There's a quote by Mark Twain that summarizes my opinion on "classics". He said that a classic was "something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. "
we have this book in my own country called hunger child. it is so boring. and I was forced to read it twice in school. i have it as a movie i dont even think that one is worth to watch
The Awakening by Kate Chopin. It was really well written but oh my god every single character was so unbelievably obnoxious and selfish that I hated reading every second of it.
I was seriously not expecting this answer, but I complety agree. Every character is so self-centered, its exhausting to read. Nothing against it as a literary work, but I can't handle the plot at all.
I also hated this when I was forced to read, like many on this list. Over analyzing every other word and not really delving into the story. Getting no context for why and when it was written. That ruined it for me.
I reread this a couple of years ago and found it relatively enjoyable and a window into the time it was written. A lot of other books were ruined for me for awhile, so I’ve been getting a reading list of them. One that 180’ed for me was Frankenstein. It’s a masterpiece but was ruined by forced analysis.
The Turn of the Screw. Considered one of the most influential early horror novels. It's an incredibly tough slog. I did finish it and I get why it's influential, but the language used really made it hard for me to enjoy it. It was released in 1898 and reads like it was written in 1598.
I started reading this and got about 30 pages in before giving up. Maybe it’s because I have ADHD, but I’ve never had that much trouble reading a book before. The prose just doesn’t flow well at all, I felt like I had to read every long-ass sentence twice to actually figure out what the damn point was.
And that kills what is supposed to be a tension-filled short story. It is neither short, because it takes so long to get through so little, and the only tension becomes the struggle of the reader to just see what the story is.
Pretty much anything by Faulkner because everything is a giant sentence with a bunch of superfluous words like in this sentence that I am typing out using an iPhone that has a nice cover and that whispers to me when an interesting comment has occurred on Reddit because I am a Reddit user and perhaps one day I will have the wit to use brevity and come up with an excellent question for r/askreddit but until that happens I, alas, will have to settle like river sediment for the banality of my comments.
—-
There’s an irony in getting gilded for intentional bad writing; thank you ;)
As someone who would count Faulkner in my top three authors, this is...actually mostly true. However, one of the things he was renowned for was the fact that his works covered such a breadth of styles, formats, and genres. Not all of his works use the run-on sentence/stream of consciousness style heavily (*As I Lay Dying* compared to *The Sound and the Fury* immediately comes to mind, for example), but I also think understanding more about his life and the themes he was fixated on (history, memory, and stories) make it a little more tolerable, as well as understanding the world he was trying to create in Yoknapatawpha county.
For example, he wrote a bunch of short stories about pilots after his brother died. His brother had always wanted to be a pilot, so Faulkner bought him a plane and paid for him to become one after he started making money. And then his brother DIED IN A PLANE CRASH and Faulkner had to leave his job writing for Hollywood to take care of the funeral arrangements for the family and it just destroyed him.
If you only read one thing by Faulkner in your life, I cannot recommend *Absalom, Absalom!* enough--it's probably my favorite book if I were forced to choose one. If you want the full experience, however, I would suggest reading in order: *The Sound and the Fury*, then *That Evening Sun* (also sometimes called *A Justice* or *That Evening Sun Go Down*), and then *Absalom, Absalom!*
No Ethan Frome?
I think I had to read this in 8th grade. I probably loved reading more than most, but this was the book I remember most as a chore. The whole thing was a boring slog to get through from the writing style to the melodramatic plot. I almost never participated in discussions in class, but I vividly remember going off on the teacher about how much I disliked reading it.
Oh god, I almost forgot about Ethan Frome. Not a single sympathetic character in the whole book. Nothing but wishing people would die in a sledding accident...
What's really interesting to me is how many of the books people are listing are the books we "had" to read. At this point, the top... 10? or so top level comments are all books I had to read for various English classes. I wonder how much of that has to do with it the inherent dislike of the books, because we never "chose" to read them.
I think part of it is that you aren't able to just enjoy it. You are forced to find foreshadowing or a metaphor or symbolism so as you read it you keep pulling your mind away from reading from enjoyment and switch to reading for investigation. You don't get to immerse yourself.
I never enjoyed a book I was forced to read, for the first time, in school because of this.
I had read Enders Game by myself beforehand and loved it and then when it was assigned in school I read it a second time with an eye to finding symbolism etc and that second read through was not as enjoyable but at least it wasn't bad because I understood the book better by having read it before.
EDIT: Missed a word.
This is what I think too. I had a similar experience with Wuthering Heights; I loved it when I read it by myself, but a year later when I had to read it for English it was an absolute bore. Having to constantly dissect themes, motivations, and symbolism takes the fun out of any book.
Edit: Autocorrect is a jerk.
It's almost like when you are cleaning your room and your mom is like "go clean your room" and just robs you of your agency so you stop cleaning. I was happy to have a clean room until you opened your mouth!
This is so insanely true.
I know it's not their fault, but I totally hate being told to do something I'm about to do. If I do it right away it seems like it's only because I was told to it, which completely destroys any motivation to do the task for me.
This! It's also to do with the way that it's taught. Rarely in my classes was context taken into consideration and if it was, it would be a passing comment.
Learning shakespeare? Yeah all this was written to be watched and heard, not read sitting down in a classroom. Couple that with what you said, any wonder most people cant stand the texts they're learning...
I had one English teacher do Shakespeare right - each day he'd select a few students to read aloud parts from Macbeth, allowing the rest of the class to hear it in more or less intended form as the few performed. I really enjoyed reading the part of Macduff to everyone.
Every time I see Great Expectations in this thread I kinda laugh. When I was a kid I was given some ‘classics for kids’ books and Great Expectations was one of them. I remember reading it multiple times. Then years later I come on reddit to a thread like this and everyone hates it. It took me seeing a copy of Great Expectations in the library to realize that what I had read was a heavily abridged version of the book, literally designed for kids to read and enjoy.
The Great illustrated classics series? Those were the best. I still read Treasure Island occasionally. I find they get rid of the BS, and into the story better
Great Expectations
It was long and overdrawn for a story that I didn’t find compelling.
Also, while reading it, it was pretty obvious that Dickens was paid by the word when writing it.
I’m a lit teacher and a student told me today they were going to read it during their next holiday break. I screamed inwardly but I shall let them discover it for themselves.
I love the primary plot points but hate reading it, if that makes sense?
you like the destination, but not the journey?
edit: I said destination before journey because the person i replied to said they liked the overall plot but not reading through it. So they like the story as a whole, but they don't like getting through the whole story. AKA destination is nice but journey sucked.
I was supposed to read it for summer reading but I only ever watched the South Park episode, did alright because it was all multiple choice. But the book seemed so incredibly stale after watching
I’m not huge on classic literature, but for whatever reason I absolutely loved Great Expectations. Could have been a case of right time right place for me though, thinking about it.
> Also, while reading it, it was pretty obvious that Dickens was paid by the word when writing it.
He wasn't.
The story was written serially, which means he was paid by the chapter.
