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ObliviousInvestor
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by ObliviousInvestor »

Off the top of my head:

The Great Gatsby
The Bible
The Catcher in the Rye
Rich Dad Poor Dad


FWIW, Dickens is probably my favorite fiction writer. I almost don't even have to care about the plot, given how much fun I have reading his sentences. :)
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by William4u »

If you read A Jane Austen Education you might appreciate Jane Austen more. This book has a nice discussion about how Jane Austen writes such realistic dialogue that she bores us with it (since real conversation can be boring), only to show us that the characters (like Emma) are bored with the same kind of dialogue and are the worse for it (just like us).
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Alex Frakt »

Just thought of another one: A Confederacy of Dunces. Started it a couple of times, but never made much of a dent.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Alex Frakt »

ObliviousInvestor wrote:Rich Dad Poor Dad
The thread is titled "A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy." I would guess that no one has praised Rich Dad Poor Dad for its literary merits.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by ObliviousInvestor »

Alex Frakt wrote:
ObliviousInvestor wrote:Rich Dad Poor Dad
The thread is titles "A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy." I would guess that no one has praised Rich Dad Poor Dad for its literary merits.
Fair enough. I didn't think we were talking only about literary merits. I had interpreted "reputed to be excellent" more broadly.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Alex Frakt »

letsgobobby wrote:I'm finding my 'to read' list getting inexorably longer. With work, family, personal obligations, there's not enough time, even to optimistically plan on doing in a far away retirement. Need a way to winnow down a bit.
Do you have an actual list? Post it and give us an idea of your likes and dislikes and we can probably give you more targeted advice.

Have I mentioned that I'm an ex-librarian? :D
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

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mojave wrote:#1 on my list is Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I had to read that book so many times and it was rage-inducingly horrible every time. :thumbsdown
I've read it four times, I really wanted to like it, I liked what it was about, but the first three times I just couldn't enjoy it. The fourth time (30 years after the first) something clicked, and I understood how to read it, which is completely different from the way I normally read.

I started going through the adult book section of the library when I was about 11. Read mostly trashy thrillers. Read fast, maybe three novels a week, twice as many in the holidays. Anything I didn't understand I just glossed over. Similarly, unnecessarily long descriptive passages, just ploughed through as quickly as possible until I get to the next action in the plot.

With "Heart of Darkness" the secret was to treat it as poetry. I had to slow right down, and take in every sentence. Not treat descriptive passages as waffle getting between me and the next action. For example, there is what originally seemed like an inconsequential scene when he first arrives in Africa, where while walking up a hill he steps aside to allow some slaves chained together to pass. Originally I just regarded it as a bit of scene-setting that went on a bit to long (as did everything else in the book.) On the fourth reading I was imagining seeing this in film, I imagined it as a surreal scene with the slaves as grotesque caricatures. I thought at the time a very good film of the book could be made, if you could find a scriptwriter who wrote from the point of view of being a deeply racist cartoonist on hallucinogenic drugs. (This might all just be me, maybe no-one else does or should see the book that way. I guess my point is just that once I slowed down and started to take everything in, it made a huge difference.)
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by cjking »

ginyah wrote:Moby Dick - I have had to write a book report on it in high school and again in college and in truth I never could get past the first couple of chapters. It was terribly boring! Thank God for Cliff notes.
I read it for the first time recently, and nearly gave up because of the first few chapters. Immediately after them it suddenly improves!
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by cjking »

FRANK2009 wrote:I've read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" at least twice. I want to like it. But what is he talking about? Obviously the book is written on a much higher level than my average, puny mind can comprehend.
I read it when I was about 15, not since. I thought about the meaning of certain passages for hours at a time. (I remember my friends father, a science professor, commenting that he didn't think it was "an important book.") I have no idea how good or bad I would find it if I were to re-read it now, but thinking about what it was saying did make me turn my mind inside out and see the world differently. This might have just been normal intellectual development, that would have happened anyway, so I'm not sure how much credit to give the book for triggering it.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by camptalcott »

7 shades of grey.

