THE BEST OF JUNE

HUME - A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE

"i hate Hume, Locke, Galileo, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and all those stupid philosophers that just liked to smoke a lot of pot and write shit that we have to study like crazy!!"

"he talks about a priori even though he is an empiricist"


BECKETT - MOLLOY

"Presumes to lay bare the geriatric mind, but comes nowhere near. Based on the ludicrous proposition that the aging process is hellish and unnatural. Beckett is the true godfather of MTV."


HEMINGWAY - A FAREWELL TO ARMS

"This goes on the 'thrown across room' part of the 'skimmed or thrown across room' shelf. Sadly, this was only mentally done. I could only mentally throw it across the room, since it's a library book."

"This novel reminds me of those rooms with one chair (wooden) and one window (no curtains) which we're supposed to appreciate."


JOYCE - ULYSSES

"This is an outdated book and in today's fast life style few want to be academically oriented and corner themselves to enjoy this book except a few old styled ones who are still living in their past ideals."

"Ulysses is structured on the template of Homer's Odyssey. Well, that's very original. I suppose that its taking place over a 24 hour period rather than 24 sections of an epic poem is somewhat original. If you are 5 years old."


AUSTEN - PERSUASION

"LAME! HATED IT! NOT MY STYLE - TOO FLOWERY, TOO MANY WORDS, TOO PROPER. UGH! So glad I did not live back then! Gag me!!!!!!!"

"Some parts were ok, such as the scene where a girl is jumping around and cracks her head open. I laughed out loud at her idiocy."


IBSEN - PEER GYNT

"The story itself defies the Greek Unities of Time and Place."

Henrik Ibsen - Peer Gynt

"WTH???"


"Written as a poem...not so into poems."


"I finished Peer Gynt... good grief it was awful.
It was so boring & half the time I had no idea what was going on. I sure hope I don’t get picked to stage manage it this semester or I’ll be bored to tears."


"Based on traditional Nordic legend Ibsen's version would make a better narrative than verse literary effort ... plus the story itself defies the Greek Unities of Time and Place."


"it's too bloody Norwegian"


"I hate puppets and I hate Peer Gynt."


IN MY TRAVELS I ALSO CAME ACROSS AN INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE: "TO THYSELF BE - ENOUGH!" ~ HENRIK IBSEN. JESUS CHRIST, PEOPLE

Alexander Pope - The Rape of the Lock

"today in english we're reading a 20 page epic poem about a lock of hair, and a card game:
HOW ABOUT NO"


"an insipid subject"


"I found the whole thing to be just a bit of overkill."


"i hate the rape of the lock and alexander pope brings a bad name to disabled people everywhere"


"I'm sorry Alexander Pope but 'The Rape of the Lock' sucks and not only am I procrastinating writing about you Pope, and Hogarth, and Smart, but I'm procrastinating up until the last minute. Fuck you for not burning your last copies of such stale British literature. Now we all have to suffer through it. That's not to say that these gentlemen weren't brilliant for their time; I'm just saying it's not their time anymore. Let's live in the now, please, for the sake of God."


"Belinda is over-dramatic as hell about her goddamn hair"


"Omg really
Belinda it is okay your hair went to heaven and became a constellation.

SMH ALEXANDER POPE"

Homer - The Iliad III

"I have a dog and a family. I'm a liberal. I hate The Iliad, ignorant people and anyone who gets pleasure out of reality television."


"There was too much violence for me. Really? Did he have to kill everyone at the end?"


"Since I loved the movie Troy, I thought I would love The Iliad, which provides the basis of the plot in the movie. However, I was sorely disappointed when I discovered that although The Iliad is very similar to Troy, it is very dull. Basically, the movie is all action and drama while the book is just literally boring description after boring description of battle. It is very repetitive, and there are literally hundreds of characters in this poem. In fact, many characters have multiple names, as do the armies. In short, although the movie changes/leaves out some things in the book, it is actually a lot better than the poem itself. Therefore, while I give the movie a 5 star rating, I only give the book a 2 star rating."


"It's not the style of contemporary book people is habituated to read ... The history is full of confuse facts that are related in such a extensively descriptive way that does not help to its easy understanding. Some of the characters have very similar names between themselves and aren't blood related.
As a common factor of the age in which this book was written we should add like another bad aspect too, the fact the characters always have the same descriptions by the side (eg. silver feet for Iris , fast feet, for Hector and Achilles, owl's eyes for Hera) and are repeated in the most extreme ways."


"I read (and comprehended) the entire poem in Latin. #BAWSE"

A MEAN FEAT


"I HATE THE ILIAD. WISH SOMEONE WOULD WRITE THIS PAPER FOR ME. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO HECTOR AND ACHILLES ARE! SMH."


