@Hanna, I don’t think that’s, at all, the central theme of Jude and Tess.
Tess is a noble figure. The “unforgivable sin” is not hers, but belongs to her avaricious father for sending her off alone to the wealthy d’Ubervilles because he falsely believes that his family, the poor Durbeyfields, are related. Tess is like the heroic Hector, in that she is fated by the idiotic actions of a relative (in Hector’s case, Paris, his brother).
Rape in the book Jude the Obscure? No. Jude is fated because of his relationship with Arabella and the son that they had together. His relationship with Sue Bridehead is destroyed because of his past life with Arabella.
The same with The Mayor of Casterbridge, who “sells” his wife at a fair, while drunk. All of the admirable things that he subsequently accomplishes in life comes tumbling down because of that horrible decision.
IMO, the central theme in most of Hardy’s books is fate: how actions of others can define our lives, or how our own decisions cannot be escaped and frequently come back to haunt us.
Ok, I don’t want to derail the thread, but I wanted to respond. Hanna, if you want to PM me about Hardy, I would be happy to discuss his books with you.
I found The Nightingale throw-across-the-room quality. The whole book was kind of second rate, but the ending was ridiculous. GET THE GIRL SOME MEDICAL CARE for chrissakes!
@Barbalot, what did you think? I thought the plot was interesting too but really did not like what the main character ended up doing. I won’t give away details though.
Just finished Camino Island. Sooo disappointed. I read Grisham for great storytelling and a sympathetic protagonist, and although the overall story was somewhat interesting, the narrative and characters were way below expectations.
Interesting! I gave up on Grisham back with The Firm, because I don’t like his writing, and because I found the protagonist to be decidedly unsympathetic, since ultimately it’s his own bad choices that led to him being in a pickle (though I did have infinite sympathy for his wife.)
Here’s another one – not “throw across the room” but “read about 50 pages, realize it’s boring, and throw it in the book bag to return to the library” … Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton. He died several years ago, so I’m wondering if his estate is finding old half-written manuscripts and fleshing them out to keep the $$ rolling in. This is the man who wrote spooky, scary thrillers like the Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, but this book was more of a historical fiction travelogue. Disappointing and boring.
Yes, Camino Island was one that I would have thrown across the room had I not been reading it on my iPad. I think it could have been so much more interesting, and the main character was kind of insipid. The book she should have started writing would be about the Fitzgerald heist!
I agree with the original poster’s Da Vinci Code, but my answer is hands down Love in the Time of Cholera. This book completely glorifies both pedophilia and rape, and implies/directly sates that both victims enjoy the experience and are better off for it. This was actually required summer reading for my daughter one year of high school. I read it ahead of her (yes, all of it unfortunately), and sent a full number of quotes to the head of the school and the English Department. They quickly sent an apology to parents and a revised reading list. I suspect that the book was simply picked off a list of “Great Books by Great Authors” and nobody at the school actually read it ahead of time.
Agree with the opinions on Edgar Sawtelle. Basically it is Hamlet With Dogs, padded with subplots that go absolutely nowhere. For modernized Shakespeare done right, see A Thousand Acres.
Wolf Hall was ruined for me by the deliberately obscure writing style. An author trying to be needlessly artsy.
As for classics, I never understood the love for Moby Dick. A great story ruined by turgid writing. Huckleberry Finn was a great read up until Huck meets Tom Sawyer, then it descends into pathetic farce. Ruins the book.
Throw across the room: Isabel Allende, City of the Beasts. Can’t they find a better book for school kids. It ranks up there with the worst junk I have ever read.
I read “Sweetbitter” expecting it to be great. I was underwhelmed. I told my older daughter that the field is still open for her to write the Great American Server Novel.
I would have like Wolf Hall a million times more if she had used quotation marks. I got so tired of trying to figure out who was talking to whom and if it was actually a conversation. Needless to say, I didn’t read the sequel.
I read Moby Dick with a teacher I adored. She made us all love it.
I loved Moby Dick too, although it had it’s “throw across the room” moments, particularly with all of the nonfiction digressions about whaling. The existentialism in Moby Dick is fantastic though. I’ll never forget the concept of god as a weaver or “there is a wisdom that is woe, but there is a woe that is madness.” Bartleby is also great, but I didn’t enjoy Billy Budd or Pierre.
Lincoln in the Bardo. I don’t understand all the praise for this book. The writing style was incredibly boring. I think it was possibly the worst book I’ve ever read.
I just read this thread and had an immediate and visceral response and read through the whole thread to see if anyone else mentioned this book and no one did. The Road. I got the end, said “that’s it, that’s how we end this thing?” I went back and read the last few chapters again to see if I had missed something important but apparently I hadn’t.
The Road ends on a hopeful note, IMO. The boy has the sorrow of losing his father, but is found and led away by a seemingly well-intentioned man. As I recall, there was a young girl too in the final scene. It seemed to me that the boy had the prospect of living under their protection. The ending could have been far worse, given the horror that preceded it. I can’t recall ever being more emotionally invested in a fictional character (the boy).
