The Most Overrated Books Showing 601-650 of 5,680

[Mark]

Monty J wrote: "Mark wrote: "...by the likes of Southpark."

I'm a little more open-minded (or, perhaps, more tainted?) than that, Monty. And thanks for the kind words, btw.

I don't regularly watch Southpark, but I've certainly laughed out loud at certain episodes. My limited experience with it is that it's fairly intertextual within the constraints of a particular pop culture iconography but you have to have something going on between your ears to get all the jokes to their full extent. And I think quality art is about art that lives up to its expectations and doesn't stretch to pretensions beyond its means (perhaps it would be better to say "human expression" or "creativity" rather than "art" so a debate about high culture, low culture, pop culture and the relative values of each is less likely to muddy the waters). In other words, Southpark--at least what I've seen of it--doesn't pretend to be something it's not and is very good at being what it is trying to be.

Some of what I lamented in the post is no doubt generational in nature, but some of it is ... what's that line from scripture (I don't even know if it's Old or New Testament to tell the truth but I suspect it's New), "the poor you will always have with you."?

Well one could say the same about the ... aesthetically challenged? I'm not sure what pithy phrase would be best (I'm sure there's better), but you get the idea.

There will always be those people who gravitate toward the sensational over the substantive and the sentimental over the truly soulful ... but I think it's dangerously easy to get too elitist about the whole thing. In the realm of pop culture, some creative people manage to create stuff that operates successfully on two levels. So the scab picking intellectuals who can't leave things alone and want to delve, delve, delve have something to work with and those who just want a jolly good show until the fat lady sings get their kicks, too. Arguably the two level approach isn't limited to just pop culture. A friend of mine is fond of saying he doesn't read Shakespeare for revelations about the human condition as much as he reads him for the blood and guts and fart jokes. Obviously he's going for the laugh there, but as Chaucer once wrote "a man may say full sooth in game and play."

You know, I really liked the recent HBO series True Detective and (hang on, I am going somewhere that I think will fit into this rant here) it stuck in my craw when Emily Nussbaum, TV Critic for The New Yorker took the series to task for more or less being what she perceived as a bunch of macho hot air. After the season finale, she had not developed any deeper affection or respect for the show, but she again returned to her an observation from her first review that she didn't particularly relish panning something that so many people (myself included) were so enthusiastic about and appreciative of. She wrote, "As I said in the review, it’s no fun to pan a show that people love (pleasure is an argument for itself, after all)."

That's a nicely turned phrase and a solid nugget of truth that's hard to split into any valid smaller components: "pleasure is an argument for itself, after all."

If someone doesn't get some modicum of pleasure from reading Ulysses, no amount of literary critical caterwauling is likely to make it a source of pleasure for them any time soon. Likewise, you'd probably never convince me that reading Twilight or 50 Shades of Gray was anything other than a waste of my precious time.

But here's what really ticked me off about the guy above who with a lazy swish of his cerebral fly swatter dismissed Beckett, Camus and Joyce. I think I may have said something similar to this on the dreaded "Is Nick Carraway Gay?" thread. I'm a real music aficionado and I pride myself on being eclectic. From Scarlatti to American hardcore punk, from Bebop Jazz to Indian raga music, from Abba to Zappa, I can usually find something that holds some interest for me. Not Opera. Opera repels me. I don't get it. It doesn't connect to me emotionally or intellectually. I cannot find a way to access whatever it is trying to accomplish at all. THAT SAID, I don't think I would ever bring myself to simply dismiss Opera as "boring" because I can't crack the code.

I realize my inability to appreciate it has something (maybe even "as much") to do with how my ears and brain have been conditioned and educated as it does with something innate within the musical form. I realize that the people who are skilled within the musical form aren't people who have duped themselves or pretentious tricksters. When you don't "get" some form of human expression and you can't explain why, you should at least realize that it very well may be as much about you as about the art. That's what the braggart who shot down the merits of Beckett, Camus and Joyce like he was cutting through so much country corn failed to realize.

[Reborn]

Kallie wrote: "Monty J wrote: "Mark wrote: "...this is creating a culture and a condition of public intellectual discourse that is nothing more than a race to the bottom. So I'll limit myself to one facet of how ..."
A friend of mine is in charge of setting the ELA curriculum for the state I live in. I met him when we were in the same book club and many of his picks were books his students (middle and high school) recommended and I would say they were anything but "dumbed down." These kids have excellent and sophisticated tastes.

Have you read The Book Thief? Even then Harry Potter books? Those are some excellent, deep and important works that our children are reading, not to mention things like The Fault in Our Stars and (though older, it's still popular) The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

[Monty J]

Kallie wrote: "If anything is overrated, it is this tendency to dismiss, especially for younger students, works to which they cannot relate; we want to make their world bigger, not shrink it to size."

Bravo!

College is where the chickens come home to roost.

