themadchemist
Mar 3, 2004, 12:35 AM
It had to be done. And now it has. Here are some of my picks:
Hemmingway's Old Man and the Sea. I read this five years ago and still can't believe that this was his crowning achievement to clinch the Nobel. Man is hungry. Man goes to ocean. Man catches biiig fish. Biiig fish gets away. Oh no! Man comes back without much of the fish. Man is still hungry. Man goes to sleep.
Pushkin's Yevgeny Onegin (Eugene Onegin). Hundreds of pages of poetry about a guy who has falls in love with a couple of girls but is essentially disinterested in 'most everything...Gimme a break.
Dante's Commedia, except for the last couple of pages. Most of this is total, radical evangelical garbage. Every now and then, Dante makes a few good points. I do not hate this as much as the above two, but it's mostly garbage. Dante's few bright thoughts are overshadowed by his parochial idiocy.
Austen's Pride and Prejudice...C'mon. Do I need to say anything?!
Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles...Hardy killed nuance. He killed logic. He killed plot. He nearly killed the novel, itself. If only he'd just killed this story before it had started...Hardy had this really big problem. He couldn't create characters, a setting, and circumstances that made his plot reasonable without random acts of fate. I remember writing a paper on Hardy's fatalism. Students shouldn't have to write papers tracing the copouts that authors use to get out of good storytelling. What a crock.
As with the books I enjoyed, I'm SURE I'll think of more...And please, be sure to add your commentary as to WHY the books of your choice suck royally.
Hemmingway's Old Man and the Sea. I read this five years ago and still can't believe that this was his crowning achievement to clinch the Nobel. Man is hungry. Man goes to ocean. Man catches biiig fish. Biiig fish gets away. Oh no! Man comes back without much of the fish. Man is still hungry. Man goes to sleep.
Pushkin's Yevgeny Onegin (Eugene Onegin). Hundreds of pages of poetry about a guy who has falls in love with a couple of girls but is essentially disinterested in 'most everything...Gimme a break.
Dante's Commedia, except for the last couple of pages. Most of this is total, radical evangelical garbage. Every now and then, Dante makes a few good points. I do not hate this as much as the above two, but it's mostly garbage. Dante's few bright thoughts are overshadowed by his parochial idiocy.
Austen's Pride and Prejudice...C'mon. Do I need to say anything?!
Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles...Hardy killed nuance. He killed logic. He killed plot. He nearly killed the novel, itself. If only he'd just killed this story before it had started...Hardy had this really big problem. He couldn't create characters, a setting, and circumstances that made his plot reasonable without random acts of fate. I remember writing a paper on Hardy's fatalism. Students shouldn't have to write papers tracing the copouts that authors use to get out of good storytelling. What a crock.
As with the books I enjoyed, I'm SURE I'll think of more...And please, be sure to add your commentary as to WHY the books of your choice suck royally.