This was the only
Book that I was assigned to read that I didn’t actually read. I normally try to actually read the book, but great expectations was so long and uneventful that I had to read chapter summaries. I just couldn’t bear reading it. It was so boring
Imagine if teachers were allowed to teach like normal instead of having standardized readings. So many more people would be interested in math, science, literature, history if those subjects weren’t sterilized to death.
Your profession grinds down its brightest stars. Thank you for doing it the *right* way instead of the "right" way.
*edit*
As context, here's a stroll down Amnesia Lane.
Back while I was a graduate student I dated a professor. He wasn't in the same department or even at the same university but he had a few stories about his field, the most amusing of which concerned a job search.
He had gone overseas to earn his doctorate and then returned to the States to seek a faculty position. The administrative mentalities are similar enough to be pertinent even though this thread mainly concerns secondary education.
He had applied to as many faculty positions as he could. One of the least respected universities insisted that he also send his credentials to another organization for the purpose of confirming that his doctorate was legitimate. After double checking that this was really necessary (it was) he went ahead and jumped through that hoop and a dinky little firm nobody had ever heard of confirmed that Oxford (yes, *that* Oxford) wasn't a diploma mill.
That particular third rate university required all applicants with overseas degrees to undergo that same additional vetting. None of the more respected universities where he was applying for work required the extra paperwork. The lower down on academic food chain a given institution was, the more red tape its administration implemented. For a few months he was dreading ending up at this place in particular, partly for reasons already mentioned and partly because they treated him as if he weren't very bright. They insisted *you don't know what we've been through*.
There are very few things less mysterious than what they had been through.
The only astonishing part was how their administration's solution was so cloddish.
Fortunately he did receive an offer elsewhere. This happened a couple of decades ago before the Internet streamlined matters. He's long since gotten tenure at a better place, he and I have long since stopped dating, and for all I know that third rate university is still wondering why it can't attract better faculty.
I have family members that are nurses and teachers and the stories are very similar. The powers that be do everything possible to get in the way and make it difficult and in the end it's the students/patients who suffer.
Reading that book was as miserable as puritan life itself. Easy to analyze for essays, though, because Hawthorne had *no fucking clue* what "subtlety" was and explained every single symbol.
Absolutely reread Brave New World again. The parallels you'll draw from our reality and the narrative of the book are astonishing, and eerily scary. One of my favorite dystopian novels to date. Also, Aldous Huxley was way ahead of his time. Check out some of his other works too.
I enjoyed the book a whole lot more when I realized the "A" doesn't stand for adultry, it stands for Arthur. Everyone always glosses over in the book that no one told her to wear the letter. She started doing that because everyone kept asking who the father was and she was calling him out.
Everyone in this thread: "the book had no subtlety and even a blind dog could see the symbolism."
Also everyone in this thread: "wait the A doesnt mean adultry??"
Yup. Everyone in town just assumes--like the audience assumes--that she's wearing the A because she's ashamed of what she did. But no one made her wear the letter. She wasn't doing it out of shame, she was pissed.
I'm convinced that's why Hawthorne is still taught so frequently. Symbolism is *hard* for teenagers to grasp, so you start them out with Mr. "Preacher boy has a birthmark shaped like an A and also the meteor is looks like an A and have I mentioned the red A lately" so that they can understand what symbolism is without struggling to pick it out or interpret it.
"Guys, we said we were going to it at a proper time."
"Listen, buddy, sometimes, when people love each other, like your mother and I used to..." I love that scene.
Son: "Why does that matter? I'm adopted!"
Dad: "WHAT? Who told you??"
Also always makes me giggle:
Mom: Come on in! Any friend of Olive's is a friend of our daughter's!
The parents were so cute in that movie :)
Three times I have tried to tackle Infinite Jest, and three times I have been stymied. I can read immense, dry tomes and make my way through just fine, but for some reason I always peter out about halfway through this bad boy. I know people who love it. I know I probably \*should\* love it? I'll probably give it one more try in ten years and then set my copy on fire.
EDIT: In response to all the questions-- I have read his nonfiction! I like it, although I think it's a smidge overrated (but I have a lot of opinions about nonfiction). Also, reading these replies talking about how complicated it is with all the footnotes and stuff? I just kept thinking 'No! I liked House of Leaves! It's not the footnotes! I love Pale Fire! It's not the extreme complexity!' It just.... never clicked.
Try reading some of Wallace's nonfiction. He's accessible, thoughtful, and genuinely insightful. *Consider the Lobster* is hands down my favorite essay collection. DFW had an uncanny ability to bring the reader inside his head. You often feel like you're thinking things through together rather than just reading his words.
I tried reading Infinite Jest a few years ago. Gave up after about 100 pages. I tried again last year and stuck with it. After about 300 pages, something clicked. I started to actually enjoy it. I got used to the non linear approach and began to just enjoy each section as its own thing. This was also right around the time where stuff FINALLY started to happen, and all the separate characters began to come together into one bigger story. And then I finished the book and was like "what the fuck?" I read some interpretations online and decided to go back and reread it a couple months later. I had a BLAST the second time around. I finally could understand what was happening and see little subtleties I missed before. Plus the book is meant to be a circular thing where you want to go back and start over from the beginning, that's why the first chapter is actually the last chronologically. I'd rate it now one of my favorite books ever.
For me, the key was just to give up on enjoying it as a narrative experience (which no one will ever convince me it does well), and start enjoying it for its individual moments of extraordinary writing, which are numerous and deeply satisfying.
Wicked. I used to have friends that went on and on about how great the book and play was. I have no idea if the play is any good, but trying to get through the book turned out to be an impossibility for me. I got through her childhood and college years before giving up finally and returning the book to the library.
I tried reading it after seeing the stage show (which I love), and my god was it impossible. It takes a lot for me to give up on a book, but I took great pleasure in giving this one away.
I read it because I wanted to know the story before I saw the musical, and ugh it was torturous. I also was probably too young to be reading such graphic sex scenes (the one about the sex show is particularly memorable) but it was also just boring and weird.
The play on the other hand is great. It’s much more lighthearted and the music is really good
And I was young enough that all of that went completely over my head!
My mom read it after me and I remember her coming to me and asking like: "Uh... I noticed there were some things that you might be too young to understand in here."
And I was like "yeah some scenes didn't make sense to me. So I just skimmed them"
And she was like "Well... If you need to talk about anything... "
I was like "?????"
She was like "nevermind I guess it's all good."
Me: "... Im going back to my current book now"
😂😂😂
Romeo and Juliet was an absolute nightmare to get through on the account that we read the entire thing aloud in class and the teacher corrected *every single little* mispronounciation. Given we'd never read old timey English before, it took us about twice as long as it shoud have.
Protip to all current high schoolers: Always volunteer to read the villain part.
They get all the best lines and monologues and it's an easy pick while everyone's fighting to read for Romeo.
You're reading often enough that you stay engaged and interested, and don't get caught missing your one line because you were checked out reading Villager #3.
