Reading? Still Sexy: Books Part IV

[corianderstem]

Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs

I've liked his past books; some have been outright hilarious. This one was a weird mishmash of amusing, stories where he came out looking like a total dick, and stories that were just sad.

 

[LemonMelon]

The more I write, and the more books I find that I love, the more I realize that James Joyce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot and basically every windbag I was forced to read in high school is just awful.

Perhaps I'm at the punk rock phase of my journey in literature.

 

[martha]

There's nothing wrong with George Eliot.

Now Henry James; there's EVERYTHING wrong with him.

 

[Rachel D.]

Now Henry James; there's EVERYTHING wrong with him.

I just shuddered a little remembering my American Literature class in college. We had to read "The Beast in the Jungle." I couldn't finish it. I think that was the story where I fell asleep and woke up with my face planted in the book.

 

[Mr. Green Eyes]

Now Henry James; there's EVERYTHING wrong with him.

I was lucky that I only had to read him once. It was What Maisie Knew. Well, I'll tell ya what she knew, Maisie knew that life sucked and that the adults in her life would pretty much always let her down/abandon her. Oh, how I despised that book!!

 

[LemonMelon]

My experiences with 19th century literary realism have been fucking awful.

 

[martha]

College can really kill literature.

 

[LemonMelon]

High school was considerably worse, but college hasn't exactly convinced me that forcing young, impressionable readers to trudge through 300+ page books (arbitrarily chosen by the committee behind the Western Canon) on a strict schedule is a good way to help them appreciate literature.

It has inspired me to write novels I find more interesting, however.

 

[martha]

That's good! That last part anyway.

I was in Honors/AP English all through high school and was an English Lit. major, and I still loved it. But I think some departments are worse than others. We had some pretty good instructors at CSULB in the last century, so I felt fortunate.

 

[LemonMelon]

The Things They Carried and The Monkeywrench Gang are the two real favorites that have been required reading in my years of college. The latter is trashy fun, while the former moved me very deeply.

As for worst, well, let's expand it to high school...I really can't decide between Silas Marner and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. They're both unbelievably fucking awful, but I have to go with Portrait because I don't think I ever finished Silas Marner and, for all I know, the book got awesome in the last few chapters. Also, Stephen Dedalus is a useless piece of shit. He's as bitchy and introspective as Bella Swan, but he knows how to read a thesaurus. Baaaaaaaaaad combination.

 

[IWasBored]

College can really kill literature.

High school is worse. Or maybe college would have killed things for me if I had ever been able to get into more than one lit class (and it was 80% books I'd already read, 1984, brave new world, that electric sheep one that blade runner was based off of, and some other stuff). Only Henry James I ever read was in high school, skimmed at the tail end of an all-nighter about which I somehow wrote a 3 paged paper at five am before I had to catch the bus for 7...it doesn't mean much if I say I have almost no recollection of this, since it was about 14 years ago, however I didn't really remember writing it by the time I got to class, either. Boring as hell.

 

[IWasBored]

The Things They Carried and The Monkeywrench Gang are the two real favorites that have been required reading in my years of college. The latter is trashy fun, while the former moved me very deeply.

As for worst, well, let's expand it to high school...I really can't decide between Silas Marner and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. They're both unbelievably fucking awful, but I have to go with Portrait because I don't think I ever finished Silas Marner and, for all I know, the book got awesome in the last few chapters. Also, Stephen Dedalus is a useless piece of shit. He's as bitchy and introspective as Bella Swan, but he knows how to read a thesaurus. Baaaaaaaaaad combination.

Bah. I liked portrait. But I also read it because I honestly enjoy Joyce, and never touched the stuff in school. Over-analyzing stuff to death will kill anything, and if id been forced to write a paper ever, id have wanted to exhume his body just to burn it or something. There is nothing bloated about "the dead" ( I guess it's hard for a short story to be too bloated, but then again, Stephen king exists), and I still think John Huston's movie adaptation is one of the best movies that came from literature that shouldn't even kind of work as a film.

 

[martha]

There is nothing bloated about "the dead" ( I guess it's hard for a short story to be too bloated, but then again, Stephen king exists), and I still think John Huston's movie adaptation is one of the best movies that came from literature that shouldn't even kind of work as a film.

Yes.

 

[LemonMelon]

Over-analyzing stuff to death will kill anything, and if id been forced to write a paper ever, id have wanted to exhume his body just to burn it or something.

Oh, I was. And we went over it in class twice a week. That's got to be the most quiet I've ever been in a classroom, because I had nothing kind to say. Perhaps the issue is that I'm a simpleton, because it felt like it took days to unpack every paragraph. Since I didn't have time for that, I got nothing out of it.

