Books That Haven't Influenced You Whatsover

[shereads]

Steinbeck's, Red Pony, ugh. Had to read it in 5th or 6th grade, hated it. Thought later in life I might have missed something and tried it again... nope, still hated it. Talk about a depressing book.

I was eleven or twelve. I liked animal stories.

I had heard of Steinbeck and knew he was supposed to be a serious writer, so I was expecting something like Albert Payson Terhune's "Lad" books but with clever ponies instead of genius collies.

Depressing? That book is a cloud of gloom.

Speaking of traumatic books about animals, I was in rural Florida a few weeks ago and took an an hour-long detour to Cross Creek just to tell the ghost of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings what I thought of "The Yearling."



Anytime you see the words, "a classic coming-of-age story," and there's an adorable animal on the cover, you're in for a blood-letting to rival an afternoon at a meat-packiing plant.

 

[cantdog]

Maybe there are nearly as many people who should never write a second novel as there are people who should never write the first one.

I felt like that about Herbert. Frank Herbert wrote Dune, which was subsequently hacked into bloody fragments and stuffed into a movie with a distinctly Mad Max costume department. As a novel, though, it was really quite good. It was about drugs, as all Herbert novels are. I said wow very decidedly (I was in high school), and decided to read around in Herbert's oeuvre.

He can't write at all.

Dune and exactly one other book, called Under Pressure or in some editions The Dragon in the Sea or some title much like that. I liked Under Pressure better. Action in it takes place in a submarine. Four characters in cramped spaces under tons of pressure, literal and figurative. The situation has all the dramatic unity Aristotle would ever want. It was as compressed and narrowly focused as Dune was sweeping and large-canvas.

Very good, both of them, and so different (except for the drugs) from every other Herbert book thereby! I theorize that someone else wrote those two, and Herbert was hoping, having blackmailed the other author, to cash in on his unearned repute by writing sequels.

Lousy sequels. And The Santaroga Barrier! Gawdawful. A cheese cave makes a kind of cheese which sets a community apart from the rest of the human race, you know, because it's a drug. Please, just never read that, just stay away. Hideous sequels and cheese caves, each crappier than the last.

 

[neonlyte]

Oooh! What a superb insult. May I use it?

I loved The Secret History and like the rest of its fans I was breathless with anticipation for the seven or eight years between first and second novels. When it was finally published, I read a synopsis, yawned, and never looked back.

Maybe there are nearly as many people who should never write a second novel as there are people who should never write the first one.

Be my guest.

Agreed, except I bought it, for my daughter, who bought it for me. Still, we both sleep at night.

 

[neonlyte]

Opps

 

[Guest]

I don't get most American authors - Faulkner, Twain, Hemingway, Roth, Updike, etc. Those I regard as highly as non-American English lit. authors are Henry James and Edith Wharton.

I could not finish the first LotR book, nor more than one Pratchett. Just can't do any SciFi or fantasy.

I found Siddartha boring.

Never got into German or Italian lit. outside Mann and Dante.

Hardly ever read pop lit.

Perdita

 

[LadyJeanne]

Bill Clinton's 'My Life' has been traveling around the country with me for weeks in the back seat of the car, and is now sitting under the dictionary on the living room floor. For some reason, I thought he'd be an interesting read considering his colorful life, but no. Can't get into it at all.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Oooo... I read and re-read My Dog Skip. I used to live in Yazoo County, knew a lot of the references. But, man, I walked away from it twice without ever really feeling moved.

 

[English Lady]

Pratchett is an aquired taste -one I've got!

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Throwing caution to the wind and getting ready for the lynch mob:

- Jack Kerouac's On the Road
- almost anything written by Stephen King.

I finished reading On the Road and a couple of King's, but driven only by sheer masochism and a dim hope of finding something that would justify their fame. On the Road is good, and I understand the appeal, but for fuck's sake. If there ever was a book in need of editing. And yes, I know there was a point to it.

 

[Guest]

What Laurencita said. Some authors have such zero influence or effect I never think of them. P.

 

[patrick1]

Harry Potter. I grew up thinking British boarding school stories were old-fashioned. I don't see any reason to change my opinion now.

patrick

 

[English Lady]

oh yes Harry Potter (dare I say it) I just don't get it. It seems plot holey, jumpy and over simplistic to me. Give me Mildred Hubble any day of the week.

 

[CharleyH]

LORD OF THE FUCKING FLIES How much more misogynistic can one get . . . aside from Hemmingway, though he does have beautiful passages

 

[shereads]

Bill Clinton's 'My Life' has been traveling around the country with me for weeks in the back seat of the car, and is now sitting under the dictionary on the living room floor. For some reason, I thought he'd be an interesting read considering his colorful life, but no. Can't get into it at all.

Hilary's book is better.

Here's a synopsis of the most interesting part of Bill's book, Chapter One: "My Sorry-Assed White Trash Family & Why It's Amazing I Didn't Grow Up To Be A Serial Chainsaw-Killer."

(My subtitle; Bill is downright cheerful about it all.)



In the space of a few paragraphs, this happens:

Momma is left widowed while still pregnant, when Bill's father drowns in a drainage ditch after a car accident.

Momma and baby Bill move in with Grandpa, a nice old coot, and Grandma, a nasty-tempered old bat who verbally abuses everybody until her morphine addiction lands her in a mental hospital.

Momma, who is too young and pretty and full of life to waste away in Arkansas living with her parents, goes to New Orleans where, for two years, she misses her baby boy terribly! Other than that, she seems to have a pretty good time.

Momma returns to Arkansas with Bill's new Daddy.

Daddy is great, except when he drinks and beats up Momma.

One night, Daddy shoots at Momma and misses. That's when Bill has to threaten Daddy with a golf club and make him leave the house.