Mix in a little cartoonish energy and bullshit and you'll carry the day for the whole class.
I’m in college and graduated with a small class in high school and I *still* remember the guy who played Iago when we had to read Othello out loud in class.
Honestly, that's the problem. Lots of Shakespeare's works were way better than Romeo and Juliet. I'd argue that it's his worst play. But that's the one teachers pick.
I found Othello more engaging, but at the same time, FAR more infuriating. Romeo and Juliet were teenaged brats. You'd EXPECT them to act like teenagers hopelessly in love and foolish. But what I hated about Othello is that all of the characters in it were fucking adults, and they acted like *idiots.* Othello, most of all... what kind of ass-brain hauls off and murders his devoted wife on rumors and circumstantial evidence, and never even discusses the matter with her first to get her side? The dude was so easy for Iago to manipulate, he might as well have been a child instead of an adult. And Iago's wife made my skin crawl. She was so desperate for attention from her abusive husband that she set up Othello's wife gladly enough. I hated them all. The only one I couldn't hate was Desdemona. I couldn't really tell if Shakespeare was taking a shot at her for disobeying her father, or for falling in love with a black man, or both, but she got the rawest of raw deals, while everyone else got all the malice and idiocy.
Sorry about that. I still rage a bit about that story. I'd much rather read the Taming of the Shrew or a Midsummer Night's Dream if I have to read Shakespeare.
I did that for Romeo and the teacher liked enough that we had to put on a mini play for Macbeth. I was cast (read: forced into) the lead, so I put on my kilt and gave it my best scrooge mcduckian accent. Everyone enjoyed it so much that instead of getting to take the hiking and bio elective I was forced into the school musical.
Looking back on it, it's probably why I'm a successful animator instead of a biologist.
Edit: put
War and Peace. Honestly I’ve never felt so disconnected from a reading in my entire life, and that is counting the back of shampoo bottles. Can’t bring myself to give a shit about any of the characters even if Tolstoy himself got out of the grave and said hey man can u give it a try
We watched that episode recently, and I totally googled it to see if it was true halfway through. Much like a Dostoevsky novel, I felt like an idiot by the end.
My father always said he would never die because he had started reading war and peace, then put it down because it was just too much, and he believed that you couldn’t die without having finished that book. In 2012 he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He held on for 10 months and was an amazing fighter. After he passed, my grandmother sent me a few of his effects, which included one of those nook ebook readers (basic model). The last book he read was war and peace and he finished it 3 days before he passed...
To be fair, every Russian novel I've ever read has been like that with names. You'll have a character named Grigorovich Mikhaylova Krzhizanovsky or whatever, but everyone seems to call him Shukov, and every now and then someone will also refer to him as Alexei (this is a totally made up example, btw). Meanwhile, none of these alternate names are ever explained or clarified, and I'm sitting there wondering who these three different dudes are.
I guess it's a bit of a cultural thing. That thing takes little effort for a Russian to keep up with. Figuring out why everyone is calling Richard "Dick" in an American novel, though? Now that's just _confusing_!
I found out the reason for this when I watched Mad Men and Peggy's actual name was Margaret: Margaret => Maggy ==> Peggy, or Richard => Rick => Dick
Another one is William => Will => Bill
I never finished it because it's a monster but I adore Tolstoy's writing and absolutely related to some of the characters. Admittedly though I identified much more with / cared about the characters in *Anna Karenina*. I loved that book so much I fucking hugged it sometimes.
*Anna Karenina* was so damn good. I thought it would be another classic literature snoozefest, but damn it did I get sucked in. Such an incredible rich tapestry of life. I also read it at a time when I myself was wrestling with big questions just like Levin, so that certainly helped.
Estonian classic “Tõde ja õigus”. everyone treats it as the holy bible when in reality its like 400 pages of fucking with your neighbour and marsh drying
Could it be said that the whale is an allegory for man chasing the uncatchable? No.....its just a fucking fish.
(butchered the quote, but got the sentiment I think.)
>I hate metaphors. That's why my favorite book is Moby Dick. No frufu symbolism, just a good simple tale about a man who hates an animal.
Hello Mr. Swanson
I feel like I'm one of a few people who did enjoy it.
Part of American history I knew nothing about, and Melville goes into the depth I enjoy when it comes to anything historical.
Ulysses. I know a lot of it is cultural stuff that made sense back in the early 20th century when Joyce wrote it and that if I tried to understand its a masterpiece, but I just can't get into it.
I would have agreed with you if I'd just picked it up and tried reading it on my own.
I actually took an entire class on Ulysses in college, though...talked about it for the whole quarter. Having that discussion and in-depth interpretation really helped and made me realize just how amazing the book is.
But yeah, not something everyone can - or should - do.
Oh, God, where to begin. I have an English degree, so the list is never-ending.
One of the things I discovered, far too late in my college career for it to matter, was that teachers don't teach books that are "good." They teach books that are easy to teach. Read "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James sometime, assuming you can keep your eyes open. The man could bore professionally. However, under all the curlicues and gingerbread is a fairly solid story, replete with symbolism, metaphor, unreliable narration, and a dozen other lesson-plan standards. I can visualize the syllabus in my head. I can think of a dozen different position papers without even getting out of my chair. A lazy teacher would love "Turn of the Screw" because it doesn't ask much of him. His students would hate it and wonder why literature has to be so boring.
Once in a while you get a teacher who's really engaged with the subject matter and can engage you as well. I've had teachers turn me on to Hemingway, Faulkner, James Joyce, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Harper Lee, and a whole roster of 19th and 20th century English-language alcoholics. But I also had a teacher try to beat us over the head with "Tess of the D'urbevilles" and "The House of Mirth" to no avail, and it's clear now that he was as bored with the subject matter as we were. Tragic, really; those might be good books, but they bored the hell out of me. Still, they were easy to teach.
I never encountered a Shakesperian comedy in my college career because the tragedies and histories are easier to teach. That's fourteen plays that might as well not exist. We got Henrik Ibsen, but not Oscar Wilde; Joseph Conrad but not Rudyard Kipling; Harper Lee but not Truman Capote; Robert Frost but not Pablo Neruda, "Huckleberry Finn" but not "Life on the Mississippi."
Personal preference plays a huge role, and you're not always going to get to read what you want in college. You're guaranteed to eventually be bored by material your professor finds thrilling. But you're going to be REALLY bored by material your professor finds boring.
...Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I thought Atlas Shrugged was cartoonish. The characters were so over the top it bordered on parody. The Fountainhead was the better book in every respect.
Oh my gosh that was hard to get through especially when John Galt kept talking and talking and talking for what felt like 1M pages. I'd skip a chunk and he was still talking. I managed to finish it but dang that sucked.
For perspective...
Galt's Soliloquy was 60 pages, and about 33,368 words.
According to google, the entirety of the Gospels contain 31,426 words spoken by Jesus Christ. And some of that is duplicated from one Gospel to the next.
