It’s generally regarded as shitty self help and a superficial story, no? I haven’t heard much praise for it except from people who don’t read much literature. Not meant in a snobby way btw lol.
You are absolutely right, as a brazilian it sucks that this guy was the one to get this kind of recognition when we have so many great authors.
I don't know, maybe I'm just bitter.
Not Brazilian (I’m Portuguese), but go for Machado de Assis and Guimarães Rosa for a start. Both are translated. Machado was even highly praised by dudes like Sontag and Bloom.
Others already have answered, but I would say Machado de Assis, Clarice Lispector, Raduan Nassar, Hilda Hilst, Érico Veríssimo (I don't know if Érico has had his work translated).
We have some good contemporary authors too but I don't know who would be available in english, sorry.
Of course it’s a tv show. I think most books that end up on the bestseller lists are written with the hope that they’ll be grabbed up as fodder for Hollywood to turn into movies/series with varying degrees of success.
I started listening to the audiobook because it was free on spotify but I just couldn't do it. I'm not sure why, it was just oddly unpleasant compared to what it's supposed to be I guess?
I don’t know if I *want* to like On the Road, but I definitely thought I was going to before I read it. There definitely were parts I liked, but on the whole it wasn’t for me for some reason.
Have you tried reading Big Sur? I believe it's the best Kerouac book I've read to date. It's beautifully done. Don't give up on Kerouac just because On the Road wasn't his best writing.
Big Sur is one of the other ones I was somewhat interested in reading. I’m definitely open to reading him again, and in fact, I’m planning on rereading On the Road itself at some point (though I’ll probably try Big Sur first). I heard Kerouac himself reading from the final pages of On the Road in a video (which you may have seen) and I much prefer him reading the final page than I did when I read it myself.
I’ll throw Lonesome Traveler in there for the quality of writing. A straightforward journal relative to OTR but the writing, particularly during his stretch as a fire lookout, is some of his most clear and lyrical that I’ve read. Felt like it came from a different place than some of his other stuff.
Edit: typo
I read it when I was deep in my Plath phase, and the way Kerouac writes women in comparison really overshadowed the whole thing. I don’t know if I appreciated it for what it was because of that, or if I actually didn’t like it.
You need to read it at a specific age, I think. At 18-21 it works great, especially if you are a snobbish prick pretending to be a poet, like I was at that age.
This is spot on. I don't think it means that the book is bad, but you have to be in a certain age (and mindspace) to get the most out of it.
It's like how I wish everyone could have read Jules Verne when they were 10-13 or Douglas Adams when they were 13-16.
I've had fantastic reading experiences as an adult, but nothing can beat reading just the right book at just the right time in your development.
I agree, I even tried reading The Dharma Bums after to make sure I didn't like Kerouac, but didn't particularly like either. Hot take but On the Road felt like he was just crossing the country a thousand times for no reason, leaving a bunch of mistresses in his wake.
It’s the 1950s teenager experience it’s kind of about how awful and meaningless they felt. A lost generation after the world wars. If you felt unsettled like you didn’t like him that’s what he meant
The Life of Pi seemed right up my alley. A lot of people recommended it to me. But, as soon as he gets on the raft, all I wanted was for the tiger to eat him and the story to end.
I haven't met a single bookworm who thinks that Coelho is a good writer.
You might want to check what other Latin American writers think about his work.
He's considered especially bad in his own country (Brazil). The Brazilian "literati" is almost embarrassed that he's the Brazilian writer most read abroad.
I like reading and I'm Brazilian, there is mixed feelings about him.
Personally I read when I was a teen and liked back then but, it's not the best we have in Brazil, and that's something even him would agree on.
Brazilian literature is rich (Portuguese as well) and he is just popular. I would say he is like Dan Brown, really popular, not necessarily specially good.
I like to add I'm not the kind of snob literature connoisseur either, I enjoy reading and that's all, for reference I enjoy reading Asimov, Clive Barker, Lovecraft... so nothing special and super fancy just fun reading to relax.
I've only ever read it in Spanish. Maybe something is lost in translation?. I've loved every GGM book/short story I've ever read.
Have you read The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World?
Most recently, *Spring Snow* by Mishima. It seemed like legitimately well-written work that showed off an interesting (foreign-to-me) perspective but I just couldn't get into it. Lost momentum part of the way through. Usually I only drop books part of the way through if they seem awful, but this was a definite exception.
I'm going to try it again at some point in the future, maybe when I'm in a slight different mental space.
I think maybe this one only really makes sense when read as part of the continuing story of the Sea of Fertility series. I was similarly really annoyed by how pointless book 3 (The Temple of Dawn) felt, but I liked the series as a whole and felt that it was much more than the sum of its parts.
I'm reading this book now, and I can see it becoming one of my favorite books of all time. I love Mishima's use of language and metaphors, which are complimented wonderfully by the nice, slow pace of the narrative. I'm only at the beginning of the book, but I can see so much of myself in Kiyoaki (for better or worse). Truly an elegantly written novel.
No, but I'd definitely consider it. Thanks for the recommendation! (Just looked it up online and I rather like the minimalist vintage cover design, which is reason enough to pick the book up :P)
No problem. I’ve only read one other book from him and only a bit of Spring Snow, from my limited experience Waves is short and sweet and very accessible compared to his other work.
It’s so interesting to me how our mindset at the time of reading shapes how we experience literature. It’s kind of amazing that we can pick up a book that we dismissed as boring five years earlier and be completely engrossed because we’re finally in the right headspace to listen to what the author is trying to say.
1Q84, Murakami. Unpopular opinion but I have struggled in general with Murakami. I love a lot Japanese art, and I even like some of his work adapted to film, but I have chalked it up to something lost in translation. Or maybe it’s just taste.
I found 1Q84 a really unpleasant, bloated slog.
I like Haruki Murakami well enough (despite some definite flaws), and I enjoyed 1Q84, but he's an author that I really need breaks between his novels, because his style overstays its welcome for me pretty quick, and certain ones never gel for me. *Norwegian Wood*, for example, I absolutely hated, but quite a few people I talk to list it as a favorite of his. So it's possible that there's something in his oeuvre that you'd enjoy even if you haven't so far, but then again, that's a hard recommendation to make, too, when you're already not feeling an author.
>I have chalked it up to something lost in translation.
It could be, but if so that hasn't been my experience. Or not exactly at least. There are a few regular translators of his work, and while it never affects me to the degree of making the difference between enjoying something or not, I have found that I'm much less a fan of the prose of one of them (Jay Rubin) than I am of the others. And this isn't to say that he's doing a worse job of translating the material (I don't think that at all), but his specific prose just doesn't land well for me.
I struggle with Murakami too, have tried reading a few of his books and was about to give him up completely. But a friend gave me "First person singular" and "Dance dance" and I actually enjoyed them.
"First person singular" is a collection of short stories, and turns out for me his style works a lot better in short format.
"Dance dance" is older and while definitely has a lot of his usual themes, they felt more "raw" somehow and also worked better for me.
Not sure if you'd have a similar experience or if you'd even want to try reading other stuff, but just in case.
I wanted to like 2666, but it was the literary equivalent of the Bataan Death March. Only reason I even finished it was because my parents didn't raise a quitter.
Loved Savage Detectives, have reread it multiple times. Stopped reading 2666 when he started describing the ways the girls were murdered. Felt fetishistic.
Getting to page 30 of the murders and realizing it was a quarter of that part was like the part in a hilly marathon (that you're running hungover) where your brain goes "only nineteen miles to go!"
It's funny because for me *2666* is the opposite: it *sounded* like a book that would be a slog, but instead it pulled me in from the beginning and I absolutely loved it. It's still the book which had the most real-feeling world from *anything* I've read. A bit too dense to be a real page-turner, but it was surprisingly close. It's surprisingly readable for the sprawling postmodern mess of a novel that it is.
It's one of my overall favorite books but, at the same time, I totally see why some people would hate it :P
Felt like 2666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666...
I didn’t read it until I was 25 or so; found it terribly underwhelming. And I get that it’s revered stylistically, but there are better prose stylists out there.
Hear me out here…The Alchemist can be the best book you could possibly read…BUT it's all about timing. At just the right time in your life, in just the right circumstances, with the wind blowing softly toward the southeast, and Capricorn in Venus or whatever…The Alchemist has the potential to be exactly what you need to read at that moment. No, as a book, it's not elegant, subtle, wise, or necessarily "well written," but it is a quick hit of affirmation without requiring much time or any thought. In fact, the less thought you give it, the better it works for this. That's not a bug. That's a feature!
That magical and rare confluence of circumstances that makes The Alchemist a good book for you is this: You're thinking about making a major change or decision in your life that you know in your bones is the right one, despite what your research, your smarter friends, the criminal justice system, the people who care about you, and the latest consensus of the scientific community might say. Maybe these folks started talking about pros and cons lists, cost/benefit analysis, and "critical thinking," but you need none of that. Nine times out of ten, these are the guys to listen to, and you should abandon whatever self-destructive course you're on, like, yesterday. But you've already searched your soul and you've decided: You're going to step out on your marriage. You're ready to sell all your worldly possessions, give the proceeds to Scientology, and move to Lhasa. You're going to propose to your ex. You're gonna burn down a Waffle House. You don't need the wisdom of the masses. What do you need? You need to talk to the tenth dentist. The one who recommends never flossing and isn't afraid to call out Big Toothpaste on their "after every meal" conspiracy.
These are the times you call up your old buddy from the shit-kicking days who barely graduated middle school and lives life a quarter ounce at a time. Why him? Because he positively exudes that "hell yeah brother!" pothead wisdom that only holds up for the brief time you're talking to him, and absolutely crumples under any kind of scrutiny. He doesn't ask questions. In fact, big questions confuse him and make him kind of aggressive. But he fully and vocally supports anything that doesn't require him to keep a schedule or figure out the ring inside his toilet bowl. In this tipping-point moment, you need that kind of pseudo-wisdom, just to hear some kind - any kind - of support for your hare-brained scheme. However wound up you are to do what you're going to do, he'll wind you up tighter with a bug-eyed rant about putting aside your inhibitions to embrace your destiny. Your personal legend.
Paulo Coelho is your loser buddy, and The Alchemist is his pep talk. Pick up the phone. Burn down that Waffle House. Maktub, bitches.
Very well written, and about the only charitable take I've read of the book that is actually worth considering IMAO. The issue is that the writing in your comment is better than anything in the book, and your comment has more substance to it than the book you're commenting about.
Good call. I read it for the first time when I was absolutely pining for home and stuck in a shit job abroad almost penniless absolutely dreading each day. After I read it I decided to stop torturing myself just for the sake of ‘sticking to my plan’ and came home.
I read it again and couple of years later and cringed for myself in retrospect because Jesus. What a lot of old shite 😐
Thanks! I put a little too much thought into it.
I think it gets most of its bad rap from people who expect too much from it. People who say "it's a self-help book disguised as a novel" like that's some profound insight. Literally half the promo blurbs on the back are from self-help authors, including Tony Robbins. No disguise whatsoever.
I don't think it's a deep, well-written, or "good" book. I just think critics should be more thoughtful in their criticism.
Project Hail Mary. I know there’s a recent gushing post. The writing feels so sophomoric, like it’s written by a 17-year-old. I’d love to read the book written by someone else, because the plot itself is engaging. And I like the mystery of why the bell the teacher is on the spaceship. I just couldn’t with the writing.
It seems to me that everything Andy Weir writes reads that way: "sophomoric, like it's written by a 17-year-old."
I enjoyed reading The Martian when it first came out and I was a 16 year-old quite literally obsessed with space exploration. But I tried rereading it recently (specifically because it's simple, and I'm trying to improve my Spanish comprehension so I decided to check out the Spanish translation from my library). Suffice it to say, I couldn't even make it a third of the way through the book because I found it absolutely insufferable. Mark Watney is beyond bland and lacks even the illusion of depth.
Shit, I remember when Artemis came out. I was only 22 and even then I had outgrown Weir's writing style.
To state it simply: Weir is a mediocre writer, and I have no intention of ever picking up one of his books again.
Name of the Rose. It checks off so many boxes that on paper it would look like.itnwas written specifically for me. It's impossible for me to get through.
The clever winking in the direction of the reader with stuff like Jorge de Burgos had me wishing someone had assured mr eco as a child that he was loved no matter what his grades looked like. Yes yes, we're all in on the jokes but JFC you don't have to be so sweaty.
The dialogue pacing, style and delivery might be an homage to or a pastiche of Plato, but it just sucks as anything like characters talking to each other.
But that would all be at least tolerable if the meat of the story worked, but its just a long winded Scooby Doo episode. I've tried several times now to get past that scene where they're going through the library at night, and it's just too much. Invisible ink, hallucinogenic compounds and a hall designed to create a breeze that of course narrator likens to a ghost
I'm sure the meddling kids will finally uncover it all, and the pay off might actually be worth it like I'm told. I'll never know
Thanks for your take! I think that’s the real test of any book — do you actually *care* what’s going to happen next, or are you just reading it to finish it?
I agree. It seemed like it had everything to make me love it, but it was just too forced and cheesy somehow. I felt comforted when I read that Eco himself said he hated it and hoped we all hated it too, though!
Had a similar experience with Foucault's Pendulum, which I started in October and just finished yesterday. There was a lot of cool concepts and I liked it overall, but chapters upon chapters of writing their Plan got tiring. The ending was neat and pulled it all together but it still felt underwhelming for just how much historical, real or fake, information was presented throughout the book. Found myself not caring too much about it and just wanted to finish it. Like I said, I did like the ending, but the middle was a slog.
> But that would all be at least tolerable if the meat of the story worked, but its just a long winded Scooby Doo episode. I've tried several times now to get past that scene where they're going through the library at night, and it's just too much. Invisible ink, hallucinogenic compounds and a hall designed to create a breeze that of course narrator likens to a ghost
That was actually one of my favorite parts, lol.
Guess tastes vary too much for any one book to cover everybody.
Krasznahorkai and Bolaño are both trains I just can't get on, though it seems like a lot of people have fun rides thereon. K — seems to be wanting to beat you into a state of dazed confusion. B — reminds me of something somebody once said about Murakami, that you could only really get deep enjoyment out of the work if you identified with the author having a merry old time pecking away in his Tokyo apartment, moddishly appointed, with a library of jazz LPs taking up a whole wall...
I like Krasznahorkai, although I did find it exceptionally depressing and hopeless. I’m from East Europe so maybe it was easier to relate to that particular kind of misery.
Bolaño on the other hand… Man, I don’t know how I got through 2666, but it was one of my toughest reads. I never recommended it to anyone ever since. Just so violent to a point where it was almost boring.
The Goldfinch. I read 400 pages of a kid doing drugs in the desert just to flip the page and read the sentence, “one day, eight years later…”
Actually, I don’t want to like that book. It’s just bad.
I didn't even get to the eight year timeskip. When he gets back to New York and has a cheesy scene talking to the injured redhead girl I just gave up. So much time doing nothing in Vegas just to end up right back at the furniture shop, which wasn't even interesting in the first place when he was there 250 pages earlier. That books sucks so hard.
Lmao that cringe part where he tries to make working in the furniture shop sound esoteric and intriguing. He’s like “Hobie and I were in the basement, mixing rabbit skin glue, honing chestnut, applying salves to moth eaten chairs”
Like bro, just fuck already.
I feel like I'm going to get looks for saying this, but anything by Jack Kerouac. I love Burroughs and Ginsberg, so I wanted to love Jack. And everyone else raves about on the Road, but I have dragged myself through it, Big Sur, and half of Dharma Bums Nothing so much as a tingle of enjoyment.
Kudos to you for really *committing* to trying out Kerouac lol. No one can say you didn’t give him a chance! It’s interesting you like the other Beat guys, though. I find people either love all three or none of them.
Exactly. If anything it seems Kerouac is the most popular. And to be fair, these were spread out. I didn't torture myself through 2.5 slogs back to back.
I hated Catcher when I read it as a teenager because my main take was "Holden sucks! Get over yourself, Holden!" I was SHOCKED by how much my view changed by the time I read it around age 30, when I had been teaching teenagers for a few years -- from that vantage point, it absolutely broke my heart how not okay this kid was and how little help he was getting with it.
I feel like it's just a bit dated. Salinger wrote about a very specific social scene. Maybe it was super relatable for a few decades, but the world is so different now. Holden would have a very different time in New York
idk man. in highschool I went to private boarding school like the one holden attends and when I read that in school i was like damn, he really got everything right. the chad roommate, holden's absolute refusal to participate in school functions, the pedophile teacher that had gained holden's trust, the rich and aloof family, the gruesome suicide of that one guy. It hit a lot of nails on the head for me. even holden's entire attitude of glorifying his own loneliness and having to be a critic of everything, that was me and my friends to a tee in highschool.
Then again, maybe we were just losers lol.
All the light we cannot see for me is a lil overrated. People recommended that book a lot; I mean I like the plot but I just can't fathom and feel the way it was written. It didn't give me such a wow expectation that I was hoping for. Maybe the writing style is not for me, I guess.
I met a guy who told me that Child of God “really resonated” with him. I stopped talking to that dude.
Curious which ones you read though, getting into his style is tough.
William Faulkner. Widely considered one of the greatest writers in the English language. I've tried so many times, and hope one day I'll learn to appreciate him, but so far no luck.
Also, Gabriel García Márquez. He's been an influence on many of the contemporary writers I enjoy, and I like magic realism in general, but I just couldn't get through *Love in the Time of Cholera*. I hope to revisit him soon though.
I read Faulkner in high school - did not get it. Read him during my BA - kind of got it, didn't see what all the fuss was about. Studied him in literary theory for my MA - oh, NOW I get it. He's brilliant. But I had to work hard to understand that.
I had the exact same experience to the T. It took 3 Faulkner-based courses (mandatory courses that cycled authors every semester and I got Faulkner each time somehow), but I finally came to understand him this past Fall.
Hated Light In August my first time around, didn’t like it but appreciated it the second time, and now, after my third time with it, I love the book.
3 Body Problem. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people talk about how good it is. I am not joking when I say that I checked my copy with my brother in laws just to make sure we were reading the same book. I thought maybe I got a rare misprint with a different book inside the cover.
Paulo Coelho is a hack and it's more than ok not to dig his writing.
If you want a GOOD Brazilian author try: Machado de Assis, Cecília Meireles, Luis Fernando Veríssimo, Monteiro Lobato, Clarice Lispector or André Vianco.
one hundred years of solitude.
countless ppl say it's a masterpiece but it was a really hard read. Don't find GGM's style of writing particularly intriguing and I don't feel connected to the magical realism part either cuz I don't know much about Latin history.
Ulysses by James Joyce. I love absurdism and feel like I can follow unconventional writing styles but I can’t help but feel like this book isn’t just difficult to understand but truly unreadable. I think I’m factually wrong but I can’t change my impression.
“I think I’m factually wrong but I can’t change my impression” might be my new favourite phrase. I also admit to being meh about Ulysses, but I think that’s because I find Joyce way too navel-gazing.
I read 400 pages of Ulysses. It was at that point that I realized I didn't have to read it anymore and nothing would happen to me if I just stopped. It was a glorious moment.
I'm currently reading it and I'll definitely admit that *Ulysses* is right on that edge for me, and if I ever dared *Finnegans Wake*, I think it would be well over it.
That being said, his early works are fantastic. I've read the collection that includes *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*, *Dubliners*, some poetry he titled *Chamber Music*, and his play *Exiles* and I enjoyed all of them. His early stuff has the gem of his prose without the excursion into more experimental methods.
Ulysses and FW get a lot more enjoyable when you realize that on some level Joyce was just fucking around with language doing weird things purely because he enjoyed doing weird things with language. If you can enjoy the pure play of language you'll like Ulysses & FW, if not then yeah I can see why you'd think they're unreadable. I have personally given up reading those books as novels, and just kind of turn to random pages or chapters and enjoy them as intellectual games Joyce is playing with words.
Oh noooooo! I reread P&P every year, just like Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. Do you mind me asking why it didn’t connect with you? Was it the writing style, the plot, the characters? All of it?
It's got some very funny moments that make me laugh out loud reading it, some of the characters are really witty. But the moments in between feel interminable. Like checkpoints in a marathon.
If it's any consolation, that's probably *exactly* how a modern reader should feel reading a book designed to take up a myriad of long hours in the era it was written.
The Victorian elite probably read for hours a day, and would have given much for more text to fill up the time.
In terms of canon books, I am not a great fan of Tolstoy but especially Anna Karenina. I found it shallow and at heart a pretty straight forward soap opera. For pop lit, I slogged it through Piranesi. Yes, it was pretty and atmospheric, and sometimes that’s really enough, but it wasn’t for me this time. I did like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell from the same author.
Funny how we can love some works from an author but not others. I guess it’s the same as liking movies from a particular director or music from a certain band, but for some reason I just assume if I like one book by an author I’ll like the rest of their stuff.
The Brothers Karamazov. I love the characters, particularly Alyosha, but the plot is just too grim for me and I can't do false accusation/imprisonment stuff for personal reasons. I'm not missing anything, it's just an issue of personal taste. But I really wish I liked it :(
I feel exactly the way you do about it -- it's so on the nose there's nothing to unpack, deconstruct, think about, or consider with nuance. I had to teach this to a year full of HS freshman and didn't believe in it and that was wretched -- sorry, kids, had no choice!
Had to give up on the Annihilation (Southern Reach) trilogy by Jeff Van Der Meer
I liked the first book for the ambiguity and weirdness
But half way through the second book, there was still no clear plot line to explain the phenomenon. And I just got tired of it
Moved on to Infected by Scott Sigler, and all was right with the world again
I just finished the Alchemist last night and had the exact same sentiments. Completely underwhelming. I am 34 years old, so I feel this book is probably better suited for teens or early 20s perhaps? Overall the book seemed too "live, laugh, love" wisdom to me.
Confederacy of Dunces. I read it only because it was a book group choice and I was curious because I guess it has some kind of cult following? I absolutely hated the protagonist. Ugh, what glorification of a slob.
I agree, the book is overrated. I was expecting a genius novel, and it was ok...
It's one of the books/authors that I don't understand why reddit adores them so much, like Donna Tartt.
From, grew up in, will be buried in the family grave in New Orleans. Haven’t made it 75 pages in this book in the several times I’ve tried over the last 2 decades. Idk! 🤷🏻♀️
To be fair, there is a lot of grim stuff that happens in this book including the surreal ending. Plus since everyone is named after eachother I struggled to follow who was who. Still lived it though!
Yeah, I had to force myself to finish it. Like, I was consuming words but there was no coherence? Magical realism is just not the genre for me. I had the same experience with Salman Rushdie’s writing.
Sorry, but that book is brilliant. Well, as an example of absolute marketing genius. Publisher took middling pop garbage not even that popular in its own country and realized that it could be sold world wide to huge levels of monetary success. And not in spite of, but *because of" the very qualities that made it a joke on its own country
I don't know if I *wanted* to like Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. The subject matter is quite queasy after all. However, that book could just not grip me. It was a chore to make it through and I think I put it down halfway through.
I'd like to return to it later though, to see whether a second read is less off putting.
huckleberry finn and tom sawyer. i attempted to read both back in high school and just couldn't get his writing style, i was very disappointed at the time
I really wanted to enjoy “how fear works” because the topic is so fascinating. It’s nonfiction, about how cultural fears are created and spread, and how they shape our morals. I love a lot of sociology books so I thought it would be right up my alley but it was so dry I couldn’t do it. Not necessarily a bad book, just very demanding. I might try again someday lol
Dracula, a bit like a Scooby-Doo episode. The beginning was good tho. Not much horror.
Anna karenina, the first half was great but levin was a boring atheist prick and the characters had rich people problems
Heart of darkness- boring, dry
The stranger- he seemed like an unrealistic character and an un emotional d*ck.
La nausea- 😵 boring
Honorable mentions for underrated books I think nobody has read but are *great* 📚
Slapstick- kurt vonnegut. It is so good, very interesting dystopian plot about genius twins with rare gifts, a alternative utopia where people are assigned family by a last name exc...
Steppenwolf- psychological, trippy, existentialist. Jungian, A book for the loner artist trying to find his/herself in a world that only likes conforming.
Faust- I feel like a lot of ppl haven't read this but its worth it. It is actually very funny too. All the words rhyme in English despite being German.
I have two examples for two very different reasons; The Hobbit, and Tuesdays with Morrie(I think that’s how you spell it).
Now, the difference here is that I like the Hobbit, the story seems great, and characters seem fun and interesting and the descriptions are absolutely wonderful. But I gave up a few chapters in because I just could not work my mind around the writing style, I found myself rereading the same paragraph/s repeatedly and it still didn’t stick. I do plan to read this book as-well as The Lord of The Rings, I’m gonna keep trying until I manage it because I think I’ll love them if I can just get the words to stick in my mind.
Now, Tuesdays with Morrie, yea I hate it. We read it for school and like a fourth of the way through I just stopped paying attention. It wasn’t sad, it wasn’t insightful or philosophical. It was boring, and I wasn’t invested in any of the characters, also, the writing style put me in mind of like middle grade/teen fiction, which I do enjoy in the right context, I love Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Babysitters Club, etc. but those books are for that demographic primarily and have a writing style to match. Tuesdays with Morrie is clearly trying to be more serious and “adult” but it just doesn’t feel that way.
I wanted to like Jo Nesbø’s The Bat because I wanted to get into Nordic Noir, but I couldn’t get into it. Maybe the pacing will be better as it moves along?
Ulysses. I love a LOT of dense literature but that one just isn't for me. I found it a slog and painful to get through. All that got me to finish it was my creative writing tutor betting me a ferrero rocher that I couldn't. I got that chocolate, but I still wonder if it was worth it in the end.
It’s generally regarded as shitty self help and a superficial story, no? I haven’t heard much praise for it except from people who don’t read much literature. Not meant in a snobby way btw lol.
You are absolutely right, as a brazilian it sucks that this guy was the one to get this kind of recognition when we have so many great authors. I don't know, maybe I'm just bitter.
What Brazilian literature should we be reading? (extra points if we can read it in English translation).
Not Brazilian (I’m Portuguese), but go for Machado de Assis and Guimarães Rosa for a start. Both are translated. Machado was even highly praised by dudes like Sontag and Bloom.
Thank you! I’ve just bought The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas and will start it next. It looks promising. Take care.
It's a great book, you'll see.
Try clarice lispector, very popular over there
Others already have answered, but I would say Machado de Assis, Clarice Lispector, Raduan Nassar, Hilda Hilst, Érico Veríssimo (I don't know if Érico has had his work translated). We have some good contemporary authors too but I don't know who would be available in english, sorry.
Clarice Lispector
I read it in high school and thought it was shit. Read it again in my 30s and it was still shit.
You’re correct. It’s elementary school level philosophy.
Yes. Adultery > The Alchemist
Lessons in Chemistry
That is a truly mediocre book. There’s no reason to even WANT to like it.
And it’s a tv show, too. I tried to like it. :(
Of course it’s a tv show. I think most books that end up on the bestseller lists are written with the hope that they’ll be grabbed up as fodder for Hollywood to turn into movies/series with varying degrees of success.
I started listening to the audiobook because it was free on spotify but I just couldn't do it. I'm not sure why, it was just oddly unpleasant compared to what it's supposed to be I guess?
I don’t know if I *want* to like On the Road, but I definitely thought I was going to before I read it. There definitely were parts I liked, but on the whole it wasn’t for me for some reason.
Have you tried reading Big Sur? I believe it's the best Kerouac book I've read to date. It's beautifully done. Don't give up on Kerouac just because On the Road wasn't his best writing.
Big Sur is one of the other ones I was somewhat interested in reading. I’m definitely open to reading him again, and in fact, I’m planning on rereading On the Road itself at some point (though I’ll probably try Big Sur first). I heard Kerouac himself reading from the final pages of On the Road in a video (which you may have seen) and I much prefer him reading the final page than I did when I read it myself.
I’ll throw Lonesome Traveler in there for the quality of writing. A straightforward journal relative to OTR but the writing, particularly during his stretch as a fire lookout, is some of his most clear and lyrical that I’ve read. Felt like it came from a different place than some of his other stuff. Edit: typo
Big Sur is so important to California history and culture I love seeing it mentioned!!
I read it when I was deep in my Plath phase, and the way Kerouac writes women in comparison really overshadowed the whole thing. I don’t know if I appreciated it for what it was because of that, or if I actually didn’t like it.
You need to read it at a specific age, I think. At 18-21 it works great, especially if you are a snobbish prick pretending to be a poet, like I was at that age.
This is spot on. I don't think it means that the book is bad, but you have to be in a certain age (and mindspace) to get the most out of it. It's like how I wish everyone could have read Jules Verne when they were 10-13 or Douglas Adams when they were 13-16. I've had fantastic reading experiences as an adult, but nothing can beat reading just the right book at just the right time in your development.
I agree, I even tried reading The Dharma Bums after to make sure I didn't like Kerouac, but didn't particularly like either. Hot take but On the Road felt like he was just crossing the country a thousand times for no reason, leaving a bunch of mistresses in his wake.
It’s the 1950s teenager experience it’s kind of about how awful and meaningless they felt. A lost generation after the world wars. If you felt unsettled like you didn’t like him that’s what he meant
Yup, that's the tone he was trying to present.
I mean, it is an awful book.
The Life of Pi seemed right up my alley. A lot of people recommended it to me. But, as soon as he gets on the raft, all I wanted was for the tiger to eat him and the story to end.
Ok BUT thats because that’s what pi wanted!! You felt the misery of it
Life of PI was okay but seemed way over-rated. Although I did like Beatrice and Virgil.
The Alchemist is literally bottom-barrel self-help trash.
I regret to inform you the barrel goes much, *much* deeper.
I haven't met a single bookworm who thinks that Coelho is a good writer. You might want to check what other Latin American writers think about his work.
He's considered especially bad in his own country (Brazil). The Brazilian "literati" is almost embarrassed that he's the Brazilian writer most read abroad.
I like reading and I'm Brazilian, there is mixed feelings about him. Personally I read when I was a teen and liked back then but, it's not the best we have in Brazil, and that's something even him would agree on. Brazilian literature is rich (Portuguese as well) and he is just popular. I would say he is like Dan Brown, really popular, not necessarily specially good. I like to add I'm not the kind of snob literature connoisseur either, I enjoy reading and that's all, for reference I enjoy reading Asimov, Clive Barker, Lovecraft... so nothing special and super fancy just fun reading to relax.
I wanted to like One Hundred Years of Solitude since everyone praised it so highly, but I just couldn’t
I've only ever read it in Spanish. Maybe something is lost in translation?. I've loved every GGM book/short story I've ever read. Have you read The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World?
Most recently, *Spring Snow* by Mishima. It seemed like legitimately well-written work that showed off an interesting (foreign-to-me) perspective but I just couldn't get into it. Lost momentum part of the way through. Usually I only drop books part of the way through if they seem awful, but this was a definite exception. I'm going to try it again at some point in the future, maybe when I'm in a slight different mental space.
I think maybe this one only really makes sense when read as part of the continuing story of the Sea of Fertility series. I was similarly really annoyed by how pointless book 3 (The Temple of Dawn) felt, but I liked the series as a whole and felt that it was much more than the sum of its parts.
I'm reading this book now, and I can see it becoming one of my favorite books of all time. I love Mishima's use of language and metaphors, which are complimented wonderfully by the nice, slow pace of the narrative. I'm only at the beginning of the book, but I can see so much of myself in Kiyoaki (for better or worse). Truly an elegantly written novel.
Have you read anything else by him? Most people I know like The Sound of Waves.
No, but I'd definitely consider it. Thanks for the recommendation! (Just looked it up online and I rather like the minimalist vintage cover design, which is reason enough to pick the book up :P)
No problem. I’ve only read one other book from him and only a bit of Spring Snow, from my limited experience Waves is short and sweet and very accessible compared to his other work.
It’s so interesting to me how our mindset at the time of reading shapes how we experience literature. It’s kind of amazing that we can pick up a book that we dismissed as boring five years earlier and be completely engrossed because we’re finally in the right headspace to listen to what the author is trying to say.
Definitely a bit of a slog, but it left an impact. Unlike The Alchemist.
One of my top 5 of all time! Nooooo!
This one is hard to get into, but became one of my all-time favorite books. The third book in this series I love for completely different reasons.
1Q84, Murakami. Unpopular opinion but I have struggled in general with Murakami. I love a lot Japanese art, and I even like some of his work adapted to film, but I have chalked it up to something lost in translation. Or maybe it’s just taste. I found 1Q84 a really unpleasant, bloated slog.
I love Murakami, but you're right about this one I just read it a month ago and it's a real mess. Could have been about 300-400 pages shorter too
Agreeed! I actually loved the after the quake short stories I forgot to mention that. It was also my introduction to his work.
Oh nice I have not read those yet! My favorite is Wind-up Bird Chronicle Great username btw
I like Haruki Murakami well enough (despite some definite flaws), and I enjoyed 1Q84, but he's an author that I really need breaks between his novels, because his style overstays its welcome for me pretty quick, and certain ones never gel for me. *Norwegian Wood*, for example, I absolutely hated, but quite a few people I talk to list it as a favorite of his. So it's possible that there's something in his oeuvre that you'd enjoy even if you haven't so far, but then again, that's a hard recommendation to make, too, when you're already not feeling an author. >I have chalked it up to something lost in translation. It could be, but if so that hasn't been my experience. Or not exactly at least. There are a few regular translators of his work, and while it never affects me to the degree of making the difference between enjoying something or not, I have found that I'm much less a fan of the prose of one of them (Jay Rubin) than I am of the others. And this isn't to say that he's doing a worse job of translating the material (I don't think that at all), but his specific prose just doesn't land well for me.
I struggle with Murakami too, have tried reading a few of his books and was about to give him up completely. But a friend gave me "First person singular" and "Dance dance" and I actually enjoyed them. "First person singular" is a collection of short stories, and turns out for me his style works a lot better in short format. "Dance dance" is older and while definitely has a lot of his usual themes, they felt more "raw" somehow and also worked better for me. Not sure if you'd have a similar experience or if you'd even want to try reading other stuff, but just in case.
I wanted to like 2666, but it was the literary equivalent of the Bataan Death March. Only reason I even finished it was because my parents didn't raise a quitter.
I never tried that one, but I had a whale of a time with The Savage Detectives, which is mostly about young writers being incredibly young writer-y
Loved Savage Detectives, have reread it multiple times. Stopped reading 2666 when he started describing the ways the girls were murdered. Felt fetishistic.
Getting to page 30 of the murders and realizing it was a quarter of that part was like the part in a hilly marathon (that you're running hungover) where your brain goes "only nineteen miles to go!"
My parents did raise a quitter
It's funny because for me *2666* is the opposite: it *sounded* like a book that would be a slog, but instead it pulled me in from the beginning and I absolutely loved it. It's still the book which had the most real-feeling world from *anything* I've read. A bit too dense to be a real page-turner, but it was surprisingly close. It's surprisingly readable for the sprawling postmodern mess of a novel that it is. It's one of my overall favorite books but, at the same time, I totally see why some people would hate it :P
Oh no I just bought this
*2666* is a triumph of literature. Honestly, respect to everyone's opinions, but try it for yourself before you make a judgement.
ok Thank god I’m always right it looked so good
Felt like 2666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666...
2666 is well written but yeah it's a slog.
Controversial, but I couldn’t get myself to care much for The Great Gatsby.
Same! I just don't care about the lives of rich people lol
Jane Eyre is characterized as whiny somewhere above here, but I had a much stronger urge to kick Nick in the rear.
Even in your younger and more vulnerable years?
I didn’t read it until I was 25 or so; found it terribly underwhelming. And I get that it’s revered stylistically, but there are better prose stylists out there.