In Freshman Comp, I was a class that was mostly students who had attended a local high school where the English teacher, whom I later met and flirted with me, wanted to be their friend and didn't teach them much.

In F-Comp I blew the lid off the class grade curve, getting 90+ on m papers while most of these unfortunates scored 50 and below. My high school English teachers actually taught English.

[Andrew]

Daniel wrote: "The Great Gatsby may be overrated, but only because so many people list it as the best ever. It's still very good. Fitzgerald's prose is excellent, and a worthy and important part of American Lit h..."

Great post. I couldn't agree more. Once something is considered "the best ever" it is very hard to live up to it's expectations. I have read the book twice and I find it to be very good. Maybe not the "best ever" but this is almost an ignorant category because it is based on opinion only. And yes, the novel is a very important part of American literature history.

As for Catcher In the Rye, you should definitely read it again. I thought it was much better the second time. I understood it better, and Salinger writes wonderfully. Plus, it was a groundbreaking novel. No one at that time wrote with such angst and people were trying to ban the book. This is significant for American Literature. It opened a can of worms at least.

The Stranger is on my list to read.

Thanks for the insight.

Andrew J. Frischerz
Author of PACIFIC BEACH
andrewjfrischerz.com

[Cosmic]

Renee wrote: "and I would say they were anything but "dumbed down." These kids have excellent and sophisticated tastes."

Are you kidding me? Why do you need to assign books that kids are picking in their day to day reading list? Why bother with getting a college degree just to use children to guide the curriculum?

I recommend you and your friend reading Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and getting real.

[Alison]

Paula wrote: "OMG- I forgot 50 shades!

Dude- I'm all for erotic stories, Not since the early 60s when 30 year old Lady Chatterly's Lover finally got the nod from congress has it been so socially acceptable to..."

yesyesyes!! Erotica absolutely has its place - and good erotica is ... fantastic! But not when it's as shockingly written as this!!! I downloaded a sample and then had to disinfect my poor despoiled Kindle!

[Mark]

Cosmic wrote: "Are you kidding me? Why do you need to assign books that kids are picking ..."

The book you recommend looks interesting. Thanks. Other than that, I'm not quite sure I understand exactly what you're trying to say. I want to. I sense there's a passionately held position there, but it's not coming across clearly, to me anyway.

[Anne Hawn]

Kallie wrote: "Monty J wrote: "Mark wrote: "...this is creating a culture and a condition of public intellectual discourse that is nothing more than a race to the bottom. So I'll limit myself to one facet of how ..."

When I was in college, I tutored underclassmen who were failing Literature and Freshman Comp. Some came from schools which didn't challenge the students and they could not make it in college. One of the most frustrating things for me was helping them gain the literary references necessary to understand the books they were trying to interpret. I don't think people realize how inter connected Literature is. For example, if you are studying Tess of the d'Urbervilles , the introduction to Thomas Hardy is going to make comparisons with other writers of the time. In the actual book, you may find references to other much earlier works like Chaucer, or Shakespeare, or inevitably the Bible.

In a standard literature test the student will frequently be asked to compare characters from one book, say Dickens, with characters from another work by Wilkie Collins. Then there are the questions which compare the treatment of women by Thomas Hardy with Anthony Trollop.

Another common line of study is Literary Themes. A great many authors challenge the concept of class, treatment of women, appalling conditions of the poor, and education. Authors frequently build on each other, challenging societal norms.

If a student comes to college with a good literary background, they will have to do some research in understanding authors, the times they lived in and the issues they raise, but they should be able to understand what their professors are talking about and use that knowledge to learn more.

I could teach a student what a paragraph meant, how to understand complicated sentences, the milieu and the vocabulary, but what I couldn't give was the literary references. I could not substitute for that wide body of knowledge that a college supposes the student to be familiar with already. Sadly, a few of my students could never make it. They were just too far behind, and yet they had good minds. I can't help but think of a young man I worked with for a year and a half before he finally gave up.

[Kate]

Renee wrote: "Maria wrote: "Which books do you think are overrated?

Here's a quick sampling from various internet sites that recommend skipping these:
The Catcher in the Rye
Moby Dick
The Great Gatsby
Waitin..."

I thought the exact same thing, Renee. A couple of these things are not like the others, actually. DaVinci Code and Twilight do not stack up against the other books on this list.

[Kate]

Anne Hawn wrote: "Kallie wrote: "Monty J wrote: "Mark wrote: "...this is creating a culture and a condition of public intellectual discourse that is nothing more than a race to the bottom. So I'll limit myself to on..."

The sort of knowledge you describe is the sort of knowledge you gain from writing essays. I wrote hundreds of pages' worth of essays when I was in high school, and I really learned a great deal about thinking critically through writing them. I have gained a lifetime of pleasure reading really good books since then. Of course, educators can't be bothered with grading essays anymore, so, yeah, race to the bottom.