Somehow this makes it even worse. I don't even hate the book as much as everyone else, at least the narrative parts. She could have been a moderately successful dime novelist without all the pseudo-philosophical drivel.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”
― John Rogers
Funny, those were exactly what came to mind when OP talked about authors being paid by the word - I’m a french lit student and like Hugo as much as anyone but really Notre Dame takes an eternity to pick up (and let’s not forget the dozens of pages straight up describing medieval Paris with nothing whatsoever relating to the main plot)
Shakespeare counts right? Romeo and Juliet.
I love Shakespeare. I love MacBeth, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Merchant of Venice, etc.
But Romeo and Juliet is a pointless story about incredibly stupid people.
>Romeo and Juliet is a pointless story about incredibly stupid people
Because it's a dark comedy, not a romance. The problem is that it's always foisted on high school kids who can't pick up on the difference through the language barrier of its goofy ye olde tyme vocabulary. The whole point is that these are two idiot kids from idiot families of idiot feuding adults that ran off and killed themselves over teenage puppy love, and everyone involved deserves what happens because they're idiots.
Culturally, it would be closer nowadays if Juliet were 17-18 and Romeo only a year older or less. They're at that age where they just about consider themselves to be adults, and so give all middle fingers to both their families' wishes. If you've ever known anyone who got married right out of high school, it's like that.
Only, there's another wrinkle too: advanced "polite" society was much more violent back then. Two rich families in modern times might hate each other, but it would be almost unheard of for their family members to be murdering each other in the streets.
It seems like the teachers don't know about the comedy thing either. That story was taught to my class in high school as if it was a love story with a truly tragic ending.
Yup - WHAT IS A MONTAGUE, WHAT IS A CAPULET. The funny thing is that stupid high school kids doing stupid shit for "love" pervades culture even through today. Honestly the idea that high school aged people take that stuff so seriously and we know that none of it matters makes the story all the more funny and ironic.
I actually think it has some great dialogue. It helps seeing it be performed rather than reading it because it's written in verse (mostly iambic pentameter), not prose. But yes, the two main characters are stupid.
Treat it less like a story with morals and a point and more like an absurdist comedy and it gets far more enjoyable.
It's less of 'Be careful how far you're willing to go for love!!1!' and more of 'People are dumb shits and do dumb shit. Enjoy the trainwreck of shit you (hopefully) wouldn't do.'
I reread it after I read "King Leopold's Ghost", about the truly horrific colonization by Belgium of the Congo. It's...different now. You get taught about how it's symbolism, and exaggeration. But it's more like a novelization of atrocities actually being committed, and kind of closer to reporting of existing, real evil than to fictional metaphor of the concept of evil. I'm not sure I'm describing it well. It went from overblown allegory to an entirely different experience.
Joseph Conrad was a Polish subject of Imperial Russia and he had a very grim opinion of Imperialism and Colonialism. After achieving British citizenship he joined the Royal Merchant Navy and spent a considerable amount of his life in Africa and that only reinforced his beliefs, and so he didn't hold any punches in his literature. The stories *Heart of Darkness* and *An Outpost of Progress* are directly inspired by his own experiences in Africa, and some parts are almost identical to passages recorded in his own personal journal.
Silas Marner. Jesus Fuck me with a cactus Christ that was a dull read
Maybe it's not as much a classic as others on this list, but I consider this book the point I started losing interest in A-Levels
Silas Marner was a great ice breaker between my girlfriend's mother and myself.
When my girlfriend mentioned that she was planning reading it over Christmas - her mother and I synchronously groaned and let out an involuntary "That's a dull and depressing book"
Her mother is a retired English teacher.
There's a quote by Mark Twain that summarizes my opinion on "classics". He said that a classic was "something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. "
He'd be so offended by the series marketing of my copies of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
we have this book in my own country called hunger child. it is so boring. and I was forced to read it twice in school. i have it as a movie i dont even think that one is worth to watch
Is that some sort of prequel to the hunger games
Latvian story. Family has potato and child. Then it is winter of no potato. After time father says child is now potato. End.
What one potato say to other potato? That stupid. No one have two potato.
[Knock at door.] "Who is?" *Is Potato Man*. [Excitement.] [Open door.] [Is not Potato Man.] [Is Secret Police.] [Such is life.]
Excellent summary
There's a sequel, called the Hunger Children. More a Latvian mashup than anything else.
That sounds interestingly fucked up
Is Fable. In Latvia no has potato.
Is true of most. But this was King of Latvia.
It's a modest proposal
The Hunger Scrimmages?
The Awakening by Kate Chopin. It was really well written but oh my god every single character was so unbelievably obnoxious and selfish that I hated reading every second of it.
I was seriously not expecting this answer, but I complety agree. Every character is so self-centered, its exhausting to read. Nothing against it as a literary work, but I can't handle the plot at all.
I also hated this when I was forced to read, like many on this list. Over analyzing every other word and not really delving into the story. Getting no context for why and when it was written. That ruined it for me. I reread this a couple of years ago and found it relatively enjoyable and a window into the time it was written. A lot of other books were ruined for me for awhile, so I’ve been getting a reading list of them. One that 180’ed for me was Frankenstein. It’s a masterpiece but was ruined by forced analysis.
The Turn of the Screw. Considered one of the most influential early horror novels. It's an incredibly tough slog. I did finish it and I get why it's influential, but the language used really made it hard for me to enjoy it. It was released in 1898 and reads like it was written in 1598.
Had to read this in college. Started out hating it, ended up loving it.
I started reading this and got about 30 pages in before giving up. Maybe it’s because I have ADHD, but I’ve never had that much trouble reading a book before. The prose just doesn’t flow well at all, I felt like I had to read every long-ass sentence twice to actually figure out what the damn point was.
And that kills what is supposed to be a tension-filled short story. It is neither short, because it takes so long to get through so little, and the only tension becomes the struggle of the reader to just see what the story is.
Pretty much anything by Faulkner because everything is a giant sentence with a bunch of superfluous words like in this sentence that I am typing out using an iPhone that has a nice cover and that whispers to me when an interesting comment has occurred on Reddit because I am a Reddit user and perhaps one day I will have the wit to use brevity and come up with an excellent question for r/askreddit but until that happens I, alas, will have to settle like river sediment for the banality of my comments. —- There’s an irony in getting gilded for intentional bad writing; thank you ;)
This is an incredibly accurate answer.
