I was wondering where Thoreau was.

I like some Dickens and George Eliot from time to time - Middlemarch is brilliant. And while Tom Wolfe isn't exactly writing for the ages, I've been able to read a lot more of him than Norman Mailer. Of course, I'm also the weirdo who enjoys reading Theodore Dreiser. It's like there's something in my DNA that really, really enjoys longwinded descriptions of anything, no matter how pointless.

/why yes, I am a Tolkien fan.

Ace Frehley's Ghost: I just can't believe that nobody went on record condemning the atrocity against literature that is "Wuthering Heights."

Men don't read that shiat, why would we condemn it?

Toshiro Mifune's Letter Opener: Ni!: I freaking love Twain.

Agreed.

As much as I would feel awful about subjecting the man to such a fate, I would love to bring Mark Twain back just so he can read all the Twilight Richard Langdon novels and tear Stephenie Meyer Dan Brown a vast array of new ones.

When Twain puts down folks, he does so with STYLE.

FTFM

/I couldn't subject Twain to Meyers. That would be just too damned cruel. Even Jesus would want to kick her ass.

Nothing about Harlan Ellison, eh?

/What an irascible bastard.

jaytkay: Ace Frehley's Ghost: I just can't believe that nobody went on record condemning the atrocity against literature that is "Wuthering Heights."

Men don't read that shiat, why would we condemn it?

I was assigned it for my 12th grade lit class. I am scarred to this day by that piece of tripe.

And the Book Radio channel on Sirius seems to think that it is the only book ever committed to audio.

The English Major: Yes. 100% yes. I'm glad we're getting "Aftermath" in the "Side Jobs" anthology this November; we only have to wait seven months for the next entry in the series instead of a year. Of course, it'll be from Murphy's POV.

I hadn't heard about that! Awesome!

The English Major: Can I just say that I'm going to reread it in another week or so but take my time with it? There was so much going on I know I missed more than a few subtle things.

I usually end up reading them 3-4 times in between each book. But I know exactly what you mean, especially since the ending of Changes made me recall an interesting conversation from,
I believe, Dead Beat...

lilistonic: Ace Frehley's Ghost: jaytkay: Ace Frehley's Ghost: I just can't believe that nobody went on record condemning the atrocity against literature that is "Wuthering Heights."

Men don't read that shiat, why would we condemn it?

I was assigned it for my 12th grade lit class. I am scarred to this day by that piece of tripe.

And the Book Radio channel on Sirius seems to think that it is the only book ever committed to audio.

I posted my disdain for it 32 seconds before you did. It's awful. It's badly structured, badly composed; there's just nothing good about it because anything that was good about it is ruined by the rest of it. I'm sorry you were assigned it in school. I hope your teacher's been shot by now.

I noticed that you posted right before me, but other than shaking the tiny fists, what can ya do?

It's been 24 years now, and she was close to retirement then, so I rather think that she went from natural causes by now.

In retrospect, it's a bit amusing that she finally gave up on it when nobody in the class, including the teacher's pet that probably would have washed her car for extra credit, finished the damn thing.

GAT_00: Congratulations, you've helped destroy the human race and you're a bad person.

You should know that whiteknighting for Jane Austin is a really, really lost cause.

/unless you've got a shovel

CitronR: GAT_00: Congratulations, you've helped destroy the human race and you're a bad person.

You should know that whiteknighting for Jane Austin is a really, really lost cause.

/unless you've got a shovel

No, Austin's books are horrible. But reading one of those rejects of fiction are worse.

My favorite Twain - The Innocents Abroad - "Is-is he dead?"

I have no real problems with Austen. She's not my thing, but she was female indulgent fantasy for the times. Nothing wrong with that, per se. Some of her dialog is even pretty witty, and I could probably enjoy her in very small doses.

Except for the fact that her fan girls are a bunch of squealing retards who can't go ten seconds without quoting Pride and goddamned Prejudice, even when no one else in the room gives a shiat about the novel. They have to devote at least four hours a day to worshiping their Mr. Darcy shrines, and the other twenty hours are devoted to telling everyone about their Mr. Darcy shrines.

Agh! Shut the fark up! Enjoy your books. That's fine. Just don't get your enjoyment all over me. And don't even get me started on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Mr. Darcy, Vampire or whatever the hell that book is called.

Ace Frehley's Ghost: I just can't believe that nobody went on record condemning the atrocity against literature that is "Wuthering Heights."

I would be hard pressed to say which is worse, Wuthering Heights or Twilight.

Both are stories about stupid women mooning after abusive assholes, where the plot vanishes while the book drags on about them whinging at each other for hundreds of pages.

No "oh snappeth" like parchment 'shop yet.

Fark, I am disappoint.

RatMaster999: I would love to bring Mark Twain back just so he can read all the Twilight Richard Langdon novels and tear Stephenie Meyer Dan Brown a vast array of new ones.

FTFM

/I couldn't subject Twain to Meyers.


I appreciate your sense of mercy and fairplay, RatMaster999.


The English Major: Hmm. I'd read that.

The BEST Choose Your Own Adventure book was one where you could only get to the best possible ending by flipping through the book.

There was no other way to get to that page.

And the book went on to COMMEND you for thinking outside the rules in order to achieve that ending.

Trippy stuff, man.


jaytkay: Energetic literature threads restore my faith in humanity.

Amen to that.


tallguywithglasseson: Does watching Scrooged count?