[Kate]

Mark wrote: "Maria wrote: "Maria For those of you who've asked - Here are the various internet sites I used to create the sampling of books the sites recommend skipping:

http://listverse.com/2009/02/09/top-1...."

I just read about and ordered the Lifetime Reading Plan. Thanks for the recommendation. Kate

[CD]

Geoffrey wrote: "The comments that he did it all for Daisy beg the prehistory to the present story. Even Daddy Gatz explains to Nick at the funeral that his son was amibitious to climb the social ladder. Jay befrie..."

[ Going to hopefully move most of this discussion to Monty J's separate Gatsby post on the same topic ]

Gatz/Gatsby's father is proud of his son. His, the father, is not ashamed and of course he got at least a house out of the deal. Gatsby's story isn't simplistic. Fitzgerald write in a strait forward style, but the refinement of what he encodes in that is far more complex, the 80 years or so of discussion that continues.

Fitzgerald's timeline in this story is not linear. The reader gets to reconstruct parts of the chronology and just because it is tied to a particular event or moment doesn't mean that FSF hasn't allowed textually for it to be from a different context or viewpoint.

Gatz/Gatsby's father is

This ambition of G's was the embodiment of the American Dream that Fitzgerald was writing about. He, FSF, was an observer and commentator, yet neither totally a proponent nor opponent of what he saw. The Daisy character is part of the achieving the American Dream. Gatsby was that one rung away that Daisy would complete. We come back to the story in this work being about a number of topics that motivated him, Gatsby, but the actions that Carraway sees and participates in are 'for Daisy'. I'm going to add some more in Monty's post under the book Great Gatsby discussion.

[CD]

Geoffrey wrote: "Let me add a few comments to my message 558. In another post, someone had suggested that Jay sought wealth to win over Daisy, whereas the truth was, Jay had always sought wealth by hobnobbing with ..."

Don't forget nor overlook the importance to the story that Fitzgerald encodes in one name; Madame de Maintenon. This is the real clue to Cody. Much of the rest of the story of Gatz becoming Gatsby after or during the time he is sailing on the Tuolomee is a diversion by Fitgerald and background color.

[Anne Hawn]

I'm a little confused with what you wrote. I did tutor a lot of students who had poor writing skills and, in general, they go hand in hand with a curriculum that doesn't challenge a student's literature knowledge. Since so many kids come to college needing a remedial year, it's obvious that there is a problem. You are so right about how much it teaches you to have to write a good essay, and yes, there is less and less time allowed for grading essays now.

What I was talking about, though, is high school graduates who have never read Shakespeare, Dickens, Salinger, Hardy, George Sand, Faulkner, Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis etc. I'm talking about students who haven't gone through a systematic study of American Literature from the beginning of American writing like Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Stephen Crane, Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain....the next year a study of English Literature, then Contemporary American Lit and then Contemporary English Lit.

Literature is archaeology of the mind and chronicles the history of thought through the ages. Colleges expect students to be familiar with this progression of literature, at least the good ones do. The also expect that students will have absorbed the social and philosophical thinking of the periods the books were written in.

There is one more thing that you brought up and doesn't seem to be mentioned much, thinking critically and then expressing your thoughts in writing. Our brains are formed by what we are exposed to. If you study feral children, their brains are different. If they don't learn language before the age of about 8, they can never learn to speak. On the other hand, if they are truly wild, they will have developed parts of their brains that have to do with smell, taste and sight. Often they will go out in winter unclothed and not feel cold.

All infants can make all the sounds necessary for all the languages in the world. As they grow, they drop unused sounds and learn the languages they are presented with in their environment.

Scientists know that we program our brains by what we do and that means that learning to think critically through reading and writing changes our brains. If you have ever said that you have never used the algebra you learned, you are wrong. You may not have done algebra problems, but algebra has changed your brain. Among other things, it has taught you to hold an unknown quantity in your mind while you manipulate the known factors. Geometry does the same thing, as well as physics. All those subjects teach you to think abstractly.

Dealing with the ideas posed by great literature and responding to them critically changes your brain.

[CD]

Monty J wrote: "CD wrote: "The reinvented man, Gatsby, needs Daisy to complete his ascension."

Goeffrey wrote: "The comments that he did it all for Daisy beg the prehistory to the present story.

Here is the con..."

Sorry I got distracted for a few days with less important 'stuff' like work!

I'm going to 'move' this some how to the other post in the TGG section, cut and paste where needed. But Briefly & First:

There are elements in the analysis of Gatsby's behavior and character that are indeed not about love at all. They are certainly about the greed (or some analog ) that drives Fitzgerald towards Daisy.

I'm not sure there is any 'love' in Gatsby at all. Nick's view is mistaken often because of confusion of Daisy's laughingly dismissive comments about Nick being in love with her.