"Culturally and historically, it's a work of major importance and I totally get that, but reading it made my brain hurt. There's no consistent narrative, the characters are all over the place, scenes of great power and scope are intercut with sequences of ridiculous actions and motivations, and let's not get started on the gods constantly swooping in and out of things (and I'd also mention that it has no beginning or end, but that's not its fault as it's the only surviving volume of a larger saga). I know, I know, it's an ancient work and shouldn't be held to modern standards"


"I hate The Iliad. I hate it. I loathe it. I want it to stop. Paris is stupid. Everyone is stupid. Hate."


"I hate the Iliad. Stupid Homer...why'd ya have to go and write it??"


"I hate the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two canons of American high school and college literature courses - their two examples of ancient, persevering, set-in-stone literature with times that span the tests of time and space. And I hate them. I wonder if this is one of the reasons I wasn't meant to be an English major. I can't agree with the canon... the Core, as Columbia puts it. I'm pretty sure that the Western-centric Core includes the Iliad and the Odyssey"


"reading it I felt like Homer should have had his tongue cut out as well."

Jane Austen - Persuasion III

"She does poorly in sentence structure, placing too many semi-colons, making a paragraph out of one sentence. I barely managed to grasp the plot of the story."


"I know that somewhere out there, during that time, there had to have been women that said 'NOPE! Not gonna wait around for a man to come and take my money and take care of me!' Where are they?"


"Some parts were ok, such as the scene where a girl is jumping around and cracks her head open. I laughed out loud at her idiocy."


"I was presented with this novel at my book group and I took it home filled with trepidation. I was an Austen virgin but it was time to lift the veil from my eyes and immerse myself in a classic! Everyone raves about her, TV producers cannot stop making mini series of her work so surely I am about to be blown away by the famous Austen 'wit' and the social commentary of the time? Eh, no! Whilst the insight provided into the period was fascinating and the characters relatively well rounded, the long winded prose and enormous sentences made it painful and unenjoyable. She can spin a sentence into a paragraph and by the time you've got the end you need to re-read it to remember what it was all about. One paragraph took me 15 minutes before I admitted defeat. Eventually I just gave up. Reading should be a pleasure and there are so many great books why waste time reading something that is making your eyes bleed?"


"i gaurantee that you will think about lobbing your copy out of the window once or twice. (I did actually lob it out the window and had to get a new copy as it landed in a puddle!!) ... I will be throwing my straight in the bin once ive studyed it, the recycling bin that is!"


"I must say Jane Austen is incredibly boring and all her novels are stories of women's aspirations to marry wealthy and noble men to support them. Most great literature is so wonderful because of its timelessness, touching on universal feelings and ideas. While it may have been groundbreaking in its time, it is so dull now ... This book is dull and predictable and is restricted by its time period. If you want to delve into the past then maybe pick it up, but otherwise, it's unexciting, and it still feeds on social classes and marriage as a woman's reliance on a man for social and fiscal support."


"Books like these are why Cliff Notes were invented."


"How does Chinese water torture sound?
Chinese water torture? Sounds like a welcome diversion from this boring redundant work of 'art' to me. I feel for the trees that were wasted in the process of creating this horrendously boring soap opera in paperback. It is possible that I missed something while reading this work because I spent most of the time trying to stay awake. However, in the future if I want to read something of this caliber I would write NBC and ask for the script of their least watched daytime 'soap'. In conclusion, not only do I NOT recommend this novel, but I pledge to do my best to begin an anti-Persuasion League, to prevent the widespread development of narcolepsy in high school students who are forced to read worthlessly painful novels."


"As I know Austen's works are classics, I'm sure I've just been spoiled lately by all the vampire drama in the Twilight series I just finished! ;)"


"really dated with the Victorian conceptions of etiquette and class."


"the wording was very uncomfortable."


"I found the absence of description made it difficult to flesh out the characters or locations and give them bodies and a real life.
This was exarcebated by the lack of mention of physical needs, like eating or descriptions of food or other functions"


"I felt like it had too many words"


"Does Ann and Fredrick get together all so long? You'll have to read the book to find out."

Jane Austen - Persuasion II

"I can't get behind anyone who writes the 19th-century equivalent of a rom-com."


"Let me explain my vitriol. When I read Austen I read one thing: a man who is not rich or doesn’t desire to be rich shouldn’t procreate."


"From the onset of puberty I have wanted nothing more to be in love ... Yet every time I’ve tried to instigate this, and oh how I’ve tried to follow the Austen formula, my advances have their throats slit by women who desire to join a convent, are actually attracted to women thank you, or would much rather be pursued by, you guessed it, men with money."


