Sunday, September 30, 2012

THE BEST OF SEPTEMBER

HAWTHORNE - YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN

"Blasphemy against the true woodsman
This short tale, like many of the effervescent Hawthorne's works, exposes the general contempt that dutiful professionals of urbana have against the farmer. Here, a charming young man is afraid to explore the limits of his soul, who must venture the forest to retrieve a lost treasure, but will not, would not all his spirit to traverse the darkened elements.

Several generations of good language arts teacher, of the secondary caliber, are subverting their classes with this work. They had been seduced by the charms of this Harvard-graduates eloquence. Unknowing the true interests of the youth, our cultural shame is that nearby along the shelves is a book written by his neighbour called Walden.

It would benefit the 7th grader to read Thoreau than more than having his teacher's fantasies insinuated through this other work."


SHAKESPEARE - MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

"I did not like this book very much. There was a lot of conflict between characters."


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

"A seminal work in 'race relations' -- a genre that should have been banished to idiocy (along with religion and the death penalty) years ago. What I mean by that is this: there is no such thing as 'race,' and people should realize we are all just *people* and move the hell on."

"The only think this book is about is how black people were treated so badly, I don't feel bad for them because they didn't try to change it."

"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."


FAULKNER - AS I LAY DYING

"makes me cry and shit myself."


CICERO - ORATIONS

"Greeks and Romans were idiots ... Pretty much there's the Greek gods, Zeus and all this other stuff. And pretty much all they do is run around on top of mountains zapping each other with lightning bolts and throwing spears at each other. I mean... really? Not very creative, first of all. Pretty much all they did was bad things, they killed, they tormented, they hurt each other, and it's like what kind of God would want to do that? ... It's stupid. And then the Romans, they're like the kid at school who goes up to the person who always gets Fs and cheats off their test except for changing it just a little bit so that the teacher won't think they're copying. It's like seriously they just take the gods pretty much and just change the names ... And then they copied their architecture, they copied everything. They're so similar. They're so similar that I confuse the Greeks and Romans like every day.
...
It's like what would cause these guys to think of all this? Well, the main cause that I would think of is maybe they're totally insane. Maybe they're just plain idiots.
...
And sure, they might have been smart in like math, but who gives a crap about math? I mean, knowing the basics is good, you need to know the basics, but for a lot of things you're not going to need to know the Pythagorean theorem. Or any confusing stuff. It's like sure maybe it's nice to know, but there's a lot of stuff that's a lot more important than math. It's like, they were frickin... I'm not going to say the words I was going to say. They were idiots, though. They are not smart."

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Cicero - Orations

"I really… really… really want to stab Cicero straight in the freaking testicles."


"THERE’S A REASON WHY THIS LANGUAGE IS DEAD

IT SHOULD NOT BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS WOESIDFLJK"


"Oh, the times! Oh, the morals! Oh, 300 more pages of this!"


"Greeks and Romans were idiots ... Pretty much there's the Greek gods, Zeus and all this other stuff. And pretty much all they do is run around on top of mountains zapping each other with lightning bolts and throwing spears at each other. I mean... really? Not very creative, first of all. Pretty much all they did was bad things, they killed, they tormented, they hurt each other, and it's like what kind of God would want to do that? ... It's stupid. And then the Romans, they're like the kid at school who goes up to the person who always gets Fs and cheats off their test except for changing it just a little bit so that the teacher won't think they're copying. It's like seriously they just take the gods pretty much and just change the names ... And then they copied their architecture, they copied everything. They're so similar. They're so similar that I confuse the Greeks and Romans like every day.
...
It's like what would cause these guys to think of all this? Well, the main cause that I would think of is maybe they're totally insane. Maybe they're just plain idiots.
...
And sure, they might have been smart in like math, but who gives a crap about math? I mean, knowing the basics is good, you need to know the basics, but for a lot of things you're not going to need to know the Pythagorean theorem. Or any confusing stuff. It's like sure maybe it's nice to know, but there's a lot of stuff that's a lot more important than math. It's like, they were frickin... I'm not going to say the words I was going to say. They were idiots, though. They are not smart."

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying III

"The most horrifying, awful reading experience I've ever had."


"makes me cry and shit myself."