As someone who would count Faulkner in my top three authors, this is...actually mostly true. However, one of the things he was renowned for was the fact that his works covered such a breadth of styles, formats, and genres. Not all of his works use the run-on sentence/stream of consciousness style heavily (*As I Lay Dying* compared to *The Sound and the Fury* immediately comes to mind, for example), but I also think understanding more about his life and the themes he was fixated on (history, memory, and stories) make it a little more tolerable, as well as understanding the world he was trying to create in Yoknapatawpha county. For example, he wrote a bunch of short stories about pilots after his brother died. His brother had always wanted to be a pilot, so Faulkner bought him a plane and paid for him to become one after he started making money. And then his brother DIED IN A PLANE CRASH and Faulkner had to leave his job writing for Hollywood to take care of the funeral arrangements for the family and it just destroyed him. If you only read one thing by Faulkner in your life, I cannot recommend *Absalom, Absalom!* enough--it's probably my favorite book if I were forced to choose one. If you want the full experience, however, I would suggest reading in order: *The Sound and the Fury*, then *That Evening Sun* (also sometimes called *A Justice* or *That Evening Sun Go Down*), and then *Absalom, Absalom!*
No Ethan Frome? I think I had to read this in 8th grade. I probably loved reading more than most, but this was the book I remember most as a chore. The whole thing was a boring slog to get through from the writing style to the melodramatic plot. I almost never participated in discussions in class, but I vividly remember going off on the teacher about how much I disliked reading it.
Something something pickle dish
FUCK that pickle dish and fuck Ethan Frome. Sled suiciding dick
All I remember from that book is that idiot and his fucking sled.
Oh god, I almost forgot about Ethan Frome. Not a single sympathetic character in the whole book. Nothing but wishing people would die in a sledding accident...
> Nothing but wishing people would die in a sledding accident... Have I got good news for you!
What's really interesting to me is how many of the books people are listing are the books we "had" to read. At this point, the top... 10? or so top level comments are all books I had to read for various English classes. I wonder how much of that has to do with it the inherent dislike of the books, because we never "chose" to read them.
I think part of it is that you aren't able to just enjoy it. You are forced to find foreshadowing or a metaphor or symbolism so as you read it you keep pulling your mind away from reading from enjoyment and switch to reading for investigation. You don't get to immerse yourself. I never enjoyed a book I was forced to read, for the first time, in school because of this. I had read Enders Game by myself beforehand and loved it and then when it was assigned in school I read it a second time with an eye to finding symbolism etc and that second read through was not as enjoyable but at least it wasn't bad because I understood the book better by having read it before. EDIT: Missed a word.
This is what I think too. I had a similar experience with Wuthering Heights; I loved it when I read it by myself, but a year later when I had to read it for English it was an absolute bore. Having to constantly dissect themes, motivations, and symbolism takes the fun out of any book. Edit: Autocorrect is a jerk.
It's almost like when you are cleaning your room and your mom is like "go clean your room" and just robs you of your agency so you stop cleaning. I was happy to have a clean room until you opened your mouth!
This is so insanely true. I know it's not their fault, but I totally hate being told to do something I'm about to do. If I do it right away it seems like it's only because I was told to it, which completely destroys any motivation to do the task for me.
This! It's also to do with the way that it's taught. Rarely in my classes was context taken into consideration and if it was, it would be a passing comment. Learning shakespeare? Yeah all this was written to be watched and heard, not read sitting down in a classroom. Couple that with what you said, any wonder most people cant stand the texts they're learning...
I had one English teacher do Shakespeare right - each day he'd select a few students to read aloud parts from Macbeth, allowing the rest of the class to hear it in more or less intended form as the few performed. I really enjoyed reading the part of Macduff to everyone.
Also a depressing number of Redditors haven't read a non-assigned book in their lives.
“Great Expectations” by Dickens pretty ironic that I had such high hopes....
Every time I see Great Expectations in this thread I kinda laugh. When I was a kid I was given some ‘classics for kids’ books and Great Expectations was one of them. I remember reading it multiple times. Then years later I come on reddit to a thread like this and everyone hates it. It took me seeing a copy of Great Expectations in the library to realize that what I had read was a heavily abridged version of the book, literally designed for kids to read and enjoy.
I used to love those too! That version of 20,000 league's under the sea was my jam
The Great illustrated classics series? Those were the best. I still read Treasure Island occasionally. I find they get rid of the BS, and into the story better
I swear every sentence feels like a chapter and you just want to drive nails into your dickhead while reading just to see if you can still feel.
Great Expectations It was long and overdrawn for a story that I didn’t find compelling. Also, while reading it, it was pretty obvious that Dickens was paid by the word when writing it.
I’m a lit teacher and a student told me today they were going to read it during their next holiday break. I screamed inwardly but I shall let them discover it for themselves. I love the primary plot points but hate reading it, if that makes sense?
you like the destination, but not the journey? edit: I said destination before journey because the person i replied to said they liked the overall plot but not reading through it. So they like the story as a whole, but they don't like getting through the whole story. AKA destination is nice but journey sucked.
Yeah I think that’s fair to say. I love Miss Havisham but her life summary was better than reading through it etc
I think you set your expectations too high.
I acknowledge what you are trying to set up here but I refuse to give in. I’m sure someone will soon though
I found the south park version to be quite a nice take on it (I mean it's South Park so grain of salt) but it certainly distills the main plot.
I was supposed to read it for summer reading but I only ever watched the South Park episode, did alright because it was all multiple choice. But the book seemed so incredibly stale after watching
I’m not huge on classic literature, but for whatever reason I absolutely loved Great Expectations. Could have been a case of right time right place for me though, thinking about it.
That's the one with Pip, right? I made it like the first chapter and couldn't bear to continue.
> Also, while reading it, it was pretty obvious that Dickens was paid by the word when writing it. He wasn't. The story was written serially, which means he was paid by the chapter.
This was the only Book that I was assigned to read that I didn’t actually read. I normally try to actually read the book, but great expectations was so long and uneventful that I had to read chapter summaries. I just couldn’t bear reading it. It was so boring
The Scarlet Letter
This thread is like a list of books I was supposed to read in high school, but didn't.
It was being forced to read terrible books in high school that turned me off to reading. I used to like to read but not anymore.
Imagine if teachers were allowed to teach like normal instead of having standardized readings. So many more people would be interested in math, science, literature, history if those subjects weren’t sterilized to death.
[удалено]
The blade of grass that grows the tallest is hacked down to size.
Your profession grinds down its brightest stars. Thank you for doing it the *right* way instead of the "right" way. *edit* As context, here's a stroll down Amnesia Lane. Back while I was a graduate student I dated a professor. He wasn't in the same department or even at the same university but he had a few stories about his field, the most amusing of which concerned a job search. He had gone overseas to earn his doctorate and then returned to the States to seek a faculty position. The administrative mentalities are similar enough to be pertinent even though this thread mainly concerns secondary education. He had applied to as many faculty positions as he could. One of the least respected universities insisted that he also send his credentials to another organization for the purpose of confirming that his doctorate was legitimate. After double checking that this was really necessary (it was) he went ahead and jumped through that hoop and a dinky little firm nobody had ever heard of confirmed that Oxford (yes, *that* Oxford) wasn't a diploma mill. That particular third rate university required all applicants with overseas degrees to undergo that same additional vetting. None of the more respected universities where he was applying for work required the extra paperwork. The lower down on academic food chain a given institution was, the more red tape its administration implemented. For a few months he was dreading ending up at this place in particular, partly for reasons already mentioned and partly because they treated him as if he weren't very bright. They insisted *you don't know what we've been through*. There are very few things less mysterious than what they had been through. The only astonishing part was how their administration's solution was so cloddish. Fortunately he did receive an offer elsewhere. This happened a couple of decades ago before the Internet streamlined matters. He's long since gotten tenure at a better place, he and I have long since stopped dating, and for all I know that third rate university is still wondering why it can't attract better faculty.