Fitzgerald goes beyond the normally story line, i.e. 'his something new with TGG' and intentionally leads the reader along a line that though what he is doing in this story looks like infatuation, it may be nothing more than greed as the result of unrequited love that he has moved beyond.

I've several more piece regarding this but I'm moving over to the other discussion.

[Cosmic]

Mark wrote: "The book you recommend looks interesting. Thanks. Other than that, I'm not quite sure I understand ex..."

Renee wrote,"A friend of mine is in charge of setting the ELA curriculum for the state I live in. I met him when we were in the same book club and many of his picks were books his students (middle and high school) recommended and I would say they were anything but "dumbed down." These kids have excellent and sophisticated tastes.

Have you read The Book Thief? Even then Harry Potter books? Those are some excellent, deep and important works that our children are reading, not to mention things like The Fault in Our Stars and (though older, it's still popular) The Perks of Being a Wallflower."

I think that Anne Hawn did a better job than I could explaining what I was talking about through example. I don't think that Harry Potter books are considered high literature. I think that if kids today can only read on that level then they are going to be illiterate in what we call western thought.

[Kallie]

"Have you read The Book Thief? Even then Harry Potter books? Those are some excellent, deep and important works that our children are reading, not to mention things like The Fault in Our Stars and (though older, it's still popular) The Perks of Being a Wallflower. "
As I understand the reviews, these are books aimed at teenage readers; so no, I haven't read them. And that is exactly what I object to: books for teenagers in their high school curriculum. They could (or should be able to) read books for adults by this age. The books I mention are education in the English language, its past forms, and important for learning to read in our language whether through past or contemporary English language usage. Korean English students that I knew can do this! Reading real classics makes for flexible minds that can stretch, follow demands to come, at the college level and beyond. Novels aimed at teenagers? Fine, for their leisure time (no matter how emotionally deep; this is recreational reading, which we all need) But in school? As prep for more difficult reading? Nah. I don't think so.

[[deleted user]]

Mark wrote: "Maria wrote: "Maria For those of you who've asked - Here are the various internet sites I used to create the sampling of books the sites recommend skipping:

http://listverse.com/2009/02/09/top-1...."

Thanks for the suggestions, Doctor Jekyll. I've marked them 'Want to Read.'

[Cosmic]

CD wrote: "Geoffrey wrote: "The comments that he did it all for Daisy beg the prehistory to the present story. Even Daddy Gatz explains to Nick at the funeral that his son was amibitious to climb the social l..."

This story The Great Gatsby is about old money and new money. Here is a sample of Daisy's courtship with Gatsby and then marriage to Tom.

That was nineteen-seventeen. By the next year I had a few beaux myself, and I began to play in tournaments, so I didn't see Daisy very often. She went with a slightly older crowd--when she went with anyone at all. Wild rumors were circulating about her--how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she wasn't on speaking terms with her family for several weeks. After that she didn't play around with the soldiers any more but only with a few flat-footed, short-sighted young men in town who couldn't get into the army at all.

By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a debut after the Armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came down with a hundred people in four private cars and hired a whole floor of the Seelbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

I was bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the bridal dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress--and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle of sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other.

" 'Gratulate me," she muttered. "Never had a drink before but oh, how I do enjoy it."

"What's the matter, Daisy?"

I was scared, I can tell you; I'd never seen a girl like that before.

"Here, dearis." She groped around in a waste-basket she had with her on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. "Take 'em downstairs and give 'em back to whoever they belong to. Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her mine. Say 'Daisy's change' her mine!'."

Note that it was Daisy's family that would not let her marry Jay Gatsby. He was not good enough.


She began to cry--she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother's maid and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.

But she didn't say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress and half an hour later when we walked out of the room the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o'clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver and started off on a three months' trip to the South Seas.


Now look at the conversation that these two women have about marriage.

"I almost made a mistake, too," she declared vigorously. "I almost married a little kyke who'd been after me for years. I knew he was below me. Everybody kept saying to me: 'Lucille, that man's way below you!' But if I hadn't met Chester, he'd of got me sure."

"Yes, but listen," said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, "at least you didn't marry him."

"I know I didn't."

"Well, I married him," said Myrtle, ambiguously. "And that's the difference between your case and mine."

"Why did you, Myrtle?" demanded Catherine. "Nobody forced you to."

Myrtle considered.

"I married him because I thought he was a gentleman," she said finally. "I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe."

"You were crazy about him for a while," said Catherine.

"Crazy about him!" cried Myrtle incredulously. "Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there."

She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me accusingly. I tried to show by my expression that I had played no part in her past.

"The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in and never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out. She looked around to see who was listening: " 'Oh, is that your suit?' I said. 'This is the first I ever heard about it.' But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to beat the band all afternoon."

"She really ought to get away from him," resumed Catherine to me. "They've been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom's the first sweetie she ever had."

