Books NOT to read-

[marlowe]

Glad my pick was chosen early in the thread - Beloved. I will give it a go in another couple of years to see if anything has changed, but I hated it both times through.

Was it Antecedent that was loving Joyce's poop jokes? Check out his 'love' letters to Nora. They are absolutely the most poop-filled, explicit things I have ever read.

I love almost everything on this thread.

[Two Espressos]

Anything written by Gertrude Stein. Tender Buttons is worth little more than pleasant bathroom reading. DH Lawrence is pretty horrible too. My angst might be from having to read Women in Love in one weekend in a grad seminar though.

As someone who just fabricated an entire paper on The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, I cannot agree strongly enough with this statement. The woman should be purged from the collective consciousness and never spoken of again.

*shudder*

I agree completely. Why is Stein even read? Tender Buttons is bad...really bad.

[TripWillis]

The Help.

But if we're picking non-obvious stuff, Gilbert Sorrentino reeeeaaaalllyyy gets on my nerves. Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things was the snidest thing I have ever read. I just couldn't take it. It must be my earnest midwest nature. I am also not a big pomo fan, so I'm sure that had something to do with it.

[cquin]

I also want to emphasize Julianne's post and go so far as to say anything by Octavia Butler is skippable. I have a professor, who I absolutely love, who is unfortunately obsessed with her. I've read Kindred, Patternmaster, Wild Seed, and now Mind of my Mind... awful, just terrible.

The Butler hate is making me sad! I read the Parable series in 8th grade and loved it to death. Granted, I have not revisited it since 8th grade, so that may have a slight influence on my opinion...

[TripWillis]

The Butler hate is making me sad! I read the Parable series in 8th grade and loved it to death. Granted, I have not revisited it since 8th grade, so that may have a slight influence on my opinion...

I also like Octavia Butler!

[Silent_G]

I have to echo the hatred for Dave Eggers. I couldn't make myself finish even half of A Heartbreaking Work. I also did not at all care for On the Road, which I'm sure will get me some boo's, but it just wasn't my thing. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is another one that I really wanted to like, but was entirely unimpressed with. I actually just put it down one day and couldn't be bothered to pick it back up. I tried to make myself read Paradise Lost while studying for the GRE subject test, but I only made it about halfway through that too. I have a tendency to push through to the end of books even if I'm not particularly enjoying them, but when I can't even force myself to the end it's a bad sign.

[veniente]

I have to echo the hatred for Dave Eggers. I couldn't make myself finish even half of A Heartbreaking Work. I also did not at all care for On the Road, which I'm sure will get me some boo's, but it just wasn't my thing. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is another one that I really wanted to like, but was entirely unimpressed with. I actually just put it down one day and couldn't be bothered to pick it back up. I tried to make myself read Paradise Lost while studying for the GRE subject test, but I only made it about halfway through that too. I have a tendency to push through to the end of books even if I'm not particularly enjoying them, but when I can't even force myself to the end it's a bad sign.

Yeah, Eggers seems to be quite a polarising figure. Why is that? Is it that his writing is, at times, too whimsical and twee? For my part, I think he's alright - I liked What is the What and Zeitoun. Am surprised Foer (another polarising author who, personally, I don't mind) hasn't been nominated, particularly EL&IC.

I really like how people come out defending authors who they believe do not belong in this thread. I think Portrait of an Artist, Beloved, and Sound and the Fury are all excellent, for very different reasons.

If someone said J.M. Coetzee I'd cry.

[thestage]

aarrrgghhghghgh people hating on joyce and faulkner itt :(

that's it everyone meet me out back I would like to engage in a healthy round of fistcuffs

at least there's a guy named after a Ulysses character here

[Unamuno]

Dear English/Lit folks: please allow a humble outsider (with an MA in Spanish and French lit) to opine with regards to Joyce. I love Joyce!!! I've read and done comparative work with all three novels (though one never really "reads" FW, rather s/he must be reading it over and over). As for the idea that he intended it to be difficult, I disagree (as does much of the scholarship). First of all, we all know authorial intention is of little to no import and the author has been dead for years. Second, if he had any intention at all, it was to create a work which would allow for an infinitude of interpretations (v. Eco). If this was his intention, he accomplished it masterfully.

[lolopixie]

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love -- ugh. It is actually good for about the first 250 pages...It goes on for about another 300 pages with absolutely no point.

[Timshel]

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love -- ugh. It is actually good for about the first 250 pages...It goes on for about another 300 pages with absolutely no point.

Since you mention Hijuelos, A Simple Habana Melody is also awful. So.Boring.

[user_name]

Eggers is meh; I never understood the hype. A lesser Barthelme or Wallace.

[perrykm2]

I LOVED David Eggers script for Where the Wild Things Are. Oh my god, it made me cry, cry, cry something horrible.

