Literature class books that you enjoyed aned did not enjoy

[ygolo]

Really? So, basically, in your opinion Danielle Steele = Charles Dickens = Kurt Vonnegut = Stephen King?

Not being able to create an order on something does not imply equality.

What is the best tasting food? What is the best photograph? ....

You may be able to create a partial order of some sort, but I believe value is in the eye of the beholder.

I think War and Peace is drivel, same thing with Grapes of Wrath and Great Gatsby.

But I liked Death of a Salesman and Fathers and Sons and My Antonia.

I thought To Kill a Mocking Bird was not much better than the fiction I was reading on my own.

 

[Ivy]

Not being able to create an order on something does not imply equality.

What is the best tasting food? What is the best photograph? ....

You may be able to create a partial order of some sort, but I believe value is in the eye of the beholder.

I think War and Peace is drivel, same thing with Grapes of Wrath and Great Gatsby.

But I liked Death of a Salesman and Fathers and Sons and My Antonia.

I thought To Kill a Mocking Bird was not much better than the fiction I was reading on my own.

There is a difference between valuing a piece of writing for yourself, and valuing it in the grand scheme of literature and culture. War and Peace may be drivel IYO but you can't deny that it has influenced other literature, and culture as a whole. I hated Paradise Lost with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns, but I wouldn't deny that it has been extremely influential.

 

[wildcat]

The point was more about books that people had to read in school, not classes that people took just to get to read. (As you might guess from reading the thread, people would not have read a lot of this stuff if taken to a library and let loose.)

I disagree most vehemently.

Who has said anything of letting loose.
I do not let loose.

To give a choice is not to let loose.
I did not say I should let anyone to have a free ride.



Discipline is for fools.
Attraction is gold.

 

[Zergling]

.....

Just don't bother posting in the thread anymore, nothing you are saying has a point to it, or is useful in anyway except throwing criticism around.

There is a difference between valuing a piece of writing for yourself, and valuing it in the grand scheme of literature and culture. War and Peace may be drivel IYO but you can't deny that it has influenced other literature, and culture as a whole. I hated Paradise Lost with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns, but I wouldn't deny that it has been extremely influential.

When literature gets described, it is often described as "Greatest stories...", not "Stories that had a lot of influence in some way", which repeated over and over, creates expectations of something that many, many times aren't met.

 

[Ivy]

When literature gets described, it is often described as "Greatest stories...", not "Stories that had a lot of influence in some way", which repeated over and over, creates expectations of something that many, many times aren't met.

Sure. I don't dispute that at all. I was disappointed many times that I didn't enjoy reading a piece of canonized literature, but in every case (well- almost every case) I could see why it was an important piece of history and the cultural landscape. Even if it were a relic of a regrettable time, and I disagreed with every word of it, or if it were written in a bombastic and self-important style.

Mary Shelley's writing kind of sucked in a lot of ways but there was enough interesting about the atmosphere in which it was written and her mindset and life to write a thesis on it. Still, I don't think I'd recommend Frankenstein to you unless you're interested in that big picture, and willing to do a lot of extra reading to place it in context. Read in a vacuum, it's pretty dull.

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

What makes a book a classic? Why do we read some books and not others? To me, if it is not non-fiction you cannot possibly measure the value of one book against another (excluding grammatical errors and such, obviously).

Really? So, basically, in your opinion Danielle Steele = Charles Dickens = Kurt Vonnegut = Stephen King?

I think Metamorphosis has a point. I think recognition of great literature is largely a game of identifying and giving the expected answer instead of pointing out what you truly enjoy. Let's take a hypothetical example. Pretend you have a person of average intelligence with average reading skills who is completely unfamiliar with literature and the reputations of various books. Assign him to read books by James Joyce, Stephen King, John Grisham and James Patterson. Then ask him three things:

1. If you were told one of these was considered a classic, which one do you suspect it would be?
2. Why do you say that?
3. If you could take one of these books home with you today, which one would you like to have?

I would bet my life that the majority would answer the questions like this:

1. Joyce
2. Because it was boring and I couldn't get through it
3. Any of the other three

 

[Ivy]

I think Metamorphosis has a point. I think recognition of great literature is largely a game of identifying and giving the expected answer instead of pointing out what you truly enjoy. Let's take a hypothetical example. Pretend you have a person of average intelligence with average reading skills who is completely unfamiliar with literature and the reputations of various books. Assign him to read books by James Joyce, Stephen King, John Grisham and James Patterson. Then ask him three things:

1. If you were told one of these was considered a classic, which one do you suspect it would be?
2. Why do you say that?
3. If you could take one of these books home with you today, which one would you like to have?

I would bet my life that the majority would answer the questions like this:

1. Joyce
2. Because it was boring and I couldn't get through it
3. Any of the other three

The point rests on the assumption that personal enjoyment is the sole goal of the study of literature. It's really not. I like plenty of contemporary literature but none of it has had a chance to show its effect on culture yet. It's like conflating history and current events.

 

[Metamorphosis]

I have yet to really read a "classic" book that I enjoyed. If I don't like it, I take away nothing from it. I can learn about culture more easily from watching a documentary than reading about Huck Finn. I gained a true understanding of the negative aspects of communism by reading the Sword of Truth books, but that doesn't make them a classic. What exactly is it about literature that makes it "good/classic?"

So far, the only prerequisites I see are that it must be old and boring. I notice almost no advantage of classic literature over any other fictional book, except that it is about less interesting topics.

