I've tried so often to read some classics but can't get into them, then will hear them on the radio as a drama/play and love it !! Just lay back and lose myself in the audio, it's a great way to relax !!!
It would seem for some, the Ducati Manuals are up there. :biggrin: Dante's The Divine Comedy is a very recent one for me.
I think there's a big difference in the writing style of The Hobbit and LOTR. The Hobbit was a kids book, the LOTR has adult prose and turn of phrase. Of course, both are for our inner child where there is good and evil and we know what side we're on. By definition, life isn't like that, which is the attraction of religion for most. People want simplification of life. The Tolkien stories are good old fashioned comfort reading. You could say that one of the yardsticks of great literature is irony. This is of course totally absent in Tolkien's oeuvre. There are no multiple viewpoints.
50 shades of grey.. ive never read it..dont need to..ive heard all about it from the chattering slags on Loose Women or wherever, whatever...i also know, that when a bunch of bed wetters get excited about stuff like that, thats it going to be tame as fekk, but compared to the three minutes of squelching they get twice a month, its pure hedonism....anyone with any imagination has been doing all that shite as part of their usual repertoire for yonks... it nearly broke me when i had to convert all my home movies from minidv to HDD..
Loved LOTR but couldn't get past the first few chapters of The Silmarillion. I also recently started Game of Thrones and gave up after a few chapters, it is just soap opera set in a fantasy world.
I disagree. In LOTR most of the "good" characters are tempted by evil at one stage or another; some succumb to the temptation, others resist. And even those who avoid evildoing are still permanently contaminated by the bad times and wars they have experienced. The loss of innocence is a child's story, of course, but there are other onion-layers beneath. Tolkien was an Oxford don, and a very clever chap indeed, by the way.
All Solzhenitsyn's other books are just great, and readable as novels. The Gulag A. is him spewing out all his resentment and vitriol about the Soviet prison camp system - he puts everything in, like a great indigestible mass, without balance or judgement. I have read it out of a sense of duty, rather than for any enjoyment, in much the same spirit as I visited Belsen.
read the Hobbit when at College, hated it, attempted and gave up on the LOTR. I also confess to sleeping through the first LOTR film, the seats were very comfy and I woke very refreshed btw. Never attempted Harry Potter but enjoy the films. One day I will read To kill a mocking bird and Madame Bouvary.
Having studied Mme Bovary I can tell you that it's an intense book. Intense in the way that Flaubert was obsessive about his choice of words (le mot juste). Nothing in this book is left to chance. You could spend hours just analysing any 3 or 4 pages. So to be read with great attention. Flaubert's sense of irony is probably second to none.
The Silmarillion contains tremendously moving stories. The introduction, concerning the Creation Myth and such, is a bit dry and arguably dull, but once the Eldar are involved, it's a better set of stories than LotR or The Hobbit. By far. You just have to skip past the intro. I loved Catch 22 when I read it many years ago, no idea how I would feel about it now. What I cannot stomach is the writings of Oscar Wilde ... What. A. Hack. The Portrait of Dorian Gray was dire.
Te one that got away , Chris Ryan in mandarin ......just didn't get it , but hey the title told me what happens anyway ......
The Da Vinci code I just couldn't get past the first couple of pages and Kate Mossi Labyrinth Twist of the wrist lives by my bed and my guilty pleasure Mr Grey and his red room ;-)
The Da Vinci code was/is the biggest pile of shite Ive ever attempted. A plot so full of holes and loose ends. This is the only aspect of the book that is biblical. As that too is full of shite, plot holes and loose ends. Just about any product manual you care to mention. Never read them.
The Da Vinci Code - badly written, over-hyped garbage. Oh, and by the way all you nupmties out there, it's a novel not a reference book. The film is a drama not a documentary. It's a STORY, and not a very good one at that. Stop treating it as though it's all true !
Since there is no Sky Lord, the Da Vinci Code is ipso facto tosh. That wouldn't matter much, but it is poorly written tosh. I found it quite readable though. It requires no critical faculties. I only bought it because it was at the checkout at HMV and if you like writing, it's always interesting to find out what people like reading.
DH Lawrence is not an easy read. I waded through Women In Love and only really like the Alpine bit at the end. Kangaroo was a similar experience, and I only managed to finish it because I was in Australia at the time. I have found with DH Lawrence that he never said anything in 3 words if he could say it in 14. You'd have thought he was paid by word count. Unhappily, my wife then bought me Sons and Lovers. Er.... thanks. It remains unread. I have also a copy of the Silmarilion for the last 20 years - the first few pages have defeated me. I also need to make another attempt on The Satanic Verses. The opening pages were similarly uninspiring.
The da Vinci code was a bad book, but a thoroughly enjoyable bad book! I love the game of thrones series, ok its little trashy but the convoluted storylines and the depth of the back story really kept me hooked. I've never managed to finish Moby dick, I've tried 3 times but just cant get into it.
