Catcher in the rye
Same. I thought it was so dumb
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest. It’s just a zillion loose threads of a novel that leads nowhere in particular.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Only book I’ve ever thrown across the room and used as a craft cutting board.
Ulysses by James Joyce
Couldn’t get past ten pages. I believe it’s popular so that stupid people can think themselves as smart. I doubt no one has actually read the whole thing
Runes of the Earth by Stephen R. Donaldson. Couldn’t even finish it. Loved some of his earlier books, which I read when I was much younger. Not sure if he changed or if I did. But what I read of Runes was truly awful.
Not sure if he changed or if I did.
Typically it is you who has changed. Many things we remember fondly doesn’t hold up when we go back again.
Maybe. But in this case, two decades had passed since he’d written the previous book in the series.
Of books I’ve finished, The Da Vinci Code. It’s been a long time since I read it, so I can’t recall specifics but I do remember the moment to moments of the plot being contrived and stupid, and the writing to be bland and simplistic.
The only reason I read it was I was stuck somewhere without a book and I found a copy of The Da Vinci code that had fallen behind a shelf. I figured it was super popular so there must be something to it as I slogged through.
Controversial one: I thought Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was a bad book. And I liked Thompson’s Hell’s Angel’s book that he wrote prior. The metaphors like “the great wave” of hippiedom coming from the west which crashed and receded make up about 0.1% of the contents and are not that interesting. The rest could be extremely niche satire I’m missing since I wasn’t alive in the 70s but I doubt it. For the most part it reads like a blog post on one of the 90s drugs forums where someone has just boofed meth or something.
Of the ones I read straight through
Life of Pi
Lord of the Flies
A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
At first you give it your good will and chapter by chapter the creeping horror sets in that the emperor has no clothes.
Trash in lit’s clothing
“Effi Briest” all the way.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
The Bible. So so boring.
Can you think of a greater blasphemy than to say that some junk written by mortals is the word of the absolute highest creator imaginable?
Controversial opinion but Don Quixote, so fucking long and boring, had a horrible time trying to get through it for class
I know this is controversial, but I really hated ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’, the main character is just so annoying. I had a hard time finishing that one.
I had the same issue, but my wife loved it. We have agreed to disagree.
I tried listening to the audiobook, and the narrator is even more annoying than Wil Wheaton, which I didn’t think was possible
“De Grote Zaal” by Jacoba van Velde. For school we had to read many books. In the earlier years this could be anything as long as it was Dutch, so translated versions of English books were fine. I could read stuff like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc. However, at some point the requirements shifted, and we were only allowed to read Dutch (non-translated) works of literature. This shit single-handedly killed all my fun in reading. Dry books about old people or about the war.
“De Grote Zaal” is the one that I remember the most. It’s a short book, but it goes pretty much nowhere and doesn’t at all speak to the imagination of a teen guy. To me it represents the death of reading as a hobby. I’ve tried to pick up reading again, but it has since been replaced by other things and I just don’t make the time for it anymore.