I can't believe they are making this into a movie. 7 shades of boredom and stupidity.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by snowman »

Recently, I waited 2 months for "The Death of Money" by James Rickards. I was so excited when I got email from the library that it's now available! What a disappointment. I forced myself to finish reading it, hoping with every new chapter that it will get better. It never did...

Anything by Shakespeare and Tolstoy would be on that list too. It's been several decades though...

Interestingly enough, The Sun Also Rises (mentioned by some posters) was my favorite book by E. Hemingway, so go figure.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by VictoriaF »

EmergDoc wrote:War and Peace. I couldn't keep track of all the characters.
snowman wrote:Anything by Shakespeare and Tolstoy would be on that list too. It's been several decades though.
Now people are piling up on Tostoy?! My opinion about the intellectual strength of this Forum is falling fast.

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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by bertilak »

Alex Frakt wrote:Just thought of another one: A Confederacy of Dunces. Started it a couple of times, but never made much of a dent.
Wow! I love that book. Read it may years ago when I was young and impressionable. Recently I was afraid I gave it more credit than its due (like lots of things I liked in my youth!) so I reread it. I was even more impressed than I remembered. Great book.

It is a character (and locale) study. Beautiful prose. Great dialog. Many fascinating secondary characters, all with their own interwoven subplots. The book and all its characters are quite original. It won the author a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

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VictoriaF wrote:Now people are piling up on Tostoy?! My opinion about the intellectual strength of this Forum is falling fast.
As a teenager in the seventies, I was always impressed by the similarities between passive resistance philosophy and Christian values, given the origins of the former were attributed to Gandhi. It was only quite recently when I tackled Russian writers (Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky) for the first time that I found to my amusement this was no co-incidence, Gandhi essentially got his ideas indirectly from Tolstoy, a Christian whose ideas about resisting Tsarist tyranny appealed to Indians who were tired of British rule.

(You may know all this, but I couldn't ignore the opportunity to share my favourite bit of Tolstoy trivia with the forum. Though I think I have posted it before.)
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by avmax8 »

Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by barnetto »

The Lovely Bones

All fluff and no substance. It dons a veneer of Seriousness by starting with the rape and murder of a minor, then blows it all on the most pablum filled version of a Hallmark heaven (yes, lower case 'h' on heaven) possible. Everyone lives happily ever after and the long arm of the universe brings justice to all. Give me real religion any day over The Lovely Bones, with its mess, wars, intrigue, contradictions, but actual passion! The author (aside from the rape and murder of a minor) made the thing so inoffensive that in the end it just felt sterile to me.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by barnetto »

cjking wrote:(You may know all this, but I couldn't ignore the opportunity to share my favourite bit of Tolstoy trivia with the forum. Though I think I have posted it before.)
New to me. Found it to be a very interesting tidbit.

I had to read Crime and Punishment in high school, and I enjoyed. Never read anything else by him though.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by cjking »

barnetto wrote:
cjking wrote:(You may know all this, but I couldn't ignore the opportunity to share my favourite bit of Tolstoy trivia with the forum. Though I think I have posted it before.)
New to me. Found it to be a very interesting tidbit.

I had to read Crime and Punishment in high school, and I enjoyed. Never read anything else by him though.
That's Dostoyevsky, and a great book. If people are only going to read one 19th century Russian book, that's the one to go for. (Not that I'm an expert, but have read Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's major works.)
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Donnie Baseball Fan »

The Dangerous Summer, by Hemingway. Very repetitive and as biased as anyone can get, it got to the point where I didn't believe his descriptions of the bulls. I guess someone shouldn't try to objectively relate the rivalry between two professionals when said person is close --too close?-- friends with one of them.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by campy2010 »

The Life of Pi.

