I'm sure we've all experienced that strange effect where being assigned a book for class drains it of all entertainment value; and this effect makes me a little uneasy with labeling some of the "great works" as boring... but I will do it anyway.
Cry, The Beloved Country:
Wow was this boring. I have wiped most of this from my memory, so please hold as I slide over to sparknotes for a refresher...
Ok, I just skimmed that and the plot summary makes it sound great; don't be fooled. I remember getting into it periodically, as the characters are interesting and the story is pretty good; but the author's style is just too devoid of flair. This is actually a better book than the other two I will mention in my eyes, but I can't get over the way this took up so much of my time in 9th grade english class; I shall never forgive you Alan Paton...
Siddhartha:
Another book that I barely remember. Now I realize that this has a lot of deep philosophical concepts and deals with enlightenment and all that jazz... but I was 14 and all I remember is the main character sleeping with hookers. This probably says something about me; but hookers stand out in a 14 year old's mind. Also, for someone who loves The Catcher in the Rye, I have a strong distaste for pretentiousness, which I could easily assign to anything attempting to explore the meaning of life if I wanted to be an ass about it. I remember reading this in about two sitting because I had a paper to write on Monday... I'm sure this didn't help my experience with it.
The Grapes of Wrath:
WOW, John Steinbeck you slippery son of a bitch. People love you, but I cannot flippin stand your writing. Would it kill to bring this thing above the stylistic level of say... the Yellow Pages, or the ingredient list of this bottle of Minute Maid lemonade sitting on my desk? In fact; correction, this lemonade contains "glycerol ester of wood rosin", Steinbeck loses. DRYDRYDRYDRYDRYDRYDRYDRY. If I were stranded on a desert island the one thing I'd bring is this, because there's a fairly good chance I could throw it off shore and relieve myself of the whole "surrounded by water" thing. One morning I was in my school's dining hall with a craving for some oatmeal and was disappointed to see that it was waaaaaay too watery-- the first thought to cross my mind was "If only I had a Steinbeck book to wave at this". Who needs to waste all that time draining the pool in the winter when you can just drop in a copy of "Tortilla Flat"?
No comments:
Post a Comment