Books I Hate

[rushthatspeaks]

I spend so much time here talking about books I love that I thought I might as well reassure people that I don't in fact, spend my free time perpetrating unnatural acts with folios and taking quartos out for intimate lunches. Well, not all of my free time, anyway. So I decided to write about some books I hate.

Originally, I was going to write about books that had been spoiled for me by overanalysis in horrible English classes, but then I looked over my mental list of books I had in English classes and discovered that while said classes are in fact the source of most of the books I've read that I simply can't stand, I haven't actually developed a dislike for anything based on the way it was taught to me. In fact, it tends to be more of the reverse; my grudging and bitter respect for Madame Bovary is based entirely on the feelings of the professor who insisted for half a semester that it was a black comedy and we were all simply failing to notice the joke. (I have no idea whether Flaubert intended the book to be read this way, but I have to say that it becomes a devastatingly hilarious novel.) I therefore suspect that the reason various classes are my major source for books I hate is that classes have been the major thing that have caused me to read books I would never otherwise have touched with a ten-foot pole. Of course, some good things have come of that-- I did not expect to fall madly and passionately in love with The Scarlet Letter, especially when the rest of the class and the teacher saw it as a cross to be carried-- but there have been some real stinkers. Things I hate for their quality, or for their outlook, or for their prose, or for simply existing; books I would rather bungee-jump from the Great Wall of China than again attempt to open; books whose popularity I simply cannot comprehend.

Mind you, I try to keep an open mind. I am sure that the authors of many of the books I hate are and were good and wise people. Except Wordsworth. Wordsworth was a git. I know full well that many people I like and respect and whose critical views I find essential love books that I hate, and that's absolutely fine with me. I don't like hating books. I enjoy being talked into appreciation of books I originally didn't like, and I try my damnedest to at least come to a technical understanding of the good points of the works and authors a lot of people seem to think brilliant that I couldn't tolerate. Except about Marianne Moore, even if she did go to Bryn Mawr. I think I may be allergic, literally, to Marianne Moore. Nothing anyone can say would help. If you love something I hate, please, please, tell me what you see in it, unless it's William Carlos Williams, because I just can't deal, and I will try very hard to understand.

So, some books and authors I really hate:

-- Wordsworth. Way to hide the real beauty of nature under a veil of staggering banality.
-- Ethan Frome. Why did the chicken cross the road? To die. In the rain. After a period of twenty years. Pointlessly. With the universe laughing at it.
-- Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Michael Dorrit. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because everybody hated its tribal background, dooming it to a lifetime of extremely poorly worked out metaphor and innately squicky sexuality.
-- The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers. I admit that this is a brilliant book, but I already had my adolescence and do not need to reread a version of it with a much more depressing outcome.
-- Marianne Moore. When people ask me what's wrong with poetry today, I tend to gesture in her general direction. "A poem should not mean, but be?" *retreats behind a defensive barrier of Shelley* *starts assembling automatic weaponry*
-- William Carlos Williams. Every so often, I would like to read a poem that is longer than two lines and fewer than two hundred. Oddly, this does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Williams. The two-line ones require five seconds and an intimate knowledge of the author's biography; the long ones require five days, an intimate knowledge of the author's biography, and random tidbits of information about, say, yachting in California in the 1920s. Life is just too short.
-- Beloved. What in the name of all the saints and little fishes does everybody seem to SEE in this book? I've read almost all of Toni Morrison, in one semester of high school, and although I hated all of it I can admit to technical accomplishment and a fair quantity of interesting argument in most of her oeuvre. This one? Is it IN ENGLISH? Because you couldn't prove that by me. Everyone else in the class fell desperately in love, and the teacher was so delighted and kept going on and on about how this was the best thing he'd ever read, and I could not parse what they were saying about it as having one damn thing to do with the book in front of me. I kept wondering if my copy had slipped in from some alternate dimension in which it had a totally different text. Then I'd go back to clutching my copy of The Scarlet Letter and wondering if they were just all raving lunatics. Seriously, if anyone can explain ANYTHING about why this won the Nobel Prize to me, I will love you forever.
-- The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. Heh. I still have somewhere the assignment in which we were all given the first chapter of this in class and told to extrapolate the ending in an on-the-spot essay. My essay goes on and on about how if this book followed the worst tendencies of novels trying and failing to be feminist, and if it was in fact very poorly thought out as it seemed to be, one thing would happen in the ending, but I really hoped it didn't. The professor called me aside and told me not to bother reading the rest, as I had apparently not only predicted the ending correctly, but in fact extrapolated one of the lines of dialogue used-- a line I was using as an example of a hideous cliche that I hoped would not come into play. I did finish the book, but I shouldn't have bothered.

