Posted on 09/18/2008 6:41:41 PM PDT by PotatoHeadMick
Recommended lists of ‘essential’ reading are the most pernicious ‘to do’ lists of all. Lists of physical achievements or magical holiday destinations or wonderful restaurants or fabulous hotels make you feel like your life has been wasted; a list of great books you should have read makes you feel like your brain has been wasted. Most people embarking on a journey into a new book will feel they have to hack through a hundred pages of dense undergrowth before their conscience will allow them to give it up as a lost cause. But how many people feel secure enough in their own judgment even to do that? How many times have we all ploughed on to the end to find there’s actually no treasure after all? A book, even a useless one, can take several days out of your life so it’s a big investment. The best way to fight the massed ranks of recommended books is with an offensively glib and, if possible, ill-informed reason for not bothering with them.
(Excerpt) Read more at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk ...
He forget Catch-22
LOTR - I had never read the trilogy until the movies came out. I read each one the month before the movie came out before Christmas for three years.
A lot was left out. It should have been four movies.
Glad I read the books before seeing the movies. Something about getting to have your own mental idea of it before getting it from another source.
1. My Life
2. It Takes a Village
3. Living History
I, wit very few exceptions, limit my reading to nonfiction.
I read the list.
I’m safe.
I agree with 4, 5 and 6.
And I think I read it twice -- read it in college to see if it still sucked.
I really don't remember "Catcher in the Rye".
It seems to be the style in England these days to reject anything having to do with classical notions of manliness. They are so postmodern it's just precious.
Hemingway's short story about the fly fisherman is great. Just thinking about it makes me hungry for buckwheat pancakes and a handrolled smoke.
Joyce's Ulysses seems to be about the style more than the plot and so it seems acceptable to quit after the first third or so.
Tried but just can't get interested in hobbitses.
Are these 10 Books that You should NOT read before you die -- or is the author a Twit?
I hated that book as well. I'm not sure why that story appeals to so-called "intellectuals.". Do they glory in stories about futile angst? Does it make them feel superior?
You know it's bad when it's been made into a movie no fewer than FIVE TIMES.
I read at least 5 out of 6 of those, GOP.
After trying to read The Iliad and finding it unnecessarily confusing (too many nicknames that made no sense), I had to get a watered down version to get anything out of it, plus Cliff’s Notes. Same with The Odyssey.
The most overrated book I ever read is Moby Dick. If not for a two week teacher strike, I don’t think I could have done anything but use Cliff’s Notes. My teacher (who died late last year, rest his soul, and who had been run out of Birmingham by none other than Bull Connor) was great when school returned. He was extremely impressed that I had made the effort to read Moby Dick during the strike. Almost no one else bothered. He gave me the grade book to fill in zeros for many of the rest of the class. I declined that offer.
There's an awful lot of crap I'd throw up in place of these. You may dispense with Jonathan Livingston Seagull, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Portnoy's Complaint, The Prophet, Lady Chatterly's Lover, and The Handmaid's Tale if you want to save some time that might be better spent clipping your toenails. (I have agreed to disagree with a FReeper I respect a good deal in respect of the last of these. YMMV.)
I suppose I ought to include An Inconvenient Truth as well. Why not? It's just as fictional as the others.
Dude forgot most of the bestsellers since about 1960.
Thang is, you don’t hafta read what most people read, or what most people talk about, like James Joyce, whom nobody reads and everyone talks about. The most intrrresting stuff in literature and popular music comes out of the left field. Look for it!
This guy is a pretentious "bloke" whose taste in literature no doubt runs to the post-modern claptrap one finds in an airport kiosk.
I too think Hemingway is gimmicky, and I wouldn't read Proust if it was that or a bathroom wall. But to presume that my tastes should set the standards for anyone -- let alone EVERYone -- else is nothing more than narcissistic prattle.
I love Jane Austin. Her characters are timeless. This guy is a twit.
That's pointless literature.
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