Different dude. I’m talking about the guy that wrote Johnathan Livingston Seagull.
2 Likes
Duly noted; hadn’t heard of it before.
Just reading a quick blurb, it still sounds way more interesting than Catcher.
1 Like
“Catcher in the Rye” was the most utterly brilliant thing I’d ever read ---- at age 14.
Ten years later and it made me cringe.
But that doesn’t make it a bad book. It makes it a book that speaks to generation after generation of kids at a certain age.
The list also pans “Franny and Zooey”, so i think they just wanted to shit on anything considered “intellectual”.
I hated the heck out of Grapes of Wrath in high school, when i had to analyze every part of it, but when I reread it 20 years later, I loved it. It captures Dust Bowl America life like no other book ever has.
6 Likes
Wait a minute! Did we attend the same church?!
2 Likes
No, the inherent conceit which only people of privilege have is what makes it a bad book, IMO.
I read it at 15, and still wanted to punch Caulfield in the face, repeatedly.
4 Likes
That part of the list was particularly idiotic. If one were to propose an alternative to The Bible, shouldn’t the counter-work be a work of religion or philosophy (or atheism which may or may not be a philosophy depending)? Maybe The Notebook qualifies as such, but you wouldn’t know it from the description provided.
3 Likes
Oh, Holden’s a conceited, idiotic, privileged asshole, absolutely. But it’s unique in that it completely gets inside his head to show you what kind of person can act this way, and then breaks him down – he’s not a well person and his selfish journey was like nothing else someone had published at that point. It’s a book that was utterly revolutionary in the 50s but like you I question how relevant it is in 2018. I love a lot of what Salinger wrote but better books on being a teen are out there.
Now, where high school lit is considered, one book that I doubt anyone will defend is fucking Ethan Frome.
13 Likes
Perhaps that’s the issue; It was 1990 when I read it, and I was completely unable to relate.
4 Likes
But why?? Holden is so . . . romantic!
I think some kids (especially sensitive white boys, and some white girls) can “relate” to him because he’s smart, yet so sensitive in some ways, and so against what the adult world says is good for him, and so charmed by little kids (and those damn ducks). Qualities, that yeah, can make him seem like a fucking pain to others.
3 Likes
I had to read The Pearl in school and was fairly un-enthused. Making things required reading was generally a turn-off for me.
4 Likes
It was a free Kindle download for Prime members last December, so I grabbed it and reread it. Still holds up.
4 Likes
I must have re-read it 30 times (in pieces) while reading the filming blogs for the movies. Somehow they always made me really hungry.
2 Likes
1 Like
The Denis Johnson story collection Jesus’ Son was good; I haven’t read his novels, tbh.
And replacing Dracula seems weird to me, for contemporary reasons: it’s a definite page-turner, and it has that familiar trope from contemporary horror movies, where the most identifiable characters for most people back then seem so frustratingly clueless you can’t believe it.
And I need to reread Frankenstein; I remember liking it a long time ago, but I wonder if it’s gotten kind of thin from it being so familiar.
3 Likes
I remember the first time I read Dracula, probably around 13 or 14 or so. It was a sticky summer night, so hot we camped out on the living room floor rather than go upstairs to sleep in the bedrooms. I’d gotten to the part where Van Helsing and friends were entering Lucy’s crypt… and reading that part, I actually felt a cold chill or two. It’s a fine book, though I can see where some readers had trouble with the letters/diary entry format. I didn’t; I loved it, and I read it again, voluntarily, for a high school class later on.
I didn’t read Frankenstein until I was grown. I recall reading it on my old Kobo e-reader between visits from trick-or-treaters one Halloween night. I liked it too, though after watching all the movies, I was amazed at how much of the novel was spent talking about travel to other countries and their descriptions. Likewise, the first time I read the Three Musketeers, it was a little distracting how much time was spent on finding money for equipment… but I still enjoyed it.
I think I first read Lord of the Rings at 8 or 10 or so. I tried to get through the books again as a grownup before the movies came out and could not get through them for anything… but I think that was just me. That was a busy time for me.
I’ve got quite a few unread classics on my Kindle, waiting for me to catch up to them. I have to agree, being required to read them in school takes half the joy out of them. And frankly, some of them don’t have a lot of relevance today. (Yes, the Mill on the Floss, I’m talking about you. I read that in college and I can barely remember what it was about.) But some novels still have things to teach us about human nature, or the way of life in other eras. If you like them, great. If they don’t speak to you, there are plenty of other books in the world, so there’s no point in getting snobbish about it. But clickbait articles gotta clickbait, I guess. >shrug<
10 Likes
I’ve tried to read Gormenghast several times. Somehow I love the idea of the book, but find it completely unreadable. I loved reading Lord of the Rings. Horses for courses, I guess.
6 Likes
No, you read Earthsea instead of Harry Potter.
5 Likes
Same here. But for people whose world revolves around top 10 lists on the internet, things might be different.
As for Catcher in the Rye, when we had to read that in high school, the teenage angst seemed quite tame to what an average teenager in the 90s experienced. It just felt outdated and contrived. Having to read it in high school also never worked well to make me appreciate a book. Some of them I read again much later and only appreciated them then. One example would be Siddharta by Hesse, which is still the most beautiful use of the German language I know, don’t know how well it fares in translation.
3 Likes
Well that’s an interesting list.
But still i would disagree with some names here.
I tried to read Silmarillion when I was about 12. It didn’t take, because I was looking for Frodo or Gandalf. Then, somewhat later came back without preconceived expectations and fully enjoyed it.
4 Likes
