DOSTOEVSKY - CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
"I really don't care about a bunch of Russians view on politics and right and wrong because I see all of their views as incorrect to the foundations of our society."
GREENE - THE QUIET AMERICAN
"I understand that criticism of America's mistakes during the Vietnam war is deserved. We made many sad mistakes. But I don't like Americans being criticized for their idealism, their innocence, virtue, or dedication to the spread of democracy ... I believe that though Americans have made many mistakes, America is still the best neighbor of any country on the planet. America's strength keeps many tyrants at bay."
DESCARTES - MEDITATIONS
"I've been rereading this while rereading LOTR, and I cannot help hearing Descartes as Morgoth, Sauron, Saruman, or any number of other characters who look at reality as something to be conquered and bent to one's will."
SHAKESPEARE - MACBETH
"One of the most horrible books I have had the pleasure to read.
I mean, this is the crap that makes people my age despise reading. People need to learn yesterday's classics can't even match the crappy teen books of today.
Get me some work from Shakespeare that is at least Dean Koontz level, then get back to me when he gets a character at least even with Koontz's Vess."
"it's just not portayed well at all. Im pretty sure it took Macbeth two pages to stab Duncan. I'm an ameteur writer myself and when someone in my book gets stabbed, it takes about this much space:'I Stabbed him.' It's not that hard!"
HELLER - CATCH-22
"Heck, I even contemplated putting up a sign where the book is displayed in the bookstore, saying 'DON'T BUY THIS BOOK' were it not for my law-abiding morally-right sensitivities."
MORRISON - SULA
"Primarily, I think it is a ronchy story which I don't care for - even if it does portray a certain culture and way of life. It (the ronchy way of living) shouldn't exist any more and the characters habits and ways of living should be tamed ... the way these African-Americans people live is atrocious and appalling. I can't believe that people live like this. If this is close to realistic then we've got a problem with society. We should all be worried with people living like animals."
ACHEBE - THINGS FALL APART
"The climax seemed to be the author taking out his personal dislike of white people and Christians, which, as a white Christian, I didn't appreciate. I'm tired of hearing about how horrible white people are all the time. If we were a society that was truly about promoting equality, we would stop constantly slamming the whites."
FITZGERALD - THE GREAT GATSBY
"It's a shame this book is 'required reading' for all freshmen at the high school where I teach. No wonder the vast majority of my students believe they 'hate to read.' Though thoughtfully written, I could not connect with the author, relate to the characters, or appreciate the content as a 35 year old, and compared to a 14 year old American teenager, I have many more life experiences, much more background knowledge, and college level history classes under my belt to help me connect or even enjoy this novel.
So many of my students are not reading on grade level, and this text is what we are assigning them to read? What a horrible advertisement for reading and English classes in general. I had to force myself through the last 10 pages and I don't feel better educated or smarter for having done so. My poor students!"
NORTHROP FRYE - ANATOMY OF CRITICISM
"Frye was a man second rate at best who bluffed the gullible with obscure complexities. For a man who never wrote a memorable poem, or a novel, or a play, it is a wonder he could ever in a logical world be seen as an expert in literature. QED."
THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH
"all of the things that happen are impossible. there is no way that they actually saw gods. personally, i didnt like this book"
Friday, August 30, 2013
Thursday, August 29, 2013
The Epic of Gilgamesh III
"If it were my type of book then I may have liked it."
"This epic poem is certainly exaggerated"
"all of the things that happen are impossible. there is no way that they actually saw gods. personally, i didnt like this book"
"LOVE GREEK MYTHOLOGY"
"written in very old style English."
"It felt like I was reading the world's first soap opera script ... Warning: the behavior of most characters is pretty skanky."
"I wish I could give this book 0 stars. I don't really know what the point of printing this book was; half of it was unfinished anyway. Extremely pointless and incomprehensible. Also the most repetitive book ever. You could skip half the chapter and still only be at the beginning of the book. Didn't really understand any of it and I'm glad to be done with it"
"teacher claimed it was 'shit literature'."
"There just didn't seem to be anything going on here: man is born, slays enemy, searches for meaning, dies."
"As with most things (comedy,drama, movies, plays, music, etc.) my/our tastes change over time and it takes more, or better, than the last to stimulate us. I keep telling myself that anyway. For example, thousands of years from now someone may feel the exact same way about (insert favorite book here) as I do about Gilgamesh. Hard to believe, but I'm sure mental and creative stimulation will be on a whole new level."
"This epic poem is certainly exaggerated"
"all of the things that happen are impossible. there is no way that they actually saw gods. personally, i didnt like this book"
"LOVE GREEK MYTHOLOGY"
"written in very old style English."
"It felt like I was reading the world's first soap opera script ... Warning: the behavior of most characters is pretty skanky."
"I wish I could give this book 0 stars. I don't really know what the point of printing this book was; half of it was unfinished anyway. Extremely pointless and incomprehensible. Also the most repetitive book ever. You could skip half the chapter and still only be at the beginning of the book. Didn't really understand any of it and I'm glad to be done with it"
"teacher claimed it was 'shit literature'."
"There just didn't seem to be anything going on here: man is born, slays enemy, searches for meaning, dies."
"As with most things (comedy,drama, movies, plays, music, etc.) my/our tastes change over time and it takes more, or better, than the last to stimulate us. I keep telling myself that anyway. For example, thousands of years from now someone may feel the exact same way about (insert favorite book here) as I do about Gilgamesh. Hard to believe, but I'm sure mental and creative stimulation will be on a whole new level."
