Bad books

[Deleted]

Pure joy from the reader reviews of Amazon.com

James Joyce, "Ulysses"

• "Pretentious intellectual self-absorption"
  
  
• "Most of the book strikes me as an attempt by the author to show how very clever he was with word play and analogy and practically every other literary devise under the sun."
  
  
• "For all the great style modern authors may use, they are just using it to cover up a total lack of substance."
  
  
• "Life is too short to waste your time on this crap!"
  
  "Ulysses is a hardcover bounded knife in the face."
  

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"

• "It was poorly structured, the story is unclear and it is not very memorable."
  
  
• "Anyone who is an ancestor to that worthless excuse of an American novelist should be offered sincere consoling and extreme sympathies."
  
  
• "The love story was predictable and the characters were obnoxious."
  
  
• "It's just so haphazard and bad that people mistake it for being good."
  

J.D. Salinger, "Catcher in the Rye"

• "A dull, pendantic book about a dull, pedantic hypocrite."
  
  
• "This book was linked with the murders of John Lennon, and actress Rebecca Schaeffer. How could this book be around, when so many nutcases use it for such things?"
  
  
• "Salinger is the real phony here."
  
  
• "I find it as pointless as the day i read it. You would be much better off reading a nice Grisham, actually..."
  

Kurt Vonnegut, "Slaughterhouse Five"

• "Vonnegut is no better or worse than Daniele Steele!"
  
  
• "The novel is written in a childish absurdist style that becomes wearisome very quickly."
  
  
• "I read it, but I literally have no idea what this book is about. And I'm not reading it again to find out either."
  
  
• "A tangled mess of disjointed scenes and uninspiring ramblings."
  

[spindrift]

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Rubbish books.

[gyro]

Is this posting which books YOU think are crap, or have been reasonably well rgardde, but have had bad reviews elsewhere ?

[Deleted]

I think that spindrift should write a capsule review about why she thinks the Tolkien books are rubbish, along the lines of "The whole story could have been told in 50 pages because nothing happens anyway."

[gyro]

I take it you don't like them either then .... ?

[Deleted]

I didn't care for The Hobbit, but The Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite books of all time, and I have read the three volumes at least five times.

[gyro]

One of theose times where it's either all or nothing, I think. They are either loved or hated. Pretty much the same as the movies.

[happytraveller]

Mar 10, 2009 6:18:24 GMT kerouac2 said:

I didn't care for The Hobbit, but The Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite books of all time, and I have read the three volumes at least five times.

Me too. And seen the movies several times too. Love them !

[gyro]

At what age did you not care for the Hobbit ? It was my first introduction to Tolkein when I was about 9 or 10, and I loved it then. But, obviously, it was originally written for children, and it's not really until the last chapter or so that he forgets that ... !

[spindrift]

I could never get beyond the first twenty pages....these books were not for me. Other sorts of brains obviously appreciate them.

[bazfaz]

I'll tell you an author I hate: Martin Amis. He seems to be a deeply unpleasant person writing about deeply unpleasant people. But all his chums in literary London say how wonderful he is.

[spindrift]

Yes, I hate him too.

[gyro]

Did he do The Rachel Papers ? That was alright, but it's the only one of his I've read.

[gyro]

Oh, and Kerouac, do you agree with any of the comments in the OP ?

I liked Gatsby, and loved The Catcher In The Rye, but have never read the other two.

[Deleted]

Mar 10, 2009 9:30:19 GMT gyro said:

Oh, and Kerouac, do you agree with any of the comments in the OP ?

I liked Gatsby, and loved The Catcher In The Rye, but have never read the other two.

No, of course not. That was the whole point of the OP. Sorry if I am too subtle.

[gyro]

Based on the first reply, you are obviously super-humanly sybtle .....

[bjd]

I couldn't read The Hobbit, but liked Lord of the Rings a lot when I first read the books years ago. I also liked Slaughterhouse 5 and Catcher in the Rye, but admit I never managed to read Ulysses and finally gave up even thinking I should read it not long ago and put my copy in a bag of books to be given away.

[Deleted]

The Great Gatsby is a magnificent read, and I will read it again some day. This is perhaps one of only two occasions for me when I was forced to read a book in school and absolutely loved and appreciated it when all of the details, symbolism and choice of words were crammed down my throat by a really inspired teacher. The other book that I would probably have found quite dull (if ever I had read it spontaneously -- not likely!) but ended up learning that it was a masterwork of literature was Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native.

[gringalais]

Mar 10, 2009 8:58:19 GMT spindrift said:

I could never get beyond the first twenty pages....these books were not for me. Other sorts of brains obviously appreciate them.

I tried to read the Hobbit when I was pretty young. I was an avid reader then, but didn't make it too far either and never tried the others as a result.

On the initial list, The Great Gatsby I read and liked, I think I may have read Slaughterhouse 5 at some point, but clearly it made no impression on me. The others I never read.

One that a lot of people like that I could not get into was 100 Years of Solitude by García Márquez. Part of the problem was that I tried to read it in Spanish a while ago and the vocabulary was somewhat of a problem. I did like a few of his other books in English. I kind wonder if I would like it better now after living in a Spanish-speaking country for 6+ years.

[bixaorellana]

That's exactly what happened with me & The Hobbit, Gringalais. I was in my late teens or twenties & it was the book to read, but it did nothing for me even though I love fantasy. As a consequence, I never tried the other Tolkien books.

You cut me to the quick with your dismissal of my all-time favorite book! Do try it again. I've lost track of how many times I read it. I was told by a Mexican reader that some of the words in the book seemed archaic to him. I couldn't possibly say if that has to do with differences in usage between Mexico and Columbia or what. I still have to get all the way through it in Spanish -- something I haven't done because of laziness. One of the reasons I'm motivated to read it in Spanish is because it's enormously funny in the original. Who knows why, as the English translation is quite good, but yeah, quite comical in Spanish.

[Deleted]

Regarding The Lord of the Rings, I would say that you have to plow through about 50 pages, or maybe even 70 pages, and maybe wonder WTF as you do it, but you will be very richly rewarded if you go beyond that.

[gyro]

To me, most victorian era writers are like that, only it's not 50 pages, it's 350 .

Dickens does my swede in, but ironically, one of my favourite short stories is The Signalman, by himself.

[Kimby]

Mar 10, 2009 18:06:38 GMT gringalais said:

I tried to read the Hobbit when I was pretty young. I was an avid reader then, but didn't make it too far either and never tried the others as a result.

I LOVED the Hobbit, but couldn't get into Frodo and his gang, so lost interest in the series after Bilbo Baggins returned to Hobbit Town, or whatever it was called. I even learned how to write in runes. I was older than gringa and spindrift when I read it though, HS, I think.