"As I see it, time is precious. Love makes it more so. Eight years of opportunity is missed because of a stupid dying caste system; the novel raises this issue, and merely shrugs."


"This is the first Jane Austen novel I've read, and if it's at all exemplary of her work as a whole, I think I understand her appeal in some circles. This is largely a book of gossip, and in the end, of wish fulfillment. It's a reality show from late Georgian England, couched in flowery prose."


"It's no wonder that Ms Austen died an old maid. I imagine she spent her life mooning quietly over potential beaus and suffering imagined slights like a high school girl."


"My main complain is that Austen`s books are all mostly the same - there`s some more or less active heroin and there are two guys"

COLONEL WARWICKSHIRE'S FACILITY WITH A SPOON WAS VERY MUCH ADMIRED AT WARBLER'S FLAT, WHERE ANY THING WAS A WELCOME RELIEF TO THE THREE SISTERS, AND FOLLOWING THE BRAVERY HE HAD DISPLAYED IN THE INCIDENT OF MARY'S REVIVAL BY NALOXONE SHOT, EVEN CATHERINE HAD JOINED IN THE GENERAL PRAISE OF THE COLONEL. AT THE PROPER HOUR EVERY EVENING IT WAS HIS CUSTOM TO ARRANGE HIMSELF IN THE LARGE ARMCHAIR FACING THE FIRE, AND COOK THE FIRST CHUNK OVER THE FLAMES WHILE THE GIRLS COLLECTED ABOUT HIM, TYING THEIR THICK LEATHER BELTS AROUND THEIR UPPER ARMS AND SHIVERING OR ROCKING BACK AND FORTH AS THEIR FANCY TOOK THEM. TONIGHT BEING NO EXCEPTION, ALL EYES WERE ON THE SIZZLING BROWN CHUNK AS IT DISSOLVED IN THE COLONEL'S CAPABLE HANDS. EACH GIRL, EVEN CATHERINE, HOPED THAT SHE MIGHT BE THE FIRST CHOSEN, AND EACH WAS EQUALLY DISMAYED WHEN THE COLONEL, HAVING ADDED THE WATER, SWIFTLY INJECTED THE SYRINGE INTO THE WRECKAGE OF HIS OWN INNER ARM. ALL WERE SO FLUSTERED BY THEIR DISAPPOINTMENT THAT IT WAS NOT UNTIL A VOICE FROM BEHIND THEM ANNOUNCED THE PRESENCE OF AN OBSERVER THAT ANY OF THE SISTERS TURNED HERSELF ABOUT. LUCY'S ASTONISHMENT WAS BEYOND EXPRESSION -- IT WAS MR SHELBY!

"I SUPPOSE THAT IT IS THE CUSTOM IN THE WEST INDIES TO SERVE ONESELF BEFORE A LADY, COLONEL. MAY I THEREFORE ADVISE YOU THAT IN ENGLAND WE PREFER TO ATTEND TO THE DESIRES OF THE FAIRER SEX BEFORE WE STOOP TO GRATIFY OUR OWN."

"MY WORD, BOY!" SAID THE COLONEL, WITH NO SLIGHT INDIGNATION. THE GIRLS SCREAMED AND RUSHED TO STEADY HIS HAND.

"I ASSURE YOU, SIR," INTERVENED LUCY. "THE GOOD COLONEL HAS NO NEED OF SUCH ADVICE -- I MYSELF CAN VOUCH THAT HIS MANNERS CONCERNING THE FIRST HIT ARE ALWAYS EXEMPLARY. IF HE JUDGES IT BEST THAT IT FALL TO HIS OWN PART, IT IS ONLY TO FORESTALL ANY SQUABBLING BETWEEN THE LADIES OF THIS PARTY CONCERNING WHICH AMONG US MIGHT COUNT HERSELF THE FAVOURITE."

MR SHELBY ONLY SNIFFED, TURNED UP HIS NOSE AND RETREATED TO THE VESTIBULE. THOUGH LUCY AND CATHERINE HAD RECEIVED THE INTRUDER WITH THE FORBEARANCE OF CIVILITY, THE AGITATION OF COLONEL WARWICKSHIRE, AND THE TEARS OF MARY, PROVED ENOUGH TO QUITE SPOIL THE WHOLE PARTY'S BUZZ. "I NEVER MET SUCH AN ILL-MANNERED MAN!" CRIED LUCY UPON RETURNING TO HER CHAMBER. ALL NIGHT SHE SCRATCHED AT HER CHEST AND ARMS, AND HER SLEEPLESSNESS WAS HARDLY LESS OWING TO MR SHELBY'S CONDUCT THAN TO THE TWO TEN-BAGS OF TAR HEROIN BURNING IN HER VEINS.