Edited February 17, 2012 by perrykm2

[DorindaAfterThyrsis]

This thread is great.

I place myself squarely in the "I heart Dave Eggers" camp, on the the strengths of Heartbreaking Work and You Shall Know Our Velocity alone (i actually hated Zeitoun an what is the What). I got a subscription to McSweeneys for Xmas last year, and find it a charming, often horrible, and occasionally brilliant surprise that shows up in my mailbox every couple of months.

As for Joyce, I have a cat named Stephen Dedalus. 'Nuff said.

(I should note that the preceding opinions are entirely those of a casual reader, and not a scholar. I make no claims to depth of knowledge on anything written past the late 17th century)

[wreckofthehope]

So... Where the Wild Things Are is the only marginally likeable thing he has done.

McSweeney's is entirely unpalatable for me.

[NowMoreSerious]

My pick is Dickens' Oliver Twist. reading it was like swimming in a tar pit ............ while on fire.

I could only make it 5 pages through White Teeth. Barf. Diaz's Drown is better than Brief/Wonderous; the former is a more traditional novel feel while the latter is more entertaining.

Isn't Drown his outstanding short story collection?

[NowMoreSerious]

I agree completely. Why is Stein even read? Tender Buttons is bad...really bad.

I'm guessing Stein is read because her Three Lives is a pretty amazing set of stories.

Also, I can understand some of the Joyce hate, but even The Dubliners? Hating that book must be some new high level of hipsterism I'm not yet hip to.

Edited February 17, 2012 by ImWantHazPhD

[Timshel]

Isn't Drown his outstanding short story collection?

Yes, but he won the Pulitzer for Oscar Wao. For me, though I like them both, Oscar Wao was way better.

[NowMoreSerious]

Yes, but he won the Pulitzer for Oscar Wao. For me, though I like them both, Oscar Wao was way better.

I read the first 30 pages Oscar Wao and it was amazing. I find I'm always partial to a writer's short story collection, such as with Lahiri and Alexie, for example.

oh and,

in before somebody says The Bible

[perrykm2]

I love both, but it is kind of interesting that Oscar Wao won the Pulitzer, IMHO. When I think of other recent Pulitzer Prize winning novels from the past few years, Oscar Wao seems to be kind of a dud compared to Kavalier and Clay, Intepreter of Maladies (so fabulous and underrated,) or Middlesex.

I think as testimonial literature, it's one of the best. Best fiction of 2008? Maybe not.

I feel like it is the ugly girl that crashed the party, but they let her stay anyway.

[perrykm2]

in before somebody says The Bible

Yeah, really. I was raised as an Atheist. The amount of information I know about the Bible = 0. How much it handicapped me in my Dante class = 100000000000.

At one point, the professor was like, "notice how the lord's prayer has been modified," and everyone started reciting the lord's prayer. I was so freaked out. That's what you get for going to public school in the Southern Ohio, though.

[user_name]

I think reading the bible is important because it'll make you not christian. the majority of practicers haven't read it, hence they still are.

[Historiogaffe]

This one doesn't fall so much into the literary canon (I hope) so much as the popular one, but: The Perks of Being a Wallflower. A copy made the rounds in my high school friend group, each of us reading it in about a day, and spending the rest of the year sneak-attacking each other with some of its most memorable lines. "I feel infinite."

I'm just going to lose all my cred by saying I like Gertrude Stein. That said, I've only read her most "accessible" libretto, some poetry, and some composition lectures. (Not "only" in the sense of, alas, I have not digested the canon in its entirety, but in the sense of, I haven't read Tender Buttons.)

As a throw-back: Plato. That Socrates, so pro at taking down straw men with his fascist ideals. Except Phaedrus, because paraquote, "You have to give the speech for me, Socrates, in this pastoral field by a river, or I will extract it from your lips with my own." There was actually a footnote in the edition I read that was pretty much, "A lot of people think this scene is pretty gay, for the last time that is not true."*

*It is so true.

Canonical items from the 17th century tend to leave me cold. Maybe as a medievalist I'm all, "Where my Catholics at," but my deep love for the 18th c. suggests it's more likely just Milton being a big groaner.

Edited February 17, 2012 by speakwrite_

[DorindaAfterThyrsis]

just Milton being a big groaner.

Is "just Milton" even something you're allowed to say? That construction is nonsensical to my brain.

Loving the diversity and (very) surprising opinions in this thread. Beginning to realize I'm totally guilty of assuming all Lit folks love/hate EXACTLY what I love/hate.

Edited February 17, 2012 by DorindaAfterThyrsis

[TripWillis]

I actually think The Bible is good... I am an agnostic, and I tend to read a lot more stuff about the Bible than I do actual Bible, but there are some decent things in there. I think the topic of women in the Bible is fascinating.