GENTLE READERS: I'M ABOUT TO MOVE INTO A PERIOD OF EXAMINATIONS FOLLOWED BY FAIRLY HEAVY RESEARCH, AND I'M PUTTING THE BLOG ON HIATUS FOR THREE MONTHS. I'LL BE BACK ON THE FIFTH DAY OF THE NEW YEAR TO CHART FURTHER THE HUMAN RACE'S DESCENT INTO BARBARISM -- UNTIL THEN, THANKS FOR READING.
MEANWHILE, ENJOY THE BEST AND WORST OF 2012:
NABOKOV - LOLITA
"I, personally, do no not think that Humbert Humbert's act of giving Lolita sleeping pills is justified, but with a closer analysis, this act can be justified. Humbert Humbert gives Lolita these pills so he can molest her, and Lolita would have no knowledge of it. This can be considered a justified act because this shows that Humbert Humbert cares about the Lolita's sanity and well-being. Who knows what Lolita would think if Humbert Humbert forcefully rape her. Her behavior can show signs of insanity or she can experience unstable conditions. Humbert Humbert is looking out for her well-being by giving her the sleeping pills with the intent of raping her."
CERVANTES - DON QUIXOTE
"What the hell is the big deal about Don Quixote?
And not knowing that he was the master of Sancho Panza? People are shrieking everywhere, OH MY GOD!!!!! U MUST BE TEH ILLITERATEZ IF U DO NOT KNOW WHO HE IS! Jesus, get over your ego-centric westernized world views."
JOYCE - ULYSSES
"Proclaiming this the greatest novel of the 20th century is arguably correct for the technical structure, language use, observation etc but that is like stating Citizen Kane as the greatest film - technically brilliant but does anyone really enjoy or even truely understand it?"
WILLIAM JAMES - THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
"I have a degree and some background in psychology, but I couldn't understand a word of what James Joyce was saying or trying to say, it's so 'thick', and that's unfortunately the way a lot of the top 100 greatest novels read for me; like Ulysses for example. That book was so thick with aulde Englishe, one would need an interpreter or something. My only thought is, what a bunch of stuffy people, those literary 'scholars', who voted many of these books. I am reading all the way through the bible, my objective, but I am also reading and enjoying many of the greatest classic novels as an objective, just to do it. But I don't need to read this book 'varieties..' to gain a single grain of wisdom or whatever. I am a born-again God-Man with a most wonderful life experience. Handcuffed in a police car and at the breaking point, I silently cried out from someplace desperately deep inside, 'O God... Take me out of this world', and true to my prayer, God answered. One day hitchhiking, I met a household of 'brothers' headed by a middle-aged Japanese couple. The Japanese man asked me, 'If you could have a treasure chest, that every time you opened it, there was something new and [exciting], would you take it?' When I looked into his eyes, they were shining, not as if he had been weeping, but glistening as with life and joy. I didn't answer; in fact I put up a fighting argument the whole time, but I stepped out to the curb, and whispered, 'Lord Jesus Christ! If you are real, get me a ride.' Almost instantly, a VW bug pulled over with a young college music student inside and took me home. Another day, I tested again, '.. If you're real, please give me a ride.' A car again pulled over, I got in without saying a word, and the lady handed me some christian gospel tracts, '..Here. Hand these out to people you meet. Praise the Lord.' Again another day, I tested, 'Lord, if you're real..' I got in without saying a word, and the lady exclaimed, '..I just had to pick you up. God told me, 'Pick up my Child'...'"
SHAKESPEARE - HAMLET
"Would've been a good book if the play was revolved around Laertes instead of Hamlet. It would've been based on the same timeline but just from Laertes's point of view. Think about it."
DOSTOEVSKY - CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
"Lessons this book teaches us: 'You are not superiour to other people, do not kill other people, God is the answer to all your problems'
Good. now let's go after some teletabbies."
EMERSON - ESSAYS
"This book was a waste of my time. Not anywhere in his bumbling incoherence did Waldo come up with a single cognitive thought! The shame he has brought upon American society is very disturbing. I mean, his name is WALDO. You know? As in, where's Waldo? Obviously he's very lost. Stay away!"
BEOWULF
"I continue to be amazed at the belief that just because something is written by the British then that in itself makes it a classic and a must read. We freed ourselves from the British government through war and struggle. What do we have to do to free ourselves from their literature, becuase other than The Cantebury Tales and a few poems and epitaphs, British lit is long, boring, tedious and outdated. Not to mention some of the language is unbearable, I find myself having to re-read passages just to understand them. Please free the college undergrads of the world."