So. Books you hate? Reasons I should like the ones I do? Rotten fruit? Reassurance? All discussion welcomed. Be my guest.

Comments

[ryenna.livejournal.com]

No rotten fruit. I'm with you on everything there. Especially The Awakening, which bored me senseless.

[triestine.livejournal.com]

Point Counter Point. I forced myself through that because I hate leaving a book half-read. What was the point of all that? Also, I was particularly bothered by the character of the painter, although I can no longer remember why.

Back to the shadows,
J

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

hmm. I'm not sure you'll care, because you don't know me, I'm reading because I like the way you write (hi). But I think our tastes on this matter are different-- I came to love Williams on the sole credential of his poem "The Sparrow", which is medium length. I avoid "Patterson" like the plague (I hear it's terrible), though. I also, after a long hatred, began to like Wordsworth upon reading the Prelude. Don't like Tintern Abbey, though. I do agree that he's a git based on his nonfiction, but I think he understood the exhilaration one gets from nature, even if he translated it into a proof of his own genius. The enlightenment's... an interesting time, they were hung up on the genius-aesthetic bigtime, and Wordsworth had Coleridge feeding it back to him spoonful by spoonful, building up his ego until they couldn't stand one another anymore. Anyway.
I also enjoyed "Song of Solomon" very much, although I haven't read "Beloved". It reminded me of the South American magical realists more than anything else; wonderfully, succinctly impossible images such as a person who has no navel (looks like detail until you think about it twice-- one detail grows to encompass the entire ground of the novel, calling even genre into question), and by the end, the interplay between metaphor and statement of fact has become entirely blurred. Reality is fiction, fiction is reality. It was an eyeopener, at seventeen. I haven't read it since.

For me, I was surprised by adoring Johnny Tremain, which everyone had described as a dutiful slog through required Revolutionary War idealistic coming-of-age. Well, I loved it (I think I was seven or eight?); it had abuse and angst and intrigue and heroism, and Paul Revere... I don't think I ever met anyone else who loved it.

On the other hand, I despise Ender's Game, and used to froth at the mouth. I find it appallingly self-righteous and dishonest about bullying; reading it, I could just imagine bullied kids reading it and identifying with Ender (because the book sure is sympathetic in that respect) and thinking, "wow, it's OK, because I'm being bullied because I'm Special! I'm being bullied because I'm a Genius!", and then growing up to become that horrible self-important defensive type of geek who never learns proper coping strategies for dealing with others. Bullying sucks, but that doesn't mean that the victims should become escapists by self-aggrandizement. Also, I found it in general mean-spirited.

Well, I said a mouthful, didn't I?
I won't defend Wordsworth, because he *is* fundamentally a git, I just also enjoy his poems. On the other hand, I do think that Williams wrote some godawful poems but also some really wonderful ones. You may have just had bad luck.

[aurelia-star.livejournal.com]

I liked Johnny Tremain...

~Emily

[larryhammer]

As did I, when I was eight.

---L.

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

Awesome.

[earis.livejournal.com]

Me too! Seriously, who didn't like Johnny Tremain? It's historical fiction! There's an angsty kid!

[cosmorific.livejournal.com]

I also liked The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not saying you should like it, but I can tell you what I see in Beloved. This is not going to be that detailed, unfortunately, since it's been ages since I re-read it.

