We are all guilty. Every one of has one; that book we are supposed to love, it’s a classic no doubt, one of the greats, everyone else raves about how brilliant it is—but as for you, you don’t get it. You’ve read it, and you just don’t like it. But admitting it is a horrible sin to be scoffed at. So I’m just going to say it and get it out there; for me, it’s the The Awakening. Being that I am of the female gender this is a double sin. Not only did I not enjoy this classic but it’s also a Stonehenge in the world of the independent woman. The forerunner in the world of female fiction. I’ve tried to read it three times (twice sincerely) and have never finished it. Plain and simple, it puts me to sleep. Edna, Kate, I'm sorry. There is nothing else I can say. How’s that for a confession? Your turn.
18 comments:
the trail, by kafka.
i like kafka, i guess, i mean i like what he's about and all, and metamorphosis. but the trail just bored the shit out of me.
Can I second the Awakening? As I said in the other book bulletin, I thought this book was boring and generic, and I don't really see how it's such a trailblazing feminist manifesto. So she makes an attempt to break free of the systemic confines of home and family? To what, get caught up in the emotional tripe of some other man? And what happens when she tries to exist independently? She can't do it because she basically gives up and swims out to sea. I have no reservations about admitting that I found this book to really suck.
i remember your love of disliking this book, scarlet zapata. i was waiting for you to come in and second a's pick.
but i still like it.
"speak up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking-stick shop"-dickens, bleak house.
greatest. insult. ever.
Since we are being honest, I will also admit that I have never been able to finish a Rushdie novel. Yup.
I confess that delillo is the best writer alive. Except when he has the villain explain himself. Why does the villain have to reason with us? why does he have to explain himseif? The Names. White Noise. Mao II. Underworld. all of Libra. fuckin cosmopolis. every book has it's lengthy extrapolation to the roots of the processes and naratives or personal vice and evil. Certainly Delillo can be called a novelist of ideas, but give me a break Don! Do we really have to know every time why the bad guy is bad?
i confess that after we broke up i gave a girl a copy of the awakening and told her to read it on a beach. i had it in my bag, what can i say...
I'll confess on the Rushdie, too AZ.
big al=1.6
Oh! I just thought of another one! Confederacy of Dunces. Vomit. I hated it. And I did read the whole thing.
I like your style, Big Al.
Can I also say that I hated Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine? How can a writer stand to carry around such a horrible character/person as Jasmine in their head for months while they plan and write their novel? And not even horrible in an interesting, diabolical way. I mean, boring, selfish, nauseating, and decidedly NOT interesting. AND, on top of it all-- recommended to me by a professor whose taste I respected! It depresses me that my life is only so long and by the end of it I will only have read so many books, and THIS Jasmine bullshit will be one among them.
wow. thats some serious disliking.
it's not a classic, but everyone i know who's read huraki murakami loves him to death, including Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. which i hate. cut three hundred pages, and let me know.
i find kurt vonnegut unreadable; too much of a teenage sensibility that wanks off fanboys. and jonathan franzen's 'the corrections'? utter bilge.
Maybe because I read it in college and because it was hot in the library and because Don Postema was teaching the Modern Mind but I liked the Awakening. We had great discussion about it - none of which I can remember of course. I can't get into the Great Gatsby. I've tried three times and I get 10 pages in, yawn and put it back on the shelf. I know it's satirical writing about the rich, specifically, east coast rich but it doesn't interest me and I don't think it's all that amusing.
sacralidge on the gatsby comment. second on the franzen comment, though the first 40 so pages are great.
azf you have no sence of humor. dunces was great, i have not read it since high school, but introduced by percy, walker percy not the "trunkless legs of stone" percy...
actually, you have a bad sense of humor. so, there.
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