Lit class sophomore year blew because the quizzes would sometimes have these baffling, insignificant questions to "prove" that we had read the chapters. I already struggled with Red Badge of Courage (stretches of it dragged terribly and I hated the ending, though it had some evocative imagery), but when I was asked about where one specific jackass was standing in chapter 4 and why and what it meant I wanted to stab my writing implement through the paper.

This is why I'm in publishing instead of majoring in literature. There's a fine line.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

Lit class sophomore year blew because the quizzes would sometimes have these baffling, insignificant questions to "prove" that we had read the chapters. I already struggled with Red Badge of Courage (stretches of it dragged terribly and I hated the ending, though it had some evocative imagery), but when I was asked about where one specific jackass was standing in chapter 4 and why and what it meant I wanted to stab my writing implement through the paper.

I. HATED. Those. Assignments. Absolutely despised doing them. You could flip to the specific chapter/page, find the answer, and write it down, didn't mean you actually learned anything from it. And like you said, every last single thing had to have some sort of meaning to it. I like a good discussion of a story, and analysis every now and again is fine, too, and worthwhile. But most of these writers wrote this stuff when they were in the throes of some insane episode or drunken stupor or flat out high on drugs at the time or something, so really, who knows what the hell they meant, if anything, with their stories? Not everything has to have loaded meaning. Sometimes a story is just that: a story.

That being said, if I were going to personally pick a means to discuss literature, I was much more into the class discussion stuff. Which is funny, given I've never been the talkative sort in school. But if a topic genuinely interests me, I'll chime in. Plus, even if I don't have any particular thoughts on the story, I like hearing what others thought of it, if they liked it or hated it and what they took away from it, if anything. I just like hearing people's opinions on things. And I hated it when teachers would dock kids for not speaking up in class. Maybe they're just shy. Maybe they're gathering their thoughts. Maybe writing it out helps them share things better. Or maybe they're just not in the mood to talk, who knows? Don't make a big thing out of how not talking about the book automatically means they're not reading it/interested in participating in class.

 

[LemonMelon]

Class discussion is a funny thing. Most of the time, I've found it's more harm than good, but I really applaud professors who stick with it (without docking students who don't cooperate, yeah). It's so much easier to zone out and listen to a professor lecture, but I couldn't engage with the book in that capacity. Come to think of it, I've never had a literature class like that. Sounds like a living hell.


My goal as a writer is to gain so much clout and support from the literary community that I could write something like Finnegans Wake. Not exactly like Finnegans Wake, because I would want to have more fun with it than Joyce did, but I might perhaps invent a unique language for my characters (inspired maybe by an actual dialect, but probably not) and fashion a non-plot that could possibly be 25 different plots, depending on how you read it, or what level of sunlight you're in.

 

[cobl04]

I actually haven't read all that much, which is a shame. And probably detrimental to me as well. But I was burned by a number of books... Jane Austen is fucking awful, I'd volunteer for a frontal lobotomy before I'd read one of her books in full and a few others that just drag on much longer than need be. I also hate poetry. Nothing I hated more than taking a verse of ridiculously dense and verbose writing and trying to dissect it. Apologies to those who enjoy it. Any of you ever read John Dunne? "Metaphysical" poet who was a sex fiend before he became a clergyman. My yr12 lit teacher loved him.

Class discussion though was probably my favourite thing about high school, outside of chilling with friends of course. Always looked forward to it. One of my favourite books is Regeneration by Pat Barker. It's about soldiers who developed mental problems in the first world war. It moves at about half the speed of an iceberg, which is why I originally hated it; class discussion, closer reading and appreciation then opened my eyes to a pretty incredible novel.

 

[LemonMelon]

Donne? Yeah, I've read Donne. Too much fire and brimstone for me these days, too much self-loathing. Christians really have no right to feel that way, whatever the Old Testament tells them. It's all a bit sad. But he has written a few things that make my heart jump into my throat, so that's valuable.

I like prose more than poetry though.

 

[cobl04]

I did kind of like At The Round Earth's Imagined Corners. But there's just far too many metaphors and all the rest of it packed into poetry for me to enjoy it. If I read five lines I don't want to spend the next 20 minutes trying to decipher it.

 

[Rachel D.]

I took some Honors literature classes my first two years of college, and that basically meant that the professors thought they had to make us write papers and research projects all the time. Those classes scarred me for life and now the idea of a research paper gives me a stress headache just thinking about it.

