Why is this a literary classic? (not really a rant)

[ThrobbingEgo]

I loved all the mandatory reading books. Catcher in The Rye and Great Gatsby included. I don't know. I guess I appreciate the ideas behind the unreliable narrators and, in the case of the Great Gatsby, the brittleness of the dialog. The reason why the conversations in the Great Gatsby don't convey meaning is because Fitzgerald thought that the bulk of conversation doesn't convey meaning.

"How are you doing?" "Good." You don't tell random acquaintances about the things that are really eating away at your soul when they ask you how you are. That's why the characters throughout the book speak contrary to their feelings in almost perpetually casual conversation.

There's a certain degree of ambiguity you have to be comfortable with in these stories, because they're somewhat of a rejection to the norms and conventions of storytelling - and of what can be described in dialog. These are the books you get when the authors are really exploring their medium.

At least, that's what I've been led to believe.

 

[TriggerUnhappy]

Lord of the Flies
To Kill A Mockingbird
They weren't bad necessarily, I just found them rather bland. Plus, Lord of the Flies wasn't as brutal as everyone hailed it, especially compared to things they show on tv every day.

 

[The_Echo]

I found To Kill A Mockingbird to be just awful and boring as all hell. And Romeo and Juliet. I'm kind of hoping I don't have to read any more Shakespeare for the rest of my life.

Lord of the Flies
To Kill A Mockingbird
They weren't bad necessarily, I just found them rather bland. Plus, Lord of the Flies wasn't as brutal as everyone hailed it, especially compared to things they show on tv every day.

My dad was telling me about Lord of the Flies the other day. At first I thought it might be about Beelzebub, but then it got more boring and weird (Pig head on a stick? Huh?) when he told me what it was really about.

 

[ChromeAlchemist]

I thought that The Great Gatsby was terrible.

If any effort to make the characters likeable was made, I probably would have liked that book.

 

[similar.squirrel]

I thought that The Great Gatsby was terrible.

Pride and Prejudice was pretty awful, as well, but it didn't stop me from buying
http://roberthood.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/prideandprejudiceandzombies.jpg

I need to get my hands on that. Read an article about it some months ago. Probably a better introduction to Austen than Pride and Prejudice proper.

I didn't really get Catcher In The Rye, either. A really alien way of thinking. Maybe it's because I don't really like myself, unlike the archetypical teen. Hm.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

I found To Kill A Mockingbird to be just awful and boring as all hell. And Romeo and Juliet. I'm kind of hoping I don't have to read any more Shakespeare for the rest of my life.

Why not? Didn't like the language or the characters? You know, Romeo and Juliet is a play. It's better spoken, or live, than it is on paper. Did you at least watch the DiCaprio version? "Give me my long sword, ho!"

Hamlet's pretty fucking awesome. So is King Lear. I've heard good things about Othello too.

I saw someone reading a manga version of Hamlet somewhere. I'd be interested in reading that. "Swear by my sword."

 

[twcblaze]

Into Thin Air
Great Expectations
To Kill a Mockingbird. This was the worst book I've ever read.

obviously, you've never read Walden, I wouldn't make my worst enemies read this book, it's cruel and unusual punishment.

 

[OuroborosChoked]

Anything Ayn Rand... mirite?

That woman can't write worth a damn... and she's so damned full of herself... you can just feel the self-congratulation on every dry, dull, monotonous, dragging page...

 

[Naeo]

Jane Eyre. I loved it, but I didn't see all that much about it that was a "classic", aside from that it's written in extremely modern language but it was written in like the 1830's.

Their Eyes were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston. Didn't see what was so special about it- one could argue it was Janie's development, but it's nothing you couldn't find anywhere else in the literary world.

 

[vangor3d]

I loathed "Anna Karenina". I hate to be the neanderthal here, but the only interesting part out of 800 pages was when she threw herself under the train for that one paragraph. The rest of it was people whining.

I automatically remove Dickens from contention for being a great literary author since he was actually paid by the word and thus artificially inflated the lengths of his works.

I'm not a huge fan of any British Restoration authors. Before or after is fine. And I actually like Shakespeare but only after doing independent studies of his works (outside of the classroom). Admittedly, he is an acquired taste.

I'm probably the only person who liked "Watership Down". Ninja bunnies! What's not to love? Also, I liked James Michener's "Chesapeake." Sure, it's 1,000 pages, but it never gets boring. Whenever he finished with one character's arc, he'd kill 'em off and move on to the next one. He had a very brisk pace because of it (it was definitely more narrative that philosophy, unlike the other great works of literature)

 

[Lord Beautiful]

Great Expectations was the biggest piece of shit I've ever read. The Awakening sucked a big one as well.

I know this is cliche, but William Shakespeare. Many teachers seem to subscribe to the belief that reading a dead form of English somehow will enlighten and sophisticate readers. Unfortunately, all it does is confuse and aggravate students. The ironic thing is that the teachers who preach Shakespeare's outdated English are usually the same ones who will tell you that your paper is unreadable because you misused a comma.

I have to agree with you here. Shakespeare was a fantastic writer for his time, and his stories are still good to this day, but the language is far too archaic to enjoy. It's simply not written for us.

 

[The_Echo]

I found To Kill A Mockingbird to be just awful and boring as all hell. And Romeo and Juliet. I'm kind of hoping I don't have to read any more Shakespeare for the rest of my life.

