Disrespecting a "classic"

[Alleged_Alec]

I was once given a collection of H. P. Lovecraft stories, and I found them really lacklustre. They were not in the least scary, mainly due to the fact of me being really annoyed by being told that the monster was scary. The only things I kind of liked were his poems.

 

[DarthSka]

Wuthering Heights. My God, that book is horrible. From what I remember, it's just the bad boy who hates everything and everyone along with the girl who wants to help him via love. All it is is Heathcliff going on and on about I hate this and I hate that, and this is after he's taken in off the streets by a wealthy man. What the hell do you have to complain about now?! Our teacher actually was upset at a good number of us for saying we didn't like it for the above reasons and more.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Romeo and Juliet is just a shitty, bog-standard love story between two kids that were living in a melodramatic dream land and deserved to die for their stupidity. It doesn?t really say much about anything, other than ?dumb kids are going to do dumb things out of some fabricated idea of romance, just that it?ll be made that much harder if you happen to be members of rival families?. Well, duh. Maybe it was groundbreaking at the time, but I don?t see why they made us read and analyze it in English class.

Stephen King?s Carrie was a decent book, but it wasn?t scary at all, and only really got interesting towards the end. But I understand that it was one of King?s first horror novels and apparently, even he doesn?t think it was that great.

Frank Miller?s The Dark Knight Returns.

Spoiler

Seriously, has anyone ever looked at the art? I get that it?s meant to be a dark and grungy portrayal of Batman and Gotham City, but half the time it looks pretty neat, and the other half it?s like a couple of sketches that sometimes aren?t even properly coloured in (not to mention the fact that Carrie Kelley/Robin, Ellen Yindel, and Martha Wayne all look the fucking same). It?s inconsistent as hell; I don?t have scans on hand now, but Batman?s suit changes a couple of times from the ?yellow ellipse? design that looks quite Neal Adams? work, to just the black bat symbol on grey reminiscent of his original 40s look.

Furthermore, there?s far too much text crammed, the news sections are pushed on you so much that it can often detract rather than enhance your reading experience, and this combined with the art can make the story hard to follow at times. Also, Batman straight-up kills a Mutant gang member with a fucking gun in one scene, and then later can?t bring himself to kill the even more dangerous Joker and berates the SOBs for using a gun, which he calls ?the weapon of the enemy?. I would?ve been fine with this if it highlighted Batman?s hypocrisy or at least had him questionably justify it to himself by the fact that the Mutant he killed was holding a baby hostage, but Batman is completely cold after the event and it?s completely glossed over.

To be honest, this book doesn?t even deserve to be regarded in the same light as Watchmen, a far more enjoyable read with much more depth and more to say on the political issues of the time, despite the fact that it came after DKR and many fans argue that it ?took inspiration?. But the difference is that DKR has aged somewhat badly, and once you get over the shock of ?Wow, Batman is so dark and brooding here! And Batman and Superman brawl it out!? I also think that, if they were going to have Batman and Superman fight it out as a climax, they should?ve built it up much better outside of almost sheer fanservice, as I just felt it was somewhat left-field and I find it hard to believe the Dark Knight held his own that good against the Man of Steel, even before the Kryptonite.

Let me clarify that I liked the book. I thought it was decent, genuinely thoughtful, and some of my personal highlights were Carrie Kelly as Robin (even though she was more of a plot device than a fleshed-out character), Batman and the Joker?s final confrontation, and the overall atmosphere. But it is overrated, and I much prefer Year One.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

Well I know a guy who refuses to see Looper on the basis of "it looks boring and dumb, plus Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis are shit actors". While you may argue that Looper is not classic literature I beg to differ, it is a modern movie classic that deserves to be seen by everyone. I bet whoever disagrees that in 10+ years high-school teachers will be showing this flm to media classes to write essays on.