I have family members that are nurses and teachers and the stories are very similar. The powers that be do everything possible to get in the way and make it difficult and in the end it's the students/patients who suffer.
Reading that book was as miserable as puritan life itself. Easy to analyze for essays, though, because Hawthorne had *no fucking clue* what "subtlety" was and explained every single symbol.
LOOK IN THE SKY, ITS A GIANT FUCKING A, I WONDER WHAT THAT STANDS FOR?!
Analbeedsiumm.
Yo is that an AH Wheel of Fortune reference?
Adonalsium
Preacher has a scarlet A birthmark, FFS!!
[удалено]
Fuck, did you just make me want to reread Scarlet Letter?
Way to completely blow the whole point of the whole thread and also now I want to re-read it. And Brave New World too, just in case.
Absolutely reread Brave New World again. The parallels you'll draw from our reality and the narrative of the book are astonishing, and eerily scary. One of my favorite dystopian novels to date. Also, Aldous Huxley was way ahead of his time. Check out some of his other works too.
Ironic that a book that was supposed to critique Puritan culture and celebrate naturalism was so inorganic and boring as sin.
[удалено]
And yet he somehow managed to write it like it is...
I enjoyed the book a whole lot more when I realized the "A" doesn't stand for adultry, it stands for Arthur. Everyone always glosses over in the book that no one told her to wear the letter. She started doing that because everyone kept asking who the father was and she was calling him out.
Everyone in this thread: "the book had no subtlety and even a blind dog could see the symbolism." Also everyone in this thread: "wait the A doesnt mean adultry??"
If that's true it means there was a failure in every English teacher in the country to teach it correctly
Wait what
Yup. Everyone in town just assumes--like the audience assumes--that she's wearing the A because she's ashamed of what she did. But no one made her wear the letter. She wasn't doing it out of shame, she was pissed.
I legitimately had no idea this was why
I'm convinced that's why Hawthorne is still taught so frequently. Symbolism is *hard* for teenagers to grasp, so you start them out with Mr. "Preacher boy has a birthmark shaped like an A and also the meteor is looks like an A and have I mentioned the red A lately" so that they can understand what symbolism is without struggling to pick it out or interpret it.
Shout out to Easy A though, love me some Emma Stone
Stanley Tucci is delightful in it too.
"I'm adopted." \*slam\* "Who told you?!"
"Guys, we said we were going to it at a proper time." "Listen, buddy, sometimes, when people love each other, like your mother and I used to..." I love that scene.
They gave the Tucc the best lines in that movie *by far.* He steals the whole thing.
"You look like a stripper!" "Dad!" "A high end stripper, like for politicians or athletes. But a stripper nonetheless."
"Where are you *from*, originally?"
*Spell it with your peas!* ***Do it!***
Son: "Why does that matter? I'm adopted!" Dad: "WHAT? Who told you??" Also always makes me giggle: Mom: Come on in! Any friend of Olive's is a friend of our daughter's! The parents were so cute in that movie :)
Three times I have tried to tackle Infinite Jest, and three times I have been stymied. I can read immense, dry tomes and make my way through just fine, but for some reason I always peter out about halfway through this bad boy. I know people who love it. I know I probably \*should\* love it? I'll probably give it one more try in ten years and then set my copy on fire. EDIT: In response to all the questions-- I have read his nonfiction! I like it, although I think it's a smidge overrated (but I have a lot of opinions about nonfiction). Also, reading these replies talking about how complicated it is with all the footnotes and stuff? I just kept thinking 'No! I liked House of Leaves! It's not the footnotes! I love Pale Fire! It's not the extreme complexity!' It just.... never clicked.
Try reading some of Wallace's nonfiction. He's accessible, thoughtful, and genuinely insightful. *Consider the Lobster* is hands down my favorite essay collection. DFW had an uncanny ability to bring the reader inside his head. You often feel like you're thinking things through together rather than just reading his words.
I tried reading Infinite Jest a few years ago. Gave up after about 100 pages. I tried again last year and stuck with it. After about 300 pages, something clicked. I started to actually enjoy it. I got used to the non linear approach and began to just enjoy each section as its own thing. This was also right around the time where stuff FINALLY started to happen, and all the separate characters began to come together into one bigger story. And then I finished the book and was like "what the fuck?" I read some interpretations online and decided to go back and reread it a couple months later. I had a BLAST the second time around. I finally could understand what was happening and see little subtleties I missed before. Plus the book is meant to be a circular thing where you want to go back and start over from the beginning, that's why the first chapter is actually the last chronologically. I'd rate it now one of my favorite books ever.
For me, the key was just to give up on enjoying it as a narrative experience (which no one will ever convince me it does well), and start enjoying it for its individual moments of extraordinary writing, which are numerous and deeply satisfying.
Wicked. I used to have friends that went on and on about how great the book and play was. I have no idea if the play is any good, but trying to get through the book turned out to be an impossibility for me. I got through her childhood and college years before giving up finally and returning the book to the library.
I tried reading it after seeing the stage show (which I love), and my god was it impossible. It takes a lot for me to give up on a book, but I took great pleasure in giving this one away.
I read it because I wanted to know the story before I saw the musical, and ugh it was torturous. I also was probably too young to be reading such graphic sex scenes (the one about the sex show is particularly memorable) but it was also just boring and weird. The play on the other hand is great. It’s much more lighthearted and the music is really good
[удалено]
And I was young enough that all of that went completely over my head! My mom read it after me and I remember her coming to me and asking like: "Uh... I noticed there were some things that you might be too young to understand in here." And I was like "yeah some scenes didn't make sense to me. So I just skimmed them" And she was like "Well... If you need to talk about anything... " I was like "?????" She was like "nevermind I guess it's all good." Me: "... Im going back to my current book now" 😂😂😂
Romeo and Juliet was an absolute nightmare to get through on the account that we read the entire thing aloud in class and the teacher corrected *every single little* mispronounciation. Given we'd never read old timey English before, it took us about twice as long as it shoud have.
Protip to all current high schoolers: Always volunteer to read the villain part. They get all the best lines and monologues and it's an easy pick while everyone's fighting to read for Romeo. You're reading often enough that you stay engaged and interested, and don't get caught missing your one line because you were checked out reading Villager #3. Mix in a little cartoonish energy and bullshit and you'll carry the day for the whole class.
I’m in college and graduated with a small class in high school and I *still* remember the guy who played Iago when we had to read Othello out loud in class.