Why not? Didn't like the language or the characters? You know, Romeo and Juliet is a play. It's better spoken, or live, than it is on paper. Did you at least watch the DiCaprio version? "Give me my long sword, ho!"

Hamlet's pretty fucking awesome. So is King Lear. I've heard good things about Othello too.

I saw someone reading a manga version of Hamlet somewhere. I'd be interested in reading that. "Swear by my sword."

I was fine with the language. I understood it better than pretty much anyone else in the class. Hated the characters. Especially Romeo. Indeed I did watch the DiCaprio version. Still didn't like it.

 

[Hot'n'steamy]

I thought that The Great Gatsby was terrible.

If any effort to make the characters likeable was made, I probably would have liked that book.

I hate to sound pompous, but that's the point of the book.

Classic literature is taught very poorly in the UK. After leaving school I have read so much compared to in my schooling, I have seriously considered changing my degree from biochemistry to English literature.The big thing about classical literature is it is basically a clique. Everything references everything, and that's why it's necessary to read the Bible, to read Othello etc etc. After a while you do enjoy reading these books. It's funny that I now read Shakespeare for personal enjoyment, seeing as I hated it in school, and I basically failed English Lit GCSE.

 

[hamster mk 4]

I hated all mandatory reading books. Often the teacher would try and shoe horn in their interpretation of the story. Then require parroting of that interpretation of the book back to them for the test. The entire reading list seemed to be comprised of books that appealed to the last generation but had little relivance or appeal to me. Perhaps it was the forced nature of the reading that sapped any enjoyment that there may have been from the process.

The only required reading I liked was "Brave new World" and that is because I read it for my own amusement years before I was forced to. I felt the book was a study in what would have to be given up in order to achieve peace and stability in the world. Instead the teacher rambled on and on about how the utopia described in the book sapped individual freedom and only the savages got to live meaningful lives. Of course I parroted this back to her on the test and passed the class, but it made me feel dirty. Ultimately English class taught me how to appease the fools fate has put in control of my immediate future.

 

[Simulacrum]

I found To Kill A Mockingbird to be just awful and boring as all hell. And Romeo and Juliet. I'm kind of hoping I don't have to read any more Shakespeare for the rest of my life.

Why not? Didn't like the language or the characters? You know, Romeo and Juliet is a play. It's better spoken, or live, than it is on paper. Did you at least watch the DiCaprio version? "Give me my long sword, ho!"

Hamlet's pretty fucking awesome. So is King Lear. I've heard good things about Othello too.

I saw someone reading a manga version of Hamlet somewhere. I'd be interested in reading that. "Swear by my sword."

The manga Hamlet has terrible art, at least the one I've perused does, there are three others I know of. Hopefully you'll strike gold if you ever read one of them, and if not, you've got a one in three chance of getting a good one next time! Or something like that.

Even though it's cliche, I like taming of the shrew and Absolutely hate Merchant of Venice. Even though The Merchant (can't remember his name was) a likeable (somewhat) character he ended up skewered on the pike of public opinion because Shakespear copped out. It's one of the few times we see him leave a good character in the dust so utterly, right from his daughter leaving up to the loss of his vengeance for the sins heaped upon him by a mere legal technicality. All this in a comedy, which makes it all supremely, and ironically, tragic.

Anyone read waiting for Godot and liked it? Rejoice my fellow crazies. It's one of those classics that most can't enjoy.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

I found To Kill A Mockingbird to be just awful and boring as all hell. And Romeo and Juliet. I'm kind of hoping I don't have to read any more Shakespeare for the rest of my life.

Why not? Didn't like the language or the characters? You know, Romeo and Juliet is a play. It's better spoken, or live, than it is on paper. Did you at least watch the DiCaprio version? "Give me my long sword, ho!"

Hamlet's pretty fucking awesome. So is King Lear. I've heard good things about Othello too.

I saw someone reading a manga version of Hamlet somewhere. I'd be interested in reading that. "Swear by my sword."

I was fine with the language. I understood it better than pretty much anyone else in the class. Hated the characters. Especially Romeo. Indeed I did watch the DiCaprio version. Still didn't like it.

You're intended to think Romeo's an idiot. Romeo and Juliet is considered a "failed" tragedy because Romeo never admitted that he was the one who did wrong. "I am fortune's fool."

Anyway, the guy's supposed to be flawed. He's an unredeemed tragic hero.

(I totally forgot about Macbeth in my previous post. Go see Macbeth. Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth!)

 

[Eskay]

Tom Hardy's the Mayor of Casterbridge. Was basically a book about architecture, he just rambles on about buildings for half of it. Didn't dislike the rest of it much, but it was nothing special.

I do think that the fact that you read it for school, OP, proves that they tried to use it as English education and not as philosophy or just a good night's read.

hardy was studied for GCSE English, I had to stop studying English there, it just kept ruining good books through over interpretation and over study. The laborious nit-picking and attempts to attribute meaning to each syllable pains me. Since dropping it I've read and loved many classics, Jeckyl and Hyde and The Count of Monte Cristo being two of the most prominent. Its sad to think how many people have probably been put off reading by classes which miss the damn point of reading fiction.

 

[LogicNProportion]

Things Fall Apart....ewwwwwww

 

[Eskay]

(I totally forgot about Macbeth in my previous post. Go see Macbeth. Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth!)

Seconded! I had tickets to see the patrick stewart version, he was off sick with a throat infection, never quite got over that
The understudy was good, but he was not the captain.