Up Front by Emma Hart

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Up Front: The Classics Are Rubbish Too

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  • Andrew Stevenson,

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 206 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    One year a friend gave me a copy of Rogue, by Fabio. We had a competition to see who could get the furtherest through it without

    a)hurling it across the room
    b)hurling

    This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

    (Dorothy Parker)

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Sam F,

    And: The Eye of Argon: Worst fantasy short story ever. Conventions hold reading competitions: you have to see how far you can get before you start laughing...

    Got here, with genuine effort:

    "I find you to be the only fool, sitting upon your pompous throne, enhancing the rolling flabs of your belly in the midst of your elaborate luxuryland ..."

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1611 posts Report Reply

  • Cecelia,

    Great Expectations is okay. Read it with Mister Pip. It's really funny. In parts.

    I hate Da Vinci Code with a passion and I haven't even read it. The first SENTENCE is appalling.

    Now Stephanie Meyer. Stephanie Meyer. Vampire novels. Wow! I have devoured all four. I'm an English teacher who should know better. I'm 62. Too old for young adult fare?

    Has anybody read them and can anybody tell me why I enjoyed them so much WHILE my antenna were telling me "this is sick"? It all started with a Time article - new JK Rowling etc.

    I've passed on the addiction to my (girl) students one of whom did a seminar yesterday and mentioned the "erotic power of abstinence." Maybe that's it!

    Hibiscus Coast • Since Apr 2008 • 559 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    (The first was Robert Heinlein's Number of the Beast.)

    Is that the one where the hero jumps in a time machine and gives a whole new slant to the already vile acronym MILF (don't ask), or transplants his brain into his conveniently dead nuble secretary's body and spends quite a lot of time rubbing her nipples and trying to get knocked up with his own sperm (really, don't ask) or... Seriously, the sixties have a lot to answer for, including apparently destroying Robert Heinlein into a bar room bore.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • McKenzie,

    Tess of the d'Urbervilles. It's been well over a decade since I read it and I still remember the agony of doing so. Awful, just awful.

    Office Chair • Since Oct 2008 • 1 posts Report Reply

  • Geoff Willmott,

    Stephen Fleming's "book" ... bad even for a sports autobiography.

    Donna Tart's "The Secret History"; which is divided into two parts but contains just one event.

    Movie: "The Core" nudges out "The Day After Tomorrow"

    So much easier than favourites.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 15 posts Report Reply

  • andrew llewellyn,

    If you have to read it then it won't be fun.

    hah, yes, the curse os the English Major - wing it through the entire year, including tutot\rials, tests, essays & exams, then sit back in the holidays reading the saet texts thinking "Damn, these are GOOD!"*

    *Except for Portrait of a Lady, which was not. And Ulysses, which was unfinishable, although probably very worthy.

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • andrew llewellyn,

    Oh, and Cocktail is the worst movie ever. Closely followed by some dross called Jack in the Box.

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    Now Stephanie Meyer. Stephanie Meyer. Vampire novels. Wow! I have devoured all four. I'm an English teacher who should know better. I'm 62. Too old for young adult fare?

    Nah... there's not so many good books out there you can be too picky about where they come from. I've read Twilight, and it's competently written Mills and Boon soft pron with vampires. Anyone who has drunk deep at the bracing spring of Jane Austen -- and taken to heart the hard truths of Northanger Abbey -- will find it risible. But what the hell, I'm sure you've got a better sense than me how much worse twaddle lurks on the 'Young Adult' shelves of every book store and public library.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    Donna Tart's "The Secret History"; which is divided into two parts but contains just one event.

    I loved "The Secret History". But then, I can remember being at a party with a group of friends and reaching the unanimous conclusion that yes, [character from TSH] was exactly like [dear friend who now works for the Ministry of (Redacted)]. So there may be mitigating circumstances there.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • Andrew Stevenson,

    The Highlander (movie) sequels are really really bad

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 206 posts Report Reply

  • Hadyn Green,

    re: Vampire novels
    Someone gave me an Anne Rice book once. I vividly remember yelling out-loud to an empty room: "I'm 100 pages in and nothing has happened!"

