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  1.  (1263.61)
    @pico

    100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

    aww. I love that one.
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      CommentAuthorstsparky
    • CommentTimeMar 5th 2008
     (1263.62)
    Something about Coupland's Microserfs rubs me the wrong way. I had expected to find clever phrases in it like his early "disposable Swedish furniture" and it came up short. So it had a bookmark in it and remains untouched for years now.
  3.  (1263.63)
    100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez


    I've given up telling people to read that, I loved it and read it in about two days straight but no one I've suggested it to seems to be able to get into it.
  4.  (1263.64)
    I always had a problem with both On the Road and The Catcher in the Rye. It's a bit weird considering I love writers like Burrough, Selby Jr and Bukowski.

    I used to hate Jane Austen but I've warmed to her as I've older. The same goes with the Bronte sisters.

    I never made it all the way through The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man either. I really enjoyed Dubliners but that one left me cold.

    I'm fighting a long running battle with Les Miserables. One day it will happen.

    It's always hard to predict what I'll struggle with. I devoured Moby Dick and Gormenghast with relish but took several attempts to get through Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks. Even with writers I like it ain't always straightforward. I raved about For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Moveable Feast and To Have and Have Not but I've never finished A Farewell To Arms. Funny how these things work.

    I'm not even going to contemplate Ayn Rand.
  5.  (1263.65)
    Iain Banks is one of my favourite writers by a long shot, but I couldn't get through 'Song of Stone', just didn't click with me at all. Gormenghast and Moby Dick I've read multiple times... I did try and read 120 Days of Sodom once and found it so ludicrous that I couldn't get through it.
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      CommentAuthorPete Martin
    • CommentTimeMar 5th 2008 edited
     (1263.66)
    Funny how On The Road has been mentioned a few times. I swear, its a combination of the old book smell and terrible print on my copy that three pages EXACTLY makes me fall asleep.

    It's literary NiQuil.

    And Mill on the Floss. It would take a threat of arse eels to make me read that again. Never before have I wanted every character to die.
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      CommentAuthorCyman
    • CommentTimeMar 5th 2008
     (1263.67)
    I really do love 100 Years of Solitude and On The Road, and strangely I find myself agreeing with RJ and Jon Wake. I loved all Tolkien's books way more when I was like... 10. It just bugs me reading it that he'll list 5-10 adjectives before saying what the thing is he's talking about. It makes for a lot of fun reading to kids, though, and I guess that's a great thing. And I like to read out loud, so maybe that explains why I love reading Shakespeare and Kerouac. Logically, I should then LOVE A Clockwork Orange... I don't know what it was about that book that made it so hard on me.
  8.  (1263.68)
    i had the same problem with moby dick, but after hearing laurie anderson's take on it, i read it all the time.

    i found the entire dark tower series to be totally obnoxious. especially wizard and glass. so many of my friends love this book (a few fellows i know are in a dark tower tribute band call the lobstrocities) i forced myself to read them. i kept waiting for stephen king to pull some amazing metaphor out of his ass. i thought the end of the series was bullshit. the comics are pretty cool though.


    i'm trying to read odd john by olaf stapledon. it's really good, and i'm really enjoying it, but i can't seem to read more than three chapters in a sitting. mostly, because i got a bunch of new comics at wondercon. woe is me.
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      CommentAuthorSteve
    • CommentTimeMar 5th 2008
     (1263.69)
    @oneiros
    Perdido Street Station took me a long time to finish despite enjoying it. It's thick writing. The first several pages simply describe something (I think a watering can) falling out of a window. I tried another one of his books set in the same world, but couldn't get through it. Maybe I should give it another go now that some time has passed.
  10.  (1263.70)
    My personal shame is that I have never made it through Naked Lunch. I've read several books of Burroughs essays and enjoyed them quite a bit. It's not that I dislike Naked Lunch, I just get to a point in the middle, set it down with every intention of picking it back up, and never do. Strange, since it's high on the list of influences of just about all my favorite writers.
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      CommentAuthorDaveNant
    • CommentTimeMar 5th 2008
     (1263.71)
    @JonCarpenter - funny, 'Song of Stone' was the only Iain Banks book I actually really liked, and I did wade through it but, fuck me, how depressing was that?
  12.  (1263.72)
    @STSParky. That's 20 pages better than me. You're a hero in my book.

    I read the whole thing. What does that make me?

    I'm rather surprised by a lot of these. I loved Kavalier & Clay, Confederacy of Dunces, The Trial, Clockwork Orange, Portrait of the Artist...basically everything on here so far, except Jane Austen (who I've never read) and The Scarlett Letter (which is probably one of the worst books ever).

    I haven't been able to get through Cryptonomicon, as it's really really long, but I plan to. I also haven't gotten through War & Peace, or Blood & Guts in Highschool by Kathy Acker.

    When it first came out, I read the first Dune prequel, but I was 14 or so at the time. I decided to try to get through them all recently, and began the audiobook of the first in the series. I stopped listening about half way through. At one point, the Corinno heir's assassin friend was described as "being very fond of subtlety." Though the character was, it was obvious the authors were not.

