Posted on 07/08/2014 6:44:44 AM PDT by InvisibleChurch
You’re proud that you’ve never read The Great Gatsby? :)
Most unreadable books ever:
1.Gravity’s Rainbow- Thomas Pynchon
2.Ulysses- James Joyce
3.Satanic Verses- Rushdie
4.Anything by Umberto Eccho
5. Cryptonomicon- Neal Stephonson
I couldn't put down Les Miserables because I rested it on my lap and was pinned there until I got some help. :-)
Seriously, it was on of the best books I've read. It even made me wish I understood French so I could read an untranslated version.
Anything discursive or difficult then?
Do you like the musical? On stage I mean. That recent film was terrible.
I read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy when in my early 20s (a long time ago, I'll grant you!).
The Hobbit was kind of slow until the Battle of the Five Armies, upon whence it's pace picked up considerably, leading in to The Fellowship.
I was at the beach when I finished The Two Towers, and once I put it down, I simply had to have Return of the King at that very moment! My mind demanded it!
So a neighbor took me down to the local bookstore and made my vacation the smashing success it eventually turned out to be.
I read a lot of books (too many, thinketh my wife!), but there are books out there whose turgid prose will simply turn me off and not permit me to finish them, they are that bad.
I think it's a defense mechanism of some sort my mind has devised over the years.
CA....
I agree with your list, except for this one. I find some of Eco's work quite entertaining, especially Foucault's Pendulum.
I’ve only seen the “in concert” version on PBS. It seemed like a thin veneer compared to a great tree: a couple of hours were only enough to give a hint of the book.
But I never could, and still can't, understand or enjoy Shakespeare. Most of the modern adaptations are fine, but not the originals.
I guess I have no taste or class. That's what some English teachers told me when I'd say I'd rather read Poe than read Shakespeare. Even Chaucer, Melville, Niestche, Dostoyovski...no problem.
Heck, we don't even know who Shakepeare really was. Probably some serial killer royal.
Kahnemann and his previous partner, Amos Tversky's works about risk analysis and the various biases that go into human judgement are all excellent. Its not done so with a lot of scientific jargon either.
Camp of the Saints depicts an invasion from the third world underclass that ends Western civilization.
that is because Shakespeare was meant to be watched! watch the plays... they are fantastic... try not to watch adaptations before you watch in the original language... i introduced my sons to Shakespeare while they were tots... they love him... i first showed them Shakespeare: The Animated Tales dvds... these are adaptations for children done in several styles of animation... then i showed them movies like Two Gentlemen from Verona and Taming of the Shrew... than MacBeth and Othello... then we started going to plays when they were grammar school/middle school-aged...
and there is a new Julius Caesar movie coming out soon... i cannot wait to take them to watch this... the love Shakespeare and Roman history, so this will be a double shot of enjoyment for them... :)
rent Taming of the Shrew starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton... it is fantastic!
The only book on this list I’ve read is the “50 Shades” book. I only read it because an old girlfriend compared me to Grey (of which I disagree). I found the book to be horrendously bad and wish I had never read it.
when reading Fahrenheit 451 i asked my students and their parents: "if books were outlawed (as in Fahrenheit 451) which book would you want to commit to memory? for me it would be either Les Miserables, or the Book of Romans... i might forgo Les Miserables only because i believe my two sons know it by heart... but i think my husband knows much of Romans, so i might consider something else altogether :)
as is said in a previous comment, i think Les Miserables is the best story ever written... (not counting the entirety of the Bible)...
I must have no class or taste either. I can’t and won’t read Shakespeare. I went to see A Midsummer Nights Dream at a live theatre and left during intermission. Of course it was half in English with Vietnamese subtitles and half in Vietnamese with English subtitles (this was when I was in Hawaii). Way too confusing.
i thumbed through it and the writing looked atrocious... so i skipped it... i took a second stab at Lolita instead... that time i finished it...
LM was a huge best seller upon release. When Hugo wanted to know what the sales figures in America he sent a telegram to his American publisher with a single ‘?’. His publisher’s response: ‘!’.
let me recommend something better in DVD--like Taming of the Shrew or Hamlet... or Much Ado About Nothing with Emma Thompson, the fantastic Kenneth Branagh and Denzel Washington... this is a wonderful movie... Shakespeare's comedies are so clever and witty... his tragedies so--well, tragic! the characters in these plays are the same characters of today... the themes so relevant even today... Othello, MacBeth... King Lear!
Joss Wheldon filmed Much Ado About Nothing last year. He filmed it in 12 days at his home (in black and white), presumably in California. The dialogue is Shakespearean but the surroundings are modern day including Mercedes Benz’s, iPods, iPhones, modern kitchens, etc. This helped me understand the story better than had it been done as a period piece (subtitles help, too!). I think the b&w helps you focus on the characters instead of the background, too. It’s on Netflix, maybe Amazon Prime, but give it ten minutes and tell me what you think.
i love that!
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