I didn't like Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I mean, yes, I realize that it's supposed to be meaningful, and such, but I dislike excessive description.

That, and Fitzgeralds ... The Great Gatsby, again, because there was too much description.

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"Never doubt a small group of dedicated people can change the world - indeed, it is the only thing that ever has" Margaret Mead

I really didn't like "The Tenth Insight", which is strange because I liked "The Celestine Prophecy"

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"The man who says he has exhausted life usually means life has exhausted him." -Oscar Wilde
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-Sean

why does everyone always have to pick on him

*pouts*
dont hate me for this, but i really dont like mostly harmless by douglas adams....

...at least you know, you were taken by a pro, i know just how you feel. she talked a perfect game, deflecting all the blame, you took the jack and changed the flat and got behind the wheel and youre driving sideways....

Mostly Harmless wasn't great, but the first three or four Hitchhikers books are still some of the funniest stuff ever written.

Plus Douglas Adams lived for a long time (and eventually died) in Santa Barbara.

dont get me wrong, i love adams, but mostly harmless sucked...i was expecting more i guess...

...at least you know, you were taken by a pro, i know just how you feel. she talked a perfect game, deflecting all the blame, you took the jack and changed the flat and got behind the wheel and youre driving sideways....

I thought it was still marginally better than So Long and Thanks for all the Fish. (Although the latter has the funniest title I've ever heard. Whenever I leave someone's house and they're not around, I always leave a scrawled post-it with that line)

did you know that at mit, when he died, they put up a white sign on the dome that said so long and thanks for all the fish
my sister was one of the hackers that did it
go amandorable!!!!!

...at least you know, you were taken by a pro, i know just how you feel. she talked a perfect game, deflecting all the blame, you took the jack and changed the flat and got behind the wheel and youre driving sideways....

Well, Brideshead revisited by Evleyn Waugh was a total disappointment . I had read great things about it , but it was dull, I barely finished.


I don't think Dave Eggers should be in this list. I really admire him for trying to publish books out of the main stream and succeeding. I love A Hearbreaking Work of a Stagering Genius.

Oh wow...somehwere I can finally say this...I hated Son of Man, by Robert Silverberg. Now, I really, really, really like Robert Silverberg, and so I tried to apply all sorts of socail commentary and sexual political ideas to it, but...

I mean, if you wake up, on an alien world, is the first thing that you are do really, really going to do is masterbate?

Ick.

Ninave

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"It is bitter...but I like it, because it is bitter, and because it is my heart" - Stephen Crane

A Pen And Fire

YES. "I'm the first man in all history to masturbate on an alien planet! Take that, Neil Armstrong!"
I wonder if Armstrong or Aldrin got a chance to wank on the moon? Come to think of it, do astronauts ever get a chance to wank on their spaceflights?

Relax, you fiends! I'm only joking.

I was going to add Dean Koontx here. I read a book by him which kind of ok, interesting in some levels, so I bought another one at the bus station once...It sucked so so so so bad, that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but I secretely wish someone reads it so I can talk about it and exorcize the horror out of me!
And Journey to the End of the Night by Céline. Probably a great book, but it's so depressing and horrible and makes oyu feel so utterly bad with the world... Yikes.
I never read any of those fantasy authors oyu say... They don't travel here -we just get the crappy Dragonlance Endless torture (something I wouldn't recommend either, of course).
Also, the fourth Dune book. The second and third were not anything I liked, but this fourth one... And I'm only halfway through it. Since last Summer. The other day I just sighed, took the page marker out of the book and decided to forget that episode of my life forever

quote:

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Originally posted by Gemmi:
I didn't like Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I mean, yes, I realize that it's supposed to be meaningful, and such, but I dislike excessive description.

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funny, i was just about to post on how much i hate that book.

___________________________
but what are the jocelae?

"He must be on our side. He isn't dressed sensibly" -In the Land of Winter.