KUHN - THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS
"Kuhn started down this path by looking at Aristotle's physics and asked why something that was so 'obviously' wrong could have been conceived by such a brilliant man and not be questioned for such a long time. The obvious answer to anyone with a grasp of history would be that Aristotle wasn't all that smart"
HENRY JAMES - THE TURN OF THE SCREW
"Many people will say: 'you can't judge a 19th-century book according to our 21th century standards'. Good point, but yes, I can."
KIERKEGAARD - REPETITION
"Philosophers are people who like to make life seem more meaningful than it is. We live. We die. End of transaction."
SOPHOCLES - OEDIPUS AT COLONUS
"too simplistic for me ... I expected to be challenged when reading Sophocles. I'm guessing that this was written at a middle school reading level."
NABOKOV - BEND SINISTER
"Pubescent girls have all the features that heterosexual men normally find attractive, including an extra dose of youthfulness. Show me a man, white gentile or otherwise, who does not find them attractive and I will show you a probable homosexual."
HAWTHORNE - THE SCARLET LETTER
"I read this book as part of my background reading on the Gothic for my A level exams, and it left me asking two questions when I'd finished, first, how is this even slightly Gothic?"
LADY MURASAKI - THE TALE OF GENJI
"it gave me headaches from all the words and whatnot. It's like they think i know ALL these stuff."
ARISTOTLE - PHYSICS
"Forget Plato. Forget Aristotle. What about that philosopher know as 'you'?"
"ARISTOTLE WAS AN IDIOT
Aristotelian logic is destroying our world. The world must stop adhering to this old style of logic and begin viewing all things as One if the human race is to survive for any decent length of time.
The way to sidestep around this trap of Aristotle is to see all things as One, with no particular leanings to either end of the pole. Be in the middle. Walk the middle path between the extremes. Observe with a scientific mind all that occurs before you in life."
SHAKESPEARE - A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
"i thought this book was stupid and kinda confusing... its a play and they do a play within a play, um no its just not gonna work out. its a stupid book because there are 3 worlds, none that would ever really be around, and faries are just no longer popular. so if shakesphere was actually a good writer then sure, but this book is just weird."
BERKELEY - THREE DIALOGUES BETWEEN HYLAS AND PHILONOUS
"George Berkeley is an exemplary example of why philosophers are known as crazy ... Claiming that there is no matter and everything we see is perception is unlikely to get you any brownie points."
THE BIBLE
"There's some comedy pieces like this guy Noah who forgot all the dinosaurs and left them to die instead of taking them on his super arc. Must have been a cold-hearted guy and let them drown like the chick in Titanic did to Leo. So did Noah paint the dinosaurs like one of his 'French girls'? ... I think the writers owe George Lucas some money for stealing his idea."
O'CONNOR - A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND
"I wouldn't recommend this book. I picked it up thinking it would give me a great story about a certain man in this world . . . and it squelched my hopes. I have a husband I love dearly and hardly get to see. When I do, I want to appreciate him more vs. find myself dwelling on the negative. This book was not positive and was a waste of my time I felt."
SHELLEY - EPIPSYCHIDION
"Percy Bitch Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822), one of the faggot English Romantic poets and, critically regarded as among the gayest lyric poets in the English language"
DANTE - THE DIVINE COMEDY
"Would Not Make It In Today's World
One of those classics that would not make it in today's world. There are some humorous parts, but the America is so over the edge with its shock culture, such as shock rock, and shock news that it makes this book seem quite dated."
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!!"
HEMINGWAY - A FAREWELL TO ARMS
"This novel reminds me of those rooms with one chair (wooden) and one window (no curtains) which we're supposed to appreciate."
TOLSTOY - ANNA KARENINA
"Almost every night, my husband comes to bed and finds me passed out with a book open and my glasses still on my face. He gently removes the glasses, pulls the book away and sets them both on the nightstand. Last night, he picks up Anna Karenina and the following conversation ensues:
Him - 'That's a big book! Have you really read 500 pages?'
I reply in a sleepy voice, 'yeah. it sucks.'
Him - 'It looks boring as fuck.'
Me - sleepy giggle
He says, 'It looks like some romance/wuthering heights bullshit. You, know, 'stuffy.' In his best uppity Victorian voice, says, 'Anna gets banged in the garden by some honeysuckle.'