I read it over a weekend, in one of those delighted hazes where you do nothing for days other than read a book that you're completely immersed in, and which is difficult or dense enough that you must read it slowly. I think what caused my total immersion was a combination of a vivid setting that I wasn't already extremely familiar with, the odd structure (I love narratives with unusual chronology), ten tons of atmosphere, and a sense of suspense: what the hell is going on, and what's going to happen next?

I also liked that even though a lot of the events were horrifying, the tone of the book wasn't that awful Oprah club "I was traumatized, and then I was traumatized again, and then my dog died."

I liked the magic realism.

I liked that after all the build-up and mystery about Beloved, when we finally get a bit of narrative from her point of view, it's weird and, although satisfying in one sense, doesn't do anything to dispell her mystery.

I liked the way the characters all had their own agendas that, again, didn't follow the Oprah book club route of being either evil or overly understanding.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I loathed The Scarlet Letter. I may have been prejudiced because I had to read it for class, but there were other books we had to read for class that I liked. I detested all the characters and the prose style gave me hives.

I also hated two books I was forced to read in history class, Killer Angels (a very dull classic about the Civil War) and The Winds of War by Herman Wouk, an excruciatingly dull and incredibly long novel about WWII. I failed a test on the latter because even though I read the damn thing, I could not remember a thing about it because nothing had made an impression except that Hitler liked the color pink. I wrote down that fact, rather randomly, to which my history teacher replied in red ink, "Nice try."

"Nice Try"

[shahnasa.livejournal.com]

That's so f*ing funny! I'm sorry, I'm sure it was traumatic and disappointing at the time, but now it makes a good story.
::is amused::
B

[zdenka]

I rather liked The Killer Angels, but then, I wasn't forced to read it. I can't actually remember much about its style, because I've only read the book once but I've seen Gettysburg (which was based on the book) so many times that I don't remember what was the book as opposed to the movie.

My father is a Civil War buff, and I grew up with him telling me interesting things about the Civil War and other periods of military history. Or even if they weren't inherently interesting, they became so when he talked about them. And we watch Gettysburg once a year as a family tradition. So it might be one of those things that I like not because it's good but because it has pleasant associations.

Sorry -- that didn't have much to do with literary merit.

[aurelia-star.livejournal.com]

OH I HATE The Awakening and DETEST Beloved. With the fiery passion of a thousand stars!!!

The Shipping News also blew.

~Emily

Ahh, Rush.

[shahnasa.livejournal.com]

Your descriptions are so colorful, you make me actually want to read a couple of said hated books.

Here are a few I hate:

--Hemingway. I admit that my assessment is only based on The Old Man and the Sea (why does Hemingway think that the old man is Jesus? He just isn't. In fact he's pretty damn dull. I think that the point was that we're all saviors in our own right, which I would agree with. But not the old man. He was just really, really boring) and Farewell to Arms (I remember very little about this book except that it taught me a little about syphilis), and I have been told to give him another shot by reading his short stories, but I don't get why Hemingway is a classic to be read in high school. It's just NOT applicable to teenage girls.

--The Drowning Tree, by Carol Goodman. This is one of those recent books that must have made a bestsellers list somewhere, because I had heard of it a bunch before I actually picked it up. The back cover was so promising: a women's college, a stained-glass window, a stained-glass restorer, history, mystery... but then it just sucked. Twenty pages into and I hated Goodman's style. One of her two main characters really admired the other, and within the first twenty pages doted on her so much, comparing her to a goddess, the moon, and a greyhound. Only lesbianism could have saved it for me at that point. Unfortunately, no lesbianism was forthcoming. Darn.

And by the way, I've not read The Member of the Wedding, but Carson McCullers wrote what is probably my favorite short story in the world, "A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud." Have you read it?

Re: Ahh, Rush.