Monday, August 26, 2013
Murasaki Shikibu - The Tale of Genji III
"I absolutely detested every moment of reading this book. I only read it because it's on the '1001 Books you Need to Read Before you Die'. Whilst this list of books has helped me to discover books I love and may never have otherwise read ... there are pitfalls such as this dull book. I think, perhaps, that it was added to prove that the East also has a long history of the novel form, but I don't think I really needed to know that before I shuffle off this mortal coil."
"I suppose when you're an aristocratic lady in ancient Japan, there wasn't much else to do but write! ... You can tell as she starts out that she hasn't quite realized how to write for the first couple chapters ... I guess this was written for a bunch of bored, rich ladies to read together and coo and fawn over."
"given that it's 'the first novel' I'll not award only one star, but... lordy this book is repetitive and dreary. I occasionally pick it up and read a wee bit at random and for a little while can enjoy, but that seems to be the only way to appreciate. I recall having an argument about whether the first piece of computer music which I think was by ben johnston was any kind of music at all, in fact, and have to shake my head at peoples' self delusional capacities to hold this novel as being 'still one of the greatest' as it's value seems mainly in the accident of its initiation of an inevitable long form of prose literature"
"i found it to be intensely...boring. the book is extremely long, even by my standards, and the stroryline is repeitive and essentially is a chrnicle of the affairs of the prince and his son. we learn of nothing else"
"I can well appreciate the lords and ladies fascination with the Tale of Genji. Back in the early 60′s, I think, the first night time soap opera, Peyton Place, came to Boston. There was premarital sex going on, not show on the screen of course."
"hahaaha
It seems like Genji Monogatari is the greatest book Japanese have written. To me it is like those pornographic tales, just that the characters in Genji Monogatari are all royal."
"I have to admit that I really don't like The Tale of Genji all that much. It is, essentially, a big soap-opera written for Heian court women. I find claims that it is insightful into human nature or an examination of the human condition somewhat dubious ... Some people consider The Tale of Genji to be the Japanese national epic, but I have a serious bone to pick with that.
I do not believe Genji can be compared to the national epics of other cultures, such as The Iliad, Le Chanson de Roland, or The Niebelungenlied, because it doesn't possess the same sort of character as those epics. Indeed, Genji isn't even a poem, while the others are.
My knowledge of Japanese literature, however, is quite limited. I'd like to believe that the Japanese would have a national epic, but what it would be, I don't know.
All-in-all, The Tale of Genji may be a fascinating look into Heian court-life, but I cannot help but question it's validity as an epic and seminal work in Japanese literature. It is simply the earliest surviving work that we know of, so far as I can tell."
"The _Tale of Genji_ is indisputably the most boring novel I've ever read. This is no exaggeration: it was only because of its towering stature in Japanese literature and an inertia fueled by disbelief -- this is a classic? -- that I finished it; anything else this unpleasant to read I would have put down long before the ending."
"I suppose when you're an aristocratic lady in ancient Japan, there wasn't much else to do but write! ... You can tell as she starts out that she hasn't quite realized how to write for the first couple chapters ... I guess this was written for a bunch of bored, rich ladies to read together and coo and fawn over."
"given that it's 'the first novel' I'll not award only one star, but... lordy this book is repetitive and dreary. I occasionally pick it up and read a wee bit at random and for a little while can enjoy, but that seems to be the only way to appreciate. I recall having an argument about whether the first piece of computer music which I think was by ben johnston was any kind of music at all, in fact, and have to shake my head at peoples' self delusional capacities to hold this novel as being 'still one of the greatest' as it's value seems mainly in the accident of its initiation of an inevitable long form of prose literature"
"i found it to be intensely...boring. the book is extremely long, even by my standards, and the stroryline is repeitive and essentially is a chrnicle of the affairs of the prince and his son. we learn of nothing else"
"I can well appreciate the lords and ladies fascination with the Tale of Genji. Back in the early 60′s, I think, the first night time soap opera, Peyton Place, came to Boston. There was premarital sex going on, not show on the screen of course."
"hahaaha
It seems like Genji Monogatari is the greatest book Japanese have written. To me it is like those pornographic tales, just that the characters in Genji Monogatari are all royal."
"I have to admit that I really don't like The Tale of Genji all that much. It is, essentially, a big soap-opera written for Heian court women. I find claims that it is insightful into human nature or an examination of the human condition somewhat dubious ... Some people consider The Tale of Genji to be the Japanese national epic, but I have a serious bone to pick with that.
I do not believe Genji can be compared to the national epics of other cultures, such as The Iliad, Le Chanson de Roland, or The Niebelungenlied, because it doesn't possess the same sort of character as those epics. Indeed, Genji isn't even a poem, while the others are.
My knowledge of Japanese literature, however, is quite limited. I'd like to believe that the Japanese would have a national epic, but what it would be, I don't know.
All-in-all, The Tale of Genji may be a fascinating look into Heian court-life, but I cannot help but question it's validity as an epic and seminal work in Japanese literature. It is simply the earliest surviving work that we know of, so far as I can tell."
"The _Tale of Genji_ is indisputably the most boring novel I've ever read. This is no exaggeration: it was only because of its towering stature in Japanese literature and an inertia fueled by disbelief -- this is a classic? -- that I finished it; anything else this unpleasant to read I would have put down long before the ending."
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