The most annoying unreadable literature of all time

[PeterG]

The most annoying unreadable novels/plays I've ever read or tried to read:

1. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
2. The Alchemist- Paulo Coelho
3. The Lord of the Rings (first book) - Tolkein
4. The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
5. Silas Marner - George Elliot
6. Endgame - Samuel Beckett (pains me to have a great Irish writer on this list, but there you have it)
7. Magic Cottage - James Herbert
8. The Tommyknockers -Stephen King

ALSO but not only:

Everything else I've ever read by Tolkein
Henry James - pick a title!
Some Steinbeck, some Hemingway
Most of the stuff written by most of those English women in the 18th and 19th centuries: Brontes, Austen, Elliot, (Mary Shelley the notable exception)

[Facelift]

Wow, I think that Moby Dick is one of the greatest things I've ever read. The writing is so phenomenal, "Shakespearan prose" is sometimes the only way I can describe it.

The worst of the classics, IMO, is To the Lighthouse. It reads like a precocious 9th grader just discovered Faulkner.

[Jymbot]

Certainly not annoying or unreadable, but the most difficult read for myself was Wyndham Lewis' wonderful "The Childermass".

.....
I took a university course on contemporary AMERICAN literature (because there was pretty well no choice that year for anything else). It was ALL annoying / uninteresting.

The Norman Mailer book was just interminable "fuck this, fuck that".

Clown-professor put this course together.

[PeterG]

I've tried lots of Normal Mailer, disliked it all, with one exception, The Gospel According to the Son - that is a good read.

[PeterG]

Wow, I think that Moby Dick is one of the greatest things I've ever read. The writing is so phenomenal,

Hey Pal, don't come round here praising what other people dislike Go to the other thread if you want to be nice about books.

[Rael]

If I hadn't taken a seminar on James Joyce, I would have nominated "Ulysses". But I learned to like it; if you can handle Joyce, you can pretty much handle anything.

[3LockBox]

F. Scott Fitzgerald

[firth5th]

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I read The Great Gatsby for the first time recently, but didn't see what the "hub bub" was all about. It's not a bad book, but I don't quite see why it is considered one of the greatest.

Just curious though, what do you not like about Fitzgerald?

[Baribrotzer]

For a college literature course, I was once forced to read Madame Bovary.

In case you aren't aware, this work is considered, by most people in the know, to be The Greatest Novel Of All Time. I found it intolerable. Not for the prose - which is after all, a translation, although the original is supposedly written in incomparably brilliant French, and is said to be virtually impossible to translate, especially into so blunt, crude, and unfitting an instrument as English. But for its depressing, endlessly bleak story of a poor foolish woman who endlessly expects more out of life than it can deliver, endlessly tries to live one foolish dream after another, and endlessly has her hopes crushed. And for its jaundiced depiction of 1850s France, in which the grace, beauty, richness, and overall correctness of its glorious aristocratic past had been overwhelmed by a wave of small-souled, practical, money-grubbing bourgeoisie. At least, according to Gustave Flaubert, the author. Who, fortunately for Literature, had inherited several valuable rental properties, didn't have to work for a living, and could just spend his whole life maundering on about Art.

Can you tell how much I hated it, and why I still avoid Serious Literature?

[Baribrotzer]

8. The Tommyknockers -Stephen King

I think that might have been one of the books he wrote during his "drug period", when he was mostly zonked out of his skull.

The thing I found infuriating was the flashlight batteries. The idea that these super-genius, incredibly developed aliens (with the emotional maturity of a two-year-old) couldn't build a rectifying power supply. Any smart, reasonably well-read human ten-year-old can do that - it's not hard at all. You can even buy one off the shelf if you know where to look. But because King doesn't know beans about science, engineering, or any technical subject, he makes that dumb, infuriating error.

[Camelogue]

the Old Testament.

[notallwhowander]

Your favorite book sucks.

[moecurlythanu]

TV Guide...Have you tried to read that shit lately?

[Dave (in MA)]

Do electronics owner's manuals written in Engrish count as "literature"?

[Scott Bails]

I think that might have been one of the books he wrote during his "drug period", when he was mostly zonked out of his skull.

No doubt about it.

[Jerjo]

Which way we going with on this, books considered to be great literature (I couldn't stand Confederacy of Dunces) or popular books that well and truly suck, like the works of Dan Brown or Stephenie Meyer. Cuz I rock this like a mutha either way.

[Progbear]

Good God, William Faulkner. Pretentiously overwritten and full of loathsome characters, his works defy you to keep reading.

If we’re talking “pop” literature, then allow me to say, I’d rather try to cut my own head off with a rusty hacksaw than ever attempt reading Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant ever again. I got a hundred pages into the first book in the series, at which point I, quite literally, threw the book across the room in frustration and despair. At least Wizard’s First Rule made me giggle with how lame and clichéd it was, this didn’t even offer that small, ironic pleasure.

-------------
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")

‘“What blow, Goblin?” said Corinius.’ --E. R. Eddison

N.P.:“Desideri”-Aria Palea/Zoicekardi’a

[80s were ok]

I'm sorry but to start a post to rail on the likes Salinger, Melville, Beckett? Do we really need an anti-book thread on PE?
Anyway, how did a Steven King book wind up on that list? Traci Lords starred in the TV adaption of "The Tommy Knockers" which of course wasn't her first film she starred in with the word Knockers in it.

[80s were ok]

TV Guide...Have you tried to read that shit lately?

TV Guide stinks as a magazine these days. I used to collect the TV Guide back in the day and still have a small collection of them, back when they would publish separate editions for every TV market in the country. Man, when TV Guide arrived in the mail every Thursday, it MEANT something. Today, the magazine is a joke and nearly every issue is a "Double Issue" covering two weeks. They only give you prime-listings and half the time, they aren't even right, especially when they publish "Double Issues" which are only like 15 pages more. The articles are lame and the general "coverage" of TV in general is very poor. In case you are wondering, last year I decided to give them another shot when they danges a $10 subscription, so I've had a subscription for the last 10 months or so I'm just riding it out to the end.

[PeterG]

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Yep, got to agree. Awful stuff.

[PeterG]

I'm sorry

You're forgiven. Now piss off back to your lovey dovey great books thread!

[sonic]

Traci Lords starred in the TV adaption of "The Tommy Knockers" which of course wasn't her first film she starred in with the word Knockers in it.

[Jymbot]

Good God, William Faulkner. Pretentiously overwritten and full of loathsome characters, his works defy you to keep reading.

If we’re talking “pop” literature, then allow me to say, I’d rather try to cut my own head off with a rusty hacksaw than ever attempt reading Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant ever again. I got a hundred pages into the first book in the series, at which point I, quite literally, threw the book across the room in frustration and despair.
-------------
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")

‘“What blow, Goblin?” said Corinius.’ --E. R. Eddison

N.P.:“Desideri”-Aria Palea/Zoicekardi’a

Faulkner is a clown-writer, for sure.
But what exactly dont you like about Covenant series? Is it that its depressing? Well ,look at the main character. How could it be anything but? Its well-written. What else do you want.


Now Eddison - you've struck gold there. I have origional press of one of his less-known books (dont think it was ever reissued), "Styriborn the Strong".

[Cuz]

Edgar Allen Poe. Boring.

[Trane]

the Old Testament.

and all assimilated literature...