When the book is only a classic piece of crap. Some books just don’t deserve the hype
When the book is only a classic piece of crap. Some books just don’t deserve the hype ??
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When the book is only a classic piece of crap. Some books just don’t deserve the hype ??
Which book you have in mind?
I was thinking about The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I read The Old Man and The Sea and I really enjoyed it…but this one I didn’t like at all. I’ve heard it mentioned a lot as one of his best books but I really don’t get the hype.
@Diana The Old Man and The Sea got a 2/5 stars for me ? one of the most boring books I have ever read
@Debbie oh I love The Sun Also Rises!
The Sun Also Rises is my assigned reading rn and it was the first thing I thought of when I saw this post ?
@Rehana Tell me why..maybe I’m reading this wrong
Diana Garcia well first of all, don’t think you are doing anything wrong, not every book is everyone’s cup of tea. I personally liked it because 1) the very first time I read it I was a teenager in HS in the 80’s and I had a very sheltered upbringing. So it was my first time
reading/learning about impotence. I don’t think that was a common topic in the 80’s especially among teenagers so it was interesting and “informative” (for a lack of a better word) and 2) I was always fascinated about that era and war stories. And reading about a group of socialites drinking and partying their troubles away( their way of dealing with PTSD) was intriguing. Most war stories deal with depression, poverty, survival etc but this book was about a group that dealt with it differently. 3) I also enjoyed the bullfighting description as it was my first time learning about that tradition and Spain. Most of the other books I read at the age were either in England or America.
I feel this on a spiritual level…. Staring at you Lord of the Flies
@Bobbie Thank you! I was forced to read it in School. Plain torture
@Linda I read it on my own because I never read it in school and every page was like pulling teeth?
Its such an awful awful book.
@Bobbie I loved it! ?
Are you reading The Catcher in the Rye by any chance? ?
my thought too ?
@Carolin just came to ask that too haha
Catcher in the rye is not about a plot or action or suspense or about being entertained; it is about themes. The main theme is the innocence of children and their world of understanding; Holden wants to protect them against the adult word. Also read about the symbolism in the book.
@Hanlie It still sucks tho?♀️
@Carolin it’s funny you’d say that. When I had to read it in high school I hated it with a passion. Now that I’m older I’ve come to appreciate it more, wouldn’t say it’s the sort of book that should withstand the test of time but it’s not a terrible book. At least I don’t think so.
@Diana I read it when I was in high school as well so maybe I should reread it!
I read different genres for different reasons: murder and suspense to take my mind off the real world because it is more scary; classic literature for the enjoyment of the way it is written, the subtexts, the symbolism, the characaterization; James Herriot for a laugh; Bill Bryson to be entertained; Nevil Shute to be uplifted.
I read it as an adult, in an attempt to read more classics, and oh, man, it was a serious struggle.
@Kristen this is my current problem. If you have any suggestions on the ones you enjoyed please let me know. I would appreciate it.
Boy do I hate the catcher in the rye
@Carolin loved this one too
I thought Great Gatsby
@Anna THE STRUGGLE IS SO REAL
@Anna it’s hard to get through this one but it’s actually pretty good. I liked the plot but I get the struggle with books like this one.
Come on Diana we’re all waiting in suspense what are you reading? ?
@Morgan The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
I read that one last year and while I agree that it feels dated now I think 2 things are still true about it: 1. it captures the feeling of that specific generation he is writing about and so it does provide a view into that time-period and 2. he is a good writer even though i have no interest in bullfights and stuff – the writing itself is quite solid 🙂
And now that I got that lofty talk over with: I really disliked Women in love by D.H.Lawrence :p
@Nína you just described the exact reasons why i have a love-hate relationship with Hemingway ?
Scarlet Letter?
@Matt I love The Scarlet Letter.
@Matt Worst. Book. Ever.
Oh I keep hoping baby pearl rises up and kills them all
@Matt haven’t read it…is it really that bad? I have a reading list of classics I might read.
@Shannon me too
Someone already took mine. Was going to say Lord of the Flies.
It’s Grapes of Wrath. I know it.
@Renee I haven’t read this but I’ll keep this in mind in case I decide to ever read it..just so I keep my expectations low.
Hey now, The Grapes of Wrath deserves to be a classic! It’s depressing, but Steinbeck’s writing/prose is beautiful, and the themes about survival and the commonality of humanity are universal. Plus, it chronicles a true time period in American history. You definitely need to read it, Diana Garcia!