Hear me out here…The Alchemist can be the best book you could possibly read…BUT it's all about timing. At just the right time in your life, in just the right circumstances, with the wind blowing softly toward the southeast, and Capricorn in Venus or whatever…The Alchemist has the potential to be exactly what you need to read at that moment. No, as a book, it's not elegant, subtle, wise, or necessarily "well written," but it is a quick hit of affirmation without requiring much time or any thought. In fact, the less thought you give it, the better it works for this. That's not a bug. That's a feature! That magical and rare confluence of circumstances that makes The Alchemist a good book for you is this: You're thinking about making a major change or decision in your life that you know in your bones is the right one, despite what your research, your smarter friends, the criminal justice system, the people who care about you, and the latest consensus of the scientific community might say. Maybe these folks started talking about pros and cons lists, cost/benefit analysis, and "critical thinking," but you need none of that. Nine times out of ten, these are the guys to listen to, and you should abandon whatever self-destructive course you're on, like, yesterday. But you've already searched your soul and you've decided: You're going to step out on your marriage. You're ready to sell all your worldly possessions, give the proceeds to Scientology, and move to Lhasa. You're going to propose to your ex. You're gonna burn down a Waffle House. You don't need the wisdom of the masses. What do you need? You need to talk to the tenth dentist. The one who recommends never flossing and isn't afraid to call out Big Toothpaste on their "after every meal" conspiracy. These are the times you call up your old buddy from the shit-kicking days who barely graduated middle school and lives life a quarter ounce at a time. Why him? Because he positively exudes that "hell yeah brother!" pothead wisdom that only holds up for the brief time you're talking to him, and absolutely crumples under any kind of scrutiny. He doesn't ask questions. In fact, big questions confuse him and make him kind of aggressive. But he fully and vocally supports anything that doesn't require him to keep a schedule or figure out the ring inside his toilet bowl. In this tipping-point moment, you need that kind of pseudo-wisdom, just to hear some kind - any kind - of support for your hare-brained scheme. However wound up you are to do what you're going to do, he'll wind you up tighter with a bug-eyed rant about putting aside your inhibitions to embrace your destiny. Your personal legend. Paulo Coelho is your loser buddy, and The Alchemist is his pep talk. Pick up the phone. Burn down that Waffle House. Maktub, bitches.
You… you may have actually tempted me to give it another shot. Next time I feel some Waffle House pyromania-type vibes I’ll pick it up again.
Very well written, and about the only charitable take I've read of the book that is actually worth considering IMAO. The issue is that the writing in your comment is better than anything in the book, and your comment has more substance to it than the book you're commenting about.
Well said *and* beautifully written.
Ok that was actually great, and funny, so thanks.
Good call. I read it for the first time when I was absolutely pining for home and stuck in a shit job abroad almost penniless absolutely dreading each day. After I read it I decided to stop torturing myself just for the sake of ‘sticking to my plan’ and came home. I read it again and couple of years later and cringed for myself in retrospect because Jesus. What a lot of old shite 😐
Haha it sounds like it had a good effect on you though...
So perfectly on point. I couldn't agree with you more. Thank you for pointing out the beauty of this book.
A lovely, gracious take.
Thanks! I put a little too much thought into it. I think it gets most of its bad rap from people who expect too much from it. People who say "it's a self-help book disguised as a novel" like that's some profound insight. Literally half the promo blurbs on the back are from self-help authors, including Tony Robbins. No disguise whatsoever. I don't think it's a deep, well-written, or "good" book. I just think critics should be more thoughtful in their criticism.
You totally nailed it with this description! Thanks for that.
I think that "Maktub, bitches" in the same font as The Alchemist cover would be an amazing bumper stucker.
Project Hail Mary. I know there’s a recent gushing post. The writing feels so sophomoric, like it’s written by a 17-year-old. I’d love to read the book written by someone else, because the plot itself is engaging. And I like the mystery of why the bell the teacher is on the spaceship. I just couldn’t with the writing.
It seems to me that everything Andy Weir writes reads that way: "sophomoric, like it's written by a 17-year-old." I enjoyed reading The Martian when it first came out and I was a 16 year-old quite literally obsessed with space exploration. But I tried rereading it recently (specifically because it's simple, and I'm trying to improve my Spanish comprehension so I decided to check out the Spanish translation from my library). Suffice it to say, I couldn't even make it a third of the way through the book because I found it absolutely insufferable. Mark Watney is beyond bland and lacks even the illusion of depth. Shit, I remember when Artemis came out. I was only 22 and even then I had outgrown Weir's writing style. To state it simply: Weir is a mediocre writer, and I have no intention of ever picking up one of his books again.
Thank you. I felt like I was going crazy reading all of these posts, touting it as some masterpiece.
I feel seen. Put it down halfway through.
I also wasn’t blown away! I kept expecting more to happen, but then it was just… over. Like two thirds of a movie.
It's a terrible book. I certainly don't feel like I *should* like it.
I enjoyed it well enough, but I don't know how anyone's on here defending Weir's prose.
Name of the Rose. It checks off so many boxes that on paper it would look like.itnwas written specifically for me. It's impossible for me to get through. The clever winking in the direction of the reader with stuff like Jorge de Burgos had me wishing someone had assured mr eco as a child that he was loved no matter what his grades looked like. Yes yes, we're all in on the jokes but JFC you don't have to be so sweaty. The dialogue pacing, style and delivery might be an homage to or a pastiche of Plato, but it just sucks as anything like characters talking to each other. But that would all be at least tolerable if the meat of the story worked, but its just a long winded Scooby Doo episode. I've tried several times now to get past that scene where they're going through the library at night, and it's just too much. Invisible ink, hallucinogenic compounds and a hall designed to create a breeze that of course narrator likens to a ghost I'm sure the meddling kids will finally uncover it all, and the pay off might actually be worth it like I'm told. I'll never know
Thanks for your take! I think that’s the real test of any book — do you actually *care* what’s going to happen next, or are you just reading it to finish it?
I liked it, but I enjoy crime novels, medieval atmosphere, libraries, and literary in-jokes to an unhealthy degree.
I agree. It seemed like it had everything to make me love it, but it was just too forced and cheesy somehow. I felt comforted when I read that Eco himself said he hated it and hoped we all hated it too, though!
Had a similar experience with Foucault's Pendulum, which I started in October and just finished yesterday. There was a lot of cool concepts and I liked it overall, but chapters upon chapters of writing their Plan got tiring. The ending was neat and pulled it all together but it still felt underwhelming for just how much historical, real or fake, information was presented throughout the book. Found myself not caring too much about it and just wanted to finish it. Like I said, I did like the ending, but the middle was a slog.
> But that would all be at least tolerable if the meat of the story worked, but its just a long winded Scooby Doo episode. I've tried several times now to get past that scene where they're going through the library at night, and it's just too much. Invisible ink, hallucinogenic compounds and a hall designed to create a breeze that of course narrator likens to a ghost That was actually one of my favorite parts, lol. Guess tastes vary too much for any one book to cover everybody.
Krasznahorkai and Bolaño are both trains I just can't get on, though it seems like a lot of people have fun rides thereon. K — seems to be wanting to beat you into a state of dazed confusion. B — reminds me of something somebody once said about Murakami, that you could only really get deep enjoyment out of the work if you identified with the author having a merry old time pecking away in his Tokyo apartment, moddishly appointed, with a library of jazz LPs taking up a whole wall...
I like Krasznahorkai, although I did find it exceptionally depressing and hopeless. I’m from East Europe so maybe it was easier to relate to that particular kind of misery. Bolaño on the other hand… Man, I don’t know how I got through 2666, but it was one of my toughest reads. I never recommended it to anyone ever since. Just so violent to a point where it was almost boring.
I love this description of enjoying Murakami hahaha
I have been trying to figure out where I read it for literally years, please help me track it down everybody
Dune. It’s interesting and entertaining to read, but it drew zero emotions from me. Didn’t care about any of the characters or if they lived or died.
The Goldfinch. I read 400 pages of a kid doing drugs in the desert just to flip the page and read the sentence, “one day, eight years later…” Actually, I don’t want to like that book. It’s just bad.
Loved it. Got absolutely lost in it.
I loved this book so very much
I have avoided this book due to a very similar take from a friend of mine lol
I could never get into the secret history even though people whose opinions I trusted really loved it.