Marriage to Gatsby would be a mistake because it would be marrying below her class. Even when she could have run away and marry Gatsby her focus was on "the other woman". The money and security that Gatsby could offer want enough. Even though he had these parties I think it is pretty plan that he is an outsider.

Gatsby had achieve the American dream and still it wasn't enough because he didn't have a pedigree to go with it. Wilson had also achieved a certain level of the American dream, honestly and his wife thinks that it is beneath her. He lives his wife, but she believes in the lies that Tim tells her.

Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: "Neither of them can stand the person they're married to."

"Can't they?"

"Can't stand them." She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. "What I say is, why go on living with them if they can't stand them? If I was them I'd get a divorce and get married to each other right away."

"Doesn't she like Wilson either?"

The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle who had overheard the question and it was violent and obscene.

"You see?" cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. "It's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Catholic and they don't believe in divorce."

Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.

"When they do get married," continued Catherine, "they're going west to live for a while until it blows over."

"It'd be more discreet to go to Europe."

Look at the lies that she is telling herself. These reflect the lies that Gatsby believes. This is the days of the Robber Barons. It is not much different today when we see fortunes lost in the housing market our stock markets while others get richer. THINK AND GROW RICH....right...

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfu2A0ezq0

This is one thing Tom didn't have to do or worry about doing...he didn't work to get where he was. HE WAS ENTITLED. ENTITLED to use people. ENTITLED to marry without love our being faithful. ENTITLED to make deals and break them. (Wilson and the car). ENTITLED to sweep murder under the rug by blaming it on an innocent man. Whatever it takes. He had money and clout and connections.

This was not only reflected in the relationships of these people but also the difference between the haves and have nots...once you get to and pass Wilson's garage. The billboard is a huge symbol that is haunting...but I will have to look it up to figure out why.

This could also be about monopolies.

It is reflected probably in Fitzgerald life as he probably was always and outsider in Zelda's family's eyes. Could never be enough. Just a story of a dysfunctional family trying to appear normal, ignoring the white elephant.

[CD]

Cosmic wrote:


I agree. Gatsby is about money. See the discussion Monty started and my comment there that begins with addressing the money issue:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

The great divide between old money and the nouveau riche is vast, but we return to the American Dream of surpassing the chasm. In the end, it is all about the riche part. (a reference to another work that I won't go into here)

Entitlement is one term, status or 'station' is another catchall that describes this element of the story.

Gatsby had money. Lots of money from wherever it really originated. But that wasn't enough. He was raw and new. Tom Buchanan offered the familiar and comfortable to Daisy. Status. Station. No need for pretense or caution. A reckless casualness was hers with Tom. That was something Gatsby could never offer.

[Cosmic]

CD wrote: "A reckless casualness was hers with Tom. That was something Gatsby could never offer.
"

And why was that?

Because the American Dream is not attainable except as an underclass. Tom embodied the American dream. So maybe the dream itself is reckless? I mean Gatsby was reckless in the people he dealt with and how he got his money. Was there an investigation into how he was killed? Or did they say it was a suicide? Just kidding...but it could have ended that way because of the risks that he w was taking running moonshine.

[Peter]

Renee wrote: "Kallie wrote: "Monty J wrote: "Mark wrote: "...this is creating a culture and a condition of public intellectual discourse that is nothing more than a race to the bottom. So I'll limit myself to on..."

The Book Thief - loved by me at 50 and my daughter at 17. Fabulous, fabulous book.

[Peter]

Fijke wrote: "Peter wrote: "
The Book Thief - loved by me at 50 and my daughter at 17. Fabulous, fabulous book...."

I'm currently reading it and loving it so far. Very relevant and an interesting writing style...."

I could not pretend to describe the style so eloquently, which I thank you for. Enjoy.

[Petergiaquinta]

Fijke wrote: "Peter wrote: 'Fabulous, fabulous book....'
I wouldn't categorize it as YA."

But how does The Book Thief stack up against a novel like, say, The Tin Drum?

In comparison to typical YA dreck (Divergent comes to mind, and The Hunger Games isn't much better), the author of The Book Thief does a far better job exploring complexities of character and experimenting with point of view. But if we're talking about the failure of many American schools to challenge their teenage readers and prepare them for the kind of reading/thinking they will need at the college level, a novel like The Book Thief isn't going to stretch growing minds in the same way that one of those dusty and too-often discarded classics will.

Yeah, and I'm aware The Tin Drum isn't going to be taught in any American schools any time soon, nor should it be, but if we compare these two novels with their similar geographies, it's fairly clear how thin a book The Book Thief truly is and why it belongs on the YA shelf.

[Geoffrey]

Fijke wrote: "Just a question: from most of what people say here (and what I hear in general), I gather that in American schools teachers or some other authority assign specific books to their students to read a..."

