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CommentAuthorAlan Tyson
- CommentTimeMar 4th 2008
Liquidcow: You really should give Red Mars a try. Ideally during the winter, when you can wrap up in a blanket with a cup of cocoa. It's just that good.
And Britannica, I think you'll like Gibson's Bridge books a lot more than the Sprawl books. There's much less of that "toss-you-in-with-no-life-vest" writing, though I must say, I rather enjoyed that in Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive.
I think the one book I could never read, no matter how much I really, really reeeealllly wanted to, was Stranger in a Strange Land. I love it, from what I've read. But I always stop about 150 pages into it, and by the time I pick it up again, I have to re-read...up until around page 150. I don't get it. -
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- CommentAuthorMidgetRadio
- CommentTimeMar 4th 2008
Infinite Jest - Parts of it are fucking brilliant, but on the whole it's written too obliquely for me to stick with. It would also help if the Endnotes were footnotes instead as I hate having to constantly flick between where I'm at and the back of the book, and usually lose whatever flow I'd managed to get up to that point.
Corey, I love that book. I've actually read it twice. Have you tried using two bookmarks? It's a huge help.
It's taken me three tries to get halfway through Gravity's Rainbow. I actually stopped the third time because I was too grossed-out by it, which I didn't think could ever happen. Just got through the General/Dominatrix poo-eating stuff and a chapter later here's a whore getting gang-fucked. Someday...
I second Underworld. The first sixty pages are probably some of the best writing in English literature. But I got about halfway through that book before I becoming so sick of the artist character that I had to stop. I can't remember her name, just that I completely hate her. -
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CommentAuthorwill_butler
- CommentTimeMar 4th 2008
I love On the Road, but I read about 50 pages of Kerouac's Big Sur, and was infuriated. I've never tried again. Between anecdotes about the necessity of keeping a rag and bucket in one's outhouse with which to scrub one's asshole after taking a shit, he layers on this completely manipulative, portentous, foreboding nonsense to keep you reading through the inanity. "How was I to know that in only two weeks, I would have gone mad?" I don't give a damn, Kerouac. Let's get to the fucking madness, already. It has to be more interesting than the garbage with which you're frontloading your book.
Let's see, what else... I do hate Jane Austen and can't finish anything she's ever written. I've never tried Ayn Rand, and I have mixed feelings about her stuff. On the one hand, I identify as Libertarian, and most Libertarians I've met have an enormous hard-on for her work. On the other hand, I've heard that her stuff is incredibly didactic and that she can't write characters. I'll eventually give her a shot, if only to be able to speak about her from experience.
Will -
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CommentAuthorCorey Waits
- CommentTimeMar 4th 2008
MidgetRadio
Corey, I love that book. I've actually read it twice. Have you tried using two bookmarks? It's a huge help.
Yeah, I tried the two bookmarks and it helped a bit, but it's not even the physical act of turning back and forth. It's the fact that I have to constantly interrupt the flow of the story because of the whim of the author.
David Foster Wallace is the only author I've read that seems to want to make the reader really work for the story (though admittedly there were bits of brilliance that almost made the rest of it worth working for).
I know too many people that rave about it for me to disregard it completely, so I will read it all one day... -
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A Clockwork Orange.
The Holy Bible.
Dianetics.
I just can't make sense of any of them.
Any Ken Follett stuff is a struggle too, but only because it's so rich and great. If you really know your English history it's probably easier, but I needed a hefty stack of reference books to help me get through Pillars of the Earth and World Without End. -
I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.What's troubling you with <em>A Clockwork Orange</em>?
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i am also wondering if there are any english teachers out there who can seriously point out to me the "subtle humour" in austen -- what scale is it registering on? is there some kind of superhuman power that allows you to detect subtle humour that is invisible to the human mind?
oh, just thought of another: Typewriter in the Sky & Fear by L Ron Hubbard. I felt like slapping him at regular intervals and the frustration of not being able to made me abandon the book. I did however verbally slap the twat that leant it to me. -
Ulysses - I was stuck on page 29 forever.
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@MagicSword! : I feel your pain. My exile led me to finish Gravity's Rainbow, Don Quixote and Sheherazade. I think I got a little masochistic with the last one.
Now if I can only get farther than a quarter of a way through Midnight's Children, I'll be golden. -
Clockwork Orange- The language. I mean, I finished it, but it wasn't easy.
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I've never finished Anansi Boys. I don't know what it is, maybe cause I started reading it straight after American Gods re-read number whatever. Different tones, I dont know...
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@STSParky. That's 20 pages better than me. You're a hero in my book.
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Don Quixote.
Got given this to read by my school teacher when i was 9, possibly because I had read everything in the library by that point and they wanted to shut me up so she brought it in herself. Read it then i think, but can't even look at it now because of it. Remember being bored out of my mind.
If that alternate constitution in CLV made you read it, DQ tells me to back away slowly. Nothing to read here -
I've read Gravity's Rainbow.
I've read Dhalgren by Samuel Delany.
I've even managed to dry heave my way through 120 Days of Sodom.
the only book I've never been able to get through.....
My Life by Bill Clinton. I actually like the ex-Pres but this book sucked floppy donkey anus. -
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CommentAuthorDoctor Pockets
- CommentTimeMar 5th 2008
@sybil.dysobedience
I never finished Atom either - probably because its just not a good book. Most of Aylett's other stuff is clever, but that one is just bad. -
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I never got through Lord of the Rings, either. In fact, for years I'd decry it the way a only a teenager can.
Then, on one of my habitual massive roadtrips, I bought The Two Towers on tape, read by, I think, John Rhys Davies, and immediately got it. It's not a book that's meant to be read, it's meant to be narrated.
I had to read Travels With Charlie for my advanced grade school English. I could never get more than twenty pages into it. In the end I just made up the answers on the test and called it a wash. -
Someone should do a No Singing version of Lord of the Rings, I'm sure it would be a great improvement.
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Crash, by J.G. Ballard. I want to read it, but it's just a wee bit too extreme for me.
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Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville. Got about 136 pages into it and my brain begged for mercy. Don't get me wrong -- it's quite good (so far), but it's so dense. There's almost too much of everything going on. I really need to get back to that book and finish it.
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@ tmofee
I found Anansi Boys extremely readable. It probably was coming right off American Gods that drove you away.
Unreadables:
Emma by Jane Austen
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare (what a shite play)
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland