Books you should read, but probably won't

[trubble]

No one has to like Dickens.

Or Hemmingway.

Or even AA Milne.

Although disliking Winnie-the-Pooh stories may incur the Wrath of Trubble so I'd tread very carefully if I were you lot.

It is not odd to be deterred from reading someone by what you already know via films or reputation.

It is very ignorant, not to mention arrogant, to pontificate on the negatives of an author without ever having read a word.




I don't read chicklit. I used to say 'I don't like chicklit' until one day I was busy pouring the usual scorn on that type of book when someone started to complain about a book written by a childhood friend of mine. I had never read her novels so I was intrigued and asked which one they had read - none! was the reply.

None! And they sat there tearing it to bits.

Suddenly my old loyalty surged up and I found myself defending her from this unfair review and it dawned on me for the first time that I had no recollection of ever having read a chicklit book. Ever.


This author was a best seller in her genre, top of the weekly list in both UK and Ireland at the time, and she'd been in the all-genre weekly top 10 sellers too. She obviously was good at what she did. She had a great education, very accomplished, certainly not brainless and giddy and all the other descriptions one might feel like attributing to this genre.


So I read a chicklit novel. Not hers actually. I read one that some sweet naive lover had given me having seen me browsing the chicklit shelf (in fact looking at my friend's work out of amazed interest) and had sat glaring at me ever since as a book I should read because it was given with such love -but that I never would.


It was dull, unremarkable, predictable twists, the humour was there but unhilarious, the emotions were as deep as puddles, all the things I had prejudged it to be. I will never read my friend's work, I don't want to dislike it.

But now I can at least say that I tried it and don't like it. I can also see the appeal it might have to the many people who do read it -- it's light, it's quick and easy, it's entertaining in a distracting manner, it's achievable in a short time, if you only have 20 minutes to do a little reading a James Joyce masterpiece is no bloody use to you but in 20 minutes of chicklit you can discover Dirk's secret past and whether Felicity ever did tell him she fancied him or whether she stayed with reliable Mark, which you just knew she couldn't because - oh I digress but if you want to know if she ever got her man, PM me.


I respect the chicklit for what it is. Anyone who reads it no longer gets my quizzical and superiority complexed stares. It's actually okay, it is written very well, writing something that's easy-to-read is an incredible skill.

It just doesn't grab me.



I have a friend who dislikes any fiction whatsoever. Classics be damned. It's all horseshit to him and if he catches you reading it, even Hemmingway, he will laugh in pity at your feeble mind.


Now the idea of Dickens may not grab you, nor even the books themselves, but that is of no consequence to anything except self-discovery.

If, however, you intend to argue that every writer in Europe was better than Dickens you had better have read all those European authors but most importantly - you need to have read Dickens.

[everso]

Have a and a

[Flatypus]

Sept 2, 2009 8:30:23 GMT jean said:

To get her back before he leaves her pregnant and alone, certainly - and to force him to marry her however disastrous the marriage might be.

Your tub-thumping leads you to ignore the subtleties, as usual.

I don't see any tub-thumping. I see a comparison. Since Wickham was en route for the Napoleonic wars and I recall part of the haste was to avoid the possibility of finding her both married and deserted (or even worse not deserted until she finds herself stuck with the camp-followers), I maintain that Regency attitudes were considerably more enlightened than Victorian.

(How is it possible to have a thread largely about nineteenth-century fiction without a mention of George Eliot?)

Or the Brontes for that matter. Then again, I don't recall that this was a thread about 19th century literature. It was supposed to be about classics until nobody could accept that I have always found Dickens unpalatable.

Sinistral. The difference is that when I said I dislike Dickens I got a barrage pronouncing this to be some kind of grievous failing that had to be accounted for. And accounted for. And pleaded for. And anything except a simple matter of finding absolutely no interest or rapport with anybody or anything he wrote about - except maybe Tale of two cities which I think was actually written as a novel and not a fortnightly serial.

However, when you admit to disliking Hemingway despite never having read him or intending to, no such outburst results that you have no right to say anything of the sort without ploughing through the old fraud. (I think he did like cats actually but preferred not to admit it)

BTW I have read some Hemingway. You aren't missing anything.