@Paris I don’t know. I find it hard to pull through the what 700?800? pages for that ending. It was worse than the ending of The Sopranos or Seinfeld.
@Paris I read The Pearl and enjoyed it, so I might read Grapes of Wrath.
Some people wondered why I didn’t add in the post the name of the book but it’s for this very reason. Everyone’s opinion on this is different, while I don’t like some books, others might love those same books I dislike.
If you like Steinbeck’s writing, try East of Eden. If you’re in the mood for something more lighthearted, his Travel’s With Charley is a favorite of mine.
@Stephanie thank you so much. I screenshot your suggestions so when I’m at the library I can pick them up. ?
@Renee okay, I’ll grant you that— the ending sucked. Like, one of the worst endings I’ve ever read. ?
Frankenstein for me ?
@Eva yes… This was the only time I have ever sparknoted a book
@Eva can’t stand the romantics…maybe Oscar Wilde is the only one who was able to get away with talking about a mountain for half the chapter without me wanting to kill myself.
I’m thinking Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway spends at least 25 pages describing this dude’s hands. ??♀️
@Elizabeth that book is too awful to even be a doorstop
@Elizabeth damn I actually liked this one which made me pick up the book I’m actually talking about…the inspiration for this post if you will. I’m talking about The Sun Also Rises. I’m more than halfway and I still have no idea what is really happening..where did Mr. Hemingway put his plot…I can’t seem to find it here
@Diana I haven’t even tried that one. Hemingway is definitely not for me.
@Elizabeth I think I’ll try just one more time in the future with another one of his but not any time soon. I really need a palette cleanser after this book. I just really want to give him a chance for some odd reason. He might be my literary shitty boyfriend that’s only good for one book and not for the rest but I read on hoping this next book will be different.
@Diana I really liked “A Moveable Feast,” because it’s autobiographical of his time in Paris, and there are so many other well-known figures who show up, including F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, and a bunch of others.
@Stephanie that sounds really cool. I liked this one movie that sounds similar to this..I think it was called Midnight in Paris or something similar to it. I hope I like it, fingers crossed.
@Elizabeth I like Old Man and the Sea.
All of the classics they made us read in school. Especially Lord of the Flies. And Of Mice and Men ?
I acutally liked Of Mice and Men. I still remember watching the lightbulb go on for a bunch of kids about Curley’s glove fulla vaseline.
@Kelsey all of the classics??? You sound bleak with your opinion on the classics.. theirs so many good classics..
@Aislan I mainly talking about the ones forced on us in school. They (for the most part) were boring to begin with. Then we had to analyze them or write essays on them. Which is a great way to ruin a book for a teen.
I will say I really enjoyed Great Gatsby which was a surprise to me.
Space trilogy cs lewis just dont bother ???
Im following bc i want to know which book she’s talking about
Moby Dick ??
@Mallory I came here to say this
I like how she hadn’t mentioned what book she talking about but everyone is throwing out theirs ?
@Bobbie love love love your hair by the way ?
@Lauren thank you so much ?
@Bobbie I’m loving it actually, helps me see which ones not to read in future and also compare my own experiences with others I’ve read that are mentioned here.
@Diana I wouldn’t let it make you not read things you’ve thought about reading. Everyone is going to have very different tastes, so I would say if it’s a classic, give it a LITTLE chance, but you don’t have to finish it lol!
@Dominique good advice..I agree but I do like to keep my expectations low..that way I know what state of mind to be in when reading them
Catcher in the Rye ??
almost any classic i’ve ever been forced to read. especially 1984. had to sparknotes a LOT of classic material
@Megan oh man. F$&@ 1984.
I still haven’t finished that book and it’s been years since I started it. I dont even want to go back to it. More than halfway through and a couple friends dont understand why I don’t like it. I brought to their attention that it’s so much easier to understand/enjoy a classic when it’s being read in school
@Breyanne Oh? I really can’t get into books if it’s an assigned reading. I like choosing my own books to read. I loved Catcher in the Rye but if I were to have to read it for school I’d dread it so much.
Animal farm ?
@Alicia oh I really liked this one.
I actually do like a lot of so called “classics”, I’ve read quite a few of them..but just like with anything some of them are really bad and really shouldn’t continue to be read when there’s much better books to read.