Jane Austen - Persuasion

"I tried. I really did."


"I tried to read this book, really I did."


"I really did try my best, and right now I'm just patting myself on the back for finally finishing this little book after starting it a dozen times."


"I have fallen asleep EVERY TIME I have read it. THAT NEVER HAPPENS."


"Jane Austen and I don't get along very well. Am I the worst female English major ever because of it? Perhaps. And I'm okay with that."


"SNOOZE FEST!!! It was as boring as the landscape depicted in the bleek winter of this book. I'm sure my review will make me seem like an uneducated boob. But, I'm not. I just don't like boring stuff!"


"I am constantly amazed that generations of readers return again and again to this turgid slop. Dull, slow and uninteresting."


"This was the last novel by Austen before she passed on. I'd die too, if this was the last book that I've written. Simply awful."


"I really think this is a terrible terrible object. Not even as a book, just in general.
That Jane Austen is a jerk."


"I came to Persuasion in reverence, as I think one should approach any of the classics, but I am turned away in utter disgust. Anne Elliot is a calculating, grasping, whining louse. Persuasion is irrelevant."


"Jane Austen has a huge problem, in my opinion, when it comes to her novels. That is: THEY'RE ALL ABOUT THE SAME THING!! A young woman meets a guy and for one reason or another can't be with him (in this case because Wentworth didn't have enough money, with Pride and Prejudice it's because Elizabeth can't stand Darcy's behaviour). Guess what? They also end the same way - with marriage.

It's boring reading the same plot over and over again. I am finished with Jane Austen. Absolutely done."


"I didn't finish it. I couldn't even get 20 pages into it. I avoided it. I read another book after starting it. I tried to force myself to read it really fast to get past the beginning. I finally gave up and flipped to the last page, and I couldn't even force myself to read that. What I did read and see at the end was very shallow, so I'm assuming I didn't miss anything?"


"The verbiage was unending. That society was superficial to the extreme. Maybe I'm a modern, jaded woman, but it was all too much.
Miss Austen seemed to have forced herself to create these most boring folk. It does make me grateful for television - and I got rid of cable a couple of years ago."


"LAME! HATED IT! NOT MY STYLE - TOO FLOWERY, TOO MANY WORDS, TOO PROPER. UGH! So glad I did not live back then! Gag me!!!!!!!"

James Joyce - Ulysses V

HAPPY BLOOMSDAY, EVERYBODY!

"Reading Ulysses sucks up a great deal of time and maybe I must devote months to read and enjoy his work. I cannot do that considering my busy schedules and of course most of people too.

I have to stop at every word and look up in the dictionary for its intricate meaning and try to analyze.

I hate to read the textbook type these days. I do not read it just a few academics prescribe at some universities.

This is an outdated book and in today's fast life style few want to be academically oriented and corner themselves to enjoy this book except a few old styled ones who are still living in their past ideals."


"Quite frankly, I think the 'narrative' (if you can call it that) is a fucking mess. It was/is confusing, disjointed, the flow is totally screwed up repeatedly. This has a you-shouldn't-write-when-you're-drunk warning all over the pages.

And this book's a case of: some people don't want to say it stinks because they think they'll look like they're stupid. I despise when people call what qualifies as unintelligble gibberish great writing and act as if those calling it gibberish are just too dumb to see its brilliance. Or people claim the writer's mind is just so superior, so brilliant, no one else can understand what comes from it. I've heard Ulysses lovers brag that no one can understand the book.

Um, in my opinion, writing is foremost about communicating. If NO ONE can understand a written work, maybe it's because the writing just SUCKS?"


"I almost vomitted over this abomination! Piece of trash."


"This book is the biggest scam in the history of scams and books. Utterly nonsense from the beginning to end, and everyone keeps pretending that this book is the greatest ever written. What utter tosh!"


"If Joyce had access to a little Ritalin for his apparent ADHD, Ulysses might have been a short story, as he initially intended"


"I hate Ulysses. I'm not about to waste my time reading a book in which 'sentences' are composed like a Pollock painting."


"Ulysses is an unoriginal, pretentious, boring novel. Yes, the merits ... are true - if you are a writer or an academic. It is perfect masturbatory material for serious writers and academicians who write for each other and only read those things written for them. But for the average layperson, who is looking to put his hands around, and his eyes in front of, a good story to enrich his life and pass some quality time, Ulysses is nothing but a waste of a few good twigs.