"As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. I had a tough time understanding the backwards language of these backwoods people. It was much ado over nothing much ... I could make it out to be much more as many people have but I wouldn’t recommend this book - nothing is to be learned from it today, other perhaps than in his style of writing, which I don’t really care for since I’m a reader and not a writer; however, times were different in 1930 when it was published and it may have been shocking for some then."


"I give this one star, simply because the end was mildly interesting. However, the title of this book has been changed within my house. It is now called As I Lay Dying (Of Boredom)."


"I found it hardly entertaining and I didn't appreciate the 'it's all jumbled and when you're done you're suppose to sit back and think on it forming it logically in your mind' I don't find that amusing. If you write a book I should only do % 25 of the work with is reading what you wrote and understanding all the images because you put them there for me to understand."


"As I Lay Dying was old and static-y. This caused me to miss many pages. Even if I would have read every page i'm not sure if I would have gotten everything. Honestly, there is a point where you are being so dense and mysterious that you are just wasting the readers time."


"I read this book for college and I hated it so much and I was so depressed from reading it that, with only a few days left, I chose a whole other novel rather than write an essay on this book. I don't think I have read anything more depressing than this book, and as a former English major that is saying something."


"I teach literature at university level and I am astounded how this book finds its way onto numerous 'must read' lists that appear on the internet and periodically in print ... How ever you spin it, what ultimately transpires is that for any of the above reasons or others equally illogical, perfectly good texts - especially modern ones, are constantly ignored as white elephants like this go through their umpteenth re-print.

To get down to brass tacks, this book fails for a number of reasons, but amongst those I would cite the following five as being the major points of contention:
i) It is simply VERY boring indeed. A dull tale if ever one was told.
ii) The characters are neither well-established or particularly well-drawn. Faulkner's literary skills presented herein are neither worthy of his acclaim nor his many accolades and awards.
iii) Structurally it is a simple narrative (not necessarily a problem), however, his language (except the odd regional accent) is unchallenging and unprovocative.
iv) It essentially fails to offer the reader anything. No new ideas, no philosophical insights, no social observations and no historical documentary per se. I think I picked out and highlighted about four sentences in the whole book, that I felt were interesting.
v) Finally, it fails to establish a new genre, a new mode of expression. Likewise it also fails to re-establish a current mode or extend and develop a literary style. In plain terms that means it belongs nowhere, has no recognisable nor definable style and yet fails to take new steps in establish a new genre; it is amateurish and unaccomplished.
...
I cannot see one logical or justifiable reason why anyone should waste their time or their money in reading this text. Unless it is prescribed reading, in which case I would question the teachers motivations for electing this a a core or supplementary text. I think if you are studying American Literature, literature of death and dying, family structures etc. there are MUCH better books out there than this."

Monday, September 24, 2012

Nathanael West - Miss Lonelyhearts

"Ugh. What an utterly lousy book."


"What a bizarre book. Maybe it's that it was written so long ago, but I just found so many of the dialogue, scenes, and situations so strange that I didn't get people's responses to anything about 95% of the time."


"Life is bleak. Boo-hoo. Don't read this book unless they force you to do it for school. Avoid like poison otherwise."


"The characters are all supposed to be in deep emotional despair, but it is impossible to connect with them or their pain because so little of their lives is available to us. They are dressed up cardboard, mannequins wearing clothing. In the end, these are people we don't know and don't care about. They are riders on the subway of life. We get on, we notice they are absorbed it their own thoughts, their own pains. But the vision lingers only so long as it takes to exit the next stop. There is nothing there, no connection to remember them by. In the end we just don't care about them. We have our own lives to live. West is not up to the challenge. In all, a very unsatisfying read. Don't buy into the hype."


"a new veiw
while the writers craft may be good, and there are many levels to this story, it is not one to contrive morals from."

Friday, September 21, 2012

Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man IV

"'Invisible Man' is a boring book. The only thing that it's really about is how black people were treated after slavery ... The only think this book is about is how black people were treated so badly, I don't feel bad for them because they didn't try to change it. I think that since the man moved into a free state where they treated black people a little better that he should have done something greater instead of becoming an insirational speaker for some secret organization. All he did was speak infront of people speeche after speech. And all for what?
In the end he gave up, he accepted defeat. He simple accepted something taht he could have changed."