    So I stopped reading.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2090 posts Report Reply

  • Tom Beard,

    "I'm 100 pages in and nothing has happened!"

    That could be said of many of my favourite books, but then I don't read because I want things to happen, but because I love good writing. In A Rebours ("Against Nature") nothing happens what. so. ever. The "hero" Des Esseintes doesn't even leave the room for whole chapters (except to have a turtle encrusted in jewels). Mind you, Huysmans was no Anne Rice.

    I've never even bothered with the Da Vinci code, partly because Eco has covered some of the same ground and Eco can write. He has apparently been quoted as saying that the wrote the first 100 pages of The Name of the Rose as a kind of penance for the reader: if you make it past that, then you've shown enough dedication to be the sort of reader Eco wants. Mind you, I loved all the (supposedly) mind-numbing turgidity of it, because of the way it celebrates the sheer multiplicity and teeming detail of the world.

    Not so much a classic, but one highly-regarded book that I found very disappointing, was Norwegian Wood. Limpidly written, of course, but it just didn't engage me. Luckily I persisted with Murakami, otherwise I'd never have experienced the sheer joy of Wild Sheep Chase and Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 1040 posts Report Reply

  • Josh Addison,

    The Highlander (movie) sequels are really really bad

    There are no Highlander sequels.

    I rarely have the attention span for books, but I'm exceptionally good at enjoying movies, no matter how crappy they are. (Die Hard 4? Awesome action film; so-so Die Hard film.) It's a rare film that I find myself wondering why the hell I'm watching it -- of the top of my head, that list consists of Very Bad Things, Species 2, Highlander 2 and Mortal Kombat 2 (in which the "uniquely attractive" Brian Thompson intones, in his velvet Shakespearean murmur, the word "millenniums").

    Onehunga, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 298 posts Report Reply

  • Jake Pollock,

    (in which the "uniquely attractive" Brian Thompson intones, in his velvet Shakespearean murmur, the word "millenniums").

    Oh, he was talking about one thousand intonations used to indicate hesitating or inarticulate utterance on the part of a speaker. Closely related to 'millenniahs'.

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report Reply

  • Isabel Hitchings,

    I loved "The Secret History". But then, I can remember being at a party with a group of friends and reaching the unanimous conclusion that yes, [character from TSH] was exactly like [dear friend who now works for the Ministry of (Redacted)]. So there may be mitigating circumstances there.

    I loved TSH too mostly because I had a very strong sense of having known most of the characters and therefore having to uneasily wonder if people in my circle would behave the same way given the same set of circumstances.

    Conversely A Secret History by Mary Gentle saw me piking less than a third of the way in. Pages and pages of tedium interspersed with very graphic, and often sexual, violence. Probably not unlike 15th Century warfare really.

    Heart of Darkness has to be the worst thing I ever read as a set text - far too many words and most of them infuriating. Not helped by every interpretation I offered my tutor being completely wrong (according to her).

    And, while she may be some kind of National Treasure, I've never really got the hang of Janet Frame's novels (though her short stories and autobiography are bearable)

    Christchurch • Since Jul 2007 • 719 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    At the risk of exposing poor taste: I read _The Redemption of Athalus_ by David Eddings.

    David Eddings did two 5 book fantasy series: The Belgariad and The Malloreon.

    The first was a rather average series, short books, easy to read in a weekend.

    The second series was a repeat of the first series, which a couple of characters changed, taking place on a different continent, with many of the same things happening. Rather terrible.

    You're not allowed to bitch about LOTR unless you've read truly bad fantasy. Tolkein might have been a boring old prude who took 100 pages to talk about a party and 50 ancient ancestors of no consequence, but at least he had command of the English language and had a basic good story in his head. Other fantasy series fail on both those counts.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Graeme Edgeler,

    After about a week, Robinson Crusoe achieved a singular honour. It became the first set text I didn't make it to the end of.

