Richard Taylor answers “This book is soooooo boring. I'm like...”

Jeremy X asked this question about Robinson Crusoe:

This book is soooooo boring. I'm like one-third through the book and it's just boring me to death but I have to read it for English. Does anyone agree?

Richard Taylor I found it fascinating. I am 74, I think I read it a few years ago. It is very exciting. It has been criticised for 'Colonialist' views but it was wri…moreI found it fascinating. I am 74, I think I read it a few years ago. It is very exciting. It has been criticised for 'Colonialist' views but it was written in a time when the world viewed such things differently. The book is based on a real-life marooning on an Island. The novel in those days (of Daniel Defoe) was fairly new as a form or art or entertainment in England. Defoe also wrote his semi-fictional 'Diary of a Plague Year'. He wrote much else on both fact and fiction. 'Robinson Crusoe' has one fault, not at the start, but the end, it continues on in Europe where various adventures take place. That doesn't seem connected to the novel but is interesting also. I see a lot of young people found it boring. By the age of 13 I had read almost everything by Charles Dickens, Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, and then I read both volumes of Les Miserables. I almost never watch television (we didn't have one when I was young, or computers or even video players, not even calculators -- we used log tables -- and no cell phones). I haven't got a cell phone, never have. I don't listen to music. Reading is my passion. For people who like books, and there are still many, there is no interest in "devices". But one word of advice, I review all kinds of books. I looked through a friend's poetry book. He had about 80 poems. I read each poem about 8 times. As I did so it intensified what I was reading. The more a reader puts into reading the more he or she will get out of the book. It is not a question of intelligence, temperament probably, and as a writer myself I need to read a lot. So I have a library of about 4000 books. And I read on all topics, or a wide range, still getting old and more recent books from the library. But don't read books because a teacher recommends it (although I have found, for example, that almost every classic I have read has been great to read, as well as many more recent books). The main thing has to be enjoyment. It you know something also about the writer and the history of a writer's times, it can also change the way you read a book, and how you see it. Defoe's character deals with people who deal with slaves and sell them. If you dig out some of the Elizabethan novels, the right editions have some crazy violent and sometimes beautiful things. But these writers, for example Thomas Nash who wrote 'The Unfortunate Traveller', lived in times where the violence and death rate from the Plague, or Typhus was much higher than now. Before and round Defoe's time the average life span of anyone was about 35. Most died by violence or disease, or malnutrition. Also attitudes to life and death were very different. The novel was still 'developing' when Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe but he wrote a huge amount of other stuff. So give these books a go. No point in reading if you don't enjoy the experience. If you find a book boring -- or books in general boring, then they are perhaps not for you. Some other interest. Movies can convey things in dramatic ways and for some people this is a way they are inspired to read a book....(less)

flag

About Goodreads Q&A

Ask and answer questions about books!

You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.

See Featured Authors Answering Questions

Learn more