@Diana I like a lot of classics too. But I hated that one and studying it.
@Alicia did they go over fallacies with this one when you were studying it?
I guess I enjoyed it because I really like learning about politics and this book is very political.
I hated it when they forced me to read it at school. Years passed and for some reason I decided to try and read it again; I can’t say it’s my favourite book but I did enjoy it
I don’t know if I’d have liked it if I read it in high school. But I recently read it, 1984, It Can’t Happen Here and Brave New World and I liked all of the except the last.
But those of us that are into thrillers love the suspense of having to ask/figure out what the book is ??
i think in a lot of cases, classics aren’t actually all that bad, but being forced to read them makes us dislike them. not in ALL cases, mind you, but i definitely think that happens.
@Kell as a former teacher I definitely agree with this!
@Kell this!!! So much. Any classic I hate is from studying it in school. Not all of them that I read I disliked, but there were definitely a few.
its because you don’t get a chance to enjoy it. you’re analyzing it every single step of the way and have no time to really THINK for yourself.
The only one I remember teaching that wasn’t a complete struggle was Lord of the Flies. Maybe they related to the feral teenagers and found some enjoyment in that ?♀️?
I think we’re often far too young to have enough context to really understand the issues being dealt with and the intent of the author. I HATED books because of the way they were taught but when I went back once I was older I actually enjoyed reading.
@Rhea I think its because they can at least understand and identify with the emotions of the characters. They understand the inherent joy and danger of having no rules. There is no way a 16 year old has the life experience to understand the point of Germinal (maybe a bad example because I dont actually think there is one for that particular book but that was my most hated HS book) or even to truly understand Catcher in the Rye.
@Kell yes! I had a higher reading level when I was a kid and I was home schooled so my parents tried to force all the classics on me… When I was seven and eight! They were gibberish to me and boring as all get out and I hated them for years! Only this last year have I found they are actually okay.
@Kell yes! Or because we feel we should real them. Always makes it worse.
Brave New World. I hate that book with a fiery passion.
@Lara that’s one of my faves! ?
This is one of those books that I say I will one day read… But secretly I know I won’t ?
@Lara it’s sooooo good. One of the first books I read to my daughter when she was newborn ?
It’s better to end than mend! That book has stuck with me until the end of time. And I chant it each time I darn a pair of socks. ?
I finished it. I grited my teeth to the bitter end listening to the audiobook. But I lost count of how many times I had to pause the thing and let out a stream of curses about Aldous fucking Huxley and whiney ass men feeling under priveleged while being priveleged and the awful treatment of female characters. RAWRG!
@Lara curious, what didn’t you like about it?
I read it when I was in high school for a class and I hated it so much
@Raelee See above for most of it. Honestly at this point I mostly remember the burning hatred. It is presented as a classic of distopian stories and I suppose it is, but I feel other authors made similar points better. I think that the story was written from such a place of white, male privelege Huxley had no idea what an actual dystopia looked like. There were a lot of moments where it felt like you were supposed to think that this was a moment of deep understanding, but it is only deep if you’re a white dude with your head shoved so far up your own ass you’ve never looked at or considered the current world experience of anyone not a white dude.
Now, I can’t provide great examples on things for these points. Mostly because that wioudl invovle me having to go back and read this damn book again and I regret the hours I gave it in the first place.
I like dystopias. I just think that this is the single most overrated one I’ve ever read.
@Lilliana Whoops, see the above because I hit the wrong reply button initially.
I loved it high school, use to say it was my fav book but i reread it this year and….it’s the worse. I need to apologize to everyone I ever recomended this book too.
@Angela it’s The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway in case you want to know which book you might want to clear from. Of course it’s just my opinion..I don’t know who would like this book..but you never know. I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from reading their potentially favorite book.
@Liz that’s sick lol:P
@Diana I probably would not be down for that book either but honestly classics are largely not my thing.
I feel this way about A Confederacy of Dunces! It breaks my heart because I have some good, really literary friends who LOVE this book, and I have tried but I can’t not hate it.
Oh my goodnes YES!! I slogged through it smh. I found it so depressing when it’s supposed to be funny? Blegh!
@Angela I get that. I just like to mix things up. I like to read a little bit from every genre (although I have my preferences).
The Pearl by John Steinbeck! You couldn’t pay me to read that again!
Katrina Mohler I remember being like “What the actual heck?!” at the end.