 

[217not237]

Apocalypse Now is my least favorite film of all time. The characters have no real personality, the entire plot is pretty much "Let's go to the place where there is a plot" for the first two hours, and no actual development happens until the end. I can understand why people like it-- actually, no, I can't. I have no idea why Frances Ford Coppola is such a respected film-maker when his films are just so mediocre and bland.

Blade Runner was... meh. Not really all that interesting overall.

Memento was my least favorite Christopher Nolan film. It was way too confusing, and I just didn't care about the characters.

 

[lunam-kardas]

Moby Dick, and boy did my teachers try to make me feel like crap for not loving every single stupid second of it.

One of my professors tried to hit me with "You just don't get it" to which I say profoundly that yes, yes I get it, which is exactly why I am not the least bit impressed with it.

It's a story about a crazy Quaker who clearly doesn't know a thing about picking his battles (he even says he'd take on the goddamned sun if it wronged him), and somehow manages to get an entire crew to go along with taking on the Gustave of whales (Gustave is a crocodile, one that's murdered over 300 people and counting) despite the fact that they at that point have enough whale oil already to make a ton of money once they go home and sell it. Surprise surprise, they all die....except for this one guy so he could "tell their story".

Oh yeah, I can see how this would be a classic.

Also, the author Melville's writing style absolutely sucks all of the ass!

 

[Dante dynamite]

Great Gatsby was a terrible book why the hell is it considered a classic it was so bad

 

[Another]

Remembering trying to read Jane Eyre makes me die a little inside. The most boring book I have ever read.

Honestly though, most books that I read in high school I didn't really like. The only two that I ended up LOVING were To Kill a Mockingbird and Les Miserables.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I only remember liking a handful of the books I was required to read back in my school days. I liked Animal Farm, I loved Midsummer Night's Dream and, there were a couple of fantasy books that I read back in middle school that I liked. Other than that, I really didn't care for any of the books my teachers had us read, especially The Great Gatsby because if there's one thing I hate it's rich people doing nothing but getting drunk and high.

 

[snekadid]

I hate "The Merchant of Venice", its overrated and tedious.

 

[Wolf In A Bear Suit]

I hated 1984 when I read it in school. It's obviously an extremely well written book that I feel was a very accurate warning for the future, but it bored me the plot moved slowly as the protaganist slowly comes to rebel in tiny ways and is then promptly crushed by an unbeatable system giving a sense of hopelessness. I just hated it. It may also be partially due to having an English teacher who felt the need to over explain everything and was far too nice to teach. I finished the book two weeks before the rest of the class because they moved so slow.

 

[Generalissimo]

of mice and men.

bloody hell, i hated this one. it's plot....doesn't exist. it's the diary of 2 traveling workers for 99.9% of the book, and then when i think it's one saving grace could be a good ending. it's one MASSIVE downer.

well done, steinbeck. you wasted me 3 days i could have spent...oh i don't know.....READING A BETTER BOOK.

 

[Swyftstar]

Huck Finn sent me into a rage when I got to the ending. I liked the book, I liked the writing, I liked Huck, I liked Jim and I liked their relationship. Then Tom Sawyer shows up at the end and the entire thing just turns into one of his clusterfucks. I hate that lil shit.

 

[Coldster]

Well I was practically forced to read the LOTR book -"there is actually several books, but..." shut the hell up fantasy-nerd friends, I'm talking here!-, and to me it was a 1000 page brick of boredom. No, I didn't finish it. I did read nearly 400 pages, so dont say I didn't try!

This was after having watched the first movie. A few of my friends had long been into the LOTR universe, long before any rumors of a Peter Jackson movie circulated. I had never taken interest, I much prefer space ships, lasers and aliens. However, I very much enjoyed the first movie and found myself interested in learning a bit more about that mystical world. One of my friends recommended I read the Bible *ahem*, I mean the big block of paper that is the LOTR book. There I would find all the information I could possibly desire!