"The narrator really bothered me. Shit just happens to this guy, but I feel like he doesn’t react to it realistically. He completely believes that it’s not his fault, but he never try’s to find out if there’s something he can do about it, or if there is someone behind these events."


"Too bad Mr. Ellison doesn't rise above the hateful messages in his book. He leaves us feeling like he is the black-equivalent of an elderly white racist skinhead."


"Let me start off by saying I am not impressed by this book. And dats all I gots ta say bout dat. yassah. If ever there was a book that should be banned, I think this might be one"


"the message one seems to draw from the book, is that african americans do not matter and cannot overcome racial prejudice. To reach this conclusion takes 580 pages and a myriad of sureal episodes."


"Ellison dehumanizes his white counterparts, believing them to fundamnetally the same."


"The book contains 581 pages. The story could have been well told in half that space, saving countless stress in the process. Sure, the grammar is good, the spelling is faultless, the punctuation is right on."


"this book is really, really, really, really long, and probably not worth the time it takes to read"


"I thought it was going to be mostly about a man isolating himself from the world. To my surprise the book is about a black man and the struggles he endures because of his race. There are many parts of this book that I found upsetting"


"This book is like the whatchamacallit of Frederick Douglas.
Some Black Guy, In sometime, where Black Guys, such as him, are not liked, or paid attention to cause they’re black guys. I can barely get two sentences in each time I read. It’s so close to non-fiction. It’s so boring. Anyone who says it isn’t is dead on the inside. Dead, or dying.
Do you know what 1984(the book we were supposed to read….) is about?
COOL SHIT. About shit-crazed governments controlling people’s ever goddamned move.
Muthafucking COOL SHIT."

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man III

"He needs to learn to control his anger."


"The logical fallacies are so numerous that they discount the entire meaning of the book."


"Uncle Tom's Cabin has largely the same message (though it is perhaps not as stylistically advanced), and has had a far greater impact on the Nation's awareness and treatment of blacks."


"I wanted to shake him! He was such a darned fool who never used his brain and continutally erupted into violent anger. What a waste of a life"


"If Ellison's motivation was to show the crushing effects of racism, then his character should have been less of a self-centered fool"


"How often can you blame others without looking at yourself?"


"I understand the plight, but the book seems sad rather than proactive."


"It is hard to believe that it took all those hardships for him to 'find' himself. Is anyone that naive. I hope not."


"A disturbing portrayal of the perception a black man has of white America. It has not earned a place on my list of favorite novels, but I am pleased that I persevered in my struggle to read this book, and even more in my struggle to write about it."


"I found myself early on with the impression of an unintelligent liar, telling me poor lies and expecting me to believe them because he has already fooled himself into believing them. That impression was confirmed again and again with each subsequent tale. Several times I actually called the book a liar out loud (in manners of speech), putting it down in disgust. The more I read, the more I felt burdened as I have in my life when forced to listen to similarly poor liars, telling me stupid fantasies in an attempt to either impress me or to avoid punishment. Perhaps Mr. Ellison was too clever for me and has actually written a tale told by a dense, pathological liar, to see whether his audience would figure it out."


"As an American historian, I probably should've read it a long time ago. I did not. I found it to be uninteresting"


"It made sense for the protagonist to feel invisible because of how much he was kicked around not only by white society but also by his fellow black 'Brothers.'"


"I bought this because it was required reading for my son's high school English class. He got a few chapters in and said Mom I don't think I should be reading this. I took the book and read about 30 pages before I put it down in disgust. I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination. I am also not religious, so my criticism of this book does not stem from that either. I just think it's way too mature for a high school student. The story is told from the point of view of the 'invisible man' and one passage of the book describes in detail how he gazes upon the naked body of this girl, and how he wants to spit on her nipples and is consumed with desire to kill her. IMO it borders on pornographic. I don't understand how or why this book is considered 'literature' and I told my son he did not have to read it if it made him uncomfortable."


"There is no distinct conclusion."


"I thought this was about the invisible man. i kept wondering when he'd become invisible. disappointing."

Monday, September 17, 2012

Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man II

"T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E. No substance! This is the most boring book ever. I couldn't even concentrate on the sparknotes."


"an inferior and turgid work of literature"


"Very dark book that was a huge waste of my time!!!"


