Books That Haven't Influenced You Whatsover

[sweetnpetite]

For whom the Bell Tolls- first book I intentionally didn't finish. (second was It.- I don't think there where any others.)

I got 3/4 of the way through Hemingway, stopped on the first page of It. Scared the shIT out of me

 

[sweetnpetite]

oooh I'm going to get lynched for this but I just don't get all the hooha over Tolkein.

I have had the Hobbit read to me as a kid (it was great to get me to sleep) and read it as an adult....and nope...I just don't see what all the fuss is for.


And I love Fantasy books generally

I loved the Hobbit, but can't manage to read the Trillagy.

 

[sweetnpetite]

I remember thinking Kipling the most annoying prose writer on the face of the earth. Then I tried Dickens. He's worse.

Then I read Captains Courageous. Jesus, thought I, the dude can write prose after all. Then The Man Who Would Be King. What a tightly written gem that thing is. I was in awe. But Kim still sucks, and The Jungle Book right with it.

No such revelation has ever come along to change or mitigate my impression of Dickens. I think we do English Lit a disservice to hold him up as an example of it.

I Dickens. Esp. Great Expectations.

I like his tendancy to create really eccentric characters

 

[sweetnpetite]

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

He writes about sex a lot in his books. He never makes it seem appealing. You'd think he was a real woman hater from his sex scenes if nothing else. (that aside I like SK)

 

[shereads]

I Dickens. Esp. Great Expectations.

I like his tendancy to create really eccentric characters

Eccentric? They're eccentric?

Are you sure?

Dammit. One less place to seek a role model.

 

[sweetnpetite]

I found the Koran and the Gita a little repetitive, too, but they had more focus. It helps to have a single author.

I think it helps if you don't think of compilation books like the bible (not really familiar w/ the Koran or the Gita) as one book- since they are really not.

One of my Sophomore Super-Slows, as I liked to think of them, came to class from a read of Macbeth and told me it was just amazing that a person could write a play composed entirely of book titles and movie titles.

cantdog

I think that is hillarious. Thanks for sharing that cantdog.

 

[sweetnpetite]

Eccentric? They're eccentric?

Are you sure?

Dammit. One less place to seek a role model.

Eccentrics make great role models Mine is Henry David.

 

[sweetnpetite]

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

I liked it. (We read it back in 10th grade, and watched the movie with Balthazaar Getty) I cried when Piggie died. I once read this parody of it called Lord of the Fries. Verry odd little story. But funny.

 

[sweetnpetite]

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..."

I nominate this as 'best line of the day'.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

If I want to sleep, I don't read the phone catalogue, because that always makes me clear awake, giggling at all the stupid names there are in it. I read the bible.

"Garaguk was the son of Barbaruk who was the father of Urkudurk who was the father of Ruggukduk who was the father of Pukruguk who... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..."

 

[Fag-Ash_Lil]

I 'aven't finished Janet and John.

What 'appens? Do they get it togever or do they stay loike the prats they are?

Fag-Ash

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Who are Janet and John? Relatives of Jack and Jill?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I take it as a sign of some sort of skill that more people don't just burst our laughing when they read Stephen King. I read "The Stand" where the bad guy was someone called "the Walkin' Dude" who shlepped an H-bomb around behind him in a wagon or something, and it was just too much. Horror always walks the line between fear and laughter for me, and King falls off too often for me to take him seriously.

On the other hand, I don't find Mark Twain particularly funny at all. In fact, someone posted a long-forgotten piece by Twain on this site about a month or two ago that was basically one big fart joke, so crude and unimaginative that it would have emarrassed me back in sixth grade. Hey, fart jokes are fart jokes, whether they're in faux restoration prose or playground monosyllables. "Methinks I beshat my pantaloons" just doesn't do it for me anymore.

Jane Austin: I can read her, and enjoy her while I'm reading, but as soon as I put down the book I totally forget what I've just read. I think I've read P&P about 4-5 times now, and each time it's like reading a new book because I've completely forgotten everything that happens and who these people are.

James Elroy: I picked up two JE books based on someone's recommendation here because I love a good crime yarn and it sounded like he was good. But his style is just so highly stylized that it's like a joke after awhile. He just talks too tough. It's like reading a "Dan Tanner Hollywood Detective" pulp book from the 40's, with roscoes coughing and bodies spouting ketchup. Way over the top.

---dr.M.

 

[cantdog]

Ah, roscoes coughing. They don't make 'em like they used to.

I never could finish any Agatha Christie. Is it her flat writing, her studied air? And yet people seem to like her stuff, it is standing, as they say, the test of time even now. Dorothy Sayers is not for everyone, either. My sister dotes on P.D. James. I read one, and I can see the appeal, but I like Laurie R. King a thousand times better, even though she will maim her protagonists terribly.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Hmm, this is hard because books often influence me in some manner.

I've had books I've loved and others whose style I've tried to emulate or toy with.

And on the other end of the spectrum there were books where I wanted to slap the author with a dead herring. These include any novel by Hemmingway (good short story writer but all his novels sound like they were written by a misogynistic three-year-old) and "Grapes of Wrath" by Steinbeck (it is a long waste of words with no reward for sticking with it and ends in the middle of the story even after so many words, utter tripe). These books influenced me to not write like that or to mock it. Still an influence.

So, for a book that went through me completely unnoticed, I don't think I have one. Even the Crucible, which I spent the entire book thinking of another character type's reaction to it all, influenced a story that never got penned. So, I got nothing, sorry.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

No wait! I remember one. Once a friend convinced me through some sort of mind-control ray to read Kant. That influenced me not one iota. I just looked at it, read it for awhile, dismissed it, and walked away.

 

[Kate.E]

The Bible

The Dictionary

The Highway Code

... all overrated.

 

[In your psyche]