There's a long and ugly divorce.

When it's finally over, Momma has one of those Brady Bunch-style heart-to-heart talks with Bill and little brother Roger, and they learn that Momma is going to remarry Daddy because the boys need a father figure.



On the upside, Bill hardly ever has to threaten Daddy with the golf club anymore, because Bill is bigger now.

They divorce again.

Daddy gets a horrible disease.

Momma takes him back so he can die at home.

Bill visits Daddy and they make amends before Daddy's painful death.

Everything that follows Chapter One is predictable. But considering that other people with lives like that either turn into Ted Bundy or continue the family tradition of dying in a drainage ditch, I guess it's pretty amazing. Not well written, but still.

 

[shereads]

I felt like that about Herbert. Frank Herbert wrote Dune, which was subsequently hacked into bloody fragments and stuffed into a movie with a distinctly Mad Max costume department.

<snip>

Lousy sequels. And The Santaroga Barrier! Gawdawful. A cheese cave makes a kind of cheese which sets a community apart from the rest of the human race, you know, because it's a drug.

I don't know, Cdog. Retitled, "Cheese Caves of the Fungus Beasts," that series has potential.

I attended the movie, "Dune," as a courtesy to someone I had apparently married.

I remember Sting wearing a metal diaper. After that, it's all mercifully a blur.

 

[English Lady]

oh Charley I'd forgotten that one...I had to read Lord of the flies in secondary school (i was about 13/14 i think) but I HATED it. I thought it was awful.

 

[matriarch]

Paradice lost. *shudders*

Anything by Stephen King. Hasn't afected me cause I can't get through the first four chapters of any of them. Thank God he dosen't write porn, it would turn me off to sex.

-Colly

Ditto.
Thank heavens I'm not the only one.

And I also can't get all the fuss about Tolkein. The Hobbit bored me up to the first 10 pages I read, so I never bothered with the rest.

My sons, both worshipers of the modern media LOTR treat me as a blasphemer.

Dickens, I enjoy some, mainly for his descriptive skills. The stores are abysmal.

George Eliot. *groan*.

John Ruskin - endurance material.

 

[sincerely_helene]

oh yes Harry Potter (dare I say it) I just don't get it. It seems plot holey, jumpy and over simplistic to me. Give me Mildred Hubble any day of the week.

Just wait till Flicka gets a hold of you!

 

[English Lady]

I know *cringe* but its only my view *gulps*


do you think i'llcome out in one piece?

 

[sincerely_helene]

I know *cringe* but its only my view *gulps*


do you think i'llcome out in one piece?

Hard to say.

Perhaps I shouldn't have just PMed her and alerted her to this thread?

 

[LadyJeanne]

Hilary's book is better.

Here's a synopsis of the most interesting part of Bill's book, Chapter One: "My Sorry-Assed White Trash Family & Why It's Amazing I Didn't Grow Up To Be A Serial Chainsaw-Killer."

(My subtitle; Bill is downright cheerful about it all.)



In the space of a few paragraphs, this happens:

Momma is left widowed while still pregnant, when Bill's father drowns in a drainage ditch after a car accident.

Momma and baby Bill move in with Grandpa, a nice old coot, and Grandma, a nasty-tempered old bat who verbally abuses everybody until her morphine addiction lands her in a mental hospital.

Momma, who is too young and pretty and full of life to waste away in Arkansas living with her parents, goes to New Orleans where, for two years, she misses her baby boy terribly! Other than that, she seems to have a pretty good time.

Momma returns to Arkansas with Bill's new Daddy.

Daddy is great, except when he drinks and beats up Momma.

One night, Daddy shoots at Momma and misses. That's when Bill has to threaten Daddy with a golf club and make him leave the house.

There's a long and ugly divorce.

When it's finally over, Momma has one of those Brady Bunch-style heart-to-heart talks with Bill and little brother Roger, and they learn that Momma is going to remarry Daddy because the boys need a father figure.



On the upside, Bill hardly ever has to threaten Daddy with the golf club anymore, because Bill is bigger now.

They divorce again.

Daddy gets a horrible disease.

Momma takes him back so he can die at home.

Bill visits Daddy and they make amends before Daddy's painful death.

Everything that follows Chapter One is predictable. But considering that other people with lives like that either turn into Ted Bundy or continue the family tradition of dying in a drainage ditch, I guess it's pretty amazing. Not well written, but still.

He'd have done better if he'd had an editor like you - your synopsis was far more engaging than that chapter.

Maybe its his being so cheerful about it all is what makes his words feel empty - he holds up each dirty sock, runs it through the washer, and it comes out cheery and bright...no stains, no insights, just socks.

 

[English Lady]

Hard to say.

Perhaps I shouldn't have just PMed her and alerted her to this thread?

I better run for the hills.......

 

[shereads]

no stains, no insights, just socks.

Awww. Remember Socks?

LadyJ, if you think the calm, collected description of his horrific childhood is odd in print, it's downright startling when you hear him read it in the audio book. I couldn't make myself read the thing, and I'm his biggest fan, so I listened during a long car trip.

Bill, perkily: "Like all families, ours had a psychotic Grandma who hacked up Granddaddy with a meat cleaver and forced us kids to eat him in a pie. Fortunately, Grandma was a terrific cook, and the pie wasn't half-bad..."

 

[rgraham666]

Never could get into The Bible. If there was ever a book in need of an editor, that one was.

 

[Liar]

Hemmingway bored my sox off.

And since I kind of like (some) science fiction, everyone and their mother have tried to get me to read Asimov. And maybe there are interresting themes in his stories. But since he hides it in plain unattractive writing, I couldn't be arsed through more than two chapters.

#L