"I did not like this book very much, mainly because the narrator rubbed me the wrong way. He came off as very arrogant and even ignorant ... He is the reason that he is invisible! That really made me angry. However, I did like the perspective of the book, even if an aggravating African American man was the narrator."


"A seminal work in 'race relations' -- a genre that should have been banished to idiocy (along with religion and the death penalty) years ago. What I mean by that is this: there is no such thing as 'race,' and people should realize we are all just *people* and move the hell on."


"I thought that it was extremely difficult to actually be interested in this book because of how predictable the story is. Of course the black community would have been oppressed during the 1930's, and of course blacks would be discriminated against by the white people in the community."


"It's actually just kind of dated and doesn't sufficiently enlighten us from a more color-blind age what the black experience was really like under such systemic racism."


"The speech that gets him into college is insightful/passionate enough"


"I have been trying to get through this one for a year, but I just can't take it anymore. I have officially decided to give up on it at the half-way point. Maybe it has a message or some literary value, but I am just not getting it."


"I was done with it after about 15 pages. Of course, the book is about 350 pages, so that really made for some difficulty in my life when I had to write a 10 page paper on it."

YEAH, SOUNDS LIKE YOU HAD SOME REAL DIFFICULTY IN YOUR LIFE THERE


"I'm afraid my stomach was just too weak for this book. I'm highly effected by imagery and this book nearly knocked me off my feet. There just wasn't enough to justify how long it took me to recover from the reading."


"My hate stems from the fact that we spent nearly a month of class dissecting this book and I was never so miserable in my entire life."


I'M AWARDING A PRIZE TO THIS, POSSIBLY THE MOST MEANINGLESS PARAGRAPH I HAVE EVER READ:

"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."

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man

"First off, he isn't really invisible. That was disappointment enough"


"I don't care about the plot, I don't care about the characters, I hate that he whines and is stupid over and over and over again."


"I don't know what it is. Is it because I'm white? Because I'm 17? Because I live in 21st century suburban Ohio? I'm not sure which reason explains it, but I did not understand this book at all."


"I thought it was a boring topic, and I thought the events that happened in the book were boring. I probably would have liked the book more if I could find a way to relate to it, but I could not."


"Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison was a boring book. Ellison used a lot of big words that sometimes made it hard to understand."


"This book is very confusing to say the least. It travels back into his past and even back to the present day ... I really do not recomend this book to anyone. Its almost sick and very racist page in and page out."


"READERS should be aware that, like what the title implies, this holistic piece of SHIT is all about nothing. while the content of this shit is perhaps a realistic representation of what probably is the world's most desperate attempt to appear descriptive and meaningful, it actually is nothing more than a long, tedious raving of a young man whose sole occupation in life stands alone--forcing meaning into issues that never make you give a damn hoot.you can call me illiterate for failing to recognize whatever merit more 'literate' people have so far managed to unravel in this solid crap, but for my part it's this simple: truly liking this book requires more than just good education and refinement. you have to at least be fucking desperate and pretentious, and perhaps hypnotized, and, on the whole, insane to feel some sort of appreciation for this so-called novel."


"It was okay. I was interesting in reading it because it was the only character from 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' whom I did not know."


"This was not good. Most of the time I spent reading this book was actually spent re-reading parts because I felt like I had missed important facts. Like, since when is the character on a horse? It was not described that he was on a horse and yet suddenly he is being described as jumping down from a horse. Crap like this all through the book."


"As a Caucasian middle class teenage girl, I could not relate to this book nor can I see the importance in the subject matter."


"There is a lot of mature content that I'll just never be old enough to read."


"Gross language and visual scenes. Disturbing uses of the themes in the book. I know the guy was trying to make a point, but other novels do a much more impressive job with symbolism and imagery and yet they STILL enforce the reading of this for school. It's always the same every year, reading a piece of depressing "literature" on black slavery/persecution or the Holocaust. I understand that we need to appreciate and understand the social significance of these time periods, but book after book of the same subject matter? With inappropriate qualities, nonetheless?"

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Shakespeare - Much Ado About Nothing

"Much Ado About Nothing is just another well written 19th century play by William Shakespeare."


"I did not like this book very much. There was a lot of conflict between characters."


"I really didn't get what they were saying (I doubt people actually said stuff like that)"


"Shakespeare wrote some amazing tragedies, but his comedies are basically twee, glorified rom-coms, written for the 'You've Got Mail' and 'Must Love Dogs' demographic as it existed in the 17th century. Absoultely nauseating."