[foleyartist1.livejournal.com]

Huh. I remember The Old Man and the Sea as a nice little book that I could sort of flow along with and not feel any of the rage I generally associate with Hemingway based on what everyone I know says about him. The prose was nice and spare and I loved the obsession with Joe Dimaggio. Maybe I, too, had a book that was written in a different dimension with different text...

[marchharetay.livejournal.com]

Lol! Yep, that is indeed the Ethan Frome & the Awakening that I remember of which you speak.

I too enjoyed the Scarlett Letter when I read it in high school, but I do recall being very puzzled, as it made the list of books that I enjoyed without being exactly sure why.

[gallian.livejournal.com]

i agree with you on most all the ones i've read (ethan frome and beloved) except perhaps awakening. i liked it when i didn't have to analyse it. after i was forced to anaylse it to death by a teacher who knew less about english lit than i did, i came to dislike it. i think if i could read it for story's sake again, i would like it again, but i haven't tried.

[irene-adler.livejournal.com]

Anything by Raymond Carver. Was he so overrated because his style was easy to teach to creative writing students? Other writers have suggested this -- I know I've been assigned something of his in any writing class I've taken. And it's generally "Cathedral." Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses was in the same school -- K-Mart minimalism, they call it. Hated it. This also was assigned. If something minimalist isn't assigned to me, it's going to lose me on the first page, and I'll put it right back on the shelf.

Speaking of assigned books: shut up, The Bird Artist by Howard Norman. You too, A Lost Lady by Willa Cather, and I don't care if she did call herself "William."

Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land had me for almost half the book, and then lost me so hard it might as well have spontaneously combusted. I've never been able to find any more time for Heinlein.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, Heinlein, there's so much there to hate that I'm not sure he's relevant to this topic. The question is not why you hate Stranger in a Strange Land, but why I retain an embarrassing affection for it. Also Glory Road. Farnham's Freehold, though, is vile all the way through.

Also, I haven't dared re-read Watership Down since I read and detested Girl in a Swing.

[larryhammer]

I don't like Marianne Moore all that much, though I reserve my Moderist loathing for William Carlos Williams and Robert Bly, but I must defend her on one point: "A poem should not mean / But be" is not her sin, but Archibald MacLeish's. Which is a shame, because MacLeish sometimes wrote quite lovely stuff, so we can't consign his collected works to the dustbin of forgotten history. But his "Ars Poetica," and WCW's collected -- those can, should, and must be tossed. Feh. (Moore's can merely be duly forgetten with time.)

I come close to loathing Wordsworth, too, but mostly I ignore him till the feeling goes away. Oddly enough, I don't loath Paradise Lost, even though I find it completely unreadable and dispise its pernicious influence on later poets.

But one to loath: Angel in the House, Conventry Patmore. Feh.

---L.

[sovay]

What do you dislike so about MacLeish's "Ars Poetica"? It does not practice what it prescribes, because that's impossible, but I love the imagery. (It is, in fact, almost the only piece by MacLeish that I have read. There's J.B., which I also love.)

[larryhammer]

I don't like the imagery all that much, but that's not a good reason to dislike. It's more its influence: how so many take its proscriptions seriously; how so many take its style as a model; how those images get repeated over and over. Which is not in the text, and I'm at least rational enough about Paradise Lost and Aeneid to separate hatred of influence from dislike of the model, but there it is.

---L.

[larryhammer]

Forgot to add: The Giving Tree aka The Taking Boy. Feh².

---L.

[breadandroses.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you! what a little asshole that boy was.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I HATE that book. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. It's smarmy, creepy, disturbing, depressing, and has an absolutely terrible message. Hate it!

[larryhammer]

Don't hold back, Rachel -- tell us how you really feel.

---L.

[thirteen-ravens.livejournal.com]

-- Wordsworth. Way to hide the real beauty of nature under a veil of staggering banality.
ROTF! :D
I was forced to suffer Wordsworth when doing my degree. Our lecturer loved his work, but she was so damn scary no one dared contradict her... ;o>

*sniggers about Ethan Frome* I've sen the film - I thought it sounded familiar. Gods...so much angst...

