's "Sixty Stories":

--Tell me you liked it.
--I read five or six stories. Robert Kennedy and an Indian Uprising. The prose jumped around a lot. Fragments, or non-sequiturs?
How old is she? Her haircut is young, stylish. Her purple blouse hangs low on the shoulder, exposing a bra strap. Face clear and lean, but not quite taut. 35? No, this is Geneva, add 5 years. 40.
The homeless man parts his grey hair.
--Either Barthelme or the reader is in Plato's cave: the fragments don't quite add up to a whole.
--How bad must a five page story be, for you not to finish it?
--See one of Barthelme's sixty.

I disagree with the entirety of this person's criticism, but I laughed at the parody of Barthelme's (occasional) style

>> No.3086952

>>3086735

>anglo writers are the worst

A self-hating hipster with no cultural identity of his own wrote this.

I'd bet cash.

>> No.3086979

Brave New World

Mark rated it 1 of 5 stars
It was pretty hard slogging through side-trips and endless FutureWorld(TM) cameos in Aldous Huxley's disjointed narrative. I could just hear him thinking: "Oh, it would look very avant-garde if I had a chapter where the omniscient narrator does nothing but randomly dip into people's thoughts." Shades of James Joyce. I kept pressing on hoping, in vain, it turns out, that it would get better, or at least conclude with an identifiable point. If I had to characterize this book in terms of others of its ilk, I would have to say this: 1984 meets Farenheit 451 meets Logan's Run meets Pretties meets who? Tony Hillerman? Robert Heinlein? In any case, I was glad to see the back cover.


I don't even. Is he SERIOUSLY implying that BNW ripped off books that appeared 20+ years AFTER it?
Huxley had a better vision of the future than I expected.

>> No.3087026

>DeLillo's 'White Noise'

I'm so happy that I finally reached a point in this book where I could accept that I wasn't going to finish it. I stuck with it for a long time because I'd heard good things and because I actually enjoyed it a lot at the beginning. But after the toxic event, it's just really stupid.

Few writers could make a massive, deadly toxic gas leak boring. But somehow, I feel the Don DeLillo has done it here. Such an interesting thing to read about - potential for some serious action and dread! But there was no action. It was less exciting than when my family and I tried to flee from Hurricane Rita for three hours just to not be able to leave the county and turn around and watch TV at home. What happened during the event? Oh dear, Jack Gladney's discovered he's going to die in a few decades. . . join the club! Is this a revelation that can only be realized after an airborn toxic event?

The dialogue is terrible, uninvolving, and unbelievable.

I feel bad giving up on a book that I'm less than 100 pages from ending, but if nothing interesting happens in 225 pages, then I can't expect it ever will.

>Completely missed the point of the entire book.

>> No.3087030

This is seriously worse than any of yours, I was not expecting this. Especially from the first review. It's too long but you can look the rest up, it's absolute bullshit. She tries to compare it to the Dead Poets Society....why? Because Stephen likes poetry? She also says "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a perfect example of how I instinctively dislike people who aren’t funny. And if you tell me that he actually is funny, I say to you that if it takes you longer than 1 minute to explain the joke and at the end of explanation it leaves me with only a vague uneasy feeling, it doesn’t count. " No one was trying to be funny. And in the end she justifies her shit review by saying that she like The Velvet Underground and Virginia Woolf and others like that's relevant and redeems her or something.

>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
This book is a very dry, written version of the Dead Poet’s Society without Robin Williams. I was already grateful to Whoopi Goldberg this week for her reasonable comments about the most recent Sarah Palin ridiculousness, so I feel kind of bitter at having to be grateful for the other half of that daring duo. I had sworn them as my nemeses – minor nemeses, yes, of nowhere near the caliber of Charlie Kaufman, David Lynch, or Harold Bloom, but nemeses nonetheless. Now, I find myself thinking, “It’s a good thing Whoopi is on the View. Otherwise it might turn into some kind of evil vortex,” and “It’s a good thing that Robin Williams was in Dead Poet’s Society, otherwise those kids all would have been running around having conversations like I’m reading right now.” What type of conversations am I referring to, you ask? Here is an example from when Stephen is, I believe, supposed to be around 12 years old:

>> No.3087049

This is for The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, a translation from the Poetic Edda by Tolkien with commentary by his SON.

Donna rated it 1 of 5 stars
This is a tasteless mercenary venture trading on Tolkien's name. The book is basically a collection of Norse poetry about Sigurd and Gudrun and Tolkien's commentary on it. The poetry is uninspiring as is the commentary. I'm glad I borrowed the book rather than wasted money on buying it.

>The book is basically a collection of Norse poetry about Sigurd and Gudrun

YES
THAT WAS PRETTY MUCH THE GODDAMN POINT
>Women

>> No.3087056
File: 731 KB, 817x663, incred.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3087056

>Anna Karenina

Tyler writes:
"When the Russian elite first read this idyll to their vanity, they must have fallen headlong into the reflecting pool right after Narcissus. For now, you see, not only are they rich and powerful, but according to Tolstoy they’re also supremely virtuous. The theme of this book does the trick."

I actually burst out laughing when I read this. This is probably the most boldly false statement about a book I have ever read. Yes, Tyler. The Oblonsky Family: saints to the one.

>> No.3087066
File: 89 KB, 400x400, 1350284826705.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3087066

>>3087030

>And in the end she justifies her shit review by saying that she like The Velvet Underground and Virginia Woolf

It's just some incorrigible little scamp trying to have a go at cultural critiquing.

I find these vapid namedropping types more amusing than anything.

They think injecting a desperate pastiche of pop culture references into every opinion they have somehow compensates for a lack of analytical thought.