Ulysses is structured on the template of Homer's Odyssey. Well, that's very original. I suppose that its taking place over a 24 hour period rather than 24 sections of an epic poem is somewhat original. If you are 5 years old. The Odyssey was written over 2,000 years ago and is still enjoyed today by millions of readers. Note to Joyce: we do not need a re-hashed Odyssey. We need a story that originates from your imagination, from that great brain that rests inside your myopic skull! Hey, I have an idea: I will write a novel based on Hamlet and sell that to people. Oh, wait a minute, nobody wants to read Hamlet again ... But Ulysses is great because of its word-play, its use of stream-of-consciousness, its inventive dialogue, its allusions to past great works of literature, its use of symbols as based on The Odyssey, Mark. Not really. All of this is unnecessary window-dressing on an otherwise boring - no, wait, BORING! - story. A writer doesn't need word-play, stream-of-consciousness, inventive dialogue, allusions, and symbols to write a great story. No, what he needs is an enthralling beginning, middle, and ending; complex characters; conflicts and crises; and the ability to choose words that tell his story and no one else's. Anything else is overcompensation for a story so thin that skeletons call it anorexic.

Ulysses is boring. I alluded - ha, look, I'm James Joyce, I made an allusion! - earlier to this aspect of Ulysses' total failure as a novel, which is probably the hardest point to show and justify. But then again, it's Ulysses - no, it's not hard. It takes place over the course of one day in Dublin. A guy goes to a funeral, jerks off on a beach, gets drunk, goes to a brothel, meets up with a young guy he doesn't even hit on, pisses in the yard with said guy, then goes to bed, only to have his story taken over by his shrill, sorry, cuckolded wife. And it takes over 700 pages for all this to happen. Wow. Great stuff, huh? Maybe if you are a corpse. But like Judge Woolsey famously said of Ulysses in the obscenity trial regarding it, '...it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring.' Well, thank God (who doesn't exist, by the way; I have looked for Him and found only his Husk, which I kicked to ashes and blew into the wind), that I'm not Irish - I would have died from boredom upon being born (or hatched, as my dear mother would say).

In conclusion, Ulysses is the greatest novel ever written. I sincerely believe that. But I would suggest that no one worth his salt read it so that it remains so."

Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms IV

"Farewell...to this Book!!
I know the book was written in the 50's or so, but there's no way people have ever spoken like this."


"Lt. Henry comes down with sypilis. When he and his commandees are convicted of treason because they retreated, he hides in a river to avoid being exectuted."


"The WORST book of all TIME!
The characters had all the personality of wood chips! Infact, it would be more interesting to sit and watch the dog poop in my back yard petrify! I have never read such a boring book in all my life. It was EXTEREMLY hard to finish. It actually took me 1 month! And if I had to hear GOD'S name in vain one more time I would have burned the book, but it wasn't mine so UNFORTUNATLY I couldn't!"


"Clearly written from an immoral man's perspective, it was impossible for me to relate to the characters. And the ending, well, it was just stupid. There was no lesson to be learned, no happy ending, nothing that makes a great book great."


"I am baffled that critics call this a classic (and I was a lit major)."


"This novel reminds me of those rooms with one chair (wooden) and one window (no curtains) which we're supposed to appreciate."


"the nurse, oh please, she must be about 10 years old and bland as a spinach on top of that ... could have been written by a 5th grader. Folks, there is really nothing to it, YOU can do it too. In your spare time or on coffee break. The only problem is, no self-respecting publisher would actually publish such prose in today's day and age."


"This book should be titled 'A Farewell to Legs'
Seriously. It's his legs the main character almost has blown off, not his arms."


"The written English is, perhaps deliberately, but certainly, poor. It reads like a poor translation into English by a non-native speaker. The tale itself is OK, hence 2 stars, but it meanders and ends up in the ditch at the end. Indeed, the book has less of an end and more of a well-that'll-do-for-me from the author where everyone except the narrator dies. Hamlet for our day."

A FAREWELL TO ARMS: AS BAD AS HAMLET


"Hemingway must have marvelled at his luck in pulling off such an 'emperor's new clothes' scam. Perhaps i'm missing something here but for now I'll stick with being the one who shouts 'the emperor is naked'"


"I hope I don't offend when I let you all into a little secret....Hemingway can't write. Short, confusing sentences, disruptive asides and childish thematics make this a classic for our US dominated times only. With a more mature civilization the book will be placed where it belongs....amongst the pop-trash pulp novels of the 20th century."

Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms III

"I am not a reader who demands constant action like some kind of Impossible Mission movie, but good grief!"