That´s a bit too unstructured for American tastes. I did have the good fortune however to be assigned summer Reading between my 2nd and 3rd year high school and the school prepared a list of about 100 titles that we could choose from. We had to read 2 books and bring in book reports when we started school up the 3rd year. I recall Reading WAR AND PEACE as its length counted for two books and enjoying it.

My peeve is that teachers emphasize novels to the detriment of short stories. I believe part of the goal of Reading literature is to expose students to as many different authors as posible so the likelihood that they will continue to read their favorite writers rises.

[Carlie]

I completely agree that the list is subjective, but surely that’s the point of the thread, to discuss?

What I love about books is that you could read them at such different points in your life and they could affect you so differently.
I read Catcher in the Rye about a year ago at the age of 26, this was definitely not the time in my life I should have read the book. I’m well out of my teens, not so much that I’ve forgotten all those teenage emotions but enough that I couldn’t appreciate Holden’s issues.
I liked Holden, I thought he was a great character and hugely misunderstood but I found his constant complaining annoying.
If I’d have read this book 10 years ago I probably would have empathised with him a lot more.
I recently also read Looking for Alaska, this is basically the modern day version of Catcher, but I did enjoy it.

I personally enjoyed The Da Vinci code but preferred Angels and Demons, they are what they are. They’re not claiming to be literary masterpieces but they sucked me in and I was desperate to know what happened at the end. It was thrilling and exciting. I love a good crime thriller and read a lot of Patricia Cornwell, again not classics or masterpieces but if you enjoy a book and get sucked into the plot and characters then surely it’s served its purpose?

[Kallie]

Carlie wrote: " if you enjoy a book and get sucked into the plot and characters then surely it’s served its purpose? "
Good question. In that case, the book has served a purpose and one that is not unimportant. Usually I want more from books though: stimulation of thought, evocations of place and character (from the past as much as the present) that are fresh and enlightening and come alive.

[Ken]

Agreed, Kallie. Basic entertainment is a purpose, but it is a base purpose. It doesn't serve deeper desires or intellectual engagement. It's junk food compared to a feast. You can't live off the former.

[Mark]

on the question of when has a book "served its purpose"? And what is the purpose of a book?

I thought I had made a point about "thrilling and exciting" (i.e. "pot-boiler/page-turner") books in my Goodreads review of Angels & Demons that might be worth repeating here.

But I moused around to check and, nope. Perhaps much to the chagrin of fans of the book I was uncharacteristically brief and not kind in my review:

"Bloody awful. Well researched crack fiction, pot-boiler garbage. When I finished the book, I realized I'd probably feel a bit more uplifted as a human being had I spent an equal amount of time consuming porn."

No doubt a writer displays a skilled execution of a certain kind of craft when they write a book that motivates a reader to sprint through the pages always hot on the pursuit of what will happen next. And I'll admit Brown's book had that affect on me. I even found myself beginning to skim passages of description that my internal editor surmised were not essential to the forward progress of the plot. When I reached that point, I had to really question why I was reading the book at all (although like most souls who have become hooked I stayed with it until the extremely hokey ending).

As the philosophy lecturer Alan Watts once observed (about America's education system and about our "keeping up with Joneses" mentality, but it applies to "thrillers" too: "In music, though, one doesn’t make the end of the composition the point of the composition. If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest; and there would be composers who only wrote finales. People go to concerts only to hear one crashing chord - because that’s the end. Same way in dancing—you don’t aim at a particular spot in the room; that’s where you should arrive. The whole point of the dancing is the dance."

Can I get an "Amen"?

What's one of the easiest ways for a writer to stimulate a reader to consume his or her book at a pace where they never slow down to contemplate what the story is saying about the human condition? How does a writer construct a book where the readers never slackens their pace to examine what the book reveals about, as Faulkner said, "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself"? It's easy, really. The writer in question completely avoids saying anything meaningful about the human condition and constructs plot and characters that never even begin to delve into "the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths."(again, Faulkner.) The writer either makes a deliberate decision to do that because he knows on what side of the bread his butter is or because he or she is unable to write at that level ... or maybe both.

With the notable exception of all the presumably well-researched details about the history of the Catholic church, the Illuminati and the world of sacred art, Angels and Demons was about as interesting as a Scooby-Doo cartoon (less so because, frankly, I can at least have sexual fantasy daydreams about Velma Dinkley when I'm watching Scooby-Doo. And, yes, I realize that most hetero males here are probably Daphne Blake men themselves, but I don't want to get into this any deeper than I already have).

The previous Faulkner quotes are from his banquet speech when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. As our subject is pot-boiling, page-turning entertainment as opposed to lit-rhet-tuuuure, perhaps it's worth sharing more of it. This was 1950, mind you, so unfortunately Faulkner's words reflect the sexism of the English language at the time and he makes no effort to speak of his universal writer as anything other than a "he."