It's cute.

>> No.3087187

I know somebody's going to tell me to go back to /co/, but this review is too funny not to share:

Katie on Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth

"I thought this book was going to be a real winner. The reviews on the inside cover included praise from Dave Eggers and David Sedaris among others. The story takes place at a number of different time periods, so it gets a little confusing as to who is who, because you have to rely visually on knowing what a young Jimmy Corrigan looks like versus what his grandfather looked like as a boy, etc. What I love about graphic novels is that so often this happens completely effortlessly. Your eyes take in the words and the images simultaneously and before you know it you are having a beautiful experience within the pages of the book without any awareness of how your brain is putting it all together. That didn't happen for me in this book. I had to consciously look closely at character's faces to figure out who was who, and look at the background to determine in what time period the scene was taking place. That took the magic away for me. There were moments of the book I really enjoyed, but overall it was fairly lackluster."

>> No.3087364
File: 24 KB, 150x200, 1344358074745.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3087364

Nightwood.

"TS Eliot in the introduction said: “only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it”
At that moment I almost decided not to bother with this book, as I don't get poetry. If it had been a longer book then I would have flagged after 20 pages, but it seemed like an easy way to tick off another book in the damn 1001 list. But it was torture to read and that's time that could have been spent doing something more fulfilling, like cleaning the damn toilet or something. Ugh.
I just hope this is the worst book I read this year."

>I don't get poetry.
FFS.

Another review: "Extremely boring. Extremely pretentious."
They all seem to think pretty highly of themselves.

>> No.3087374

The Guns of August

>This is an overly factual book on WW I. It's difficult to get through but very informative.

Factual and informative? ONE STAR

>> No.3087376

>The only Tolkien I've ever read. And it guarantees it'll stay that way. That's right, I'm one of the five people on the planet who didn't pretend to have read the Lord of the Rings trilogy after the movies came out. And that's using the term loosely. They weren't really movies, they were more like protracted masturbatory fantasies for stoner geeks and people who would otherwise be making b-horror film remakes.

>> No.3087382

I loved this book! I think it is very interesting to see where so much of today's vampire lore started. You can see similarity and differences between how people portray their own version of vampires today. This book is written with that older vibe, but I still enjoyed it thoroughly.
>1 star

>> No.3087392
File: 29 KB, 482x800, 1343755570163.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3087392

The Master and Margarita

"This book is like the senseless ramblings of a crazy person or someone on drugs. I was only able to read it in short doses (no more than a half hour at a time) before it started to seriously irritate me so that I had put it down. For the most part, it outlines various instances of the devil wreaking havoc on Soviet Moscow with a vague parallel plot around the lives of Pontius Pilate, the Master and Margarita. Why does the devil torment Moscow? I have no idea... After reading the book, I find myself asking what was the point? I think this book is famous and considered a classic solely because it was written and published within the Soviet Union. "

>> No.3087398

>>3087392
It's been bothering me for a while, but what the hell is that thing?

>> No.3087411

A Farewell to Arms

Observational tragedy. Bloke falls for sub-moron during war. *petitions friendly bombs*
Hemmingway absolves language of beauty. And then the world.
His intent was to expose war's mundanity. His method rendered art menial.
*sarcastic applause*

>> No.3087419

>>3087398
It's the Americlap Walrus.

>> No.3087421

>>3085063
HHHHNNNNGGGGG that twist at the end

>> No.3087430

>>3086902
mah violence

>> No.3087452

"Also a book that encapsulates the angst of... the Lost Generation." No. Kidding. If I wanted this much pointless angst, I'd read Order of the Phoenix again. Or just talk to some self-obsessed teenagers. That's what all of the characters in this book reminded me of: whiny teen brats. Life kicked them while they were down, I noticed that (and the book reminded me many, many times). But what did any of them do about it? Briefly consider complaining, then pound another shot. The characters never developed. The characters never learned anything, except who was cheating on who. The characters never cared about anything. So why should I? As a reflection of the Lost Generation and the disillusionment they went through, this work may well stand as a masterpiece. Certainly, the technical merits are there. Hemingway's style and mastery of the craft are unable to be replicated, to be sure, I just wish he hadn't wasted my time with a pointless "story" (it's really more like scenes from these people's lives than any connected and thorough story) like this one. If you want to listen to people sulk for hours on end (albeit very stylishly), well, then this is the book for you.(less)

>> No.3089259

You want a laugh look up stuff on a high-school reading list.

>> No.3089309

>>3085063
WHAT A TWEEST

>> No.3089341
File: 41 KB, 318x460, 16634.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3089341

Glass Bead Game

"Missing are the vivid portrayals and homoerotic tensions that propelled Hesse's novels beyond Platonic dialogues and into personal journeys."

in other words: 1/5, not enough cock play

>> No.3089343

Am I the only person who didn't think Humbert Humbert was a monster?

>> No.3089391

>>3089343
I didn't either. But then, I've been on 4chan for years, so that can't lend much credence to my opinion.

>> No.3089406

>>3089343
The epiphany you did not have: it was all her fault. Humbert is a victim of circumstance. Many people here can relate as evidenced by all the hatred for Rand.

>> No.3089469

>>3084982

The plot is what really counts, anyone who doesn't think so is silly.

>> No.3089474
File: 506 KB, 613x567, high life.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3089474

This isn't really related to one of my favorite books (I haven't even read it), but this excerpt from a review for The Handmaid's Tale is just too good not to share:

"Not a very well written book. The writing itself is clumsy. It doesn't feel like you're reading a story; it feels like you're reading a piece of writing."

Yes. This person is complaining about there being writing in books.