I can't stand not finishing books. Tried reading this one multiple times. No dice.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by camden »

Another vote for Moby Dick. Of all of the classics I have read, both assigned in literature courses and read for pleasure, that was about the only one I truly detested.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by mcblum »

anything by Sir Walter Scott: Ivanhoe, etc. Most be the quill pen instead of the keyboard.... long winded!!
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by LynnC »

VictoriaF wrote:
Jazztonight wrote:Another one: The Da Vinci Code.
I listened to it as an audiobook while walking. All along I was having the feeling that I was wasting my time, but the urge to continue prevailed. To be fair, I "enjoyed" it, but the enjoyment was similar to the enjoyment one gets from eating junk food or watching junk TV.

Victoria
+1 Trite, at best. I am not a fan of the author.Thought it was contrived His second book, Angels and Demons was given to me and I put it Goodwill box.

I also don't like Dickens *yawn*
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by LynnC »

ObliviousInvestor wrote:Off the top of my head:

The Great Gatsby
The Bible
The Catcher in the Rye
Rich Dad Poor Dad


FWIW, Dickens is probably my favorite fiction writer. I almost don't even have to care about the plot, given how much fun I have reading his sentences. :)
OH, NO! Not Catcher in the Rye. Salinger is the guy who got me loving books in HS.

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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by snowman »

VictoriaF wrote:
EmergDoc wrote:War and Peace. I couldn't keep track of all the characters.
snowman wrote:Anything by Shakespeare and Tolstoy would be on that list too. It's been several decades though.
Now people are piling up on Tostoy?! My opinion about the intellectual strength of this Forum is falling fast.

Victoria
Isn’t it interesting? I read a lot of Russian literature in college as that was my minor, and I really enjoyed it (for the most part). The one author that I could not stand after a while was Tolstoy. IMHO, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment was the best book I ever read (at that time), and so I wanted to read more of his stuff. There were also other Russian authors that I thought were better writers than Tolstoy.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by VictoriaF »

letsgobobby wrote:
VictoriaF wrote:
EmergDoc wrote:War and Peace. I couldn't keep track of all the characters.
snowman wrote:Anything by Shakespeare and Tolstoy would be on that list too. It's been several decades though.
Now people are piling up on Tostoy?! My opinion about the intellectual strength of this Forum is falling fast.

Victoria
Have you read it in English and Russian both? I wonder if it loses something?
Only in Russian with plenty of French used liberally by Tolstoy. I could try to read Tolstoy in English, but it seems waste of time. To be fair, it's easy for me to keep up with the characters' names, which is not the case for non-Russian speakers.

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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Epsilon Delta »

snowman wrote: Isn’t it interesting? I read a lot of Russian literature in college as that was my minor, and I really enjoyed it (for the most part). The one author that I could not stand after a while was Tolstoy. IMHO, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment was the best book I ever read (at that time), and so I wanted to read more of his stuff. There were also other Russian authors that I thought were better writers than Tolstoy.
It's also down to the translator. Those names, for example. To a Russian the names are rich and distinct, not the thirty character strings of line noise differing in the 17 place experienced in many translations. Translators can help with this in various ways but most of them are academics who care more about the purity of the transliteration than a readable text.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by nisiprius »

Tycoon wrote:Everything I have read written by William Shakespeare.
Hated the stuff I was assigned to read in school. Hated the plays I was dragged to. Then one day, almost by accident, I saw the 1955 movie version of Richard III with Laurence Olivier, and I was blown away. Shakespeare was actually really very good. Who knew? :)
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Kosmo »

Most of the things people are listing here I wouldn't touch with a 39 1/2 foot pole. A lot I haven't even heard of, of the ones I do know I haven't even had the faintest desire to read them, and a very select few I tried to read and lasted a chapter at most. The good thing is I haven't missed much!