Faulkner was concerned that the current day writers had "forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat."

"He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands."

So, I maintain, that my initial comparison of Brown's thriller to porn was not that far off the mark. Like my Velma Dinkley daydreams, Angels & Demons appeal is mostly glandular (although given the time and appropriately sized, no strings attached grants I know I could write a novel that would elevate Ms. Dinkley to the stature of Dante's Beatrice or Joyce's Molly Bloom). Not glandular in the libidinal sense (although that's where he goes for his hokey ending, as I recall). It's more about adrenalin. The whole book is a vamped up chase scene, nothing more.

If that's what tugs your boat, have at it. To say that just because I happen to feel this way then anyone else's enjoyment of thrillers (or pot boilers or whatever you want to call these literary equivalents to amusement park rides) is a devalued delusion would be the very definition of snobbery.

I think I satisfy my yearning for "mere entertainment" that has no "higher purpose" (and at some level I think this kind of thinking represents, at least for me, a false dichotomy, but that's a tale for another time) with television. I can get sucked into a Law & Order marathon like nobody's business. So I'm not trying to sound all "holier than thou" here. I don't want mind candy when I read.

[Paul Martin]

Mark wrote: "on the question of when has a book "served its purpose"? And what is the purpose of a book?

I thought I had made a point about "thrilling and exciting" (i.e. "pot-boiler/page-turner") books in my ..."

Your wall of text sure is interesting.

[Mark]

Paulmartin wrote: "Your wall of text sure is interesting ..."

Never said I was a master of brevity. Quite the opposite. You wanna take it outside?

[Paul Martin]

Mark wrote: "Paulmartin wrote: "Your wall of text sure is interesting ..."

Never said I was a master of brevity. Quite the opposite. You wanna take it outside?"

I'd make a witty reply, but I'm not good at that sort of thing. It wasn't a joke though!

[Mark]

Paulmartin wrote: "It wasn't a joke though!"

I didn't think it was a joke. I thought it was a bit of a diss. But one I left myself wide open for. At least I was interesting.

Next time I'm in Norway, I'll buy you a beer.

[Paul Martin]

Mark wrote: "Paulmartin wrote: "It wasn't a joke though!"

I didn't think it was a joke. I thought it was a bit of a diss. But one I left myself wide open for. At least I was interesting.

Next time I'm in Nor..."

Nah, just a well-masked compliment.

I'll hold you to that.

[Kallie]

Fijke wrote: "...Not every book I read has to be stimulating" No, and when I think about it, there are some literary works that make me sleepy when I read them in bed: Ian Franzier's Siberia, Proust, Graham Gibson's Bedside Book of Beasts (even though the latter is sometimes disturbing; all those tiger body counts . . .) These are not plotted books that accelerate to a climax, etc., and stimulate, as Mark aptly put it, a "glandular" reaction; they certainly stimulate imagination though.

[Ken]

That's a pretty solid critique of Brown, Mark.

[Carlie]

Kallie, I agree with you to some extent, but I don't want everything I read to be intellectually challenging. Yes I want my thoughts to be provoked, I want to keep thinking about a book long after I've finished reading it, but my point was that sometimes it's nice to just read something that takes you away from the daily grind, a bit of escapism. But, I do make a point that the next book I read should be something more of a challenge.

[Peter]

Carlie wrote: "Kallie, I agree with you to some extent, but I don't want everything I read to be intellectually challenging. Yes I want my thoughts to be provoked, I want to keep thinking about a book long after ..."

I tend to have a few levels of books on the go at the same time. A bit of escapism for bedtime reading, something heavier in the car for lunchtime and between meetings and a difficult tomb in the loo, and something that I maybe couldn't quite get into in the living room. Does this work for anyone else?

[Mark]

Peter wrote: "Does this work for anyone else?"

First of all, I'm going to form a rock and roll band and we are going to call ourselves "difficult tomb in the loo." So thanks for that.

I usually have more than one book going and find that eventually they will battle amongst themselves for my attention with winners and losers. I was halfway through Light in August and Watchmen and Chabon's Wonderboys managed to knock it into some dark corner of my bedroom. I'll probably start from the beginning when I get back to it.

Sometimes I find two that serve as a good balance to one another. Since January I've been making my way through Elsa Morante's History which is a great novel, but devastatingly bleak and heartbreaking. When my brain needs a break from that, I pick up Barry Gifford's Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels which is a lot of fun, but stops short of being a pandering or simple-minded cartoon.

I find that some books, such as Light in August demand a more singular focus in order to get from beginning to end and get the most out of the trip.

[Kimberley]

As a high-schooler, I HATED having to read Catcher in the Rye. Why do so many other high-school readers love it so much?
Moby Dick: loved it, who knew Melville had such a sense of humor? Read it as an adult, for myself; never got assigned it in school. NOT overrated at all, to me.
Great Gatsby: assigned in high school; was over my head then. Gotta retry it now before I give my 2 cents.
Waiting for Godot. Not overrated. Seen it performed several times; has staying power!
The rest of these books:
never read! Except for Twilight -- read the first few pages and was underwhelmed.

