Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/05/list-of-popular-books-people-s.html
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Gravity’s Rainbow but I swear I’m going to get back to it any month now.
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It didn’t so much as lose me as piss me off. I finished Ready Player One out of pure spite.
There are some books that lose me or I get distracted from. I tried Moby Dick again some years ago and I was finally in the zone so to speak for it. Still I found it best to read only one or two chapters and let them rattle around the brain for the rest of the day.
Also there is the hold at the library that shows up and I drop whatever I am in the middle of to read the library book and then forget about/take months to get back to what I had interrupted.
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One day I’ll actually finish Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, and Neuromancer.
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Surprised Atlas Shrugged isn’t at the top of the list. I don’t know anyone who actually made it all the way through that tripe.
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I need to read some Pynchon. I started V but realized I wasn’t going to get through it in time for the library loan. Having worked at Boeing I think Gravity’s Rainbow and The Crying Of Lot 49 is probably required reading for me.
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All 3 are great. Crying is probably a good entry point not just due to its brevity, but it’s quite a bit easier reading as well.
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for me. So many people recommended it so I’d give it another try but ultimately lose interest again.
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I have read and enjoyed three of the books from that list, but this
was faux-Victorian pretentious twattery that left me cold even though it was my kind of story.
In the same vein, “The Watchmaker of Filigree Street” was amazing, but “The Bedlam Stacks” by the same author I left unfinished.
Life is too short to spend it on books that you don’t click with.
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Works best in your early 20s. Also enh it was okay and you are not missing anything. If you like travelogues with ruminations on past relationships sure go ahead, otherwise pass on it.
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I was enjoying V but realized how long a slog it was going to be and figured I should do like I did with Moby Dick and buy a copy.
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I have a few of those holding up an end of a sofa in the basement.
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I had this problem with To Kill a Mockingbird in school. First couple of chapters were boring and I kept putting it off. I don’t know if it was the urgency of the assignment or it actually got better that I read it all the night before it was due.
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Of these books, I have read 18 all the way through, have not read 18 others, have not heard of 13 on the list, and the other one was the only one I had abandoned. That book was Atlas Shrugged.
For comparison purposes, I have read Anna Karenina twice.
9 Likes
We had to read The Fountainhead in school (which, taken as a story about architecture, is pretty engaging). A few of us tried to read Atlas Shrugged afterwards. The only people I know who finished it are exactly the kind of assholes who willingly make it through Atlas Shrugged.
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As a story about architecture, it’s not horrible. As a story about an architect loosely based on Frank Lloyd Wright, it gives insight into how fucked up and selfish someone can be if they think they’re the master of the universe for literally no reason. As the basis of a philosophy, it’s less than bullshit. It’s like basing your philosophy off of A Perfect Day For Bananafish, only even less defensible.
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I was kind of surprised to see “Lincoln in the Bardo” so high up the list. It’s neither long nor particularly hard to follow. Are the people who abandoned it the same ones who are still salty about “The War of Northern Aggression”?
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Considering how little I read anymore, I am surprised that I have read 8 and started but abandoned one (50 shades of gray) I gave up on Ayn Rand halfway through The Fountainhead, without any temptation of starting Atlas Shrugged.
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I’ve read Moby Dick twice- once as a teenager and another time as an adult. It’s actually not that bad when taken in small bites. There’s a lot of subtext that is hard to appreciate until you’re older.
I think the only other book on the list that I couldn’t get through is Infinite Jest. That fucker is just so goddamn long!
One that’s not on the list that I’m kind of ashamed I abandoned is Capitalism in 21st Century. Read the first section but just couldn’t slog through the data. Probably only appreciated by other economists (of which I am not). It’s like skipping over all the “begats…” in Genesis. You get the main point without needing to read all the supporting data.
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