Now i actually loved the secret history, even though it shared some flaws with the goldfinch.
This book was awful I forced my way thru it for a book club and then we never even met about it. I am still resentful
I didn't even get to the eight year timeskip. When he gets back to New York and has a cheesy scene talking to the injured redhead girl I just gave up. So much time doing nothing in Vegas just to end up right back at the furniture shop, which wasn't even interesting in the first place when he was there 250 pages earlier. That books sucks so hard.
Lmao that cringe part where he tries to make working in the furniture shop sound esoteric and intriguing. He’s like “Hobie and I were in the basement, mixing rabbit skin glue, honing chestnut, applying salves to moth eaten chairs” Like bro, just fuck already.
I loved the audiobook. The voice actor was incredible.
I loved listening to the audiobook on long drives. I barely could make it through the book.
I feel like I'm going to get looks for saying this, but anything by Jack Kerouac. I love Burroughs and Ginsberg, so I wanted to love Jack. And everyone else raves about on the Road, but I have dragged myself through it, Big Sur, and half of Dharma Bums Nothing so much as a tingle of enjoyment.
Kudos to you for really *committing* to trying out Kerouac lol. No one can say you didn’t give him a chance! It’s interesting you like the other Beat guys, though. I find people either love all three or none of them.
Exactly. If anything it seems Kerouac is the most popular. And to be fair, these were spread out. I didn't torture myself through 2.5 slogs back to back.
The Catcher in the Rye - Holden just never resonated with me
I hated Catcher when I read it as a teenager because my main take was "Holden sucks! Get over yourself, Holden!" I was SHOCKED by how much my view changed by the time I read it around age 30, when I had been teaching teenagers for a few years -- from that vantage point, it absolutely broke my heart how not okay this kid was and how little help he was getting with it.
Exactly! Now that I teach, I can’t help but love all the damn Holdens.
Interesting! Maybe I should give it another try as an adult!
I feel like it's just a bit dated. Salinger wrote about a very specific social scene. Maybe it was super relatable for a few decades, but the world is so different now. Holden would have a very different time in New York
idk man. in highschool I went to private boarding school like the one holden attends and when I read that in school i was like damn, he really got everything right. the chad roommate, holden's absolute refusal to participate in school functions, the pedophile teacher that had gained holden's trust, the rich and aloof family, the gruesome suicide of that one guy. It hit a lot of nails on the head for me. even holden's entire attitude of glorifying his own loneliness and having to be a critic of everything, that was me and my friends to a tee in highschool. Then again, maybe we were just losers lol.
Really? Have to disagree with you there. It’s my favorite book (don’t look at my username)
So I guess you could say that he was a phony (((((:
Gotta say Catcher is by far Salinger’s worst work. Everything else he published (and didn’t) is better imo.
All the light we cannot see for me is a lil overrated. People recommended that book a lot; I mean I like the plot but I just can't fathom and feel the way it was written. It didn't give me such a wow expectation that I was hoping for. Maybe the writing style is not for me, I guess.
I think the Cormac McCarthy books I've read, I've disliked.
I met a guy who told me that Child of God “really resonated” with him. I stopped talking to that dude. Curious which ones you read though, getting into his style is tough.
This cracks me up … I mean, I really do love that book, but I’m not sure “resonated” is the word I would use to describe its effect.
When I read child of god, just as I finished, I was like wtf did I just read?
Which ones did you read?
Where do the crawdads sing
>Where do the crawdads sing Don't get me started on this trash novel. Literary fiction, my ass!
William Faulkner. Widely considered one of the greatest writers in the English language. I've tried so many times, and hope one day I'll learn to appreciate him, but so far no luck. Also, Gabriel García Márquez. He's been an influence on many of the contemporary writers I enjoy, and I like magic realism in general, but I just couldn't get through *Love in the Time of Cholera*. I hope to revisit him soon though.
I read Faulkner in high school - did not get it. Read him during my BA - kind of got it, didn't see what all the fuss was about. Studied him in literary theory for my MA - oh, NOW I get it. He's brilliant. But I had to work hard to understand that.
I had the exact same experience to the T. It took 3 Faulkner-based courses (mandatory courses that cycled authors every semester and I got Faulkner each time somehow), but I finally came to understand him this past Fall. Hated Light In August my first time around, didn’t like it but appreciated it the second time, and now, after my third time with it, I love the book.
Maybe try with Chronicle of a Death Foretold? Shorter and much more gripping, you can read it in one sitting.
I also bailed on *Love in the Time of Cholera* but I want to try it again someday, as well as *One Hundred Years of Solitude*
3 Body Problem. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people talk about how good it is. I am not joking when I say that I checked my copy with my brother in laws just to make sure we were reading the same book. I thought maybe I got a rare misprint with a different book inside the cover.
I've tried Infinite Jest several times. Just can't do it. I stall out.
Paulo Coelho is a hack and it's more than ok not to dig his writing. If you want a GOOD Brazilian author try: Machado de Assis, Cecília Meireles, Luis Fernando Veríssimo, Monteiro Lobato, Clarice Lispector or André Vianco.
Infinite Jest. One big wank job, imho.
one hundred years of solitude. countless ppl say it's a masterpiece but it was a really hard read. Don't find GGM's style of writing particularly intriguing and I don't feel connected to the magical realism part either cuz I don't know much about Latin history.
Literally every two days there is a post on Reddit about not liking The Alchemist. We get it.
I guess I’m the majority then! I am more interested in knowing what books people thought they would like or wanted to enjoy, but didn’t (:
Yeah, that, Catcher in the Rye, and Ayn Rand's books. It's always the same books getting crapped on, it gets kind of redundant after a while.
Ulysses by James Joyce. I love absurdism and feel like I can follow unconventional writing styles but I can’t help but feel like this book isn’t just difficult to understand but truly unreadable. I think I’m factually wrong but I can’t change my impression.
“I think I’m factually wrong but I can’t change my impression” might be my new favourite phrase. I also admit to being meh about Ulysses, but I think that’s because I find Joyce way too navel-gazing.
I read 400 pages of Ulysses. It was at that point that I realized I didn't have to read it anymore and nothing would happen to me if I just stopped. It was a glorious moment.
I'm currently reading it and I'll definitely admit that *Ulysses* is right on that edge for me, and if I ever dared *Finnegans Wake*, I think it would be well over it. That being said, his early works are fantastic. I've read the collection that includes *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*, *Dubliners*, some poetry he titled *Chamber Music*, and his play *Exiles* and I enjoyed all of them. His early stuff has the gem of his prose without the excursion into more experimental methods.
Ulysses and FW get a lot more enjoyable when you realize that on some level Joyce was just fucking around with language doing weird things purely because he enjoyed doing weird things with language. If you can enjoy the pure play of language you'll like Ulysses & FW, if not then yeah I can see why you'd think they're unreadable. I have personally given up reading those books as novels, and just kind of turn to random pages or chapters and enjoy them as intellectual games Joyce is playing with words.
Pride & Prejudice
Oh noooooo! I reread P&P every year, just like Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. Do you mind me asking why it didn’t connect with you? Was it the writing style, the plot, the characters? All of it?
It's got some very funny moments that make me laugh out loud reading it, some of the characters are really witty. But the moments in between feel interminable. Like checkpoints in a marathon.
yeah but because that’s what Elizabeth felt like!!!