I avoided Toni Morrison - just. I think I had to read one poem or something.

Books I hate....*ponders* Where should I start...?

For a start - Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. Basically, to cut a long story short - innocent naive country bumpkin gets chased around the country by two utter bastards, one very inappropriately called Angel, the other Alec - a bird-keeping dandy with a creepy moustache. Basically these two guys drive Tess to stab Alec, then commit suicide. Thomas Hardy repeatedly tells the reader throughout the book that this is due to "Fate."
*rolls eyes* So lame...

Waterland - Graham Swift. Ramble ramble from beginning to end - the Fens are a dead boring place, I've been there - why the hell write a book about them?

Most of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories - Okay, I love "The Raven" and "William Wilson" - but Gods some of his short stories... *snore*
And what's his deal with "Ourang-Outangs?"

:D

[wayman.livejournal.com]

Total absolute agreement about Ethan Frome, Beloved, and The Awakening. EF and B were the two worst things I read in all of high school, hands down. I've never understood why people like Beloved... and I guess that'll have to remain a mystery given the views of your other responders :-)

[earis.livejournal.com]

I will agree with you on The Awakening. Although most of my hatred of it may stem from the fact that I was suicidal at the time when I was reading it and my English teacher tried to claim that the main character's suicide was some sort of feminist triumph. Despite my personal subjective feelings, it is still poorly written and trite. I will admit that it did make me laugh when it was one of the books in which my junior year English teacher refused to see masturbatory or lesbian imagery, the other being There Eyes Were Watching God, which I adored.

People hate what they hate. I believe that all literary interpretation and criticism is subjective and if a person doesn't like a book, or reads it a certain way, I can't tell them that they're 'doing-it-wrong'.

I did enjoy Beloved because it was so different than any of the other books that they were making me read in high school. It felt like a living thing in my hands, bursting with water and dirt and human blood. I wish, however, that my teacher had acknowledged the gothic nature of the book. It's essential a ghost story, which I love, and it is a very traditional ghost story about a stillborn or murdered infant coming back. The end bit when the women of the town come and drive out the ghost girl was so powerful for me.

[breadandroses.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember that you love it, so I fear that I will make a mortal enemy of you for this, but I hated Wuthering Heights. It's been long enough since I read it that I can't talk about it in detail, but I remmber it being whiny and obsessive, and totally joyless. In general, I have little patience for the romantics.

Also anti-Hemingway, and Steinbeck (though I haven't read Grapes of Wrath so perhaps I shouldn't write him off yet. Based on The Pearl and The Red Pony, though, it's going to be a long time before I pick up anything else by him.)

I also hate T.S. Eliot, though I freely admit he was a genius. It's just that his nihilism and general assholery comes through his work to a degree that prevents me from enjoying it. Similar to Picasso - genius but too unpleasant for me to enjoy spending time with him.

[sovay]

If you hated the two Steinbeck novels that you mention, try Cannery Row and its sequel Sweet Thursday, or The Moon Is Down. They are very unlike either The Pearl or The Red Pony, which are insanely depressing—the first two are essentially novel-length sketches of an assemblage of odd and wholly believable characters, although the first is more like a collection of related vignettes, and the second takes place (without names) in occupied Norway during World War II. I am fond of all three. (I am even fond of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, which are also insanely depressing.) I am not fond of The Red Pony . . .

[signy1.livejournal.com]

I've never liked Beloved either-- bored the crap out of me-- but then again, I've never much liked anything by Toni Morrison, and I gave her what I consider a fair shake; two or three novels worth. And I've always been rather afraid to admit that; it feels good to finally say it.

You missed one of my all-time evil, overrated books, though-- am I the only one who wishes that all extant copies of Catcher In The Rye would spontaneously combust?

I mean, really. If I want to read about a bratty teenager whining about how hard life is and how unfairly he's treated and the complete unworthiness of everyone around him, I'll just go read strangers' Livejournals and have done with it. I still suspect the main reason high school kids enjoy that dreadful thing is the illicit pleasure of reading dirty words in the classroom.

