Books I Loathed discussion
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Clan of the Cave Bear/Jean Auel
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Oh but how could you not love the STUNNINGLY GORGEOUS blonde who thinks she's hideous until she meets the STUNNINGLY GORGEOUS caveman with the giant penis! And then they invent oral sex!
i read this when i was young and impressionable, i think. it was okay. not the worst i'd ever read but not really good either. i'd rate it as mid-level. but i didn't continue on with series. i don't know about any of the other books.
Jessica: that is SO funny! I've got a friend that's trying to slog through one of the sequels. I'll have to share this with her.
Really, it is its major redeeming virtue!
Jessica could've been talking about the oral sex ;-) Well, if the giant penises were contributory to the advancement of the human race, which is also debatable, I suppose there is redeeming value in bringing it up - the subject, I mean. Scientific studies would have to be presented, however. Was there an appendix to the book referring the reader to applicable research sources?
It's just a pity the main character invents the oral sex guilt trip in the second volume.
I realize that people back then died at very young ages, but my 20th/21st century mentality couldn't seem to get beyond the fact that Ayla was having sex when she was like 10 years old (12?). Granted, it wasn't exactly willingly, but...ooky.As for the other bits of prehistoric erotica...too bad it wasn't lively enough to make the book worth reading. And too bad I didn't know that before I read it. That's several hours of my life I'll never get back.
Conrad: LOL!!!
At the time I read it, I thought that Clan... was excellent. However, I got the boxed set with the paperbacks of Clan..., Valley of Horses and the Mammoth Hunters. And as the series progressed the writing deteriorated (exponentially it seemed), so that by the end of The Mammoth Hunters Ayla had become some prehistoric amalgam of Wonder Woman and Linde Lovelace.
Sam's "prehistoric erotica" pretty much summed up my opinion of the couple of these books I read. Ugh. Crappy romance novels thinly veiled as something vaguely educational.
In one of Stephen Kings books he discribed them as "Sex among the cave people". That pretty much covers it.
personally, i rather enjoyed clan of the cave bear. but in my defence i read it when i was interning in a city with an abysmal mass transit system 12 hours from home, and i had no car and was broke, and it was pretty much a choice between that or watching COPS. but it was a pretty quick read (ok, so maybe that's because i did nothing but read for two days straight one weekend) and it kept me thoroughly entertained. valley of the horses also kept me entertained, but mostly because it was just so darn ridiculous i couldn't stop. i might have to give mammoth hunters a whirl next time i have a weekend to kill.
I had to read this book for school in junior high. I absolutely hated it and hated the movie, too. I don't know if I'd like it better now, but I doubt it.
What Jr. High did you go to that let you read Clan of the Cave Bear??? Holy crap! And parents try to ban Catcher in the Rye? I will admit that I have read them all, and like Xysea I rated them all middle of the road. An older friend gave me the first three in H.S., so I decided later to get some cheap copies from the used book store to catch up. Basically, its porn...it really is, there's no denying it. And, it doesn't really change through the progression of the story; it's still a bunch of sex, sex and more sex. I wouldn't say I "hate" it, but I don't love it either. I didn't even keep the copies I bought, I gave them away. That is telling in that I am not a Library kind of girl, I'm a book hoarder. I won't even put a book on my "to read" list until I have it on my shelf.
I read it in Jr. High too. And then go in trouble for sharing all the sexy parts with my friends in the cafeteria. At the time I loved it. I can't really imagine reading it now and I'd definitely not recommend it to my daughter!
oh my! you had to read that for school!! did you then have playboy (or something a bit more explicit) for biology...
I read this book several times when I was 10, then went on to read all the series. I even sent a letter to Jane Auel telling her how much I loved it and she wrote me back!I agree with the above comments: the characters certainly invented just about everything. But for a little kid, man those sex scenes were good with the throbbing manhood and all. Has anyone read the most recent one (#5, I think)?
