The Corrections
question
Books that are supposed to be brilliant that were lost on me.
Thomas
(last edited
Jul 09, 2015 08:11AM
)
Jul 09, 2015 04:07AM
I am looking for some suggestions for a blog post I am going to write next week.
I am looking for a book that you were told was brilliant and when you read it you thought it was rubbish.
So basically everyone tells you it is good but you think it is crap.
Thanks
I am looking for a book that you were told was brilliant and when you read it you thought it was rubbish.
So basically everyone tells you it is good but you think it is crap.
Thanks
reply
flag
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson was supposed to be fantastic. It went nowhere and if there was a point to it, I certainly missed it. Another friend who read it (who is far better read than I) felt the same way.
View 1 comment
Well, it doesn't seem to be books with me so much as authors. I'm trying to remember who I used to adore, complex writers, known writers, that I can't seem to engage with these days. One is Oe. Loved. fell head-first into, Kingdom of Heaven and some others years ago. Llosa, the same, The War at the End of the World, The Feast of the Goat, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, but I can't seem to concentrate on them.
Sometimes I re-read a book I read 30 years ago and find so many new facets, other times, nothing -- what could I have been thinking?
And since I'm older, I don't have time to finish books that I don't intellectually engage with. Such as Bonita Street, which I just put aside. I always regret I won't know what insights the author may have had at the end, but such is life.
I have to say that since so many of my favorite writers have died, I made a conscious decision to jump into the new literature and devote my intellect to it, make it my own. Perhaps that explains why Franzen, Ferris, et al., mean so much to me. I won't discuss the merits of The Corrections, in particular, and it was a library book, so I can't recall if it had an epigraph from which came the title, but it seemed to me a compassionate and deep look at the navigational "corrections" we are all called upon to make if we are to survive while life does unexpected things around us. People change, are impacted by disease, by psychological issues, fall in and out of love, grow up and are expected to forgive their parents, grow old and expect to be forgiven. All corrections. I didn't find it cold or contrived in any way. Interesting, no? That people react so differently? But of course they do, or they'd do something Orwellian, like print only one book a year, same plot, different names...
Sometimes I re-read a book I read 30 years ago and find so many new facets, other times, nothing -- what could I have been thinking?
And since I'm older, I don't have time to finish books that I don't intellectually engage with. Such as Bonita Street, which I just put aside. I always regret I won't know what insights the author may have had at the end, but such is life.
I have to say that since so many of my favorite writers have died, I made a conscious decision to jump into the new literature and devote my intellect to it, make it my own. Perhaps that explains why Franzen, Ferris, et al., mean so much to me. I won't discuss the merits of The Corrections, in particular, and it was a library book, so I can't recall if it had an epigraph from which came the title, but it seemed to me a compassionate and deep look at the navigational "corrections" we are all called upon to make if we are to survive while life does unexpected things around us. People change, are impacted by disease, by psychological issues, fall in and out of love, grow up and are expected to forgive their parents, grow old and expect to be forgiven. All corrections. I didn't find it cold or contrived in any way. Interesting, no? That people react so differently? But of course they do, or they'd do something Orwellian, like print only one book a year, same plot, different names...
all discussions on this book
|
post a new topic