"I can't really relate because, while Henry is an American, he is fighting in Italy and for the Italians, which is something I can't quite follow because I do not live in Italy."


"are you kidding me? people actually LIKE this bullshit? ... this. THIS. this overrated load of shit? i should have known better than even bothering."


"Hemmingway is in the pantheon of American writers and I think for good reason. However, his writing style is not my particular brand of vodka, to use a turn of phrase."


"The biggest fault I can find in this book are its lack of originality (I mean, a war love story? She's a nurse and he gets injured? They have a baby? Come on), although, given that this book was written about 100 years ago before any novel became 'unoriginal' this might be overlooked."


"The whole experience of reading this book felt like an utter FAIL"


"I also didn't care for the whoremongering, teasing the priest, alcoholism, etc. I know it's true-to-life, especially in a horrible, brutal war. Still, it was so heavy to me. I guess I'm just tired of all the ugliness of this world - perhaps I'd better stick to feel-good childrens' books or something. I've certainly read FAR worse in the past - I was an English major after all."


"The romance between the two seemed chanced and meaningless. I felt no sentimentality about the ending."


"I Read this BOOK!!!!! Gahh it was hard to get through, was so worth it. Just to be able to say you read this book proves that you have amazing reading stamina ... If you read this book, congratulations."


"The portrayal of women--either the saint or the whore--was something I suspected but hadn't desired to encounter."


"dead white guys, I need a break from you!!"


"do not read war novels if you do not like war."


"after she dies he claims at their last parting she was a mere 'statue'. real nice hemingway, no wonder you shot yourself in the head."


"I'm so glad that hobag died."

Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms II

"I think he left out all the interesting bits."


"Oh, please. Just because it's a classic doesn't automatically make it good. Call me blind or too modern thinking, call me what you will, but how is this even - *tries to think of good word* edifying? Was this the novel that made Hemingway on the road to being a 'literary genius'? I'm honestly curious. Because if it wasn't this book - and I can see why it wouldn't be - then, honestly, just because a guy writes one best seller doesn't make the rest of his work amazing. The man's human, remember? Not everyone an author writes is worth reading.

This goes on the 'thrown across room' part of the 'skimmed or thrown across room' shelf. Sadly, this was only mentally done. I could only mentally throw it across the room, since it's a library book."


"There was no love present in this novel. The man knocks up a hot swedish nurse, deserts the army so he can run away with her, refuses to marry her, and experiences nothing but indifference when both the girl and the baby die."


"His prose style is terrible; that deadpan dumbness is a dreadful American affectation ... A pedestrian novel, don't bother."


"BORING! COUNTERPRODUCTIVE! STALE! I couldn't relate to anything about Europe. Forced myself to finish it but it was like forcing myself to chew and swallow my own cold vomit."


"Couldn't relate to the European setting at all. There was no description with which I could relate to. I was terribly unattached to the entire story. Boring. Counterproductive. Stale."

SO I GUESS THIS GUY REALLY WANTS PEOPLE ON BOTH US AND UK AMAZON TO KNOW HE CAN'T "RELATE" TO ANYTHING TO DO WITH EUROPE, AND ALSO THAT THE BOOK IS SOMEHOW "COUNTERPRODUCTIVE"


"Sorry I read this one. Is he suppose to be a good author?"


"definitely anti-war literature."


"I know you're supposed to like Hemingway because of his literary significance, and while I can appreciate his contribution to the literature genre, he is pretty insufferable."


"I can't enjoy a book in which the main character is glad that his newborn baby dies in the end. Poo on you, Mr. Hemingway."


"to me, reading Hemingway is like eating suicidal pills."


"Maybe it all would have been worth it if in the end the characters had actually learned something, outgrown their selfishness and discovered that life has purpose and meaning beyond drinking and sex."


"if you want a cute love story watch jerry maguire. this book is pathetic."

Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms

"BLAH! Shut up. Who cares?!"


"For me it read as if everyone was either: 1) Certifiably insane, 2) an alien with no knowledge of human interaction or 3) a certifiably insane alien with no knowledge of human interaction. A vapid book full of vapid people."


"I do not like this book at all! It was so terribly boring and pointless. It didn't even have historical value! I honestly couldn't seriously finish this book. I got over 3/4 of the way through and skimmed the last 100 pages or so. Even then it was a waste of time. I hated it. Ernest Hemingway is a sexist man obsessed with war stories that have no worth. If I were to recommend this book to a friend, I wouldn't! I could've spent my time reading another book or banging my head against a wall, anything besides reading this book is a better use of time. It was literally nothing but 'I'm in the army, but not my country's army, a different one. I am a solider, but not a real solider, just the medical team, so I do nothing deadly. I am attracted to a nurse, I tell her I love her even though I don't, oh wait I do love her, we get married, she dies having a baby.' It was so bland! I hated this book so much. I honestly did. It had no plot twists, words that really pull you in, a climax. It didn't have a climax! What kind of book doesn't have a climax! UGH!"


