Books You Don't Quite "Get"

[MarkMono]

If you don't give a fuck about comics or airy-fairy fantasy novels, theres no reason you should.

[CHUCK LIDELOL]

He still infuriates me. Such a wishy-washy name. Gaiman. Terrible. Neil is weak too. No offense Neil..

[Blank_Frackis]

Originally Posted by bikuki

...all they ever talk/think about is getting married. It's so fucking tedious!

This is my pet hate about Jane Austen as well. There are countless other things which women think about as far as I can tell - embroidery, baking cakes, pretty bows, etc.

[UncleDave]

This is an old thread... did I already mention Wheel of Time and Ulysses?

I read book one of Wheel of Time purely because I have some kind of bizarre compulsion about never wanting to leave a book half-read, a compulsion I have only ever managed to overcome once, with the Chronicles of Shannara, a book so brain-crunchingly lifeless that it would make Nick Cage look like a great actor in comparison.
Usually when I say WOT is boring, monotonous, LOTR-ripoff rubbish that obsesses about women tossing their hair, there are two replies. First of all, that WOT is not a LOTR ripoff, and second of all, that you need to read more than just the first book.
These two arguments are actually related, because the first book is quite clearly a total LOTR ripoff from start to finish. Presumably the rest of the books are not, since there's only so much material you can rip off from even the LOTR, and WOT drags on for like eleventy trillion books.
Furthermore, if I dont like the first book in a series, why the flying fuck should I want to read the rest? They might be better, but even if theyre ten times better they'll still be no better than the million and one other drek fantasy titles I could be reading instead, that wont concentrate quite so disturbingly on who is folding their arms under their breasts and tossing their hair.

Upon reading Ulysses, I was looking forward to a masterpiece of wartime literature. What I found instead was a meandering, rambling, 700-page long train-of-thought scribble, where scarcely three consecutive pages actually followed on from one another. Genius my arse. Making this comment at college drew the response from my lecturer, "aye, hes taking the piss a bit in Ulysses, but Finnegans Wake is still great." So, against my better judgement, I read Finnegans Wake. Turns out, its mostly in the same vein as Ulysses, but mercifully shorter, and interspersed with occasional moments of Irish humor that somehow still fail to elevate it beyond the status of Alleged Classics That Are Actually A Bit Shit.

Sorry for the wall of text.

Cheers.

[bikuki]

Originally Posted by bikuki

I read a book a while ago that lef me completely cold, but I can't remember its name. I'll remember at some point. The ending was such an anticlimax - I felt like the book was trying to get to the point, but then just kinda faltered and stopped.

I remembered - The Little Friend by Donna Tartt.

I read The Secret History by the same author and enjoyed it (mostly), but The Little Friend just went nowhere and had such a non-ending.

[metallideth]

I could reel off a million books that I didn't like and am not that bothered about - upper-class twit of the year shit like Woolf, Bronte, Austen, Scott and so on - but the only two books that I haven't ever 'got' but genuinely want to are Catch 22 and Ulysses. Granted, I tried to read them when I was still at school, so mibbe they'll make more sense now if I go back to them...maybe?!

[StuntGirl]

"Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murikami.

I thought it was absolutely shit, but I've been informed that if I thought it was shit then I didn't "get it", ergo it must belong here.

Still but, pretentious shower of wank spatter it most certainly is.

[XMachina]

I love On The Road, Junky and any Ginsberg stuff I've read but the Naked Lunch is more trouble than it's worth.
Carlos Castaneda, another hero of counter culture got a resounding huh? from me.