"Let's face it, there aren't too many of Shakespeare's females who kick ass. Yes, we all can name the four or five that don't quite suck (Kat, Portia, Viola, Emilia, etc) but good strong feminine characters were not, it seems, the bard's strong suit. So as you wade through the whiny, conniving, helpless throngs of man worshipping wenches that appear in nearly all Shakespeare plays, it can be tempting to just give up looking for redemption."


"This is the first Shakespearean play I've read outside of an English class and its the first time I've realized why we read Shakespearean plays in English class - they're so damn obvious once you get past the frilly olde English.

Shakespeare's characters explicitly tell the reader the themes of the play in the first act or so. There's little complexity to be unraveled.

Sure there are story twists and surprise encounters, but nothing that challenges your expectations or introduces new ideas. The twists and turns are shallow at best and more akin to those of a soap opera than a great novel.
...
American schools should not rely on Shakespeare as much as they do. Sure its nice to introduce students to his creative use of language but how much will they really learn from the stories?

American students would be much better prepared for college and life were they exposed to books on great ideas. I'm talking about Plato, Ayn Rand, Asimov, Frank Herbert, and all the other great authors who base their books in ideas."

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Herman Melville - Moby-Dick V

"What kind of horrible, unreadable, nasty piece of trash is this and why do they make kids read this. I couldn't even get through the Cliff Notes it was that bad."


"I read this book as a challenge to myself. That is why I literally have no one to blame but myeslf.

I thought this would be interesting. I was wrong. This HAS to be THE most boring book EVER.

I waded through 300 hundred fricking pages of some of the most boring drivel ever created. Seriously Herman did you have to go to so much painstaking detail. After 100 pages I wouldn't have held it against you if you left one freaking detail as a mystery. But I persevered. Then when the whale finally shows it's big ass up, I get a page and a half of the whale kicking their asses. Seriously Herman? Seriously?

In conclusion this was a waste of time."


"Quite poorly written, it's read nowadays just to read it. Ahab turned his life into revenge. He could have chosen to get over it and live his life - instead, he devotes himself to a futile, desperate pursuit of revenge."


"Is there any chance that this book would get across an editor’s desk in its current state today? We think not — all the good stuff is buried under Melville’s endless self-indulgent verbiage. In our literary culture, the book has become a behemoth to slay in itself, and such a quest would obviously be cheapened by skipping all the bits about the specifics of whaling tools, but that said, wouldn’t it actually be a better book if those were left out?"


"Shouldn't be a classic. We all decided it was regardless of literary quality."


"I have to admit I hated this book too. I started calling it 'Everything you ever wanted to know about whaling and were afraid to ask' and then I didn’t finish it."


"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."


"When you have college professors telling you to skip chapters(which happened to me), then something is obviously not right. The story itself is definitely a classic, but it needed a good editor to strip out the chapters on whale biology and the entire chapter dedicated to his bowl of soup."

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince III

"a glymps into the undeveloped human min"


"Personaly i didnt like it a all because its is extremely boring. All it seems to be is a long essay that rambles on and on."


"This is probably one of the most backwards and boring books I've ever read. It is a complete waist of time, unless you plan on becoming some sort of ruler, and even then I'd pass it up. Steer clear of this one."


"Piece of trash!
this book is the most confusing & stupid book i have ever read! ... i hate this book i wish it would die!"


"this book isn't that bad... i mean... i've never read a book like this. this book talked of how a prince is suppose to act and stuff! ow gosh... this was a very boring book.... maybe fun and interesting for those with a mind for conquering or trying to persuade people to love them... great for political people.... but for me... and i maybe speakin for others... this was a very boring book.... I don't like the way Machiavelli wrote this... this was just to help him with his reputation... i guess i don't think very brillantely.... well... it was ok... but not good to read just for fun.. cuz it's not fun..."


"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."

Friday, September 7, 2012

Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince II

"Coming in at just over 100 pages this was probably the hardest read.. ever."


"While I think that some people may still subscribe to a lot of his war mongering and deceitful ways I don't think anyone would classify someone like that as a good leader today."


"I disagree with his assertion that all men are inherently selfish and wicked. I don't think this is a particularly sophisticated view of mankind."


