I really, really tried to get through "Godel, Escher, Bach," but I just couldn't do it.
Currently on my night table. Last time I tried to slog through it was about 20 yrs ago. I'm not having much more success this time. I don't know anything about music theory, so that really drags down my appreciation of that side of things.
Those of you having trouble with Finnegan's Wake -
Have you tried reading it out loud in your best drunken Irish brogue
after taking a drop of military grade liquid LSD in each eye?
Cuz that really opened up the novel for me.
Good holy jeebus. Page after page after page after page WITH NO PARAGRAPH BREAKS JUST A SOLID WALL OF TEXT. And utterly incomprehensible to boot.
I don't care if you thought it was the greatest novel of the century. I got through 20 pages and i would rather stick a fork in my eye than read another 20.
Tales of the South Pacific is really good, though.
I can certainly see and in a limited way appreciate the incredible craft that went into his stuff, and I see why some people like it, but for me I just don't connect with it at all. I only picked up Michener in the first place for a girl who ended up really effing with my head (though at the time I was reading it I still though she was the best thing ever). If young love can't get you through a tough read I don't know what hope there is for anything else :)
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein. I made it to Michael Smith starting his own religion and gave up - I think that was about 600 pages in. Anybody that uses the word 'grok' needs to be beaten about the head with a hard bound copy.
Easily the starting point for a thread "Worst book you loved when you first read it (20, 30, 40) years ago."
It's hard work for the first 150 pages or so, but this is my favorite book of all time. I cream my proverbial postmodern jeans over this book. On the other hand, trying to read his book Infinity and More, which is about the mathematical concept of infinity, was like trying to fit a brick into my ear. Mainly because I'm a product of the public education system of the 1990s and 2000s and have, shall we say, a tenuous grasp on theoretical maths.
Originally Posted by monadnocky
Infinite Jest.
Good holy jeebus. Page after page after page after page WITH NO PARAGRAPH BREAKS JUST A SOLID WALL OF TEXT. And utterly incomprehensible to boot.
I don't care if you thought it was the greatest novel of the century. I got through 20 pages and i would rather stick a fork in my eye than read another 20.
You start to get a sense of what the fuck the first 150 pages were about, DFW starts actually writing descriptive background passages, you realize that the events at the beginning (incomprehensible the first time through) actually chronologically take place at the end of the book's plot, you get a sense of the characters so that you don't go "wait, who is this section about?", etc. In other words, an astute reader starts to stitch together relationships between the book's subplots at about page 150. Also, read the endnotes. It's kind of a bitch and I don't think it was entirely necessary to do endnotes and not just footnote stuff, but they go a long way toward making the book sensible. I can totally understand someone reading and comprehending the entire book, and still thinking it's a giant postmodern jerkoff, though. I just happen to really enjoy that.
Anything by Umberto Eco post Focault's Pendulum. Tried to read several, maybe finished one of htem.
Worst sci-fi ever: Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy. I can't imagine why I even bothered. Something like 3000 pages setting up an impossible situation, with a literal deus ex machina saving the day at the end. Unimaginably bad.
John Barth's The Sot Weed factor. Kept waiting for something worthwhile to happen. Never did.
I enjoyed Cryptonomicon, but the ending is a bit abrupt and unsatisfying.
I've read a Confederacy of Dunces three times. I should read it again soon.
Catch 22 wasn't terrible. It must feel bad to be a one-hit wonder, and the one hit is pretty mediocre.
I've been trying to read Nation by Terry Pratchett, and it just isn't working. I've read every non-juvenile Discworld book and loved them all, but this one isn't working.
Nation is just sad; a failing man's plea for greater humanity. Pratchett has advanced Alzheimer's.
I also love John Kennedy Toole's classic, but then I loved Ulysses, IMO the last sentence is one of the great joys of English literature, all 4,391 words of it. You can take that how you will.
Good holy jeebus. Page after page after page after page WITH NO PARAGRAPH BREAKS JUST A SOLID WALL OF TEXT. And utterly incomprehensible to boot.
I don't care if you thought it was the greatest novel of the century. I got through 20 pages and i would rather stick a fork in my eye than read another 20.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men wasn't any better. I don't get the post-modern rub and tug for this work.
That was me. His other novels are good. His novellas and short stories are great. I just couldn't get into War and Peace.
But... but... It's not only another wonderful, rich, perfectly told story of palpably real characters, he does that whole postmodern-before-there-was-even-modern digression into analyzing Napoleon, injecting the authorial voice out of nowhere for 50 odd pages.
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Merckx
Re: Books - long and awful.
Originally Posted by fmbp
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