For everyone who hates Moby Dick, try In the Heart of the Sea. It's essentially the true story of Moby Dick (whale attacking ship). Although, you could wait for the movie to come out. I enjoy the author for his good blending of history and storytelling (from this and other books).
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Crimsontide »

William4u wrote:If you read A Jane Austen Education you might appreciate Jane Austen more. This book has a nice discussion about how Jane Austen writes such realistic dialogue that she bores us with it (since real conversation can be boring), only to show us that the characters (like Emma) are bored with the same kind of dialogue and are the worse for it (just like us).
Sounds pretty boring :happy
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Tycoon »

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

My daughter dared me to read it. I couldn't get past the first five pages. She was going to give me credit if I got through two chapters.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by John151 »

Anything by Virginia Woolf. She was broadcasting on a frequency that's off my dial.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by nisiprius »

Ah, Moby-Dick, or the Whale--that labyrinthine tortuosity, as intricately imbricated as the manifold elaborations of yon Turks-Head knot, made for show and not for service! Mark ye well, landsman, for the tale is spun from ropes, from cords, from lines, from yarns, from fettle-frims; it treats of hump-backs, razor-backs, fin-backs, stickle-backs, green-backs, half-backs, hog-backs, draw-backs, and zwei-backs; of cetology, morphology, ontology, geology, theology, and eschatology. Think then, to grasp the entirety by a swift perusal of the Classics Illustrated folio, or yet the coils of pellucid, transparent, sprocketed celluloid, wound like the line in the tubs of the whaleboat, bearing diminutive and idolatrous Gregorian peccaries, in myriad upon myriad of reduplicated images, through which the lambent beams of the the carbon arc pass as if through the fifth-order Fresnel lens of Brant Point Light? Nay, there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men! What Bowditch shall guide us through the spherical trigonometry of the soul?
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by John151 »

Well said, Nisiprius! Moby Dick was a required reading when I was in college, and I hated the book so much that I threw it across the room. in fact, I threw it so forcefully that it left a dent in the wall.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by protagonist »

nisiprius wrote:Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. Oh, sure, it had its moments, and I read it all the way through without too much effort, but I did not immediately start on Emma (which one aficionado has recommended to me as her best).

And now a terrible confession to make. I requested a hold on Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty, and waited about six weeks for this much-in-demand book to come in. When it came in, I thought at the other books stacked on my night table and queued in my Kindle, and said to myself "Why did I ever do that?" I was too embarrassed to do the honest thing, which would have been to take it out the librarian's hand at the desk and immediately drop it in the return slot in the desk. I seriously considered sneaking around to the book drop for cars in the parking lot and putting in there. But, no, I decided to take it home and look at it. I glanced at one page and said to myself, "You. Are. A. Fool." And returned it the next day.

There are lots of good books I don't enjoy. One of the nice things about being the age I am is that I don't feel I have to impress anyone or prove anything to anyone, not even myself. Like a lot of people, when I was a kid, I had some vague idea that maybe I would read all the books in the local public library someday. Eventually I did the math.

Be it with that goodness blest
Which may merit name of Best,
If it be not such to me,
What care I how good it be?

I don't really like Mozart, either.
I agree with you (and Mark Twain, and a lot of other intelligent males I know) about Austen. I could never get into Virginia Woolf either. Not Orlando, Ms. Dalloway, Room of One's Own, none of it. Or the little I read of Philip K Dick, although I really want to love him, and his novels make great movies. Or Yukio Mishima. Or most of the Victorians and Edwardians really. Or The Da Vinci Code. And Paolo Coelho is pablum. (For certain I would also include Ayn Rand, though I am not sure that any of her books are considered "really good books" by serious readers).

I don't agree with you about Mozart. Or Moby Dick, which I loved despite its obvious flaws.

Interesting about Piketty's book. What didn't you like about it? I have no real desire to read it. From what I have heard, his conclusions are too obvious.....like preaching to the choir. I don't need to read 700 pages to get the concept of growing wealth and power concentration and inequality in our society.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Candor »

EmergDoc wrote:War and Peace. I couldn't keep track of all the characters.

