What's the worst best novel you've ever read?

[Orang Utan]

I was put off reading full stop, is what I actually said.

Anyway, what's the definition of a classic?

Any book that is still in print 50 years after it was first published.

As I posted above (I edited so you may not have noticed), perhaps something published on the Penguin Classics imprint.

 

[Santino]

Huh.

What is wrong with the concept 'some books, which a lot of people think are good, and have been consistently thought of as good for quite a while'?

 

[spanglechick]

I know what you mean, but I took to the canon instantly - perhaps cos I had very good teachers who didn't insist that you must like something but coaxed us to find something to appreciate in everything we read. Well, nearly everything. Shakespeare was too much for me, but I reckon I could tackle him again now.

the stories are one thing - but it's the words. This sonnet, no hyperbole - makes me laugh and cry. Whaddya think?

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

 

[Orang Utan]

Yeah, sure - I just heard a Coil record with Judi Dench reading out his sonnets and they're enchanting

 

[plasticene]

If Borges' Collected Fictions could be classed as a novel, that would be the best novel I had ever read.

Borges gets more into 15 pages than most novelists can get into 300. Genius.

 

[8ball]

I loved Catch 22 and 1984 and Brave New World but I don't know how well I'd get on with this highfalutin stuff.

What would be good for a middlebrow like me?

 

[Dillinger4]

Borges gets more into 15 pages than most novelists can get into 300. Genius.

Definitely.

 

[bluestreak]

Me too - I love them too, though I've lost interest in their later work too.

Lots of people seem to hate Eco too - another author who I loved when I was younger, but can't be arsed with now.

i've only read the name of the rose. first time i tried i gave it up as pretentious wank. second time i fell in love and now it's a desert island novel for me.

 

[bluestreak]

Yes, it's fascinating reading his voice develop from an infantile one to an adult one

agreed. it's a superb novel.

 

[Dillinger4]

i've only read the name of the rose. first time i tried i gave it up as pretentious wank. second time i fell in love and now it's a desert island novel for me.

The name of the rose - is that about the crime solving monk?

I think I have watched the film of that. With Sean Connery in, iirc.

 

[bluestreak]

Well yeh

That's because it's nowt to do with them

if i ever write anything good enough to be deconstructed i'd be fascinated. in fact, the temptation to try and put stuff in to throw them off is so great that it would probably ruin any novel i wrote.

 

[bluestreak]

Hmm, I'm thinking that some of the negativity towards lit crit here is based on critical thinking on the canon shite. Am I right?

Cos the lit crit I did focussed on post-colonial/feminist/ideological texts

as did mine and it taught me so much important and clever stuff and hasn't spoilt my experience of naive reading at all.

 

[bluestreak]

The name of the rose - is that about the crime solving monk?

I think I have watched the film of that. With Sean Connery in, iirc.

yeah, the films alright too actually, but misses the point of the novel. the story is just hiding some ideas about great truths and history and humans.

 

[bluestreak]

alright:

American Psycho.

Fucksake. Fine if you're an 18 year old angry type, 2d and wanky for an adult reader. And in fact, anything BEE has writtenever is the same innit?

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

ooh the man who was really a woman. middlemarch?

fuck, i can't remember either

edit: yep. Eliot.

while i'm at it, DH Lawrence can fuck right off too.

i'm enjoying this and imagining my english teacher at school's face....it's been a long and hard day.

yes. middlemarch is a proper load of old toss.

 

[Santino]

The Name of the Rose is completely ripped off of Borges: detective stories, libraries, mazes, obscure theological disputes.

Spoiler: murderer

The murderer is a blind librarian called Jorge of Burgos, ffs

 

[maximilian ping]

Bronte, Austen, Hardy, DH Lawrence

snore

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Catch bleeding 22.



hate that book.