Math=applesauce

What's amusing is that I actually liked the Conrad novel. But what really amused me recently was discovering (at another site) that I apparently am one of only a few males who enjoyed Sandra Cisnero's The House on Mango Street. Thoughts, opinions, snide remarks on that?

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My baby's got a heart of stone,
Can't you people just leave her alone?
She never did nothing to hurt you
So just leave her alone - The White Stripes, "Truth Doesn't Make a Noise"

I wasn't one to give up on books in the middle, not until this summer.

I had weekly trips to the library and would always (for some god-only-knows reason) would pick up a book at random along with my other selections.

brideshead revisited, blood countess, dog city, and persuasion I could not put myself through.

not to mention the misguided afternoon I tried to see what the fuss over Ann Rice and Danielle Steele were. if only I could have those hours back.

quote:

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Originally posted by Aldarion:
But what really amused me recently was discovering (at another site) that I apparently am one of only a few males who enjoyed Sandra Cisnero's _The House on Mango Street_. Thoughts, opinions, snide remarks on that?

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I don't have any snide remarks on it, and you're the first male I know to have read it. I really enjoyed it and am happy to hear that someone else did as well. I liked the style of the book and it was the first book I read to write about rape in a non-graphic manner (compare that to say.. Sapphire's PUSH).


... it's amazing the power of tight pants and a little ball playing and their effect on an impressionable mind ...

quote:

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Originally posted by Ophelia's Vengeance:

I don't have any snide remarks on it, and you're the first male I know to have read it. I really enjoyed it and am happy to hear that someone else did as well. I liked the style of the book and it was the first book I read to write about rape in a non-graphic manner (compare that to say.. Sapphire's _PUSH_).

http://www.areaology.com/pict/got.jpg
... it's amazing the power of tight pants and a little ball playing and their effect on an impressionable mind ...

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Yeah, I thought the way Cisneros constructed the book was very well done - the short scenes, the childlike wonder about the world about, the characters seen briefly, and then...the rape. That scene was powerful as much for being a culmination of sorts of what had taken place earlier in the book (in terms of atmosphere, rather than specific plot elements) than for the rape scene itself. I guess it just made a lot of the teenage males uncomfortable, since those are the only other guys I know who have read the book. Then again, I think the story appealed to me because it resembled the home/family lives of many of the students that I taught that year; Hispanic immigrant families living in an urban environment, some of it still "safe" and others quite dangerous.

I wonder what others think of this book. I need to re-read it soon. However, I had borrowed the English language copy and only have the Spanish translation, so I guess I'll get to work more on my Spanish, huh?

***

My baby's got a heart of stone,
Can't you people just leave her alone?
She never did nothing to hurt you
So just leave her alone - The White Stripes, "Truth Doesn't Make a Noise"

She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

The book is a low self esteem trip waiting to happen.

My ex loved it and felt she could relate to it so much. How can you relate to something that miserable? I mean I actually read the entire book, just to say I read it and I hate it.

wah I'm fat wah

That's the only impression it ever left on me. It is not life changing, as all of the reviews on Amazon.com (And I'm sure even Oprah) say.

I might have liked Heart of Darkness if my tenth grade english teacher hadnt been so shitfired up about 'looking for hidden meaning'...every damned week she found a new word hidden in the picture of Africa on the cover.

All the books they forced us to read in school, all the classics, I am just now starting to pick them up and enjoy them...because there isnt a teacher hovering over my shoulder waiting for me to get his/her point and then write a paper to express his/her point, instead of my own.

I haven't got a lot of patience with most of what's considered "LIT-rature" now (by the academics who sneer at genre stuff like SF and comics ...).

I have a theory that bright but unimaginative folks nowadays like those kinds of books (people moaning about their problems and working themselves into tighter and tighter corners) because they are no longer surrounded by a close community of family and neighbors undergoing these things for real. So they have a need to read about them. I have plenty of family & friends having real problems, thankyouverymuch. I don't need to read novels about it.

I hated Lord of the Flies too, but in a way, I think it's brilliant. It wouldn't have upset me so much if it had been badly written.

- Cho