FYI: Sorry this took a little long for me to get posted. I had it typed up, just didn't internet to transfer it to the website.
10. Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare
I actually don't mind this play, I just think it's a shame that pretty much every high school student in America is introduced to Shakespeare with this one. It's really not one of his better or interesting plays. Plus, this thing turns off every male ear in the class. Hell I think it turned off my ear the first time I read it. Shakespeares histories are more interestin. The comedies have more life to them. The tragedies are some of the highest forms of literature in history. Anything, but this one please.
9. Winter Moon - Dean Koontz
I read a lot of Dean Koontz books before I realized he wasn't a very creative or good writer. I think this one had something to do with a family caught in some cabin and there were zombies around or something. I don't really remember. I just know it wasn't good. Koontz is the poor man's Stephen King and there were only a couple of books of his that he really extended his talent and this wasn't one of them.
8. A Fairly Honourable Defeat - Iris Murdoch
This was a bizarre selection in an English Novel course I took in college. The plot dealt with a guy basically sabotaging two marriages to prove his philosophy was right. It reminded me a little of those zany British comedies without the intended humor or proposterousness. I guess it tried to prove that everyone is one or two fasle steps from unhappiness. Maybe that's true, but so is the opposite.
7. It - Stephen King
I read this one soley because it was really long and I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. Well I did and by the end I didn't know why. It's pretty much a standard Stephen King horror book with about 400 extra pages. Tim Curry couldn't even save the made for TV movie.
6. The Wheel of Time series - Robert Jordan
The plot in this one is actually pretty good, but the problem is that it doesn't seem to ever end. I think Jordan gets paid by the word. Each book is around 1,000 pages with parts that could have easily been cut. Unlike Tolkien, Jordan devotes enormous amounts of time rehashing plot from previous books. I think he really underestimating the intelligence of his reader and their ability to remember. Sometimes less is more.
5. Le Morte' D'Arthur - Thomas Malory
This stands out more as a disappointment more than anyting else. Every semester, NIU offered a Literature Topic class. You could only take it once and the topic always changed. When I saw Arthurian Legend as the topic one semester I knew I had to take it. I'd loved the King Arthur story from the Sword and the Stone and from the great movie Excalibur.
Anyways the course just wasn't very interesting. This being the first written account of the Arthur legend took the brunt of my disappointment.
4. Otherland series - Tad Williams
This was the second Williams series I read. "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" was a traditional fantasy that was really well done. Ths one was more of a Sci-Fi effort and I just got tired of reading it about three books in. It dealt with children getting lost in a virtual realtiy system of some sort and the people trying to find them. I guess I thought it was a little cliche.
3. Hill Like White Elephants - Ernest Hemmingway
This is another story that professors and English teachers ram down the throat of American youth. I am not real sure why other than I think they want to shock their students by bringing up abortion. Of course, most students don't even realize it's about abortion when they read. Heck, I've studied it a couple times and I am not sure I understand why it's about abortion yet.
2. Paradise Lost - John Milton
This a 10,000 line poem about bascially five lines in the Bible. Talk about reading a bit too much into something. I recognized the brillance of it and its importance in the literary world, but come on cut to the point. Plus I don't think it really translates well into modern American pshycology very well. That much bibilical symbolism only works on us if it's in a murder mystery written by Dan Brown.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
This was a no-brainer for me. I'll never understand the fascination with this book. It's a paperback romance with out the taudry love scenes and written as dry as the Arizona desert. This book is like making a porno without a girl with big boobs and high heels. What's the point. A lot of titles will change on this list as I get older, I can see no way this one will ever move from the top of my list.
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2 comments:
Nice list, I like that we both hightlighted bad books that teachers think we should read. What was the Dean Koontz book we actually started reading together out loud while we took turns playing baseball on the Sega? December something I think. I believe it fit well into your description of his writing.
I think he wrote one called "Door to December." Which I am pretty sure I read. I honestly don't recall reading it to each other while we played sega, but after a 15 hour shift and four hours of sleep. I don't remember a lot right now.
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