    The only books I really really wish I hadn't read are The Fountainhead and The English Patient. English Patient especially - pretentious garbage from start to finish. The movie was infinitely better - for which I credit Minghella and Walter Murch.
  13.  (1263.73)
    @JonCarpenter - funny, 'Song of Stone' was the only Iain Banks book I actually really liked, and I did wade through it but, fuck me, how depressing was that?


    So relentlessly depressing I only made it halfway through, and now it's in the big pile of books to flog on Amazon. I think it turned me off as he's normally very sharp and very funny and this was just grey.
  14.  (1263.74)
    Ulysses, you can actually READ the Gaebler edition. All others are impossible.

    Um, also along these lines, if there is anybody that has ever finished a single De Sade novel, point me at them. They don't really exist, do they?

    Ayn Rand... my favorite quote of hers went something like: "We should tear down all the rain forests and turn them into cardboard boxes so at least then they would be useful."

    She's great if your nineteen, idealistic, and still certain that the world is ultimately a good place. Otherwise, to hell with that.
    • CommentAuthorsacredchao
    • CommentTimeMar 5th 2008 edited
     (1263.75)
    Um, also along these lines, if there is anybody that has ever finished a single De Sade novel, point me at them. They don't really exist, do they?


    I have a new life goal - 120 Days of Sodom, or bust.

    Also, what is this Gaebler edition you speak of?

    Also - Ulysses for Dummies.
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      CommentAuthorWaxPoetic
    • CommentTimeMar 5th 2008
     (1263.76)
    someone was reading Les Miserables, but stuck - I've read it twice, probably because the first time I read it I was 16 and in Lurve with all things French, and once I made it through the Battle of Waterloo - what a slog - everything became okay and I could argue with Hugo and yell out loud at him and it didn't matter. he is dead. also, i blame him for my obsession with thing urbans - spaces, specifically. i don't recommend it to people. like moby dick - something you have to come to on your own or as a school requirement.

    I tried On the Road many times, finally listened to it, read by Matt Dillon - and now have no desire to ever read another word of Kerouac's again.

    so glad to be here - so glad it wasn't just me couldn't see the draw of catcher in the rye - i think that's one that may have an age limit - sort of like you may have to be a certain age to read Don Quixote, beyond a certain age, Catcher just won't matter any more.
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      CommentAuthorOsmosis
    • CommentTimeMar 5th 2008
     (1263.77)
    @ JonCarpenter, DaveNant

    Did either of you ever try Feersum Endjinn? Looking at other people throwing up Clockwork Orange and Ulysses, I remembered Endjinn as one book that I was desperately interested in but literally could not read. After a while vernacular (Irvine Welsh et al) usually clicks in my brain and I can just read it, but this one ... nothing.
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      CommentAuthorDaveNant
    • CommentTimeMar 5th 2008
     (1263.78)
    @Osmosis

    No, I actually haven't tackled any of Banks' 'M.' books. Am under constant pressure to do so, tho, from a friend. Which reminds me...

    Clifford Simak's 'The Goblin Reservation' - I thought it was ridiculous, but this aforementioned friend assures me that it's a great example of science-fiction of its period.

    I also feel, after much soul searching, that I must add my weight to the anti-Tom Bombadil sentiment. It was a subject of much discussion over a few pints, once, how it would have been much more interesting had the Nazgul, or the Dark Lord himself, gone round to his house and given him a good kicking. I'd love to have seen the merry rhymes he'd spout then.
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      CommentAuthorRJBarker
    • CommentTimeMar 5th 2008
     (1263.79)
    @STSParky. That's 20 pages better than me. You're a hero in my book.


    I read the whole thing. What does that make me?


    Either saintly or mildly insane. I'm not sure. I have enormous respect for your commitment though. I have to admit that my reasons for wanting to read Ulysses are quite puerile. I keep meeting people who seem intent on lecturing me about it once they find out I'm interested in buks and ritin. They tend to do it in a particularly patronising manner and I'm sure most of them haven't read it either. I'm only persevering cos I want to catch them out.

    I adore M banks but have to admit I found Feersum Endjinn infuriating to read too.
    • CommentAuthorANMorgan
    • CommentTimeMar 5th 2008
     (1263.80)
    I haven't tried in a long time, but I bet I couldn't read a George Eliot novel again. As she is around the only famous person ever to come from my home town of Nuneaton, Warwickshire (Others being director Ken Loach, which is far cooler I'm sure you'll agree, and Larry Grayson, who was a very pleasant man who would always say good morning) we were forced into studying Silas Marner, Felix Holt and the rest at school. I have no idea how any of those books actually reads, so badly were they taught to us, and find the idea of picking up one again so distasteful my eyes are watering thinking about it. So sorry George, you might be fucking outstanding for all I know, but local history fetishists and unmotivated teachers have made sure I'll never find out.

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