And there's a special place in my heart for A Separate Peace. The entire point of that book, as far as I can recall, is that your friends will always betray you, possibly to the point of being permanently maimed and/or murdered. Oh, and let's not forget the one guy who actually tried to achieve something... and went totally bonkers. Cheerful book.

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

*raises hand* Yep-- Catcher in the Rye: get a grip. My high school English teacher's favorite book, to my despair-- and I think overall its popularity is a pity, because Salinger wrote much better things. I'd take Seymour Glass over Holden Caulfield any day.

[sovay]

Oh, and let's not forget the one guy who actually tried to achieve something... and went totally bonkers.

I was always resentful about Lepellier: he was the only character I was really interested in.

[zdenka]

who wishes that all extant copies of Catcher In The Rye would spontaneously combust?

Yes, please! I disliked it greatly.

[cosmorific.livejournal.com]

am I the only one who wishes that all extant copies of Catcher In The Rye would spontaneously combust?

No, you most certainly are not.

[sovay]

Marianne Moore. When people ask me what's wrong with poetry today, I tend to gesture in her general direction. "A poem should not mean, but be?"

Isn't that from Archibald MacLeish's "Ars Poetica"?

I also really liked The Scarlet Letter, although I was more interested in Roger Chillingworth than either Hester or Dimmesdale; which tells you again about my character preferences.

I do like William Carlos Williams, although if you haven't read it already, you should check out "I Will Alarm Islamic Owls."

All the other things you loathed, I have not read.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I have been fortunate enough to avoid all these books, and shall continue in this happy state -- but your post made me laugh aloud several times, and caused fivemack, who was in the room at the time, to come over and read it over my shoulder and be amused too.

Lovely piece of writing.

[foleyartist1.livejournal.com]

I read Beloved freshman year and remember very little about it except that it just wasn't as good as Song of Solomon so why should we care? Also I think it lost me at the pseudo-Faulkner chapter because I was like, "I've already read Faulkner, and you're trying to be Faulkner and it's not working for me because dammit you're not an insane drunk."

And now let's talk about something I hate. I HATE D.H. LAWRENCE. Do you hear me world?! I read Women in Love and I am here to tell you all that it SUCKED. It was all about breaking down the conventions of marriage and man/woman sexuality conventions and whatnot but it did not accomplish that because (1) all the characters were reprehensible and (2) the writing was so awful it was like being in the fifth circle of Hell. He would be describing someone doing something subtly and he would USE THE WORD 'SUBTLY' SIX TIMES IN ONE SENTENCE to get that across until the writing was so unsubtle that you were forced to conclude that this man's "subtle courtship" probably, in reality, took the form of screaming "You! Woman! I take you to my cave!" in the middle of the town square. *shudders*

[marchharetay.livejournal.com]

Lol! That is a fabulous description!

[kchew.livejournal.com]

Thomas Hardy sucks and blows at the same time.

Really.

I had to read The Mayor of Casterbridge in high school, and was made to watch Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Loathe, loathe, loathe. The man never wrote a main character that he didn't hate, and is willing to pull out all kinds of utterly ridiculous deus ex machina ways to make sure that his characters suffer for no reason whatsoever. I think that Jack Chalker must love Hardy.

On an odd note, Hardy's poetry is quite cheerful.

I had to read Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel in my last year of high school, and I hated it. However, I couldn't stop thinking about it, or stop arguing with the main character in my head. Finally, years later (I can be stubborn), I had to admit that although I didn't like the book any more than before, I really had to respect it as a story, and her as a storyteller.

[signy1.livejournal.com]

Hey, at least you missed 'Jude The Obscure.' The entire plot revolves around a depressive shmuck who is too poor to go to college, and this ruins his entire life. He marries someone he doesn't really love and they go and have four hundred kids they couldn't afford to feed, so his oldest son (who, for some reason probably involving deep pre-natal hatred, Jude named 'Little Father Time,') takes his brothers and sisters up to the attic and hangs them all. Then he hangs himself after pinning a reproachful note to his chest explaining that he's only doing this because his dad can't get his head out of his ass long enough to support his family. And Jude whines and mopes and kvetches for a few more chapters, and then he dies, leaving his wife with yet more children she can't afford to feed. And all the neighbors tell her that she should be happy because Jude is finally at peace. The End.