"The ending was absolutely terible as well. So depressing...and not in an insightful way. Instead of having a huge impact and making me think about life like many classics do, I just thought to myself, 'wow...that was a waste of my time'.

[The main character's knocks up the nurse (Catherine) he met. They decide to run away together. She goes to give birth to the kid and the baby is dead. Then Catherine dies as well in childbirth. The main guy doesn't say a thing. No emotions, crying, anger, etc. He just says peace out, walks into the rain and the book ends."


"mundane war he doesn't care about, check, drinking check, mundane injury and recovery and drinking, check, mundane retreat escape and pregnancy, and drinking, check, drinking more, check, baby and wife die and he still doesn't care. and neither do i."


"Hemingway hardly deserves a single star. Call me too young to appreciate literature, my opinion still stands: A Farewell to Arms was an awful novel that drug on far too long for its own good. The depiction of Italy during WWI was hardly realistic. Frederic Henry was a flat, personality-less character and Catherine was a sad excuse for a person. She was a subservient, pitiful girl, and I have never been happier to see a character die. If only Frederic had followed her to the grave."


"Hemingway seems to have the most boring writing-style ever! I was expecting a sort of forbidden love story which happened in the times of the World War I and lots of blood, death, brutality description, but instead all what I found in the book is this complete childish characters (yes, I'm referring to Catherine Barkley) the love she had with Henry was ridiculous and what was even more ridiculous is the description of their love affair 'I had gotten somewhat drunk and had nearly forgotten to come but when I could not see her there I was feeling lonely and hallow' Like seriously? lonely and hallow? I could write better than that."


"bullshit! bullshit! bullshit! fuckin' waste of time! It was obvious from the beginning that the motherfucker is gonna kill the girl at the end of the book to create a tragedy!he obviously tries to make u love girl and think how wonderful she is. the girl is meant to die from the beginning cause she is white the best thing that could happen to her is to die.the girl, without the simplest traits of a character. just a "how sweet u are"saying machine. and the man a radio . it was really hard to finish the book, kind of being tortured it was really disgusting to read all those fucked up dialogs about their stupid over raging sexual desire used to call love without any try to look deeper in characters. it was really terrible"

Samuel Beckett - Molloy

"I though i was a big fan of postmodernism until I was told that this is one of the essential texts of the movement."


"Ugh...I made it almost halfway through and gave up. There's no plot, the story is repetitive, disgusting and nothing is ever achieved."


"Most found this book totally irritating and frustrating – just completely aggravating - and one reader had vowed never to read Beckett again. The book was not hateful, but it was repetitive and rambling, with no beginning or end, and nothing achieved.
...
One member, who claimed the eccentricity of always finishing a book once started, found 'Molloy' unfortunately reminded him of 'Ulysses', the one book he had been unable to finish. The critics quoted on his copy referred to Beckett’s remarkable sense of humour, but – with the exception of one remark on page one - he had found nothing humorous. Beckett had severely tested his patience with the first 117 page paragraph, and by five pages devoted to stone-sucking.
...
Another disliked modernism in the novel – which he felt had been an experimental cul de sac from which contemporary novelists had mercifully retreated – and found that 'Molloy' confirmed his prejudices."

READER RESPONSE TIME: HAS ANYBODY EVER ACTUALLY BEEN IN A BOOK GROUP? WHY? WHAT DID YOU DO? DID YOU GET CAUGHT, LIKE, MOLESTING A CHILD? DID YOU EXTERMINATE AN ENTIRE RACE?


"Presumes to lay bare the geriatric mind, but comes nowhere near. Based on the ludicrous proposition that the aging process is hellish and unnatural. Beckett is the true godfather of MTV."


"Becketts turgid prose is virtually unreadable. Beckett is a classic example of someone lionised by the literary mafia for basically parading his neuroses in print; anyone familiar with Becketts background and writing inevitably concudes that for most of his life, Beckettt was quite simply, mentally ill. There are no ideas, no storytelling, just a pervading sense of vacuity and obscurantism, at the heart of all his work."

Hume - A Treatise of Human Nature

"I HATE HUME HIM AND HIS CHANGING BUNDLES OMG"


"i hate hume, berekely, and st. augastine"


"i hate Hume, Locke, Galileo, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and all those stupid philosophers that just liked to smoke a lot of pot and write shit that we have to study like crazy!!"