Some chicklit can be quite fun. It depends how formulaic it is. Move to the simple life in the country and everything goes up the spout is always fun. Same is true of children's books. I have never read Harry Potter and have no desire to do so. But I think Artemis Fowl hilarious. Beware Captain Holly Short of the Pixy Secret Service and her neutrino blaster (The Fairy Folk's civilisation can advance too)

[everso]

Sept 2, 2009 22:53:06 GMT Flatypus said:

.nobody could accept that I have always found Dickens unpalatable..

Well, I can accept that you've always found Dickens unpalatable, but to begin with when I queried whether you had actually read The Pickwick Papers (which started the whole thing off), you admitted you hadn't. I couldn't see how you could make any pronouncements on a book you hadn't read. That was my point.

Sinistral. The difference is that when I said I dislike Dickens I got a barrage pronouncing this to be some kind of grievous failing that had to be accounted for. And accounted for. And pleaded for. And anything except a simple matter of finding absolutely no interest or rapport with anybody or anything he wrote about - except maybe Tale of two cities which I think was actually written as a novel and not a fortnightly serial.

However, when you admit to disliking Hemingway despite never having read him or intending to, no such outburst results that you have no right to say anything of the sort without ploughing through the old fraud. (I think he did like cats actually but preferred not to admit it)

And here Sinistrel said no such thing about disliking Hemingway.

"I've never read any Hemingway......perhaps I should start trashing his work from the comfort of my own ignorance!"

and

"I have never read Hemingway......I don't want to read Hemingway.....I never intend to read Hemingway....."

but nothing about actually disliking him. How could she if she hadn't read him?

I read "The Old Man and the Sea" and thought it was awful.

[sinistral]

Sept 2, 2009 22:53:06 GMT Flatypus said:

However, when you admit to disliking Hemingway despite never having read him or intending to, no such outburst results that you have no right to say anything of the sort without ploughing through the old fraud. (I think he did like cats actually but preferred not to admit it)

Now people I'm going to have to apologise for the following post and the language.
I am in a seriously pissed off mood anyway and then I read the above.

I DID NOT SAY I DISLIKED HEMINGWAY.....

Got that....have you sodding well got it?

Unlike some people I do not pronounce my dislike of an author I have never taken the time to read.
I say nothing about his work.....because I know nothing.
For fuck sake I can well do without having to clarify things that are already in plain bloody English.
I have not wasted a considerable amount of every buggers time pontificating on books I have not read....I respect my own,and everyone else's intelligence to do that.

Patrick/Riot......do feel free to delete my little outburst on the grounds of non-fluffiness.....but there are times when you just have to let rip.

[sinistral]

Cheers Everso......you beat me to it!

[Flatypus]

Sept 2, 2009 23:08:08 GMT everso said:

Sept 2, 2009 22:53:06 GMT Flatypus said:

.nobody could accept that I have always found Dickens unpalatable..

Well, I can accept that you've always found Dickens unpalatable, but to begin with when I queried whether you had actually read The Pickwick Papers (which started the whole thing off), you admitted you hadn't. I couldn't see how you could make any pronouncements on a book you hadn't read. That was my point.

Doesn't bother Sinistral. I've seen and heard enough adaptations to know I'd have no interest in reading it and I don't think I've ever managed to get through anything else he wrote. On the other hand, I have heard enough adaptations of Three men in a boat and ... on the Bummel not to know whether I've actually read the first or not but I think I have. The second, not but they are infinitely more fun that Mr. Dopey and his blithering chums. There is the matter too, that farce is a much more personal taste than tragedy (I put comedy originally but strictly Oscar Wilde is comedy and that isn't necessarily funny)

Sinistral. The difference is that when I said I dislike Dickens I got a barrage pronouncing this to be some kind of grievous failing that had to be accounted for. And accounted for. And pleaded for. And anything except a simple matter of finding absolutely no interest or rapport with anybody or anything he wrote about - except maybe Tale of two cities which I think was actually written as a novel and not a fortnightly serial.