I had the same problem ^^

As far as Shakespeare goes I apparently need an interpreter to explain it to me and then it is enjoyable. I took a class in college where we concentrated on a couple of his works and the professor really had a love for Shakespeare and slowly walked us through them and I remember being in awe of the brilliance of them. I have since tried a couple on my own and struggled.

My pick would be A Brief History of Time. It's probably been 20 years since I gave it a go but even though the book was meant to dumb it down for the masses it apparently wasn't dumbed down quite enough for this one. :oops:
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by ObliviousInvestor »

Candor wrote:My pick would be A Brief History of Time. It's probably been 20 years since I gave it a go but even though the book was meant to dumb it down for the masses it apparently wasn't dumbed down quite enough for this one. :oops:
If you're interested in the topics, you may want to consider A Briefer History of Time:
http://www.amazon.com/Briefer-History-T ... ads.org-20
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by nisiprius »

protagonist wrote:...I don't agree with you about Mozart...
Most people don't.
Or Moby Dick, which I loved despite its obvious flaws.
Actually, I do like it. I just couldn't resist aping Melville's mannerisms. It's been quite a long time, but I've read Typee (liked it), Omoo (not so much), Redburn, Whitejacket (liked one of those two but don't remember which), Moby-Dick. Can't get into the later ones. Visited Arrowhead, looked through the window at Mount Greylock looking like a whale's back.

The rediscovery and revival of Moby-Dick was in part sparked by the publication of an edition with illustrations by Rockwell Kent, and apparently the illustrations were so important that at the time some people thought that Moby-Dick was by Rockwell Kent.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Candor »

ObliviousInvestor wrote:
Candor wrote:My pick would be A Brief History of Time. It's probably been 20 years since I gave it a go but even though the book was meant to dumb it down for the masses it apparently wasn't dumbed down quite enough for this one. :oops:
If you're interested in the topics, you may want to consider A Briefer History of Time:
http://www.amazon.com/Briefer-History-T ... ads.org-20
Thanks for the recommendation and it sounds like this version is what I was looking for when I purchased the original. Unfortunately, my mind isn't quite as inquisitive as it once was so these days I look for books that are just an enjoyable/educational read that don't make me think too much. I have enough of that going on already. :D
The fool, with all his other faults, has this also - he is always getting ready to live. - Seneca Epistles < c. 65AD
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by traineeinvestor »

Only somewhat surprised to see some of my favourite books getting a mention (The Sun Also Rises and Pride and Prejudice being two that I have reread often). Just shows how diverse people's tastes are.

Another vote for Life of Pi (I didn't get past the second chapter).

David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest was a major disappointment. I loved the short stories (Girl With Curious Hair) but am really struggling to maintain interest in 1079 pages of ultra dense impenetrable prose.

On the nonfiction front, The Power of Now, The Celestine Prophecy and Who Moved My Cheese all vie with Rich Dad Poor Dad for the worst pieces of garbage ever to have disgraced the best seller lists - how they got so many favourable reviews is beyond me.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by protagonist »

nisiprius wrote:
protagonist wrote:Or Moby Dick, which I loved despite its obvious flaws.
Actually, I do like it. I just couldn't resist aping Melville's mannerisms.
Melville sure knew a lot about whales . Except, for instance, the fact that whales are mammals and not fish. I guess he was unfamiliar with the work of Linnaeus, who figured that one out in 1778.
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by lululu »

When I was in high school we had to read The Mill on the Floss. It's a wonder I ever read anything again. It's like high school PE classes back in the day, they turned people off exercising for decades.
dolphinsaremammals
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by dolphinsaremammals »

protagonist wrote: Melville sure knew a lot about whales . Except, for instance, the fact that whales are mammals and not fish. I guess he was unfamiliar with the work of Linnaeus, who figured that one out in 1778.
:D
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Hexdump
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Hexdump »

traineeinvestor wrote:
On the nonfiction front, The Power of Now, The Celestine Prophecy and Who Moved My Cheese all vie with Rich Dad Poor Dad for the worst pieces of garbage ever to have disgraced the best seller lists - how they got so many favourable reviews is beyond me.
Ah yes, the moving cheese. It was required reading at a professional engineering corp., while I was there in 2003. Sheesh.