I'd go with The Muppet Christmas Carol, myself... only because Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol loses a little something with the Broadway framing device.

ne2d: "Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice,'..."

Why did he read it repeatedly if he hated it so much?

It's like me with Don Quixote. When you can't stand a book, and it pisses you off that you JUST can't finish the farking thing, you are more determined than ever to complete it.

To this date, Don Quixote has kicked my ass 6 times. It's so hard to follow with its story within a story crap and stupid characters. GOD I HATE IT! I did finish Pride and Prejudice, but not without fantasizing while I did what it would have been like to go back in time and tell them how tiresome they all were. Then shoot them up with a machine gun.

And that's why he said what he said.

/yeah yeah, cool story bro...
//SHUT THE fark UP.

GAT_00: No, Austin's books are horrible. But reading one of those rejects of fiction are worse.

Do you have a problem with the entirety of fun, or just the parts that you don't understand?

I have to say, #1 was great.

I've never read the book, but I have read stories that could be summed up perfectly by that burn.

I have an burning hatred of Philip Roth. His prose always sounds as though it's smirking 'look at me! I'm so clever'

Twain rules. He is truly clever, without the smirk, and an epic wit

and thus ends my literary contribution...

lilistonic: And Charlotte Bronte was okay, her disdain of Austen and fangirl love of Gaskell aside, but Emily should have just given up before she got started. Her brother should have been embarrassed pretending to have written that blithering piece of crap, Wuthering Heights.

Totally agree. Good God, Wuthering Heights was so ridiculous. I wanted to slap the hell out of both the main characters. When you forcibly make the two main characters forces of nature, you lose any ability to sympathize with them. The introduction to the signet copy I had was awful, so "This is the greatest passion story every written" there was no way it could've lived up to the hype.

I also love Jane Eyre when I first read it as a surly teenager. Her quiet rebel ways really struck a cord with me. I re-read it again recently and felt it was nothing more than a disjointed soap opera with a stupid Victorian woman who's afraid to open her mouth. Also, if that guy she was in love with just told her what was going on the third part of the novel wouldn't even have existed.

mavrickatubc: I strongly believe that Margaret Atwood is everything that is wrong with Canada. If she was male and American, not a soul would ever read any of her works.

I read a couple of her books. The Edible Woman and a book of short stories. I don't see what the big deal is either...

DamnYankees: One of my favorite Twain lines. And everyone should read his complete evisceration of James Fenimore Cooper.

Indeed. Link.

CitronR: GAT_00: No, Austin's books are horrible. But reading one of those rejects of fiction are worse.

Do you have a problem with the entirety of fun, or just the parts that you don't understand?

I have a problem with zombies and vampires and their takeover of pop culture.

Another rivalry worth looking into:

Link (new window)

who ever mentioned Innocents Abroad was spot on. The 'is he dead' and the tour guide(s) Ferguson are classic.


And amazing how familiar all the religious folk are to our current crop...

Sadly, no mention of one of my favorite Gore Vidal swipes...

"The three most dispiriting words in the English language: Joyce. Carol. Oates."

/ouch.

GAT_00: I have a problem with zombies and vampires and their takeover of pop culture.

So just the parts you don't understand then. Zombies and vampires haven't taken over anything. They've been around for a while, long before PPZ was ever even an idea. Hell, George Romero and Bela Lugosi owe the majority, if not the entirety, of their fame to those concepts. Respectively, of course.

Go read the book before you decry it's readers as being responsible for the destruction of humanity. You might accidentally enjoy it, so be careful.

5. John Updike, according to Gore Vidal (2008)

I can't stand him. Nobody will think to ask because I'm supposedly jealous; but I out-sell him. I'm more popular than he is, and I don't take him very seriously...oh, he comes on like the worker's son, like a modern-day D.H. Lawrence, but he's just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top if he can do it.

Boy, the more I read about and listen to Gore Vidal the more he sounds like a rich blowhard that inherited his fame.

/Updike's prose lights up my brain.

I have no opinions on anything or anyone mentioned in this thread.

I'd also like to go on the record and say that NO ONE has read Don Quixote all the way through. The most famous part where he attacks the windmill is in like the first 100 pages of a 1200 page book. My theory is that everyone just reads up to that point then stops and talks about his madness in every discussion. Everything that needed to happen happened up to that point, and the rest is just awful.

I nearly finished it. But with 400 pages to go and still not knowing how many characters deep I was in and who was talking about who, I threw the book across the room and pretended that all the characters felt the force of the impact as it hit the wall and died. I also realized that the farking book had made me dangerously insane.

/now I want to kill all the phonies.

#20: when the solemn ass brays! brays! brays!

Have to save this one for later use.

CitronR: They've been around for a while,

NO. REALLY? I am absolutely shocked by this completely unexpected development!

The English Major: Yes. 100% yes. I'm glad we're getting "Aftermath" in the "Side Jobs" anthology this November; we only have to wait seven months for the next entry in the series instead of a year. Of course, it'll be from Murphy's POV.

Can I just say that I'm going to reread it in another week or so but take my time with it? There was so much going on I know I missed more than a few subtle things.

It's going to be out even before that if you want to buy the anthology with other authors that's coming out this summer.

I still haven't completely read Atlas Shrugged or Les Miserables. Every time through I usually pick a few paragraphs at random from The Speech of Doom in Rand and the random Waterloo digression in Hugo, read those, and just skip the rest.