However, when you admit to disliking Hemingway despite never having read him or intending to, no such outburst results that you have no right to say anything of the sort without ploughing through the old fraud. (I think he did like cats actually but preferred not to admit it)

And here Sinistrel said no such thing about disliking Hemingway.

"I've never read any Hemingway......perhaps I should start trashing his work from the comfort of my own ignorance!"

and

"I have never read Hemingway......I don't want to read Hemingway.....I never intend to read Hemingway....."

but nothing about actually disliking him. How could she if she hadn't read him?

If you say you do not and will not read something, there are presumably reasons for that and the usual one is a dislike of what you expect to find there or at least total lack of interest in it. Which is exactly what I said about Dickens but when I said it, everybody has to have a fit while when Sinistral does, I'm not allowed to even draw the obvious conclusion that she won't read it for exactly the same reason.

As I said, I have neither read Sven Hassel nor have any intention of doing so - because I have no interest in (in fact dislike) both the subject matter and the attitude towards it. Alpha however probably has the entire corpus. Equally, I have read and enjoyed Kirst, who is also a war writer but with a very different attitude. I have also enjoyed some of the films which can be a rare thing. In fact reading the book has nearly always put me off watching the film.

I read "The Old Man and the Sea" and thought it was awful.

Snap. It is perhaps a character study, but a study of the kind of character that drives me mad and I doubt anyway that any poverty-stricken Cuban would be so bloody daft. I think I've read parts of his fascist books as well (though I'm surprised to find him against fascism!) One must remember again, that Hemingway was no more a novelist than Dickens: he was a reporter and as reportage his writing is fine for perhaps From our own correspondent, 'Despatches from the Front'; Dickens was a magazine editor and serialist, therefore when compiled, his novels exhibit feedback not found in works planned as an entirety.

[jean]

Sept 2, 2009 23:37:34 GMT Flatypus said:

...If you say you do not and will not read something, there are presumably reasons for that and the usual one is a dislike of what you expect to find there or at least total lack of interest in it...

That's absolutely fine, Flatypus, and nobody's arguing - but you cannot reasonably say (as you did) that all Dickens' novels are equally tedious unless you have read them all.

If you have not read them all, your distaste for what you'd expect to find must be expressed in different terms for it to be taken seriously.

(You make the same mistake, and attract the same opprobrium, when you generalise wildly on the basis of inadequate knowledge in the case of other subjects too.)

[jean]

Sept 2, 2009 22:53:06 GMT Flatypus said:

I don't see any tub-thumping.

The 'tub-thumping' is the inaccurate, simplistic dividing of everything into 'good' and 'bad' with the feminists in the 'bad' section regardless of whether the categories you've invented even exist, never mind whether the feminists would fit there or not.

Plenty of Victorian girls were forced into marriages with men they'd had sex with to avoid family shame, rather than being cast off completely. Attitudes and behaviour aren't nearly so neatly classifiable by date as you'd like to think.

And practically everything you say about feminists is rubbish.

[aubrey]

I can't stick Graham Greene either.

OK. I've read one book; but his fans will recite bits from his other books - "He wasn't carrion yet" - that seem to me vapid, and the kind of thing a 14-year-old would think of as deep, only because it's so negative. Greene seems to me to be the kind of writer who confuses unrelenting pessimism with seriousness of purpose. I don't get him at all.

[everso]

Sept 2, 2009 23:37:34 GMT Flatypus said:

If you say you do not and will not read something, there are presumably reasons for that and the usual one is a dislike of what you expect to find there or at least total lack of interest in it. Which is exactly what I said about Dickens but when I said it, everybody has to have a fit while when Sinistral does, I'm not allowed to even draw the obvious conclusion that she won't read it for exactly the same reason.

No it's NOT what you said. You said

" Of all of them, I loath Christmas Tale and Pickwick Papers above just about anything ever written"

You didn't say I have no intention of reading it or that you didn't expect to like it or that you had a total lack of interest. You made it sound like you'd read it - and that's what we're trying to make you understand.

