Ever read a book you thought you should like but didn't?
- jetcoffee18
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Re: Ever read a book you thought you should like but didn't?
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Carol
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Such a bestseller and I also heard a lot of people declaring they absolutely loved it, but when I read it I was a bit disappointed. Not that it was badly written, I suppose it just didn't strike a chord with meyeah, same here. I thought I'm going to love it but I didn't.
As far as Catch 22 is concerned, I absolutely loved it, and thinking about some of it's charecters still bring smile on my face. Also Catcher In The Rye was also one of my favs. I identified a lot with the language used by main protagonist,and his rants, like yeah whatever. But then again the reason could be that I read it when I was a teenager too. Just shows how people have different tastes......
- cuteyface23
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Shakespeare needs to be seen on stage, not read.Bighuey wrote:I never could get into Shakespeare. Ive tried to read some of it, but It never did anything for me. Its fairly easy to understand if you take your time, but I dont like a book where you have to read parts over again to get the full meaning. Too cumbersome for me. I must be used to easy to read cheap trashy books.
My blind spot is Dickens. Everybody tells me he's the greatest novelist ever, but I find his books unreadable. Trite and contrived plots, nauseating sentimentality, overblown language, and worst of all cardboard stereotype characters with ridiculous names. I cannot even begin to take them seriously. Awful, awful stuff.
- GotThatSwing
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And I like reading Shakespeare but dislike seeing on stagemjmooney wrote:Shakespeare needs to be seen on stage, not read.Bighuey wrote:I never could get into Shakespeare. Ive tried to read some of it, but It never did anything for me. Its fairly easy to understand if you take your time, but I dont like a book where you have to read parts over again to get the full meaning. Too cumbersome for me. I must be used to easy to read cheap trashy books.
Maybe I should but didn't like that much The Great Gatsby, it seemed to me too... i don't know, melodramatic.
But I actually don't think that we have to like everything just because it's classic or (even more) because it's popular right now. I'm very suspicious about bestsellers because most of times I can't understand all the hype about them and they turn out waste of my time. I disliked so popular Eat, Pray, Love, The Da Vinci Code or My Sister's Keeper for example and I don't think I should like them at all.
- Bighuey
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And yet I agree that many contemporary novels seem to be insubstantial and shallow.
It's the period in between that I love - first half of the 20th Century, broadly "modernism". Proust, Joyce, Musil, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Mann, Scott Fitzgerald, that lot - even up to the beat generation. But not much beyond.
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well it really depends on your mood and taste , i am really a fan of Shakespeare his way of writing was simply best , based on the reality , i think you should read "world is a stage" where explains the stages of men very simple way but really true ....mjmooney wrote:Shakespeare needs to be seen on stage, not read.Bighuey wrote:I never could get into Shakespeare. Ive tried to read some of it, but It never did anything for me. Its fairly easy to understand if you take your time, but I dont like a book where you have to read parts over again to get the full meaning. Too cumbersome for me. I must be used to easy to read cheap trashy books.
My blind spot is Dickens. Everybody tells me he's the greatest novelist ever, but I find his books unreadable. Trite and contrived plots, nauseating sentimentality, overblown language, and worst of all cardboard stereotype characters with ridiculous names. I cannot even begin to take them seriously. Awful, awful stuff.
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I've never been able to get more than 4 chapters into Catch 22, but I keep giving it a go every couple of years. The main character reminds me of the protagonist from A Confederacy of Dunces, which, when you get the feel of the guy's ridiculous personality, is hilarious, so I keep expecting to get the same response from Catch and coming up short. Maybe next year!
The most disappointed I've been however, was with Harry Potter #1, after all the hype...but so happy I kept up with the rest of the series. The rest are wonderful and engaging; perhaps the characters were so young in the beginning or there was so much back-ground development, or Rowling hadn't gotten into the stride that really made the rest of the series flow so well.
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I find it difficult to read YA literature. Just not my thing. But I did read the Harry Potter series with my son. That was our special time together. But if not for him, I never would have read them. I suppose I'm missing out by not reading things like "The Hunger Games" and such, but there are so many books to be read that I never get around to those in the YA genre.mjmooney wrote:Well, I've heard all the arguments in favour of it, but I'm afraid I STILL don't understand adults reading the Harry Potter books.
Review of The Seneca Scourge - Previous book of the month!
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Many friends told me to read this book. I started reading it but could not finish it.
Most characters go nameless and featureless as just the boy, the shepherd, the English man, the merchant, the maid, the shopkeeper, the thief, and so on. But that is the least of the reasons I could not read The Alchemist.
I always regret the time I wasted reading half of that book.
- BooksNJoy
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Though it's a good book I expected better. The introduction was very good but the book became less and less interesting.
My favorite works from him are still the short stories on robotics
The truth in masquerade."
Lord Byron, Don Juan