Haha, I read the first 4 because my grandmother really liked them. It was a little disturbing to find out that my grandmother was into caveman porn, but otherwise I enjoyed them for the sheer fluff factor. Definitely not literary books. ;)
LOL...As much as I love anthropology there just isn't much work in it unless you really love it. Or find a modern twist. This coming from the person with a BA in sculpture...I liked the books, but I wouldn't claim them as my favorites. I always thought it was funny how Ayla invented everything. That did seem weird. And the sex...well that wasn't so bad. Especially when you are 12 and it's fun to read something naughty. I actually like it more when they started traveling. Although when she finally gets pregnant kind of bothers me...I don't know if I'll ever read the next book, if it ever comes out.
This was my favorite book growing up, I read it in elementary school (kind of suprised that my parents let me read it now that I think about it).All of the information about the prehistoric civilization is what MADE the story for me. The story was interesting but without the background information it would have seemed much more contrived.
There are a lot of sexual scenes but I honestly thought that they added to the book to demonstrate how the community interacted between the sexes and rankings.
I do have to say though that each sequel got progressively worse and I almost didn't finish the last one. She should have ended with the Clan or Valley of the Horses.
Those books annoy me in the sense that I tried to read the third book and thought that these people can invent new sexual positions but they can't even talk to each other about their feelings?Mammoth Hunters was endless pages of whiney, moaning ANGST and misery. "She doesn't love me." "He doesn't love me." "Oh, we just did it again, but he totally isn't in love with me."
AUGH!
So I initially intended to give these to my mother so she could trade them in at the second hand store she goes to, but my Earth's Children series was requisitioned by my current room mate and is now in my bathroom for the roommate's toilet reading.
Jessica wrote: "Oh but how could you not love the STUNNINGLY GORGEOUS blonde who thinks she's hideous until she meets the STUNNINGLY GORGEOUS caveman with the giant penis! And then they invent oral sex!"OMG I nearly choked when I read this! Too funny!!
I don't think these were the worst, but yeah the sex. And also the way Ayla acquires one (1) new animal familiar per instalment in the series. Great job!
Not to beat a dead horse here, but FYI book #6 in this series (The Land of Painted Caves) is being released this year ... thankfully it's supposed to be the last of the cycle.As far as the reading of the books go, I quit after Plains of Passage because it was just getting too bad. I mean seriously, a close-to-1000 page book where the two central characters have to stop and do it like manic bunnies every 17 pages or so? Abigail's got it right, it's bathroom reading. I tend to think of it as unofficial required reading for horny 13-year-olds.
I realize this is a necro thread, but have to comment. I read the Plains of Passage at age 10 (holy crap, I can't believe my mom didn't censor that) and realized it was 4th in a series so went back and read the first three. I think books 1-3 weren't bad, but as an earlier author stated Auel should have stopped there. Book 4 was just "eat, sleep, walk, sex, hunt" ad nauseum. Book 5 can be summed up in one sentence: "Ayla and Jondalar arrive at Jondalar's home and Ayla has a baby" (it takes Auel 700 pages to tell that one sentence apparently). But book 6 "land of the painted caves" is the worst. I question that the author of book 1 even wrote book 6--it might be a case of VC Andrews ghost writing. It is so tediously repetitive--there's very little story until the very end--the other 600 pages are about cave paintings. If I wanted to read that I would check out a textbook. I found myself skipping whole chapters, so don't waste your time. I was actually pretty upset having waited 10 years for it to come out.
To be fair to the author - I now know how to skin a bear. ;)
Bekah wrote: "I realize this is a necro thread, but have to comment. I read the Plains of Passage at age 10 (holy crap, I can't believe my mom didn't censor that) and realized it was 4th in a series so went back..."I agree Becka. I have read all of these books, and I feel like Auel's audience have a vested interest in her characters, and that's what we wanted more of. Given her age, I wonder if she's got another novel in her, and if that's the case, I would have liked some closure. I was really expecting more, not more of the same. :/
Too many details! The book could have been 300 pages shorter and would have been a better book.
I certainly will not be reading the rest of the series.