[cosmorific.livejournal.com]

Catcher in the Rye. God, shut UP, Holden, you whiny little putz.

Don Quixote. I gotcher picaresque right here, asshole.

Lord of the Rings. I tried. Really I did. Made it halfway through The Two Towers before I thought, "Why am I torturing myself?" and stopped.

The Odyssey. I've attempted to read this fucker three times, and I still can't understand why Penelope didn't just boot all the suitors out of there and the hell with the rules of hospitality. Although I did like the part where the one guy's genitals got pulled off to feed the dogs.

Anything by Jane Austen. I honestly cannot bring myself to give a shit.

The Scarlet Letter. God, just take off the fucking letter and move to another town, Hester. And take that whiny fucker Dimmesdale with you. (Leave the kid. Preferably on the side of a mountain, the little brat.)

Walden. Ooh, lookit me, I'm a little rich boy playing farmer and living a mile away from my mommy and daddy! See how enlightened I am?

[eredien]

I really hated a great many of the YA novels I read for elementary school.

Bridge to Terebithia, Stinker from Space [aptly named], The Trumpet of the Swan [though I loved Stuart Little], and oh dear God save me from ever coming into contact with Tuck Everlasting again. I heard they made a movie of it a few years back, and wondered how on earth they could have filled up an hour and a half.

I also dislike Harold Bloom's literary criticism with a burning intensity, and, to my own suprise, couldn't finish reading Spenser's Faerie Queene to save my life. It seemed to have great material to work with, but then stretched it out over what seemed like several thousand pages.

Wordsworth is hideous. I don't like a lot of the "sublime" poetry that was going on around that time, but I think Wordsworth is a shame. It's sad, really--he genuinely seemed to like nature so much. But the word-choice he tried to express it in just...stalled whatever sentiment he was trying to express.

I like William Carlos Williams, though.

[larryhammer]

The Faerie Queene does go on a bit, but there's a few juicy bits that almost, but not quite, make up for his needing to take 16,000 lines to get comfortable with his stanza and learn to leave his outline behind.

---L.

[signy1.livejournal.com]

I remember 'Tuck Everlasting.' I could not for the life of me understand why she didn't drink the water. Blithering idiot.

... Of course, I also couldn't understand why Dorothy was so eager to go back to Kansas, why Max wanted to leave the Wild Things, or why any of the myriad children's classic characters behaved as they did. I suspect I missed much of the point.

And you know what they say about Wordsworth-- he didn't know a word's worth.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi there just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The text in your post seem to be running off the screen in Safari. I'm not sure if this is a formatting issue or something to do with web browser compatibility but I figured I'd post to let you know. The design and style look great though! Hope you get the problem resolved soon. Thanks

[diony.livejournal.com]

I also hated The Awakening; I didn't see the cliches in it, but I felt so terrible for the heroine's husband, whom so far as I could tell was a reasonable man for his time & place trying to do the best he could & being treated like garbage at every turn. Knowing that it was supposed to be some Big Feminist Work just made it worse, because of course if I were a 'proper feminist' I would have hated him -- but really, I wanted to sit down with him over a cup of coffee and explain that given his starting conditions he was being perfectly reasonable and his wife was, in fact, bonkers.

I have read some awful books in my time, but few of them have stuck with me enough that I can say that I hate them. There is, though, a pretty long list of authors that I hope to get through the rest of my life without ever having to read anything more by: Steinbeck, Whitman, Melville, Thoreau...
I could go on & on.

wait, how could I forget?

[diony.livejournal.com]

Cold Mountain. I had to read it for an English class last year and I hated it with a white-hot passion which has only faded inasmuch as I've mercifully forgotten the entire experience.