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<p>Sounds like most teenagers.</p>
<p>Coureur wins the nice old man/lady down the block award.</p>
<p>^^More like the Has Known a Lot of Teenagers award</p>
<p>“Perhaps that was the style of writing back then–see Moby Dick and more than you’d ever want to know about whaling.”</p>
<p>An American Tragedy and Moby Dick were written 75+ years apart. I don’t think it has anything to do with the style of a period. Dreiser was a contemporary of the quite concise Fitzgerald. Some authors like to pack books with boring description and others don’t. Some readers —>me<— think Dreiser needed to put a sock in it.</p>
<p>I don’t dislike description in general. The “Little House” books are packed with fascinating descriptions of pioneer life, preserving & eating food, etc. The description is essential to the story. But “An American Tragedy” goes way off the deep end. I don’t need 2000 words on every machine.</p>
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<p>Somewhat agree on An American Tragedy but Sister Carrie is one of my all time favorite classics and perhaps the quintessential work of the Naturalist period.</p>
<p>With apologies to John Dos Passos et al.</p>
<p>I was just going to say the same about Sister Carrie–love it!</p>
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<p>hanaviolet, I agree, I have tried reading “The Alchemist” several times, thinking I might be missing something, but nope… couldn’t get into it.</p>
<p>I hesitate to post this because I think I might be a minority of one on CC but – I really did not like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and totally do not get all the positive hype about it. Based on the reviews I read beforehand, I thought I would love the book, but I really did not. </p>
<p>Two (but not the only two) problems I had with the book were that it was way too long given what it had to say – it felt like a potentially great article that was stretched out with filler to create a book – and that the author injected herself into the story so much. Sometimes that works (for example, books by Oliver Sacks) but here, I did not see the point.</p>
<p>Also, the author clearly had a theme, but I don’t see how the story she told illustrated that theme.</p>
<p>“anything by Faulkner… once read a review by someone that said you need to bring your own supplies of commas, periods etc when you read Faulkner…i agree.”</p>
<p>Somebody once said that when Faulkner writes a scene about a man and a woman, one can’t tell if they are making love or playing tennis.</p>
<p>In high school, Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” was required reading for seniors. It was commonly referred to as “As I Die Reading.”</p>
<p>I nominate The Wind in the Willows. I realize that this is a classic of children’s literature, but when I tried to read it as a child, I collapsed of boredom. Then I tried to read it as an adult. Possibly it becomes good after the half-way point? QMP has never finished this book, either.</p>
<p>I actually finished “Anna Karenina,” and enjoyed it.</p>
<p>Best book I ever read was “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”</p>
<p>Most appropriately named book I ever read was “The Idiot’s Guide to Ranking Colleges.”</p>
<p>Most predictable genre is the innocent-young-woman-from-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-gets-messed-with-by-rich-dashing-nobleman-***hole, which includes about half the British novels in the 18th and 19th Centuries.</p>
<p>Agree with you, Schmaltz, on Tolstoy in general. I also liked Moby Dick quite a lot–it may have helped that I read it on the beach.</p>
<p>Purchased Gravity’s Rainbow 3 years ago. Hope to actually read it some day. Have felt that I ought to read some Joyce for over a decade.</p>
<p>I am not a fan of required reading at the middle school/high school level that is traumatizing to sensitive readers of that age. I put The Lord of the Flies in that category. Even re-reading it as an adult, the inclusion of Simon and Ralph did not quite suffice to redeem the book, in my eyes. Also no fan of Crime and Punishment, nor of The Poisonwood Bible. </p>
<p>Any opinions on Invisible Man?</p>
<p>The Literary Society one – Gurnsey and Potato Peels are in the title. Everyone was into it, I just couldn’t get past the first several pages.</p>
<p>Climax of Anna K – I burst out sobbing and cried for days afterward, a tribute to the way Tolstoy wrote the pages leading up to the climax.</p>
<p>No one at my house likes “Winnie the Pooh.” On the other hand, the Captain Underpants books were huge hits at our house for several years, as was “Halloweiner.” You can tell we are a classy bunch.</p>
<p>(But we really do enjoy good literature, too! And I liked the Poisonwood Bible, although it took awhile to get into it)</p>
<p>After finishing reading For Whom the Bell Tolls, I felt like I was in a fog for 2 weeks. My 15-y.o.-daughter is reading it right now (after about 2 years of encouragement from me).</p>
<p>Kelsmom, sounds like your family’s idea of a good book would be “The Tiger’s Revenge” or “The Yellow Stream.”</p>
<p>She came home from her SAT saying that she just knew one of the reading passages came from something by Zora Neale Hurston - and that distracted her. Zora Neale Hurston doesn’t fall in a favorites category. </p>
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<p>I LOVED “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” My kids both had to read it in high school, and they weren’t as impressed with it as I was, though.</p>
<p>S’s least favorite book of all time was “Huck Finn.” He hated it so much that he had to listen to it on tape - he couldn’t stand reading it.</p>
<p>“the Captain Underpants books were huge hits at our house for several years”</p>
<p>I was entirely turned off by what I perceived as the capitalist/imperialist narrative of the Captain Underpants books; it wasn’t til the 4th reading that I picked up on the post-modern anti-neo-feminist subtext, and the allegorical importance of the aardvark.</p>