The Scarlet Letter, couldn’t get through it lol
The Life of Pi
@Michell omg yes. I simply gave in the middle of it, read the cliffsnotes for the most of the chapters than went back to the end of the book. ?
It was a book club choice years and years ago that…I just couldn’t finish. In fact I remember going to the book club session and saying that even if it was a required reading in school…I would have justifiably failed that section…ugh torture!
I feel like I’m the only one that was completely unimpressed by “And Then There Were None”
Wuthering Heights.
Catcher in the rye
The crappiest piece of pretentious crap that ever was forced upon us.
@Lauren I can just picture this as a review on the books cover ??
@Hollie ?
@Ryan so true though. Don’t read that one ?
? It’s one of my favourite books. But I was a very angsty teenager.
@Lauren I went to a ghetto school but had to read it in college, was sooo pretentious. Had this crazy thought maybe my immaturity in high school would have made me like it more. Lol…
This is one of those where I think the age we read it does a GREAT disservice to the book. He’s supposed to be a pretentious asshat but too many foolish teens glorify him, and then grow up having that glorified impression of him/the book and thus never grow out of asshatism. Its kind of like how everyone talks about Romeo and Juliet as a great romance but they are supposed to be silly infatuated children who get caught up in the drama of it all. However when we read it and first identify with it when you are a silly infatuated teen who thinks everything is life or death you’re not getting that big picture because you’re identifying with the character’s perspective and not the intent of the work.
@Hollie that man laughed his way to the bank with his 50cents ?
@Rachel @SummerAmundsen…thoughts?
Any Charles Dickens, and I know its dirty, bu The Canterbury Tales – when everything has to be explained to you, it isn’t a naughty story anymore, it’s what did I just read none of those words are words.
I didn’t really understand it, even when a teacher was explaining it to me ?
@Breyanne -right? It’s supposedly x-rated ,but I never understood the jokes,and having to have every paragraph explained ruined whatever we were supposed to be shocked by.
When I had to read it for class I read summaries or translations. But my professor would over explain EVERY sexual reference….just in case us college kids missed it.
Your professor has some serious issues…that’s NOT ok…
Sometimes classics are worse
I’ve never read any that I think are complete crap, but I wasn’t impressed with The Catcher in the Rye. Not too fond of Charles Dickens either.?
I’ll restate Lord of the Flies. Terrible book.
I read a lot of condensed versions of classics as a kid. That helped a lot. It’s how I finished Pride & Prejudice, still one of my favourite stories today, but I could not slog through the original text. If these stories were updated for today’s readers, and I don’t mean adding technology and whatnot, I just mean the language, a lot more people would enjoy them.
@Melanie I have to say I really enjoyed Lord of the Flies. I can’t read anything by Jane Austen though.
I didnt like the scarlett letter
Wuthering Heights and Catcher in the Rye! ?
@Julie I read Wuthering Heights in high school and LOVED IT! Read it again as an adult and wanted to reach in and slap the crap out of every character! ?
@Melissa I’ve never enjoyed Wuthering Heights – such a miserable lot of selfish gits.
Some books I think we read at the wrong times in our lives. There were many classics that I didnt like when I was younger, personally, but then I reread them later and found new appreciation.
I didn’t care for The Great Gatsby. Finished it, closed the book, and wondered if I had missed something.
Fahrenheit 451
YES
Agreed.
Catcher in the rye?
@Ons OOH, PREACH. I hated that book.
We read Day of the Triffids at school and I hated it with a passion. To this day I’ve never even looked it up to see whether I’d like it today, because I just know I won’t.
I LOVED DotT at school. I’m scared to read it again in case it wasn’t very good. That was back in the early 70s and we weren’t very sophisticated with our sci-fi reading. I kind of have the memory of it being a little like the early Dr Who shows, with the sort of monsters that really aren’t going to take over the world. A good spray of Agent Orange and they’d be cactus.
Crime and Punishment ??
i felt this with catch-22 by joseph heller! i really wanted to like it, or at least appreciate it as a satire, but i just… could not…
Just @ Fahrenheit 451 next time
@Dominique I really liked F451!
Scarlett letter
Ernest Hemingway, blah
gawd i HATE hemingway. glad to meet someone else who does too.
I hated catcher in the rye. Can someone who really likes it explain the appeal to me? I’m genuinely curious that I’ve just missed the whole point of the book