10 Books Not To Read Before You Die

The Times (UK) ^ | September 17, 2008 | Richard Wilson

[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.

[LouD]

My thoughts exactly. The Nick Adams stories resonate with all real men. This guy’s a wuss.

[KenM]

The only books on the list that I read was the LOTR trilogy. Read them before the movies - plus “The Hobbit” - and loved them. I also read “Dune”, which was derided in the paragraph about LOTR, and loved it even more. The only Hemmingway I ever read was “The Sun Also Rises”. I thought it was so boring that I never finished it.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Never finished “Worcester Towers” in college. It was so boring I don’t even remember the course I took. Avoid at all costs.

Got thru half of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and then said, “to hell with it”. Passed the class, but don’t remember which one that was either. (Actually what I read was pretty interesting. Sounded like a Democratic Party fundraiser.

[MoochPooch]

ANY postmodern feminist novel is a waste of time. (Most of the fiction nowadays, anyway, is PC garbage, anyway.)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.” ~ Oscar Wilde

:)

[FrdmLvr]

That guy reminds me of this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyZspqjtG2k

[mountainbunny]

1: Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen read

2: The Iliad - Homer read

3: War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy read

4: The Beauty Myth – Naomi Wolff read

5: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson read

6: The Dice Man – Luke Reinhart

7: À la Recherche du Temps Perdu – Marcel Proust

8: For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway read

9: Lord of the Rings – J R R Tolkien read

10: Ulysses – James Joyce read

8/10 read. Someone should have told me that, to quote the article, War & Peace is "Way, way too long"

::rolls eyes::

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Being mentioned with Hemingway, Homer and Proust is really going to go to Naomi Wolff’s airhead.

Not if she reads this.

I don’t know if Naomi is a genuine academic – I couldn’t be arsed to Google her – if she is, she is probably Emeritus Professor of the bleeding obvious.

Best part of the piece, IMO.

[Vermont Lt]

I thought I was edcu-ma-cated....but I guess I am not.

These days I am lucky if I have time to read the day on my underwear.

[ovrtaxt]

LOTR and Hemingway?

Well, what do you expect from a journalist. They wouldn’t know real literary talent if it jumped up and bit them.

[VOA]

High school books I was forced to read, and still think are stupid
in my adulthood:
...
3. Grapes of Wrath. Depressing and pointless.

Yes, depressing and pointless.

Unless you have family members that lived in Depression-AND-
Dustbowl-Era Oklahoma.
(I'll not mention the economic devastation in Colorado, Kansas, Texas,
and other adjoining states as I have no family in those areas that
experienced the Great Depression and Dust Bowl eras.)

This is when about 50% of the population of Oklahoma left
OK in order to avoid impoverishment. Or even starvation.

I don't agree with all of Steinbeck's outlook in the book.
BUT, when you've worked hard for decades, your farm is repossesed
in an major economic downturn, and you have to hit the road in
1920-1930's used cars/trucks...
things might look a bit different.

As much as I disdain today's Democratic-Socialists...
and as ineffective/dangerous as some of FDR's programs were...
it's amazing the USA didn't blow up or turn into a North-American
version of the USSR.

[Revolting cat!]

3. Grapes of Wrath. Depressing and pointless.

Actually, it's much worse than that. It's an American version of socrealist art, or agitprop. Steinbeck was a Stalin sympathizer. John Gardner has a devastating (non political) analysis of it in one of his manuals on fiction writing. It is propagandistic trash from beginning to end.

[ConfusedAndLovingIt]

I have absolutely nothing worthwhile to contribute to this thread, so I'll post this instead: All-England Summarize Proust Competition

[Lancey Howard]

Very few books I have read in my life made me actually, for real, laugh out loud. ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ was one such book.

[eleni121]

I agree with you totally!

[Cicero]

Well, maybe I’ll put that back on the reading list.