[Flatypus]

Jesus Christ! Just because it's me you and Jean will go over every word to every possibnle way to make a row out of nothing. Sinistral can say she won't read Hemingway, Aubrey can say he's read a bit of Greene and doesn't want to read any more. But I say I find Dickens tedious, I find the characters and episodes of Pickwick Papers boring, so I can't be arsed to actually read it and I mustn't say that because I haven't read it. How many adaptations have there been? Is it necessary to read every turgid line to know the story and get a good idea of the characters? Is it necessary to read Pickwick to assume that it is turgid since everything else I have tried to read by Dickens has been? Mus t I uniquely spell everything out and in advance look for every possible way Jean can sniff and find some excuse to wag her finger and scold that nobody does with anybody else? If I simply say, like sinistral, that I have no intention iof reading something I'll be accused of dismissing it without cause. If I give a cause you jump on my pack like a flock of vultures screaming that I'm not entitled. You just live for any excuse to pick a fight don't you? I know that is all Jean has ever done. Get a life you vicious mob! Try discussing instead of always trying to stir the shit. Try talking. Sinistral did once and enjoyed it. So she bit my throat for telling her sex should be about making love, using people without a care about their feelings. I guess that shows the difference between us. I care about people. All you care about is having a laugh finding any way to find fault, cause trouble and hurt. Do you enjoy finding every way to insult me Sinistral, because we had a good time together and I dared to tell you that no decent man could ever feel sexual desire except in response to a woman's? Only a man as uncaring of her feelings as a rapist could feel as you expected me to? What the hell is it with you people always enjoy wounding?

[everso]

Sept 3, 2009 12:05:00 GMT Flatypus said:

Jesus Christ! Just because it's me you and Jean will go over every word to every possibnle way to make a row out of nothing. Sinistral can say she won't read Hemingway, Aubrey can say he's read a bit of Greene and doesn't want to read any more. But I say I find Dickens tedious, I find the characters and episodes of Pickwick Papers boring, so I can't be arsed to actually read it and I mustn't say that because I haven't read it. How many adaptations have there been? Is it necessary to read every turgid line to know the story and get a good idea of the characters? Is it necessary to read Pickwick to assume that it is turgid since everything else I have tried to read by Dickens has been? Mus t I uniquely spell everything out and in advance look for every possible way Jean can sniff and find some excuse to wag her finger and scold that nobody does with anybody else? If I simply say, like sinistral, that I have no intention iof reading something I'll be accused of dismissing it without cause. If I give a cause you jump on my pack like a flock of vultures screaming that I'm not entitled. You just live for any excuse to pick a fight don't you? I know that is all Jean has ever done. Get a life you vicious mob! Try discussing instead of always trying to stir the shit. Try talking. Sinistral did once and enjoyed it. So she bit my throat for telling her sex should be about making love, using people without a care about their feelings. I guess that shows the difference between us. I care about people. All you care about is having a laugh finding any way to find fault, cause trouble and hurt. Do you enjoy finding every way to insult me Sinistral, because we had a good time together and I dared to tell you that no decent man could ever feel sexual desire except in response to a woman's? Only a man as uncaring of her feelings as a rapist could feel as you expected me to? What the hell is it with you people always enjoy wounding?

Oh stop being such a drama queen. What's your real name? Ethel Barrymore?

"Just because it's me..."

Get out in the real world, accept that everyone doesn't agree with you and stop throwing your toys out of the pram.

[Flatypus]

So you try stopping the snarking. For Christ's sake! People say they aren't interested in something and that's Ok. I say it and every word gets picked to pieces, every excuse found to insult me, to find fault because I gave a opinion, and then to have a go for daring to defend myself. What the hell is wrong with you people? Bloody grow up. Nobody has to agree with everything you say. Nobody should have to defend every single thing they say either.

[everso]

Sept 3, 2009 14:22:54 GMT Flatypus said:

So you try stopping the snarking. For Christ's sake! People say they aren't interested in something and that's Ok. I say it and every word gets picked to pieces, every excuse found to insult me, to find fault because I gave a opinion, and then to have a go for daring to defend myself. What the hell is wrong with you people? Bloody grow up. Nobody has to agree with everything you say. Nobody should have to defend every single thing they say either.