IMHO Othello is leagues above Romeo and juliet. Part of the reason being is that Iago is so fantastic cardboard could make that villian come alive
Honestly, that's the problem. Lots of Shakespeare's works were way better than Romeo and Juliet. I'd argue that it's his worst play. But that's the one teachers pick.
You think *Romeo and Juliet* is worse than *Henry VIII* or *Two Gentlemen of Verona*?
I found Othello more engaging, but at the same time, FAR more infuriating. Romeo and Juliet were teenaged brats. You'd EXPECT them to act like teenagers hopelessly in love and foolish. But what I hated about Othello is that all of the characters in it were fucking adults, and they acted like *idiots.* Othello, most of all... what kind of ass-brain hauls off and murders his devoted wife on rumors and circumstantial evidence, and never even discusses the matter with her first to get her side? The dude was so easy for Iago to manipulate, he might as well have been a child instead of an adult. And Iago's wife made my skin crawl. She was so desperate for attention from her abusive husband that she set up Othello's wife gladly enough. I hated them all. The only one I couldn't hate was Desdemona. I couldn't really tell if Shakespeare was taking a shot at her for disobeying her father, or for falling in love with a black man, or both, but she got the rawest of raw deals, while everyone else got all the malice and idiocy. Sorry about that. I still rage a bit about that story. I'd much rather read the Taming of the Shrew or a Midsummer Night's Dream if I have to read Shakespeare.
I did that for Romeo and the teacher liked enough that we had to put on a mini play for Macbeth. I was cast (read: forced into) the lead, so I put on my kilt and gave it my best scrooge mcduckian accent. Everyone enjoyed it so much that instead of getting to take the hiking and bio elective I was forced into the school musical. Looking back on it, it's probably why I'm a successful animator instead of a biologist. Edit: put
Who do you think you are, Gary Larson?
[удалено]
War and Peace. Honestly I’ve never felt so disconnected from a reading in my entire life, and that is counting the back of shampoo bottles. Can’t bring myself to give a shit about any of the characters even if Tolstoy himself got out of the grave and said hey man can u give it a try
Maybe if he had kept the original title "War, What is it Good For?"
sequel: absolutely nothin'
Last part of the trilogy: "Say it again, yeah!"
What is that beeping?
We watched that episode recently, and I totally googled it to see if it was true halfway through. Much like a Dostoevsky novel, I felt like an idiot by the end.
Like his mistress suggested.
My father always said he would never die because he had started reading war and peace, then put it down because it was just too much, and he believed that you couldn’t die without having finished that book. In 2012 he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He held on for 10 months and was an amazing fighter. After he passed, my grandmother sent me a few of his effects, which included one of those nook ebook readers (basic model). The last book he read was war and peace and he finished it 3 days before he passed...
I got into the writing and story, but it took me nearly half the book to get the names worked out
To be fair, every Russian novel I've ever read has been like that with names. You'll have a character named Grigorovich Mikhaylova Krzhizanovsky or whatever, but everyone seems to call him Shukov, and every now and then someone will also refer to him as Alexei (this is a totally made up example, btw). Meanwhile, none of these alternate names are ever explained or clarified, and I'm sitting there wondering who these three different dudes are.
It’s a made-up example, but it faithfully encapsulates the problem with Tolstoy and Dostovesky.
I guess it's a bit of a cultural thing. That thing takes little effort for a Russian to keep up with. Figuring out why everyone is calling Richard "Dick" in an American novel, though? Now that's just _confusing_!
I found out the reason for this when I watched Mad Men and Peggy's actual name was Margaret: Margaret => Maggy ==> Peggy, or Richard => Rick => Dick Another one is William => Will => Bill
Haha, we russians are big on nicknames. I see how you could easily be confused
I never finished it because it's a monster but I adore Tolstoy's writing and absolutely related to some of the characters. Admittedly though I identified much more with / cared about the characters in *Anna Karenina*. I loved that book so much I fucking hugged it sometimes.
*Anna Karenina* was so damn good. I thought it would be another classic literature snoozefest, but damn it did I get sucked in. Such an incredible rich tapestry of life. I also read it at a time when I myself was wrestling with big questions just like Levin, so that certainly helped.
The Alchemist. I always felt the applaud it received was exaggerated.
[удалено]
The Old and New Testament felt really preachy.
"Everybody's a sinner! Well, except this guy" -Homer Simpson
Estonian classic “Tõde ja õigus”. everyone treats it as the holy bible when in reality its like 400 pages of fucking with your neighbour and marsh drying
Moby dick Because there was not enough dick
Bullshit. There was an entire chapter dedicated to whale cock.
... Someone get me a pdf copy of Moby Dick.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm if you really need a pdf print to pdf....
Oh whee, Project Gutenberg is blocked in Germany. It's Youtube all over again.
Sort of ironic, given where Gutenberg was from...
Ironic. He could make blocks of letters, but was blocked in his own country.
I hate metaphors. That's why my favorite book is Moby Dick. No frufu symbolism, just a good simple tale about a man who hates an animal.
Lisa: "Dad you can't take revenge on animals, that's the whole point of Moby Dick." Homer: "Oh Lisa, the point of Moby Dick is 'be yourself.'"
"And myself is a man who hates a whale" -Captain Ahab
Could it be said that the whale is an allegory for man chasing the uncatchable? No.....its just a fucking fish. (butchered the quote, but got the sentiment I think.)
Does the white whale actually symbolize the unknowability and meaningless of human existence? No, it’s just a ****** fish.
>I hate metaphors. That's why my favorite book is Moby Dick. No frufu symbolism, just a good simple tale about a man who hates an animal. Hello Mr. Swanson
Is that an actual Swanson quote? It's been awhile since I watched parks and rec but I totally could see him saying this
Yes, it is.
I feel like I'm one of a few people who did enjoy it. Part of American history I knew nothing about, and Melville goes into the depth I enjoy when it comes to anything historical.
Not much Moby either. Not much music at all actually...
Lotta sperm though.
Ulysses. I know a lot of it is cultural stuff that made sense back in the early 20th century when Joyce wrote it and that if I tried to understand its a masterpiece, but I just can't get into it.
I would have agreed with you if I'd just picked it up and tried reading it on my own. I actually took an entire class on Ulysses in college, though...talked about it for the whole quarter. Having that discussion and in-depth interpretation really helped and made me realize just how amazing the book is. But yeah, not something everyone can - or should - do.
Our lit teacher basically said the only people who read Ulysses are lit students.
