Books - long and awful.

[cody.wms]

I've found some good reads here through the Salon. This is not that thread. This is the do not read this thread. Every once in a while I think we all get caught in a book that gets good or at least mediocre reviews, read it, and regret it. Please tell us about those books so we can spend our time watching Pawn Stars instead.

First up, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It's the kind of book that even if you're on the team, it's hard to argue that it wouldn't be better if around 1/3 to 1/2 was eliminated from it. I tried re-reading the book about four years ago, as an adult, and made it through about 800 pages. The Galt's Gulch BS doesn't kick in til around page 1000. I accidentally typed 10,000 there the first time, and that would be the RPF or real page feel when you're slogging though it. Read Calculus of Consent by Buchanan and Tullock if you want to understand more about public choice/ libertarianism.

Second, Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson. I hadn't read this and decided to give it a shot earlier this year. Stephenson wrote Mother Earth, Mother Board, which is a great read if you want to understand how the Internet works. The transmission numbers are comically low compared to today, but it holds true. MEMB is long but great. Cryptonomicon is long and a bag of shit. I would think it would be hard to write a 800+ page book with minimal character development, a long pointless erotica section, and no ending, but he did it.

Third, Ulysses. I just can't. I've tried, but just can't.

What's on your list?

[Ben]

Catcher in the Rye. Come at me bro.

[spopepro]

I love this stuff...

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I don't even know what to say about this. I'm hopelessly lost from the get go and then it just gets worse. This book makes me feel dumb, and then all kinds of people say how important it is, how it's one of the best books of all time and I feel even more dumb.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. I love Eco. He's a real smart dude, and some of his other books are wonderful. But this one was really tough. Maybe it's the translation I had; I was hanging in there until the latin. Long passages in latin. Are they important, I'll never know...

huh... two postmodern classics so far...

Ulysses. Not much more to be said about this one.

The Aeneid by Virgil. Just like everything Roman, they looked at the Greeks and produced something that is bigger, more grotesque, self congradulatory and somewhat empty. I was just left cold. I don't even remember why I started in on it...I'm sure it was because a moder story was using it as a starting place and I wanted to be knowlegable. I didn't end up caring enough.

Troilus and Crisedyde by Chaucer. I can get through the general prologue of the Canterbury Tales, and my wife has finished the whole thing a couple of times (and since her minor was medieval lit, only middle english is allowed in our house--no translations) but I know I can't get very far into Troilus and I don't think she has either. It's hard to belive that this was such an inspiration to Shakespere...

I'm sure there's more out there... multiple degrees (one terminal) in the house means we have 12ft bookshelves and plenty of failures mocking us.

[spopepro]

Catcher in the Rye. Come at me bro.

Not long enough...

As a side note, I'm just about finishing up The Adolecent by Dostoevsky and thinking if I were a writer I'd love to write the story of Arkady Dolgoruky and Holden Caulfield in a semi-modern buddy story... But I'm sure even if I had the skill it would end up too long and unreadable.

[zetroc]

Finnegan's Wake. Scholars love to argue the deeper significances of his work (and the more idiotic claim to understand it) but no deeper meaning exists. Finnegan's Wake is a waste of time and anyone who claims to understand it is a self-absorbed windbag. Feel free to disagree.

[holliscx]

Catcher in the Rye. Come at me bro.

214 pp constitute a long read in the Volunteer state, Ben?

Have to agree on Name of the Rose don't remember page count but it's not a good read

[jonathanb]

Pretty much anything by Jonathan Franzen. Particularly "The Corrections". If he actually had an editor, that could have been a 180 page novel called "The Whiners."

[cody.wms]

214 pp constitute a long read in the Volunteer state, Ben?

HELL YES it does! Most of our time in class consisted of teaching how evolution is wrong, shop class, and how to uphold the sanctity of the Confederate battle flag.

I'm about nine books deep in S.M Stirling's "Change" series. I don't know why I keep reading them, and I've actually spent actual money on some of them. Actually, I know why I keep with it -- this is his picture in the back of the older books:

[lumpy]

The Magic Mountain. Took me four tries. My roommate took at least three. Don't do it. Exhaustively detailed world that's set apart, long series of episodes and discussions, then the protagonist simply leaves and it all ends in world war I. Metaphor for prewar European society, or cruel joke about the experience of reading the book?

[edoz]

Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. About 1000 pages in, every other sentence read "please, kill me"

[cody.wms]

Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. About 1000 pages in, every other sentence read "please, kill me"

I might have read a dozen books by L. Ron. All are awful.* The real question is what's worse? The book or movie version of Battlefield Earth?


*Note the theme. I read lots of terrible books. Something is wrong with me.

[72gmc]

The Grapes of Wrath. Maybe it's because I had to read it in high school but wow, that tome left a mark.

By point of personal comparison, I waited until I was in my 30s to read Moby Dick and really enjoyed it. Cryptonomicon too.

[holliscx]

Had a feverish crush on a girl my senior year hs - she said her favorite book was Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) so I jumped to read it. God awful. Don't remember how many pp but at the time it was a long read.

[davids]

I loved both The Corrections - a contemporary comedy of manners and neuroses - and The Aeneid (Fagles translation) - the foundational myth of Rome in finely wrought poetry (I agree they stole prodigiously from the Greeks. That was part of the fascination to me. I read The Aeneid after reading Fagles' Iliad and Odyssey translations...)

But Name of the Rose? Gravity's Rainbow? Tried and "failed". I adore Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners. But I couldn't read more that 50 pages of Ulysses. Ayn Rand? C'mon, I'm not that stupid.

[ChristianSLC]

I'll second Atlas Shrugged. I hit that Galt Gultch BS and was done with it for a few months. I eventually picked it back up and finished it, but damn was that painful.

Cryptonomicon sits unread on my bookshelf since it came out.

[Zandr Martin]

I only made it a few hundred pages into Atlas Shrugged. I finished The Fountainhead but it took close to a month.

I recently read Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos by M. Mitchell Waldrop. I thought it was good, and interesting ... and tedious, and I couldn't make it end quickly enough. It was just a really weird experience. I usually make it through an "average" book in about two afternoons - that one took almost two weeks. No idea why - the author's style I guess.

[TimT]

Confederacy of Dunces. It really hurt to read that.

Tim

[spopepro]

Oh! Another.

Waaay too long... check.
Full of bullshit... check.
An exercise in meglomanical self-gratification... check.
Sits unfinished on my bookshelves... check.

[lumpy]

I thought Cryptonomicon was pretty good. I'm thinking about reading it again. But do not under any circumstances read the Baroque Cycle.

[thollandpe]

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The term "Chautauqua" started to burn like lye.