I don't know why I'm even bothering to reply to this, because the last thing you will do is stop and wonder why virtually every woman you come into contact with on the boards ends up arguing with you. You just don't see, do you, that your attitude really gets up our noses. You blather on and on about how you are on the side of women, then as soon as any woman starts to try to debate with you she gets accused of wanting to be raped, of envying the penis, of god-only-knows what.

This row about (and I'm smiling as I type this) Dickens is just too funny for words. I don't really give a fig whether you find him boring, in much the same way as I don't really care if anyone else finds him boring, or hates him even. I DO care if they try to give an opinion and make it sound like they are well read of an author when they haven't even picked up his books. That's all.

If Jean or Sinistral or anyone was telling the board that they loathed a particular book and then admitted they hadn't read it, I'd be lambasting them too.

I don't think I've ever come across anyone as defensive as you - or as paranoid.

[jean]

Couldn't have put it better, everso.

[trubble]

Best laugh I've had all day.


AVVVVVITT!

[Alpha Hooligan]

People...shhh...




AH

[Flatypus]

Sept 3, 2009 14:47:26 GMT everso said:

I don't know why I'm even bothering to reply to this, because the last thing you will do is stop and wonder why virtually every woman you come into contact with on the boards ends up arguing with you. You just don't see, do you, that your attitude really gets up our noses. You blather on and on about how you are on the side of women, then as soon as any woman starts to try to debate with you she gets accused of wanting to be raped, of envying the penis, of god-only-knows what.

For God's sake! When have I ever 'accused' any woman of wanting to be raped? Have you ever possibly considered that when people deliberately falsify what I say and then disagree with it, I might just stand up to them. Ask yourself why it is that certain women consistently do this. Ask yourself when you have actually read anything I posted that said anybody wanted to be raped except when I have said that I regard men who treat sex as all about themselves regardless of the woman are regarding her similar to a rapist, and women who put up with that kind of treatment should realise that they are putting up with rape.

This row about (and I'm smiling as I type this) Dickens is just too funny for words. I don't really give a fig whether you find him boring, in much the same way as I don't really care if anyone else finds him boring, or hates him even. I DO care if they try to give an opinion and make it sound like they are well read of an author when they haven't even picked up his books. That's all.

So? I never did that did I? I said I found Dickens turgid and I don't like his characters or his subjects. I said that on the basis of adaptations I find no reason to actually read Pickwick. If you find a film boring does it make you want to rush out and read the book? Does it debar you from saying why you don't want to read the book? Is it better to just say "I haven't read it and I don't intend to" as if you were God Almighty dismissing something you know nothing about out of hand and far to grand to need to lower yourself to give any actual reason. I showed the respect of saying why I dislike Dickens and why I have never wanted to read Pickwick.

If Jean or Sinistral or anyone was telling the board that they loathed a particular book and then admitted they hadn't read it, I'd be lambasting them too.

But Sinistral did say she neither had read Hemingway nor would without giving any reason. She did not even say she disliked him. So there we do have somebody saying they have no idea whether they dislike this or not but they are damned well never going to touch it. Where's your lambasting? Only for me because I gave reasons as if I was holding a normal conversation with people who are not waiting to make a row out of every word.

I don't think I've ever come across anyone as defensive as you - or as paranoid.

I have never come across people as offensive and determined to find fault and misrepresent everything I say as the same vicious old women on the same vicious old boards. It shows how right I am, that these so-called 'feminists' have the same image of men as silly little girls running after big macho thugs, they are the same people flipped over. I don.'t fit that image, so both have to everything to take me down in the hope of finding something to suit their macho-envying fantasy. The big strutting man treating women like crap is a projection of their own inner desire. Women who feel inferior to men call themselves 'feminists'. Women assured of their equality feel no need to.

[jean]

Flatypus, I do wish you would disabuse yourself of the belief that people take against you because you are so lovely and gentle and not a big macho thug.

Lovely you may be IRL, but I am afraid your messageboard behaviour does tend towards the thuggish.