My instructors in those classes seemed like intellectual snobs who thought that they were special because they liked reading things that other people couldn't stand, so their students had to read them, too. I didn't mind class discussions if they were about something interesting, but one of my teachers would say "OK, let's begin our discussion," and then just talk the whole time and tell us to be quiet because he was talking. His class ruined Shakespeare for me. I somehow got through the essay test over The Twelfth Night even though I never finished reading it.

This discussion is bringing back repressed memories... Volpone... The Canterbury Tales...

But the second half of college was better and at a different school. I took a regular literature class and we read a lot of Vietnam War stories and poetry. Someone else mentioned The Things They Carried, which we read in that class. That was an intense read.

 

[cobl04]

There's another famous writer I couldn't give a fuck about, Shakespeare.

What do we think of Greek writing? Like Sophocles?

 

[the tourist]

I took British Literature in high school. Our teacher had 30 books on his shelf by British authors. None of us could read the same book. 1984 was on that shelf. So was Brave New World. The Two Towers. The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. By bad luck, I picked last (it would have been either last or first depending on which side of the classroom the teacher started at). What did I get stuck with? Fucking Vanity Fair. We had 2 weeks to read these books and turn in a 5+ page essay where we had to pick something about the book, make the idea our own, and sell it to the teacher. Fuck that shit. I mean, I got an A, but fuck that shit.

 

[corianderstem]

London: The Novel by Edward Rutherford.

I think the title needs an exclamation point at the end.

1100 pages of chapters spanning British history, from the pre-Roman Celts to a brief segment from the 1990s. Each chapter is about a group of folks, each somehow continuing their family trees throughout the century, and their tale about whatever historical event is going on at that time.

It held me until about halfway through, when my brain got tired of keeping the various family trees straight, and having to switch to new characters and scenarios every 50-100 pages.

I would like to try him again; he has a similar sprawling novel about New York City.

 

[Pearl]

Edward Rutherford writes a lot like that - historical fiction about a group of families in a city or country and their connections to the major events in that place.

I read "Princes of Ireland: The Dublin Saga". That I don't recommend because I found the writing to be quite dry and boring. But I do want to try the NYC book.

 

[corianderstem]

Yeah, I tried his Russia book and didn't get more than 100 pages into it. But after even that little bit, I knew that all his other books would be the same.

 

[ladyfreckles]

I took some Honors literature classes my first two years of college, and that basically meant that the professors thought they had to make us write papers and research projects all the time. Those classes scarred me for life and now the idea of a research paper gives me a stress headache just thinking about it.

My instructors in those classes seemed like intellectual snobs who thought that they were special because they liked reading things that other people couldn't stand, so their students had to read them, too. I didn't mind class discussions if they were about something interesting, but one of my teachers would say "OK, let's begin our discussion," and then just talk the whole time and tell us to be quiet because he was talking. His class ruined Shakespeare for me. I somehow got through the essay test over The Twelfth Night even though I never finished reading it.

This discussion is bringing back repressed memories... Volpone... The Canterbury Tales...

But the second half of college was better and at a different school. I took a regular literature class and we read a lot of Vietnam War stories and poetry. Someone else mentioned The Things They Carried, which we read in that class. That was an intense read.

Nothing against literature majors, but I was a promising "writer" prospect back in high school (honors, taking advanced classes, editor of a local magazine, had several articles published already) and my dad told me straight up that he'd disown me if I tried to get a major in Literature. To me, it's always been a skill. There are people who are excellent writers and people who will never be able to do more than write essays for class.

You don't need a degree in writing to write. None of my favorite authors went to college for literature. They had a gift. Lit classes can be fun though, especially when studying material that nobody else has even heard about. You know, stuff that you can't even find in your local library because it's so old. It's fun to be exposed to that, but that's a hobby, not something valuable to spend four years and $100,000 studying.

 

[cobl04]

Yeah, as much as I've enjoyed my creative writing classes at uni, I've always felt they were a little redundant in some ways, because writing and reading is so subjective. What works for one person will be a waste of time for someone else.

 

[corianderstem]

I can honestly say that I learned more about writing from my olden days writing fanfic on the internet than I did in any of the several creative writing courses I took in college.

 

[IWasBored]

I can honestly say that I learned more about writing from my olden days writing fanfic on the internet than I did in any of the several creative writing courses I took in college.

I can believe that.

 

[Rachel D.]

I hate writing, so I just minored in literature for two years because I like to read. When I went to a four-year college, the literature classes were designed for literature majors, so they really didn't want me in there. I didn't want to write 20-page research papers, anyway.