Books you feel like you have to like but didn't

There's no art inside the pyramids. And the art◊ that the Egyptians did produce is breathtaking.◊

(And that's just the shit I was allowed to photograph. The Valley of the Kings nearly blew the top off my head.)

It still saddens me that there are people who don't like Lord Of The Rings.

But its not like I didn't expect it in this thread. Anyway, I'm about to step on people's toes too, so...

In other news... everyone told me that Lovecraft's Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was one of his best stories. Now, speaking as a guy who actually finished At The Mountains Of Madness, I actually ragequit Dream Quest. I mean I had sat through fifty pages of Lovecraft's alter-ego talking about his journeys in a bunch of places that are not-at-all subtle references to his other stories, and then something happens and the character is right back where he started, and I've still got like seventy pages to go... yeah, fuck that shit.

By the same token... Robert E Howard. His stories have some good ideas, but the problem is that he has heroes who are supposed to be outrageously strong, fast, skilled, etc. but nine tenths of the time they survive and beat the villain due to some last-minute lucky break or cop-out. I swear half the stories in the Solomon Kane book end with Kane watching someone else kill the bad guy. Now granted, Howard is GREAT when he averts this trend, but that's not often enough for my tastes.

edited 17th Nov '09 2:10:34 AM by James_S_Pratt

Sorry. I meant 'purple prose'.

Still not accurate, since it's poetry, not prose.

"Bad verse" is a possible descriptor.

RE: Howard

I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed the Conan Stories.

I have to say, I honestly can't decide whether I loved or hated Huckleberry Finn. Parts of it were funny, some parts of it were stupid, and then some other parts were just pointless. In the end, my likes and dislikes cancel each other out completely.

I also have difficulty reading phonetic dialogue or narration, such as the kind used by more or less every 'great' American writer dealing with the rural South when they want to show off their leet dialect skillz. A Confederacy Of Dunces is immune to this, for some reason.

Also, Flannery O'Connor? She sucks. Sucks monkey balls.

I actually liked A Separate Peace. Oddly, I didn't notice the homoeroticism when I was actually reading the book, only afterwards.

I hated about one out of every three books I was forced to read in high school, but the ones that stand out the most in my mind are Anthem, Invisible Man, and The Grapes of Wrath. The first one I loathed because it was basically propaganda for a philosophy I found despicable; the other two just bored me to tears.

I seem to be the only person on Earth who was indifferent to The Catcher in the Rye. Everyone else either loves it to death or hates it with a passion.

I OTOH LOVED The Grapes Of Wrath. Yeah, the story is ho hum, but damn, some of those prose bits are just the kind that you read and just sit there for a while, thinking about how fucking beautiful they are.

Update on Lady Chatterly, it actually picks up a biit when we get to the juicy parts.

@The Painted Maypole:

Thank goodness. I thought I might have been the only one who was completely bored by the The Invisible Man. Most of the people I've talked to seem to have found it really fascinating. Though I have to admit, the only thing that kept me going through the story was The Invisible Man just because I wanted to see what dickish thing he might do next. From what I remember, that's the only reason I finished the novel.

That does remind me of another H.G. Wells novel I liked even less: The War of the Worlds.

I liked the Invisible Man with the black guy a lot better. Ralph Ellison writes well.

I guess I'll join the club of those who disliked LOTR. Although I was 14 when I read it, and wasn't that much tired of tropes, I found it too slow-paced, and characters uninteresting. When I re-read it 2 or 3 years later, my opinion didn't change much, although I did like some parts (Gollum guiding Frodo and Sam through the swamps, for example). On the other hand, I loved Silmarillion (but not in its entirety). Still, a part of me feels real bad for not liking LOTR: I'm a big fan of fantasy, and it's like the Bible of the genre after all...

You know something I just realized? Lord Of The Rings is one of the only fantasy novels I like. Straight-up-psuedo-medieval-forest-fantasy, I mean; all the rest just read like watered-down versions of it. None of the nobles speak with any real gravitas, and the rules of various cultures just seem tacked-on.

Um, actually, I was referring to Invisible Man (no The) by Ralph Ellison. I've never read The Invisible Man. Come to think of it, I've never read anything by H.G. Wells.

God, I probably should have thought about that. I actually got that Ralph Ellison book a few weeks ago for a school assignment.

The Invisible Man

Invisible Man

edited 20th Nov '09 3:58:43 PM by Tzetze

Furiko Maru has solar energy!

You know something I just realized? Lord Of The Rings is one of the only fantasy novels I like. Straight-up-psuedo-medieval-forest-fantasy, I mean; all the rest just read like watered-down versions of it. None of the nobles speak with any real gravitas, and the rules of various cultures just seem tacked-on.

Amen!

I don't think that I've ever read a straight-up Heroic Fantasy, actually.

I agree with Furiko. LOTR has certain flaws, but somehow it feels "authentic" to me in a way that later fantasy series don't. I think it has something to do with Tolkien having been a philologist with wide knowledge of myths and legends (hence he took direct inspiration from them), while later authors seem to have an "I'm copying Tolkien but changing a few things" kind of ethos.

It still saddens me that there are people who don't like Lord Of The Rings.

Not to say that LOTR isn't good, but I can understand where some people come from when they say they don't like him. The problem is that the thing that Tolkien was best at (worldbuilding) happens to be the thing that no longer seems original anymore because of how many times it's been ripped off — And since the other factors of the trilogy aren't really as great as his worldbuilding abilities (I, for one, think Tolkien has problems Getting On With It Already. It's less of a problem in The Hobbit, which is why I enjoyed reading that book more than LOTR), his impact seems less awesome for a lot.

The Great Gatsby. I was forced to read it, I admit there are some interesting ideas, but in the end I was like "why am I supposed to like this guy again?"

I don't think you're supposed to like any of them. They're interesting people, in the same way that an auto accident is interesting.

I don't know. I felt kinda bad for the little kid. Ah well; brilliant people often have easily-distracted parents, so maybe it'll work out for her.

They're interesting people, in the same way that an auto accident is interesting.

I found them way too shallow to be interesting. But I think I also found Gatsby and Daisy much more loathsome than the author intended. I found them really repulsive.

I'm a Gatsby fan. I kind of read it as satire, and thus I think it works if you don't really sympathize with any of the characters.

I'm lukewarm towards Catcher In The Rye though.

Am I the only one who sympathized with a few main Gatsby characters? *dodges stones* Fucked up and childish? Yeah, but we were all children once...

I actually liked The Great Gatsby a lot. I sympathised with Nick and Gatsby: Nick is a basically nice guy, and while Gatsby does a lot of dickish things, it's because society wouldn't give him a fair shake.