Me - cracking up
Him - 'Who wrote that?'
Me - 'Tolstoy'
Together, at the same time, we say, 'War and Peace'
Him - 'Dude is obviously one long-winded motherfucker!'
Me - laughing hysterically. (he has made a valid point!)"
HURSTON - THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
"Am I biased? Yes, completely, I think that the work of women does not compare favorably to what men have achieved in letters ... But there is the converse....I mean, how many great wives, how many good stay-at-home moms have been men?"
HORACE - ARS POETICA
"Its odd that for the first time physics reflects actual life philosophy (not the college coarse you took to have it look good on your transcripts), and yet people are still hung up on these order systems like morality.
Morality is dead.
Nihilism is dead.
Ethic is dead.
And this is all so obvious with QM and string theory, yet yuppie college grads are so presistent with their dead greeks ... Horace was an idiot people, and it would be best to read him to learn to hate him better."
SALINGER - THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
"I am very open minded when it comes to literature (I even read through Mein Kampf without any objection) but I just hated this book!"
WEBER - THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
"The idea that God brings you economic success (and by extension an omnipresent repression of success for others) is because you are part of his 'elite.' It's a Calvinist principle. They believe in predestination, so basically if you are doing well, it's because God wants you to and that makes it okay. Max Weber actually supported that ridiculous belief in his book."
BALDWIN - GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN
"Maybe this book just was not right for me, but I really would not recommend this to anyone who has a cheerful personality. The reader has to enjoy thinking about and pondering ideas in a book"
AUSTEN - PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
"Ohmigod, have I mentioned that I hate Jane Austen?!? I really, really hate Jane Austen. It took me a year to make it through this book. So much talking about nothing. So much of nothing happening in general. Someone enters a room, someone leaves a room.
A couple of notable scenes: Elizabeth Bennett's snappy comments when Darcy slights her and Darcy's lovelorn letter. Guess what? Both are just as good in films. Honestly, even though I teach English, I firmly believe every Jane Austen book makes for a better movie."
MACHIAVELLI - THE PRINCE
"Niccolò Machiavelli was a Big Fat Idiot
Machiavelli's The Prince is a piece of filth. Everything that is wrong in the world today can be directly attributed to this atrocity.
Take, for instance, crime. The basic mentality of most criminals is that crime pays for them, so long as they do not get caught. This philosophy is remarkably similar to that of Machiavelli, and is most likely derived from his work. Machiavelli taught that the end justifies the means. This can be easily interpreted as an encouragement of crime, so much as the criminal was benefiting from the crime he was committing. Criminals thought it was a good deed to murder, steal, loot, pillage, and rape; they perceived themself as making other people proud by vandalizing and slaughtering animals. Without Machiavelli's philosophies, criminals would not feel that they themselves were justified in their actions and all crime today would have been averted.
...
Further evidence of the threat of The Prince is prejudice. The basis for all prejudice is Machiavelli. At one point in his work, he refers to being 'effeminate' as a bad quality, synonymous with being cowardice. Thus, he advocated the belief that men were superior to women. Followers of Machiavelli soon took this belief and expanded it to include all that are not biologically similar to them as being inferior. Before long, people would run down streets, screaming in ignorance, claiming that the star-bellied sneeches or what have you were not true sentient beings, reducing others and themselves to sub-animal status and thus commencing the demise of human civilization.
...
In addition, the work of Machiavelli is the sole cause of poverty. Machiavelli encouraged the rich to keep all their money to themselves; he claimed it was better to be miserly than generous. As a result of this, the gap between the upper and lower classes was increased on both ends. The rich continued to become more lavish and extravagant, shoving their fine coats and money in the faces of the poor, while the poor, cut off from all the donations they would have received, became more miserable, and started smashing stuff in rage. However, since Machiavelli advocated the idea of being feared rather than loved, the upper class thrived off the lower classes fear that they would be slain mercilessly rather than showing love by helping eliminate poverty."
MELVILLE - MOBY-DICK
"Moby Dick is actually a bit of a joke in literary circles. It is poorly written, and it likely would not be published today if it weren’t for its reputation."
ELLISON - INVISIBLE MAN
"I believe this novel was also written as a narrative, retaining the overall quality found within a narration. The author displayed the style of writing with historical accuracy and radical development. Done in a narrative style with a strong sense of time and place, Ellison was aware of his ideas and character's growth throughout the novel. I strongly believe that Ellison was aware of this theme. He displayed it accurately throughout."
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