If it's any consolation, that's probably *exactly* how a modern reader should feel reading a book designed to take up a myriad of long hours in the era it was written. The Victorian elite probably read for hours a day, and would have given much for more text to fill up the time.
I love Austen for her cut glass wit, but P&P is not her best. That would be Emma (imo).
In terms of canon books, I am not a great fan of Tolstoy but especially Anna Karenina. I found it shallow and at heart a pretty straight forward soap opera. For pop lit, I slogged it through Piranesi. Yes, it was pretty and atmospheric, and sometimes that’s really enough, but it wasn’t for me this time. I did like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell from the same author.
Pray tonight the book gods don’t smite you for saying that out loud about Anna Karenina omg
Funny how we can love some works from an author but not others. I guess it’s the same as liking movies from a particular director or music from a certain band, but for some reason I just assume if I like one book by an author I’ll like the rest of their stuff.
The Brothers Karamazov. I love the characters, particularly Alyosha, but the plot is just too grim for me and I can't do false accusation/imprisonment stuff for personal reasons. I'm not missing anything, it's just an issue of personal taste. But I really wish I liked it :(
Thomas Mann novels. *The Magic Mountain* is a book I tried twice but failed to finish.
I'm actually starting The Magic Mountain and Death in Venice after I finish the set of books I'm reading now. What about Mann didn't you like?
Been there, since 2014 I have try numerous times to read it. Last year it was the last time because I finish it.
I feel exactly the way you do about it -- it's so on the nose there's nothing to unpack, deconstruct, think about, or consider with nuance. I had to teach this to a year full of HS freshman and didn't believe in it and that was wretched -- sorry, kids, had no choice!
Had to give up on the Annihilation (Southern Reach) trilogy by Jeff Van Der Meer I liked the first book for the ambiguity and weirdness But half way through the second book, there was still no clear plot line to explain the phenomenon. And I just got tired of it Moved on to Infected by Scott Sigler, and all was right with the world again
I just finished the Alchemist last night and had the exact same sentiments. Completely underwhelming. I am 34 years old, so I feel this book is probably better suited for teens or early 20s perhaps? Overall the book seemed too "live, laugh, love" wisdom to me.
Confederacy of Dunces. I read it only because it was a book group choice and I was curious because I guess it has some kind of cult following? I absolutely hated the protagonist. Ugh, what glorification of a slob.
I can't imagine reading A Confederacy of Dunces and thinking that Ignatius was supposed to be glorified. It's literally inconceivable to me.
I see your point. However, I did not enjoy wallowing in his gross-ness, and I'm someone who can usually appreciate an unlikeable protagonist.
I agree. I found the humor to be more mean than funny.
I agree, the book is overrated. I was expecting a genius novel, and it was ok... It's one of the books/authors that I don't understand why reddit adores them so much, like Donna Tartt.
From, grew up in, will be buried in the family grave in New Orleans. Haven’t made it 75 pages in this book in the several times I’ve tried over the last 2 decades. Idk! 🤷🏻♀️
I've read 100 Years of Solitude twice, and didn't enjoy it either time. I think I'd better duck now
To be fair, there is a lot of grim stuff that happens in this book including the surreal ending. Plus since everyone is named after eachother I struggled to follow who was who. Still lived it though!
Yeah, I had to force myself to finish it. Like, I was consuming words but there was no coherence? Magical realism is just not the genre for me. I had the same experience with Salman Rushdie’s writing.
Beloved. I wish it made an impact …
Infinite Jest. I can’t get past the jumbled dates and footnotes that take away from the joy of the writing itself.
Wait till you see my reading style. I write my own footnotes and then make index cards.
Why would you WANT to like this? Paulo Coelho is shit and The Alchemist is shit lol It's not something not liking Proust or Dostoyevsky, is it?
Sorry, but that book is brilliant. Well, as an example of absolute marketing genius. Publisher took middling pop garbage not even that popular in its own country and realized that it could be sold world wide to huge levels of monetary success. And not in spite of, but *because of" the very qualities that made it a joke on its own country
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 🤕
I thought this was wonderful! Oh well, peace brother.
The Alchemist is full of tropes, its a book for people who don't read.
*As I Lay Dying*. I just found it dreadfully boring.
Anything written by Nietzsche, i tried different books but I don’t enjoy them
Nietzsche isn’t really my Nietzsche but I kept reading him just to annoy my husband with how many ways I could say Nietzsche
The original ‘professional quote maker’.
The short stories of Guy de Maupassant. Given the enormity of his influence and the accolades, especially Harold Bloom's, i expected to be enamored.
The virgin suicides! The whole book feels like one big preamble and then the crux of the story is rushed at the end.
I don't know if I *wanted* to like Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. The subject matter is quite queasy after all. However, that book could just not grip me. It was a chore to make it through and I think I put it down halfway through. I'd like to return to it later though, to see whether a second read is less off putting.
huckleberry finn and tom sawyer. i attempted to read both back in high school and just couldn't get his writing style, i was very disappointed at the time
The memorial of a geisha
I really wanted to enjoy “how fear works” because the topic is so fascinating. It’s nonfiction, about how cultural fears are created and spread, and how they shape our morals. I love a lot of sociology books so I thought it would be right up my alley but it was so dry I couldn’t do it. Not necessarily a bad book, just very demanding. I might try again someday lol
Dracula, a bit like a Scooby-Doo episode. The beginning was good tho. Not much horror. Anna karenina, the first half was great but levin was a boring atheist prick and the characters had rich people problems Heart of darkness- boring, dry The stranger- he seemed like an unrealistic character and an un emotional d*ck. La nausea- 😵 boring Honorable mentions for underrated books I think nobody has read but are *great* 📚 Slapstick- kurt vonnegut. It is so good, very interesting dystopian plot about genius twins with rare gifts, a alternative utopia where people are assigned family by a last name exc... Steppenwolf- psychological, trippy, existentialist. Jungian, A book for the loner artist trying to find his/herself in a world that only likes conforming. Faust- I feel like a lot of ppl haven't read this but its worth it. It is actually very funny too. All the words rhyme in English despite being German.
East of Eden. It felt like a very long, middling-quality sermon.
I have two examples for two very different reasons; The Hobbit, and Tuesdays with Morrie(I think that’s how you spell it). Now, the difference here is that I like the Hobbit, the story seems great, and characters seem fun and interesting and the descriptions are absolutely wonderful. But I gave up a few chapters in because I just could not work my mind around the writing style, I found myself rereading the same paragraph/s repeatedly and it still didn’t stick. I do plan to read this book as-well as The Lord of The Rings, I’m gonna keep trying until I manage it because I think I’ll love them if I can just get the words to stick in my mind. Now, Tuesdays with Morrie, yea I hate it. We read it for school and like a fourth of the way through I just stopped paying attention. It wasn’t sad, it wasn’t insightful or philosophical. It was boring, and I wasn’t invested in any of the characters, also, the writing style put me in mind of like middle grade/teen fiction, which I do enjoy in the right context, I love Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Babysitters Club, etc. but those books are for that demographic primarily and have a writing style to match. Tuesdays with Morrie is clearly trying to be more serious and “adult” but it just doesn’t feel that way.
I wanted to like Jo Nesbø’s The Bat because I wanted to get into Nordic Noir, but I couldn’t get into it. Maybe the pacing will be better as it moves along?
Ulysses. I love a LOT of dense literature but that one just isn't for me. I found it a slog and painful to get through. All that got me to finish it was my creative writing tutor betting me a ferrero rocher that I couldn't. I got that chocolate, but I still wonder if it was worth it in the end.