"David Hume Can Suck, comma, a Dick ... Twice as many commas as necessary. They don't even make sense! It's like he puts in a comma to breathe."


"he talks about a priori even though he is an empiricist"


"I hate Hume and his negative attitude"


"I hate Hume, why does he have to be so sceptical"


"Cause and Effect, or Why Hume Sucks. [EXCERPTED, DEAR READER]
So from the Humean view of cause and effect of a constant correlation between events, we have moved to another view of cause and effect, one of a transfer of energy between between objects during their conjunction. Events cause events when the objects in one event interact with the objects in another event, with events themselves being composed of objects and their energy. So rather than imagining cause and effect as an explanation for the constant conjunction of events, we see cause and effect in the interactions between events, with the necessity of such a conjunction being measured as its energy ... I hope a reader can take my word for it when I note that Hume's philosophical work ... meets both conditions for qualifying as fire-starter material. Perhaps the content of this post may convince that same reader why this is the case."

George Eliot - Silas Marner II

"A book of such staggering ineptitude that I find it hard to believe that it was considered fit to publish. Long, convoluted sentences serve only to prolong the torment of a book that is a tortuously boring read from beginning to end."


"The characters were laughingly unrealistic ... I refuse to accept that this novel was ever popular. It's certainly not something that I would recommend for anyone - except insomniacs, that is, because a surer way of falling asleep other than reading this book has yet to be discovered. AVOID"


"I'd throw it away, but then I'd worry that some homeless person might get stuck reading it"


"Perhaps it is appreciated because of its interesting historical background...but now, it is OLD-FASHIONED ... we've outgrown this and expect more from books these days than a story like this."


"Seems not to have put any sparkle in it! I'm being forced to read this in high-school and it is the dumbest thing I have ever read. If you want to find out about English life in that time, this book is worth a glance, but don't pay for it.just borrow from the library. Oh, and fix the adult form!!!!!! I'm 16 and can't login."


"I think the book is highly overrated and is a book for juveniles except its construction is so difficult it is hard to praise for young readers."


"I can not think of a book that would be of less interest to a teen age american boy than this one."


"blah blah blah
oh my goodness completely boring please dont put your self through this."


"I had to read this book for english class for some dumb reason. First of all it is really slow, secondly, I hardly got anything from this book, all I got was that if you think there is no hope there really is, and you dont have to read a long slow book with fluffy writing to learn that, you've probally heard it bfore anyways DON'T READ IT!"

George Eliot - Silas Marner

"This novel being a classic had a very vast vocabulary, because of this it gave the book more depth and purpose also combining these complex words together added a lot of detail. I think it would be good if this book was revised or edited into a bit more simple version, to make it easier to comprehend on the reader’s part. I would add less outer information that made no sense at all and didn’t add to the book. I would also take out some of the random information, because that makes it harder to focus on the plot and basic scenes of the story ... This book is a higher level of thought and comprehension because of this I would recommend this to college students, newlyweds and those who wish to partake of the sweet spirit of children and find out according to George Eliot how much they shape and mold you."


"I had to read this in high school and it was one of several books that convinced me, at the time, that classics were absolutely worthless."


"George Eliot is tremendously boring and imparticularly a disgrace to female authors."


"One of the worst books ever foisted upon the American people!!"


"Like, gouge my eyes out with a spoon already."


"I absolutely dispised this book and have dicided that if George Elliot were still alive today, I'd have to murder her for having written it."


"its beutiful ilearn how can i leave on earth"


"Queer theorist Lee Edelman's _No Future_ alerted me to this surprisingly slim Eliot novel (1861). He locates the symbol of the Child as the condensation of the 'politics of reproduction,' which means the social order holds up the child as the exalted telos/symbol of our future ('I believe that children are the future,' anyone?). With Edelman's critique of our culture's obsession with children, upon which we stake our hopes of heterosexual. reproductive salvation, I was shocked by the familial conservatism of Eliot's novel. Here's a nauseating sample: 'But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.' Anyone else prefer backwardness?"

YEAH IT'S FUCKING ASTONISHING THAT THIS NOVEL BY A NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH FARMER'S DAUGHTER IS "FAMILIALLY CONSERVATIVE"


"Whatever, people will alwys read boring books and then try to explain why they're not boring, but its only a thinly veiled attempt to feel superior to other people who just can't understand 'good fiction, not that crap that people read nowadays'."


"I felt bored reading it because there are some chapters that is slow and I feel that is not necessary to be there."


"Yeah, yeah, so sad, whatever."