[Hyzenthlay]

LOTR is definitely in my top 5 book list. Hemingway is for some people but not others - my siblings and I find it fun to have a contest to see who can find the most absurd-sounding single sentence every time one of us has to read his books. Austen is not my thing, either, because they’re like the chick flicks of her time, and I can’t stand romance-centered anything. There’s a bunch of books I’ve read, that I hated, but seem to be good books literature-wise so I won’t include them:

My top 10 not to read list would include:
-Twilight and its sequels. Awful writing, awful pacing, Meyer needed a thesaurus AND a new editor, the ‘dream boyfriend’ of the series is manipulative and show signs of being a future abuser, and so on. If your teenagers like vampire stuff, let them watch Buffy.

-Death of a Salesman. It’s been said before, and it bears repeating, that I found this book utterly pointless.

-Catcher in the Rye. I totally did not get the point of this book, or the themes, or anything like that. I can totally pick up themes and imagery but I completely missed what was supposed to be so special about this one.

-The Stand. I know some people like this, but despite being written by Stephen King, it’s not scary AT ALL, and it just drags on for almost 1500 pages. The plot lines all intersect rather nicely in the end, but as a horror novel, it’s lame. If you want to read something scary-ish, go read HP Lovecraft or some of Neil Gaiman’s short stories. If you want to read something really genuinely scary, well, good luck on finding it, and if you do find it, PLEASE tell me!

[VOA]

A good (IMHO) alternative to the book-list in the leading article of
this thread:

10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help
by Benjamin Wiker
http://www.amazon.com/10-Books-That-Screwed-World/dp/1596980559/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221793062&sr=1-1

Benjamin Wiker, the author did decent presentation of his book on BookTV.
It is possible to view over the internet by going to the linked site
and following the step-wise instructions below.

http://www.booktv.org/search.aspx

1. Type the name Wiker in the “Last Name” box for author’s name
2. Hit “Search BookTV” button
3. This should take you to a page for Wiker’s presentation.
4. Hit red “Watch Now” button to watch the author’s presentation
(If you are on dial-up you’ll get jerky video, but you should be
able to listen to the audio.)

[VRWCRick]

My nomination for the number one utterly useless book in the world, “Know Your Power, a Message to America’s Daughters” by Nancy Pelosi. If I were an advocate of burning books, anything by Pelosi would head the list.

[Fiji Hill]

1. Catcher In The Rye. Dumb.
2. Death of a Salesman. Pointless.
3. Grapes of Wrath. Depressing and pointless.

When I was in high school in the late 1960's, " young adult" books such as Catcher in the Rye and The Outsiders weren't assigned in English classes, as they are today, but many of my fellow students read them on their own. However, having some rather odd literary tastes for a teenager, I read books such as:

• Way of a Fighter by Claire L. Chennault, (New York: G. P. Putnam's, 1947), the memoirs of the commander of the US Fourteenth Air Force, which operated in China during World War II

• The Great Pacific War: A History of the Japanese-American Conflict of 1931-33 by Hector C. Bywater (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1932), the story of an imaginary war that eerily resembled the real one that broke out a decade later

• Up Ship by Charles E. Rosendahl (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1931), a book by the commander of the airships USS Los Angeles and USS Akron, which argued the case for building rigid airships. All of these books are now collector's items--Up Ship goes for $250-300 on the American Book Exchange website.

  Death of a Salesman isn't so pointless if you're a leftie like its author, Arthur Miller, but some conservatives also like it.

  I did have to read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath in an English class, and I agree that it was overly depressing. I especially didn't care for its anti-conservative and anti-free enterprise bias. However, if it has stimulated in you an interest in the Okie diaspora in California, you might like Rising in the West: The True Story of an "Okie" Family from the Great Depression Through the Reagan Years by Dan Morgan (Dutton, 1992), a non-fiction story that provides a much more sophisticated and accurate portrayal of the Okie subculture tnan does Steinbeck's opus.