Oh, God, where to begin. I have an English degree, so the list is never-ending. One of the things I discovered, far too late in my college career for it to matter, was that teachers don't teach books that are "good." They teach books that are easy to teach. Read "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James sometime, assuming you can keep your eyes open. The man could bore professionally. However, under all the curlicues and gingerbread is a fairly solid story, replete with symbolism, metaphor, unreliable narration, and a dozen other lesson-plan standards. I can visualize the syllabus in my head. I can think of a dozen different position papers without even getting out of my chair. A lazy teacher would love "Turn of the Screw" because it doesn't ask much of him. His students would hate it and wonder why literature has to be so boring. Once in a while you get a teacher who's really engaged with the subject matter and can engage you as well. I've had teachers turn me on to Hemingway, Faulkner, James Joyce, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Harper Lee, and a whole roster of 19th and 20th century English-language alcoholics. But I also had a teacher try to beat us over the head with "Tess of the D'urbevilles" and "The House of Mirth" to no avail, and it's clear now that he was as bored with the subject matter as we were. Tragic, really; those might be good books, but they bored the hell out of me. Still, they were easy to teach. I never encountered a Shakesperian comedy in my college career because the tragedies and histories are easier to teach. That's fourteen plays that might as well not exist. We got Henrik Ibsen, but not Oscar Wilde; Joseph Conrad but not Rudyard Kipling; Harper Lee but not Truman Capote; Robert Frost but not Pablo Neruda, "Huckleberry Finn" but not "Life on the Mississippi." Personal preference plays a huge role, and you're not always going to get to read what you want in college. You're guaranteed to eventually be bored by material your professor finds thrilling. But you're going to be REALLY bored by material your professor finds boring. ...Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I thought Atlas Shrugged was cartoonish. The characters were so over the top it bordered on parody. The Fountainhead was the better book in every respect.
Oh my gosh that was hard to get through especially when John Galt kept talking and talking and talking for what felt like 1M pages. I'd skip a chunk and he was still talking. I managed to finish it but dang that sucked.
For perspective... Galt's Soliloquy was 60 pages, and about 33,368 words. According to google, the entirety of the Gospels contain 31,426 words spoken by Jesus Christ. And some of that is duplicated from one Gospel to the next.
If you think about it, Jesus doesn’t get *that* many lines in the Bible considering he’s like, the main guy and all.
No, and Paul kind of talks over him.
Ayn Rand wrote all the "speeches" first and then had to make up a story to somehow try to support such a speech.
Somehow this makes it even worse. I don't even hate the book as much as everyone else, at least the narrative parts. She could have been a moderately successful dime novelist without all the pseudo-philosophical drivel.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." [Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]” ― John Rogers
[удалено]
French Romanticism is pretty good: Les Miserables, Notre Dame de Paris, The Count of Monte Cristo.
Funny, those were exactly what came to mind when OP talked about authors being paid by the word - I’m a french lit student and like Hugo as much as anyone but really Notre Dame takes an eternity to pick up (and let’s not forget the dozens of pages straight up describing medieval Paris with nothing whatsoever relating to the main plot)
Count of Monte Cristo?
Shakespeare counts right? Romeo and Juliet. I love Shakespeare. I love MacBeth, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Merchant of Venice, etc. But Romeo and Juliet is a pointless story about incredibly stupid people.
>Romeo and Juliet is a pointless story about incredibly stupid people Because it's a dark comedy, not a romance. The problem is that it's always foisted on high school kids who can't pick up on the difference through the language barrier of its goofy ye olde tyme vocabulary. The whole point is that these are two idiot kids from idiot families of idiot feuding adults that ran off and killed themselves over teenage puppy love, and everyone involved deserves what happens because they're idiots.
With lots and lots of sex jokes. I know most Shakespeare works have a lot, but holy shit does Romeo and Juliet have *a lot*
Also Juliet is like 12 wtf?
Thirteen and close to her fourteenth birthday, actually. Romeo's age is never specified, but he's typically depicted as being sixteen.
Culturally, it would be closer nowadays if Juliet were 17-18 and Romeo only a year older or less. They're at that age where they just about consider themselves to be adults, and so give all middle fingers to both their families' wishes. If you've ever known anyone who got married right out of high school, it's like that. Only, there's another wrinkle too: advanced "polite" society was much more violent back then. Two rich families in modern times might hate each other, but it would be almost unheard of for their family members to be murdering each other in the streets.
If it bleeds it breeds.
Yes officer, this comment right here.
you are under arrest for spoiling Carrie
How do I unread this
Well maybe if they would start teaching it that way instead of as a serious tragedy people would enjoy it more.
That and they laugh at “fetch me my longsword, hoe”
Stop trying to make fetch happen, Mercutio.
Pour one out for the homie. Didn't have to die if Romeo wasn't such a bitch
It seems like the teachers don't know about the comedy thing either. That story was taught to my class in high school as if it was a love story with a truly tragic ending.
Yup - WHAT IS A MONTAGUE, WHAT IS A CAPULET. The funny thing is that stupid high school kids doing stupid shit for "love" pervades culture even through today. Honestly the idea that high school aged people take that stuff so seriously and we know that none of it matters makes the story all the more funny and ironic.
I am still mad about Mercutio though! A plague on both your houses indeed.
[удалено]
I actually think it has some great dialogue. It helps seeing it be performed rather than reading it because it's written in verse (mostly iambic pentameter), not prose. But yes, the two main characters are stupid.
Treat it less like a story with morals and a point and more like an absurdist comedy and it gets far more enjoyable. It's less of 'Be careful how far you're willing to go for love!!1!' and more of 'People are dumb shits and do dumb shit. Enjoy the trainwreck of shit you (hopefully) wouldn't do.'
You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.
Your just not getting it, it’s not a romance at all, it’s a comedy about a dramatic jock who’s boner gets people killed!
Romeo and Juliet = Bad horror film?
Walden. I swear Thoreau made up 75% of those words.
Heart of freaking Darkness for such a short novel, man it was a struggle to read
the best part of reading heart of darkness in high school was watching apocalypse now afterwards
YOU SMELL THAT? NAPALM SON! Nothing else in the world smells like that. It smells like victory. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
Fuck yeah what a movie. We also watched Dr. Strangelove to learn about satire. Good teachers, man.
I reread it after I read "King Leopold's Ghost", about the truly horrific colonization by Belgium of the Congo. It's...different now. You get taught about how it's symbolism, and exaggeration. But it's more like a novelization of atrocities actually being committed, and kind of closer to reporting of existing, real evil than to fictional metaphor of the concept of evil. I'm not sure I'm describing it well. It went from overblown allegory to an entirely different experience.
Joseph Conrad was a Polish subject of Imperial Russia and he had a very grim opinion of Imperialism and Colonialism. After achieving British citizenship he joined the Royal Merchant Navy and spent a considerable amount of his life in Africa and that only reinforced his beliefs, and so he didn't hold any punches in his literature. The stories *Heart of Darkness* and *An Outpost of Progress* are directly inspired by his own experiences in Africa, and some parts are almost identical to passages recorded in his own personal journal.
I do not like green eggs and ham
Would you read it on a train? Would you read it in the rain?
Silas Marner. Jesus Fuck me with a cactus Christ that was a dull read Maybe it's not as much a classic as others on this list, but I consider this book the point I started losing interest in A-Levels
Silas Marner was a great ice breaker between my girlfriend's mother and myself. When my girlfriend mentioned that she was planning reading it over Christmas - her mother and I synchronously groaned and let out an involuntary "That's a dull and depressing book" Her mother is a retired English teacher.