By the Gods, how the damn thing dragged on... I tend to like a bit of detail, but there is a limit to how accurately I want the situation described... The-thing-with-the-Elves-in-the-place took forever, I had completely lost interest by that point but soldiered on for another hundred pages or whatever before finally giving up. At this point I was accused of having a short attention span, my brain having been 'programmed' by stupid ADHD sci-fi such as Stargate SG-1 and the much hated (among that group of friends anyway) Star Wars universe, one of my personal favorites... I'd rather be stupid and programmed than bored out of my mind! Perhaps it's a good book... It wasn't for me!

Holy moly this is exactly what I was thinking! I cannot thank you enough for putting it into words much better than I would have. I absolutely love the movies but could not stand the book at all and stopped reading after finishing "The Two Towers". I'm pretty sure it was the first series of books I stopped reading without finishing. Hell, I read the whole Twilight series and its horribleness wasn't enough to stop me from finishing them.

 

[DrunkenMonkey]

I'm going to say Les Miserables, only half way.

The parts where dialogue and action happened and even some monologues like "The Tempest in the Brain" were awesome. On the other hand when Hugo gets into his history and theory groove it becomes a massive slog. You can't skip the history sections because you're afraid the history is going to add depth or references to other characters. You can try to skip the theory parts which is basically just Hugo shedding light on the historical background which is supposed to add to the story, but the Philosophy posed goes so far beyond my head that I feel like an idiot when they are over. Sad part is if I understood the Philosophy applied in his theories I would probably like the book a couple of times more. He seems to be in love with describing famous french architecture which really gets me confused, but I have to put it in context that the work was written at a time when most French architecture wasn't about a century old. So yeah really mixed feelings, and I wouldn't be surprised if people put it down on the first chapter despite the critical acclaim around the book.

Have you ever tried reading the any of the abridged versions available? The one that I read, at least, cut out a lot of the more long drawn-out asides and just focused on the main story. It's also a much shorter, easier read.

I don't like abridged versions much, they cut out too much for the story to live up to its name. I appreciate the advice, but don't get me wrong the book is good on its own merits, but it's really not for everyone. I'm probably not old enough to get the side things like theory, and history parts anyway, but that's the beauty of a classic or any good book really. You ever hear of the "self justification theory" it's basically the more you suffer for something the more you learn to like it or enjoy it. It works for reading the original over 2000 or more (not sure) pages version really well. The long slog makes you appreciate the character action bits that much more.

 

[Hylke Langhout]

I disliked "The Heart of Darkness," by Joseph Konrad. The book that inspired Apocalypse Now and Spec Ops: The Line.
It's a good book, don't get me wrong, and it was and interesting way of storytelling. But the way it is presented, through the narration style as a past tense story annoyed me--as much as I want to like the book, I simply couldn't get enthralled with it.

I'm with this guy. Heart of Darkness is boring as hell. It's about 100 pages long and the main character spends 2 of those pages complaining about rivets.

Also, A Room Of One's Own is a piece of shit. It's an essay written by Virginia Woolf, but it's stream of consciousness. It has very little cohesion and jumps from idea to idea in a completely random order. Screw that book.

 

[halfeclipse]

Shakespeare is pretty bad, for all the attention he gets, imo.

Shakespeare wrote a LOT, and like a lot of prolific authors can be hit and miss. On one hand, Midsummer Night?s Dream, Henry V and Hamlet are all very good. On the other a choice between hanging myself and reading Merchant of Venice again would take some consideration.

 

[Fidelias]

Great Expectations. I just wanted Pip to kill himself, it was like it started at shitty and ended at shitty, there was no progress for the characters, and if there was, then it was just so fucking boring I don't remember it. I even wrote that in my final paper. Also, Death of a Salesman. I saw nothing of value in that book and remember no details about it.

And this is coming from someone who read the Count of Monte Cristo and loved every one of those 1400+ pages.

Oh god, Great Expectations! So much Great Expectations!!!

I wanted Pip to fall off a cliff within the first chapter!