"It was filled with archane references to Italian lords of little import that I had never heard of."


"I have decided that he fits in my catagory of 'Thats Wacked'"


"Kill 'em all, better to be feared. There I just saved you some time."


"I think he is evil. =D"


"Among his many recommendations to the Prince, Machiavelli suggests that the Prince order his armies to slaughter any people who have before tasted freedom. For, as he argues, they will always rise against a ruler who would oppress them.

From such a recommendation, is it not apparent that Mr. Machiavelli would like to see mankind enslaved, rather than free? Despite this, Machiavelli is often praised for his candidness and pragmatism!"


"Just because he makes a lot of good points, doesn't mean I have to like it. Machiavelli was a pessimistic jerk."


"I learned not to use run-on sentences like Machiavelli did. Boring."


"thought it would be better but turned into typical philisophical drivel."


"most of this book is nothing more than a history lesson. Overrated.........."


"What you should know is once you start reading this book, you will find tha language very hard to understank, and if you did bad on the SAT, your in tough luck. Good luck to those who will try to read 'The Beast.'"


"All I can say about those who have praised this book is that they surely must be more intelligent than I."

THAT'S ALL I'M ASKING; THAT YOU ADMIT IT

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince

"Well, you probably know about this book. Now, I'm sure that I could have read it much more closely and come up with some very interesting material to think about. But honestly- it's just not that interesting ... without knowing the context of the stories he tells it's difficult to know why I should care."


"It was too hard to read and irrelevant to me"


"It didn't help that the gentleman reading the book had a very deep voice. It was well below the range to keep me engaged in the book."


"Maybe if he was spanked more when he was 'The Little Prince' he wouldn't have grown up so annoying. A grown man wrote this? Thinks more highly of himself than anyone else possibly could, for no good reason. Definitely has 'mommy issues.'"


"The main flaw of it in my opinion was that it relied to heavily on historical examples that most people today have don't know of and has to explain them"


"I will admit it - I didn't finish this book. I really found nothing interesting in this book at all ... I read it now because I have a group o f students reading it for a presentation and I htought that I should really know exactly what was in the book. I read the first 70 pages and then just skimmed the rest."


"I got through six and a half chapters and realized that I couldn't repeat anything because I wasn't even paying attention. I'm not sure there was even a plot."


"INCOMPREHENSIBLE.

Recommendation: Don’t bother."



~DEEP INSIGHTS CORNER~

"So, what I learned about Machiavelli that they probably don't teach in school is this:
1- He was as selfish as a person can be and only looked out for himself.
2- He was a fake and a phony.
3- He had no pride, dignity or self-respect.
4- He was a butt-kisser and a suck-up.
If Machiavelli was alive today his profession would be corrupt politician."


"I don't say this lightly, I do not say this in jest, I have had years to think about this review, I have held this opinion your years and have told anyone that will listen to me, I hope that you grasp the gravity when I say:

This is one of the worst books I have ever read.

I'll spoil it for you:

The Prince is right.
You are wrong.

Now you don't need to buy this trite book."

Monday, September 3, 2012

Sophocles - Philoctetes

"the ending was a bit of a cop-out"


"I'm beginning to believe that the use of the Deus Ex Machina is just a sign of the lack of faith that writers have in characters ... Sophoclese got tired of writing the story and just decided to tell his characters what to do."


"it took over a year to re-read. Also? You can't make me read it again. Not ever."


"Depressing play basically"

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Young Goodman Brown

"Still don't think he can write good stories for crap"


"I don't like the way the author made the horror atmosphere..:p"


"Blasphemy against the true woodsman
This short tale, like many of the effervescent Hawthorne's works, exposes the general contempt that dutiful professionals of urbana have against the farmer. Here, a charming young man is afraid to explore the limits of his soul, who must venture the forest to retrieve a lost treasure, but will not, would not all his spirit to traverse the darkened elements.

Several generations of good language arts teacher, of the secondary caliber, are subverting their classes with this work. They had been seduced by the charms of this Harvard-graduates eloquence. Unknowing the true interests of the youth, our cultural shame is that nearby along the shelves is a book written by his neighbour called Walden.

It would benefit the 7th grader to read Thoreau than more than having his teacher's fantasies insinuated through this other work."