Edit:

The point rests on the assumption that personal enjoyment is the sole goal of the study of literature. It's really not. I like plenty of contemporary literature but none of it has had a chance to show its effect on culture yet. It's like conflating history and current events.

What other point does it have then? I'm not trying to discredit the English majors out there, but I have never gained anything useful from reading classic novels, to my knowledge. The very idea of studying fictional writing for any other purpose than writing style seems ridiculous to me.

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

The point rests on the assumption that personal enjoyment is the sole goal of the study of literature. It's really not. I like plenty of contemporary literature but none of it has had a chance to show its effect on culture yet. It's like conflating history and current events.

Isn't it? To me, the first job of any work of art is to entertain. If a message or an understanding is imparted, then all the better. But if people don't want to watch/read/look at/listen to the work in the first place, then the message is lost. What good is a masterwork that sits in a closet?

To my way of thinking, the things you are looking for in the study of literature are better addressed in the study of history or sociology. Remember that the literature considered "classic" today was the contemporary entertainment of its day. Shakespeare was enjoyed by the general public as a night out. That's all it was. Only history, as you point out, has bestowed on it the label "classic".

 

[wildcat]

Just don't bother posting in the thread anymore, nothing you are saying has a point to it, or is useful in anyway except throwing criticism around.



When literature gets described, it is often described as "Greatest stories...", not "Stories that had a lot of influence in some way", which repeated over and over, creates expectations of something that many, many times aren't met.

The expectations are met.
By the reader.

 

[wildcat]

Isn't it? To me, the first job of any work of art is to entertain. If a message or an understanding is imparted, then all the better. But if people don't want to watch/read/look at/listen to the work in the first place, then the message is lost. What good is a masterwork that sits in a closet?

To my way of thinking, the things you are looking for in the study of literature are better addressed in the study of history or sociology. Remember that the literature considered "classic" today was the contemporary entertainment of its day. Shakespeare was enjoyed by the general public as a night out. That's all it was. Only history, as you point out, has bestowed on it the label "classic".

Art is of what is.

Entertainment is of what is not.

 

[Ivy]

Isn't it? To me, the first job of any work of art is to entertain. If a message or an understanding is imparted, then all the better. But if people don't want to watch/read/look at/listen to the work in the first place, then the message is lost. What good is a masterwork that sits in a closet?

To my way of thinking, the things you are looking for in the study of literature are better addressed in the study of history or sociology. Remember that the literature considered "classic" today was the contemporary entertainment of its day. Shakespeare was enjoyed by the general public as a night out. That's all it was. Only history, as you point out, has bestowed on it the label "classic".

That's all very true- and compatible with the point I'm making. I do think literature is/can be a part of the study of history/sociology. It all starts out as contemporary entertainment, but the stuff that endures over time is the stuff that offers a snapshot of a particular time/place/culture. This is separate from reading for pleasure. And like I said, I wouldn't recomment Mary Shelley or Milton for pleasure reading.

 

[Metamorphosis]

Art is of what is.

Entertainment is of what is not.

except art can entertain me...but that doesn't make it "what is not"

 

[cafe]

I liked most of the stuff we read and usually read ahead in my lit books when we had them. Two exceptions are that I usually do not like Dickens and I hated Madame Bovary.

 

[Ms. M]

I did not enjoy most assigned reading, simply because I resented that it was mandatory.

This was me as well. I enjoy reading, but have never enjoyed being told what to read. Even in AP English, when the teacher gave a list and allowed us to pick for ourselves, I didn't like my choices being limited. I typically only enjoyed the classic literature pieces I could relate to and find relevant to my life. I preferred reading works like Death be not Proud by John Gunther, Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank.

Most of the other reading I was indifferent to, though I remember detesting anything by James Joyce with a fervent passion.

 

[Metamorphosis]

Ironically, I have never read Metamorphosis but I heard that it wasn't any good.

 

[Ms. M]

Ironically, I have never read Metamorphosis but I heard that it wasn't any good.

Not to tread into a somewhat parallel conversation, but works of literature, like works of art, are always open to subjective interpretation and are appreciated in different ways by different people. Robert Frost lamented that The Road Not Taken is often mis-interpreted....but we all interpret what we experience through our own life experience prisms

 

[Metamorphosis]

Not to tread into a somewhat parallel conversation, but works of literature, like works of art, are always open to subjective interpretation and are appreciated in different ways by different people. Robert Frost lamented that The Road Not Taken is often mis-interpreted....but we all interpret what we experience through our own life experience prisms

Well put.

 

[Ivy]

Since I never actually answered the OP's question:

"Assigned reading" that I loved:

Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Orwell, Animal Farm and 1984
Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Twain, just about everything but especially Huckleberry Finn (there's one line that haunts me, something like "'was anyone killed?' 'no sir, just some n*****s'")
James Joyce, Dubliners (Ulysses was impenetrable)
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (yes, they did have senses of humor back then!)
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Frederick Douglass's autobiography
Conrad, Heart of Darkness

"Assigned reading" that I hated:

Milton, Paradise Lost (get over yourself!)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (neat ideas, bombastically executed)
Thoreau, Walden (poser, Emerson pwns j00)
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (actually I could never get into any of the big Victorian novels, although the childrens' lit and the poetry was quite nice. Someday I'll try to make it through a Dickens novel.)

 

[wildcat]

except art can entertain me...but that doesn't make it "what is not"

I was entertained by Bernard. He is a great artist.
It is not entertainment though.
New Life. The greatest piece of prosa ever written.