Now usually, this is a good start for some great character design. Some of my favorite characters were characters I absolutely hated from the start, then grew to love; Jack (Mass Effect) Junpei (Persona 3) Thomas (Dresden Files)

The problem is that Pip never learns, never grows, and never matures. Or when he does it's by making ridiculous leaps of logic that no sane or insane human ever would!

But I usually dislike classic novels. I usually find them to be written badly, and most of them are considered great simply because of a point they are trying to make. And while that point might have been interesting and well done for that time-period, almost any decent book you pick up nowadays might have that same point. Except most newer books would have that point done better, written clearer, and with additional conflict and action put in.

 

[Dr. Cakey]

Too much I wanted to quote so I'll quote none of it. My points, in brief (not really):

Shakespeare
My English teachers have played a game of Moving the Goal Posts with Shakespeare. Whatever we read next year is "the good Shakespeare". Romeo and Juliet (Freshman), Julius Caesar (Sophomore), Did we read Shakespeare junior year?, Othello (Senior). I'm still waaaaiting...

But, based on what I know of Shakespeare, it's clearly Shakespeare is better read than performed. No, I did not mix that up. Dense language like that must be read, not heard, to be comprehended. Shakespeare was capable in creating premises, but he had no skill in forming narratives. This became abundantly obvious in Othello - Othello has to think Desdemona is cheating on him, but Shakespeare has no idea how to actually accomplish that. I also think that it needed to be more clearly explained that Iago has supernatural powers. It's been a while since I read it, but if I recall rightly he can control the weather and weave Spheres of Silence, which makes him a pretty high-level mage.

The Scarlet Letter
As I was reading this book, I was also reading a very funny review series on another forum where a member critiqued fan-fiction posted on the forum. I mention this because as I read The Scarlet Letter, I kept drawing connections between it and that fan-fiction. This came to a head when several stories in a row had scenes where characters have visions of the past or future, but the reader is never told what it is (i.e. "he began to run from the thoughts of his past"). The same things happens in The Scarlet Letter.

For the past, er...two years...I've called The Scarlet Letter the second-worst book ever written (Left Behind being the worst). But recently I've been forced to bump Letter back to third-worst.

Brave New World
Has its ups and downs. Anyone who thinks it has anything to do with reality needs to get their head out of their ass. The person who said they never finished the book - I recommend you do so. I think you'll enjoy it. I certainly did. It's rare that dystopian novels have happy endings. What's that? It wasn't a happy ending? Was for me.

Lord of the Rings
If you can slog through Twilight, this should be a cakewalk. I just mention that because someone said they made it through Twilight but not this.

But why didn't they just ride the eagles?

Movies, Particularly Old Movies
Don't talk to me about shrinking attention span! Writers, directors, cinematographers, etc. all know how the human brain works. You get 3-5 seconds on a static shot, slightly more if it's on a person's face, and perhaps 15 minutes in a single location. Then you have to change, because people will be bored. This is basic stuff. Sitcoms know this. That's why they have a mechanical way of filming conversations: film the person talking from in front, plus over the other person's shoulder. Ditto for the other person. You have no other option - that's how people work.

May I point you in the direction of terrible anime? Hellsing Ultimate is a series of OVAs with no story (less than no story - any story elements serve to make it worse), solely a series of violent, blood-spattered, and occasionally horrifyingly sexual action scenes. But it is drawn brilliantly. It has to be - otherwise it would be boring. Perspective, camera angle, pose, light and shadow are all carefully managed to perfectly craft each scene.

Basically what I'm asking is for older movies to have the cinematic merit of an anime about Nazi vampires.

 

[Pharsalus]

Anything by Charles Dickens, but mainly Great Expectations. Catcher in the Rye was also a joke, it is a shallow reflection of the authors' sentiments (the author being a small step away from pedophilia in his pursuit of relationships with young girls).

LoTR was basically unreadable, barely made it through fellowship.

All that being said I gotta take a shot at the kids here who like the prequels more than the original trilogy of Star Wars movies. Really ya'll, effing really!?

http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/

Please watch these, that you might grow and understand the error of your ways.