The Sun Also Rises in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Mar 25, 2013 Christina rated it liked it · review of another edition

Okay, hmm, well, all right then. I read a Hemingway. And I have to say, as ashamed as I am to admit this, I really don't have any strong feelings about it one way or the other. I have never felt more "it is what it is" about a book.
There were distractions: ugh, the racial/anti-Semitic slurs would jar me out of the book immediately, they were like those little exploding caps you throw on the floor that making banging noises. It was easy to lose track of who was saying what in the dialogue. There Okay, hmm, well, all right then. I read a Hemingway. And I have to say, as ashamed as I am to admit this, I really don't have any strong feelings about it one way or the other. I have never felt more "it is what it is" about a book.
There were distractions: ugh, the racial/anti-Semitic slurs would jar me out of the book immediately, they were like those little exploding caps you throw on the floor that making banging noises. It was easy to lose track of who was saying what in the dialogue. There was the knowledge that I was Reading Hemingway, which did start that little voice in the back of my mind going every so often: "What am I supposed to be getting out of this? Are these people a 'lost generation'? They seem kind of lost. Holy shit, they're drinking again. Well, Hemingway was big on the booze..."
Considering how manly Hemingway's reputation is, I was actually kind of relieved that there wasn't too much dwelling on Jake's unfortunate war wound. It was explained, vaguely enough, and then the matter was dropped. Thanks for the delicacy, Ern.
Brett was one of those off-putting female characters who appear so frequently in books from the early half of the twentieth century: I can easily imagine her having cocktails with Fitzgerald's Daisy and Maugham's Isabel. These ladies all seem to be troubled but ultimately shallow (confession: I have yet to read "The Great Gatsby," so I am going off what I've heard about Daisy). Brett didn't seem like a complete misogynist fantasy like Isabel, though: I felt that her pain was pretty clearly established. Still, I'm going with troubled but ultimately shallow.
Speaking of, the only character I never felt I had a good grasp of was Robert Cohn. He'd show up, bluster, argue, get violent, vanish. Bill, otherwise a reasonably nice guy, and Mike would start complaining about Jews. I'd shudder and force myself to keep reading. Cohn would show up, bluster, argue, get violent, vanish, and the cycle would continue. Were we supposed to feel sorry for him because of how stuck he was on Brett? Was he supposed to represent destructive Americans abroad? Oh who knows. I didn't really care.
I was in the middle of reading the book when I found out that there's a movie and that in the movie Cohn is played by that manliest of manly action heroes (of the day), Errol Flynn. That was a good casting choice on somebody's part, but when I got back to the book I realized that every. Single. Male character (with the possible exception of the 19 year-old bullfighter) could have been played convincingly by Errol Flynn. I guess that says something about the book, or about me reading the book, but I don't really care. It was all right. I finished it. I did not get alcohol poisoning just from reading it. Time to move on. ...more

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Jul 07, 2007 Jen Peters rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

I tried really hard to like this book. Alas, I ended up hating it all the way through the first half. The only part of the book I enjoyed was the bull fighting, which was pretty interesting but not very long.

The book for me was just about a bunch of thirty-somethings that drank alcohol from the moment they woke up til the moment they either fell asleep or passed out. Few of them had money, few of them had jobs, and almost all of them had slept with and/or fallen in love with the only lead femal ...more

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May 22, 2007 stephanie added it

Shelves: classics, prize-winners

least favorite hemingway read so far. i think i got turned off by the bullfights. also the lack of women, which is slightly surprising. because i don't hate novels all about men at all. this just - came off as stereotypically hemingway, misogynetic and all. ...more

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