    As an assignment of a course at university - review a book on the (non-fiction) topic of the course - I reviewed the course' set text without having read it. I didn't throw it, but it was a bit of a laugh...

    Wellington, New Zealand • Since Nov 2006 • 3215 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    The second series was a repeat of the first series, which a couple of characters changed, taking place on a different continent, with many of the same things happening. Rather terrible.

    Then he wrote the Elenium, which was the same story but the characters had different names, as did the world. I gave up after just a couple of chapters.

    My kids read the Belgariad when they were about 8 or 10 and loved it, and I think in that context it's a good read.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • Jake Pollock,

    Kyle: I will hear nothing good said of Lord of the Rings. 1000+ pages of ' incredibly detailed history' and we're still left with the burning question: how did Frodo pay for his stay at the Prancing Pony?

    Also, seeing as J.R.R. Tolkien invented the genre of interminable fantasy novels about elves and dragons, I think he bears some responsibility for the truly bad stuff.

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    I loved "The Secret History". But then, I can remember being at a party with a group of friends and reaching the unanimous conclusion that yes, [character from TSH] was exactly like [dear friend who now works for the Ministry of (Redacted)]. So there may be mitigating circumstances there.

    I was a classics major when The Secret History came out, and I remember showing up to a tutorial with a library copy and got the strangest look from the tutor. It is extremely well written, but my problem isn't so much that not much happens very slowly (I'm a Trollope fan, remember) but that at several critical points the narrator is implausibly obtuse. Tartt doesn't sell it.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Sam F,

    1000+ pages of ' incredibly detailed history' and we're still left with the burning question: how did Frodo pay for his stay at the Prancing Pony?

    I suppose innkeepers in those parts were used to people turning up a bit short.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1611 posts Report Reply

  • dyan campbell,

    Donna Tart's "The Secret History"; which is divided into two parts but contains just one event.

    I enjoyed The Secret History, but I can understand a modern reader's frustration at the absence of events. One review called it a "whodunnit that tells you whodiddit right whentheydunnit" which is fair, except I don't think Donna Tartt set out to write a murder mystery, I think she set out to write a modern study of remorse. Themes like that are not usually found in modern books, which are usually plot driven.

    "I'm 100 pages in and nothing has happened!"

    That could be said of many of my favourite books, but then I don't read because I want things to happen, but because I love good writing. In A Rebours ("Against Nature") nothing happens what. so. ever. The "hero" Des Esseintes doesn't even leave the room for whole chapters (except to have a turtle encrusted in jewels).

    Like you I don't care if events happen, and like you I loved Adolph Huysman's Against Nature. (That poor turtle, the book's hero should have stuck to his mechanical fish). I also loved Goncharov's Oblomov, the first slacker novel, where the hero does nothing except lie on a sofa and complain. Both of these were intended as cautionary fable or satire of a growing trend, like Brave New Word and 1984 a couple generations later.

    But what someone (Craig?) said earlier about Forester being... "pretentious and dull" - I can't find the original quote, I agreed and it reminded me of what Katherine Mansfield said about Forester's writing (or was it Virginia Woolf's? It applied to both) "They are forever warming the pot, but when, oh when are we to have tea?"

    auckland • Since Dec 2006 • 595 posts Report Reply

  • Sayana,

    I loved "The Secret History". But then, I can remember being at a party with a group of friends and reaching the unanimous conclusion that yes, [character from TSH] was exactly like [dear friend who now works for the Ministry of (Redacted)]. So there may be mitigating circumstances there

    I loved Secret History for much the same reason that Emma stated (and possibly the same conversation). What I never forgave Donna Tartt for was her second book: The Little Friend

    I have never been so angry as when I got to the end of that one. That one I threw across the room.

    Since Sep 2008 • 50 posts Report Reply

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