Hated "The Great Gatsby". Also thought "The Hunger Games" was overrated.

I think y'all are trying to upset me. One of my 15 or 20 favorite books of all time.

 

What exactly did you not like about it?

I'm honestly not much for Great Gatsby either...although I haven't read it since I was a good bit younger. I've been meaning to pick it back up and read it again to see it my opinion changes at all.

Now you're on board too? :cry:

Now you're on board too? :cry:

 

Like I said, it's been a while since I read it. ...I really just remember finishing reading it and thinking, "What's all the fuss about?"

I think y'all are trying to upset me. One of my 15 or 20 favorite books of all time.

 

Absolutely agree. Along with "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," it's one of the two books I would actually call the Great American Novel. It is to early 20th-century America what Huck Finn is to 19th-century America.

Also thought "The Hunger Games" was overrated.

 

If we're going to start in on books that have recently been popular that have been absolute garbage, then I've got a long list to get together...

I liked Huck Finn a lot. But I guess the time period in which Gatsby was set just wasn't for me. I liked "A Tale of Two Cities" though, so basically anything before Gatsby is fine with me.:thumb:

Absolutely agree. Along with "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," it's one of the two books I would actually call the Great American Novel. It is to early 20th-century America what Huck Finn is to 19th-century America.

Exactly. Never expected to see it on the list. If someone starts badmouthing Huck Finn I may have to go drink...

If we're going to start in on books that have recently been popular that have been absolute garbage, then I've got a long list to get together...

I was trying to stick to the "classics". I'd have a list a mile long if recent popularity determined this.

Lord of the Flies and Wuthering Heights.

 

I also thought Animal Farm was overrated.

 

Ouch...those are the only two books I remember reading in high school that I enjoyed.

I liked Huck Finn a lot. But I guess the time period in which Gatsby was set just wasn't for me. I liked "A Tale of Two Cities" though, so basically anything before Gatsby is fine with me.:thumb:

 

The early 20th century American stuff I devoured in college and in the years after: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck have long been among my favorites.

The early 20th century American stuff I devoured in college and in the years after: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck have long been among my favorites.

 

I do like Hemmingway & Steinbeck. I've probably read "The Old Man and the Sea", and "Of Mice and Men" 5 times each! I am just not an F. Scott fan.:idunno:

While I didn't love "The Great Gatsby," it did have one of the best final lines of any classic novel.

 

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. "

 

The idea of trying to move forward, while still tied to our past, is one that so many people can relate to. I've quoted this line many times in regular life.

The early 20th century American stuff I devoured in college and in the years after: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck have long been among my favorites.

Completely agree. I loved most of the stuff I read in my later H.S. years and early college years.

Like I said, it's been a while since I read it. ...I really just remember finishing reading it and thinking, "What's all the fuss about?"

 

Why not read it again? I think there were some deeper, more critical aspects of the book and Fitzgerald's view of society that just went sailing by me in high school.

Had to think back to high school and college for a while to really remember what I hated.

 

Anything by James Joyce. Dubliners is not bad and had the added benefit of proving that Joyce should have been confined to short story. "Stream of Consciousness" writing should be renamed "I'm too cool and modern to bother making things readable so here's 20 pages with only one paragraph."

 

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I don't understand what people like so much about her writing and the fact that she was awarded a Nobel Prize remains one of the most perplexing things in literature.

 

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Philosophers, as a general rule but with notable exceptions, write terrible novels. I don't understand bothering to put your philosophy on paper in this way; it ends up being giant paragraph after giant paragraph of philosophy laid out as exposition. CS Lewis, Sartre, Nietzsche, just to name a few... they've all done it with terribly boring results. The Fountainhead is much better and doesn't do this nearly as much.