Moby Dick, I liked it after I got past the first few chapters or so.

Another that I hated and has not been mentioned so far is The Joy Luck Club. My wife also dragged me to the movie and it put me right to sleep. Boring.
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Mister Whale
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Mister Whale »

The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People.

Infinite Jest? I came to see this title as a description of the author's intellectual disdain towards those who actually took the effort to read, discuss and expound the work. Perhaps tellingly, it was a hot title in graduate English department circles at the time.
" ... advice is most useful and at its best, not when it is telling you what to do, but when it is illuminating aspects of the situation you hadn't thought about." --nisiprius
jasc15
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by jasc15 »

FRANK2009 wrote:I've read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" at least twice. I want to like it. But what is he talking about? Obviously the book is written on a much higher level than my average, puny mind can comprehend.
Glad I searched the thread for this book. I'm reading it now, and am about 3/4 of the way through. I enjoyed the first few chapters, but once he goes off the deep end about "quality", it has seemed repetitive for the last 100 pages. I guess referring to your past self in the third person allows you to be immodest, like mentioning your 170 IQ, and some other things. At this point it is mostly over my head, but I will try to finish it.

Coincidentally, I have Immanuel Kant's "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals" (which is referenced by Pirsig in "Zen") that I stole from my sister after a philosophy class. I picked it up while reading "Zen" to try to get some insight into what he was talking about, but it was many levels above what Pirsig was saying, and I could understand even less of that.

Coming up next is "1984".
wastenot
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by wastenot »

Huckleberry Finn, in an unaccustomed and brief role as literary critic, had something to say about tiresome classics. During one of his adventures, Huck was adopted by a host family of rustic aristocrats. After perusing the few books in the family's library, he noted: "One was 'Pilgrim's Progress,' about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough."
protagonist
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by protagonist »

dolphinsaremammals wrote:
protagonist wrote: Melville sure knew a lot about whales . Except, for instance, the fact that whales are mammals and not fish. I guess he was unfamiliar with the work of Linnaeus, who figured that one out in 1778.
:D
Dolphinsaremammals, on the other hand, probably knows.
Andyrunner
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Re: A 'really good book' you did NOT enjoy

Post by Andyrunner »

sadie wess wrote:
JonnyDVM wrote:
sschullo wrote:
rec7 wrote:
VictoriaF wrote:The Millionaire Next Door --
Frugality if fine, but the book promotes it at the expense of class, as in "classy."

Victoria
I loved The Millionaire Next Door but of course I am a super cheapskate.
I loved it too. Author, Quentin Crisp, made a tangential support of frugality in his book: "Doing it with style", "Never keep up with the Joneses, drag them down to your level."
I assumed I was the only one in this forum that didn't care for The Millionaire Next Door. Actually just read it a few weeks ago for the first time and found it a little depressing. So if you want to be a millionaire you have to live a lifetime as a miser who works all the time, does nothing fun, and then before dying dumps their ball of money onto their spoiled ungrateful children? Sounds great! Sign me up!
Hmmm...thanks for the input and making me laugh because I have read about that book on this site...for years. I have been a prolific reader all of my life and am an unabashed bookworm, yet have never read that book, despite also being a Boglehead. I shall continue to "skip it".
Picking up this book from the library today. I have a feeling I am going to be in the same boat. Its being cheap at the expense of 'class', never doing anything fun or for yourself. I am going into it with an open mind though. I'm secretly using it to convince me out of buying an ipad.
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