<p>Let me be clear – Jane Austen is not chic lit. Pride and Prejudice is one of my all time favorite books.</p>
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S read Less than Zero for his HS American Lit class, so I decided to give it a read. Thankfully it was short. Bad grammar is so insufferable from authors who supposedly know better. S and the all male class enjoyed it though. I guess it was a welcome change from the staid stuff they had been reading, as the teacher saved it for last.</p>
<p>Does anyone have an opinion about David Foster Wallace? Is he hard to read, with all those footnotes-with-footnotes that take up more of the page than the actual text? Or is he so entertaining that you don’t mind?</p>
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<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>We read Moby Dick in high school, but our English teacher had so kindly told us which chapters we could skip. </p>
<p>I’ll have to revisit War and Peace, which I read in high school. I really enjoyed Peace, but War was such a slog…</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>DH likes DFW and read Infinite Jest two ways – on Kindle and old-fashioned. Said the footnotes were easier to handle on the Kindle.</p>
<p>Don’t mean to denigrate Austen. What I meant to get across is that I generally don’t like Chik Lit, not that Austen is Chik Lit.</p>
<p>Speaking of great female authors - anyone here like George Eliot. I adore George Eliot. I don’t think she has the readership she deserves.</p>
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<p>Actually I don’t like Anita Shreve’s stories. She develops characters…but her books don’t have endings…they just STOP. </p>
<p>I also hated the Help. This is one time I’m hoping I like the movie better than the book.</p>
<p>Sewhappy–Middlemarch is possibly my favorite book in the world. Yes, I adore George Eliot, too. What a wise, generous, caring mind she had.</p>
<p>Infinite Jest–read it about 15 years ago, I’m not sure I could now. I don’t have the stamina for books like that anymore, regretfully. Product of age and a nasty head injury. But I liked it when i read it.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s anything wrong with expecting a book to be accessible. We are intelligent people here. If a writer can’t tell a story without losing most of us in the first 30 pages, then it’s probably the author’s fault. I feel no obligation to slog through hundreds of pages of dense, boring, and/or confusing prose just to prove that I’m worthy of being called literate. If the writer can’t be bothered to take the attention span of a reasonably intelligent adult into consideration, then to hell with 'em.</p>
<p>This is different from taste. Everyone has different tastes. If you read 30 pages and just aren’t engaged, that’s just a matter of taste. But if you read 30 pages and are confused and agitated and have a headache from trying to follow along, that’s the writer’s fault, not the reader’s.</p>
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<p>Well said. I don’t know why she doesn’t get more attention. I return over and over to her works. Agree that Middlemarch is a masterpiece.</p>
<p>Loved “The Help” and could not get through the first couple of chapters of “Eat, Pray, Love.” </p>
<p>I recall really liking Catcher in the Rye as a high school kid.</p>
<p>I am reading “South of Broad” by Pat Conroy (Prince of Tides). A bit slow-moving, but good.</p>
<p>Interesting thread.</p>
<p>I liked “The Help’” ; I hate anything by James Patterson (can that guy write more than one page chapters?) and Mary Higgins Clark. Couldn’t get through more than a few chapters of “Eat Pray Love.” For popular “chick lit” I like Ann Tyler.</p>
<p>Some of early Grisham is ok - “A Time to Kill” is pretty good. Ditto on Stephen King; loved “The Stand” and “Salem’s Lot” - then his novels just got longer and longer and dull. </p>
<p>Loved Gone With the Wind, Moby Dick, Catcher in the Rye, Of Human Bondage, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights…but…Jane Austen puts me to sleep…though I have tried! Maybe I will try again. </p>
<p>I have a 50 page rule.</p>
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<p>I couldn’t disagree more with this post. I think there is nothing wrong with literature (and art in general) being challenging and requiring some use of the brain. Not everyone gets agitated and develops headaches from reading complex prose.</p>
<p>Just because you find something boring and difficult doesn’t mean it’s inaccessible. Another reader might find it compelling and thought-provoking. That same other reader might find books that are straightforward and fast-paced to be boring and not interesting at all. That is, indeed, what taste is.</p>
<p>George Eliot lovers, thank you!</p>
<p>I have “Middlemarch” on my bookshelf (I saw a nice copy on sale once and knew it was a “should”), but I must admit that I have never opened it. Now I feel encouraged to undertake it.</p>
<p>In high school, I read Eliot’s “The Mill on the Floss” and liked it, and then I picked “Adam Bede” out of a supplementary list that we were required to pick a book from, and read that too.</p>
<p>agree with Guidedbywire–literature is more than a plot-dump. Much great literature is doing a lot of things at one time–playing with language, juggling several themes, showing different layers of characters, referencing the literature and other arts of the past, etc etc. if that’s not your thing, then fine; there are plenty straightforward story-tellers. But “I don’t like it and it’s hard! so it isn’t art” is a pretty thin argument.</p>
<p>San-Dee: Totally agree on Patterson. I do like a few of his books. However, one page chapters, along with unnecessarily detailed violence made “Swimsuit” a no-go for me.</p>
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<p>As I re-read my post, I find that nowhere did I say that literature should be neither challenging nor require the use of the brain. Tell me, please, whether you honestly think that I was advocating for literature to require no use of the brain. I assume you were just being condescending in order to make the point that you like to use your brain, and you decided to use me as your counterpoint.</p>
<p>I also didn’t say that there’s something wrong with an author who loses me. I said there is something wrong with an author who loses most of us, “us” being “reasonably intelligent people”. Good writing doesn’t have to appeal to, or even be comprehensible to, everyone. And much skillful and stimulating writing appeals to only a minority of people. But I assert again that writing this is barely comprehensible to most readers indicates a communication problem on the part of the writer, not on the part of the readers.</p>
<p>Writing that is incomprehensible to most people may very well be perfectly comprehensible, as well as appealing, to you. That doesn’t make it good writing in the sense of “communicating ideas clearly through the use of words”. I submit that, just as a newspaper article can be good communication without being art, a novel or poem can be art without being good communication.</p>
<p>I have an unfortunate feeling that if you respond again, your words will drip with smugness and condescension, but I sincerely hope not. I would love to engage you respectfully on this topic.</p>
<p>Mantori–honestly, I saw your post as a bit smug, if you want to know the truth. Your assertion is that your definition of literature is the only correct one, and is not a matter of taste. I disagree. i don’t expect art to depend on my willingness to persevere with difficult stuff, and i think that would be a poor definition of it. Millions of people, though maybe not enough for you, have read and loved Moby Dick and Ulysses. because more millions can’t get through them, does not mean they aren’t worth it for those who enjoy them, or less art because they take effort. </p>
<p>But you feel what you feel strongly, so I don’t imagine further conversation will change that.</p>
<p>The metamorphosis. I don’t get it. Help.</p>
<p>Catcher in the rye was torture because everyone was so “OMG I’m just like Holden” when they were white suburban preps.
. But the book sank in and I can’t say I despise it.</p>
<p>About to finish the prince. If you don’t understand all the historical people he mentions it is torture… each chapter has 2-3 unforgettable maxims however</p>
<p>Sent from my LG-P509 using CC App</p>