[Peter]

Spelling faux pas - don't you just hate that! Give me a break. This is my first attempt at any kind of social media, and it is all too fast and "out there" before you know it.

[Mark]

Peter wrote: "Give me a break."

Break given. And I was serious. It was the misspelling of "tome" that made it sound so cool. A happy accident. I truly think "difficult tomb in the loo" would be a great band name. Welcome to the wonderful world of social media.

All of these posts, btw, can be edited. I edit my own obsessively.

[Paul Martin]

Peter wrote: "Carlie wrote: "Kallie, I agree with you to some extent, but I don't want everything I read to be intellectually challenging. Yes I want my thoughts to be provoked, I want to keep thinking about a b..."

I wish it would work for me, but it doesn't. I just end up spending 90% of my reading time (is that even an expression?) reading the one I like most, and subsequently feel bad about neglecting the others.

[CD]

Cosmic wrote: "CD wrote: "A reckless casualness was hers with Tom. That was something Gatsby could never offer.
"

And why was that?

Because the American Dream is not attainable except as an underclass. Tom..."

Tom Buchanan was what came before the American dream. Old money vs nouveau riche. Daisy didn't need the American dream. She wanted part of what came before the Roaring 20's. But she wanted both the licentious behavior and to retain her social position.

The American Dream wasn't just a class thing. It was that restrictions were not placed on success as a result of birth right. The dream was that you could succeed or fail on your own merit. And try again if you failed. Regardless of station. Buchanan was the antithesis of this.

[Mark]

CD wrote: "The American Dream wasn't just a class thing."


I could almost be persuaded that the "The American Dream" as you use it in this context could be synonymous with the arrival of modernity and the culmination of the idea in America that modernity was now the prevailing ethos of the times and the culture (note I'm saying "modernity" and not "modernism," although the two are intertwined, they are not the same).

Here's a quote from a great non-fiction read, Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club:

"Modernity is the condition a society reaches when life is no longer conceived as cyclical. In a premodern society, where the purpose of life is understood to be the reproduction of the customs and practices of the group, and where people are expected to follow the life path their parents followed, the ends of life are given at the beginning of life. People know what their life's task is, and they know when it has been completed. In modern societies, the reproduction of the custom is no longer understood to be one of the chief purposes of existence, and the ends of life are not thought to be given; they are thought to be discovered or created. Individuals are not expected to follow the life path of their parents, and the future of the society is not thought to be dictated entirely by its past. Modern societies do not simply repeat and extend themselves; they change in unforeseeable directions, and the individual's contributions to these changes is unspecifiable in advance. To devote oneself to the business of preserving and reproducing the culture of one's group is to risk one of the most terrible fates in modern societies, obsolescence."

In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald shows us an America where such modernity and the individual's path within it has become the rule and not the exception. And, as Joni Mitchell sang, "something's lost and something's gained." Jay Gatsby is an epitome of the modern individual but he's chasing a doomed love and using less than moral stratagems to do so.

[India]

I absolutely adored The Great Gatsby. The story wasn't anything to sing about, but the writing was beautiful. The 20's were a great era of writing, because they were just coming out of that time in the late 1800's when most writers used ridiculously complex, but equally as boring words, so that you had to really think about what the author was saying, but it wasn't peculiarly beautiful to read. The Great Gatsby bridges the gap. About 99% of the sentences are beautifully crafted, and even though you need to think about it, it's worth it.

[Anne Hawn]

India wrote: "I absolutely adored The Great Gatsby. The story wasn't anything to sing about, but the writing was beautiful. The 20's were a great era of writing, because they were just coming out of that time in the late 1800's ...The Great Gatsby bridges the gap. About 99% of the sentences are beautifully crafted, and even though you need to think about it, it's worth it. "

I agree! The list of quotable quotes for The Great Gatsby is extensive.

[Petergiaquinta]

Mark wrote: "Jay Gatsby is an epitome of the modern individual but he's chasing a doomed love and using less than moral stratagems to do so. "

And who among us hasn't?

Can I play bass for Difficult Tomb in the Loo? I won't be any good at it, but I'll maintain an ironic aloofness that will appeal to the tweener crowd even as I sneer at them.

[Mark]

Petergiaquinta wrote: "Mark wrote: "Jay Gatsby is an epitome of the modern individual but he's chasing a doomed love and using less than moral stratagems to do so. "

And who among us hasn't?

Can I play bass for Difficu..."

You're IN. Bass is a traditional position for someone who is no good. You can be our Sid.

[Petergiaquinta]

That's what I was hoping you'd say.

Problem...problem...problem...the problem is me!