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there's literally two (2) people who posted anything more negative about catcher in the rye than a vague and bland "eh, I didn't particularly enjoy it myself" one was kestral, who posted a pretty hyperbolic-sounding Kestral posted:Mine was Catcher in the Rye. As soon as I finished the book report on it, I took it outside along with a metal pot, tore out half the pages, and lit it on fire. Good riddance. and while he clearly hated the experience of reading the book he goes into no detail whatsoever about what he disliked or why. and sure it's frustrating when someone says something you disagree with so passionately and exaggeratedly; it makes it pretty hard to respond dispassionately, but idk, seems like a bit of a leap to psychoanalyze their reasoning. the other was Ravus Ursus posted:Preach. so uh, idk. the justification for just showing up and dropping a line like "Every single person who hated Catcher read it in highschool. Every person who still hates it never grew past highschool." seems a little thin on the ground? and maybe that'd be fine but then you're repeatedly doubling down whenever anyone has calls you out on the fact that you're being really inflammatory and snobbish and that even if the people you're arguing with are wrong about the book you're still taking an emotional reaction to a book and turning it into a pretty rude judgement of character, then applying that, in your own words, not just to the specific people you're arguing with but to everyone who dislikes the book for any reason. like i think nobody who's responded to you has even said you're wrong about the book, they've just said "okay, but god drat just cool down a bit, you don't have to be such a dick" to which you reply with "I'm right tho  "its like arguing with fucken walter sobchak from the big lebowski.
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Feb 1, 2023 05:58
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Literally every single person who posted about it said or implied they read it during highschool. I'm not arguing with you, I've stated my opinion and backed it up.
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Feb 1, 2023 06:13
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General Battuta posted:holden…[loud dial up noises]…deez nuts 
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Feb 1, 2023 06:15
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Gaius Marius posted:Literally every single person who posted about it said or implied they read it during highschool. look, I need to make something clear that I'm not sure you understand Holden Caulfield is fictional. He isn't real. He was made up by an adult man for a story. There's no equivalence between disliking him and being unable to feel empathy toward a teenager with a real lovely life.
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Feb 1, 2023 06:20
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I read Flowers for Algernon around the time I read Catcher in the Rye and, in my mind, the stories have morphed together into one.
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Feb 1, 2023 06:28
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I read Flowers for Algernon around the time I read Catcher in the Rye and, in my mind, the stories have morphed together into one. Catcher for Algernon is a problematic romance novel for several reasons.
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Feb 1, 2023 06:51
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habeasdorkus posted:Catcher for Algernon is a problematic romance novel for several reasons. if you think that’s bad, you should know i often mix up Flowers for Algernon and Flowers in the Attic
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Feb 1, 2023 07:00
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Les fleurs d'Algernon was extremely problematic
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Feb 1, 2023 07:04
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I read Flowers for Algernon around the time I read Catcher in the Rye and, in my mind, the stories have morphed together into one. Of Flowers and Rye The Flowers of Wrath
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Feb 1, 2023 07:30
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Empathy for fictional teenagers you say?Gaius Marius posted:I hope she gets hit by a car, and standing over her broken body Ishigami realizes that he never even liked her. As the final sparks of life in her are going out Ishigami turns around without bothering to call an ambulance, trash on the road is more of a sanitation issue than an emergency.
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Feb 1, 2023 07:46
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hot date tonight! posted:Empathy for fictional teenagers you say? Lol
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Feb 1, 2023 08:13
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hot date tonight! posted:Empathy for fictional teenagers you say? Someone needs an ambulance, correct
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Feb 1, 2023 08:30
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hot date tonight! posted:Empathy for fictional teenagers you say? I am cackling irl. If only we could goldmine a single post. a computing pun posted:
Just to make it absolutely clear, that was a literal account of a thing I actually did, and remember doing fondly. My only regret is that it has contributed to a multi-page derail about a book and character I hate, in a thread that isn't about that topic. Here's an effort to amend that: The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford. It's good! It is, in fact, very good, and everyone who gets it into their head to write a fantasy novel over 400 pages should be required to read it. Gods know I love a doorstopper series, I'm a Wolfe and Tolkien stan, but The Dragon Waiting is a masterclass in concision that ought to be studied more widely; come to think of it, it reminds me of Le Guin in that way. By all means write long books, but the genre would be greatly improved if long books either had the kind of density of Things Happening that Ford manages. Or if they had beautiful prose that makes twenty pages per meaningful event a pleasure rather than a chore, but that's a tall order.
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Feb 1, 2023 11:10
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Ravus Ursus posted:
I liked Scarlet Letter as well but preferred The Chocolate War. I also just learned that there was a 1988 movie adaption of it with John Glover in it.
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Feb 1, 2023 11:18
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The silmarillion is fine as a random collection of backstory for the Lord of the rings (which is what it is). It's not a good book by itself. It's the fantasy equivalent of the star wars expanded universe. Just written over a long period instead of in four months to meet a deadline for book #6 of a 14 book contract for a series about xwings.
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Feb 1, 2023 14:12
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Everyone posted:I liked Scarlet Letter as well but preferred The Chocolate War. I also just learned that there was a 1988 movie adaption of it with John Glover in it. Well poo poo son, I was never tied down and force fed that in high school. Guess I should add it to the list. hot date tonight! posted:Empathy for fictional teenagers you say? He's rite tho, we should have empathy for the characters we relate to and the ones we don't relate to can *checks notes* die in the gutter. Unrelated, is Holden the Joker of middle grade lit?
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Feb 1, 2023 14:51
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Kestral posted:The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford. It's good! It is, in fact, very good, and everyone who gets it into their head to write a fantasy novel over 400 pages should be required to read it. Gods know I love a doorstopper series, I'm a Wolfe and Tolkien stan, but The Dragon Waiting is a masterclass in concision that ought to be studied more widely; come to think of it, it reminds me of Le Guin in that way. By all means write long books, but the genre would be greatly improved if long books either had the kind of density of Things Happening that Ford manages. Or if they had beautiful prose that makes twenty pages per meaningful event a pleasure rather than a chore, but that's a tall order. It's a truly fantastic book. If you're even a little bit a fan of George R. R. Martin, he's clearly influenced by it.
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Feb 1, 2023 14:58
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Books read for high school English suffer for the reasons mentioned above if you don't have a really good teacher. I feel about the Great Gatsby the way several readers feel about Catcher in the Rye, though with the hindsight of a couple decades I realize I'd really like the book if I hadn't been reading it as a 15 year old required to parse all the symbolism. I did get to read some bangers in HS tho. Macbeth, Huck Finn, Pride & Prejudice, The Once and Future King, Ms. Dalloway, The Sound & the Fury. Hell, my senior year English class read Lysistrata. Kinda surprised that was on the syllabus in retrospect. RDM posted:The silmarillion is fine as a random collection of backstory for the Lord of the rings (which is what it is). It's not a good book by itself. This is underselling the Silmarillion, IMO. It's not a novel, but it's not just backstory or padding out an EU. It's alt-mythology, more akin to the tales of Homer and his contemporaries.
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Feb 1, 2023 15:11
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habeasdorkus posted:Books read for high school English suffer for the reasons mentioned above if you don't have a really good teacher. I feel about the Great Gatsby the way several readers feel about Catcher in the Rye, though with the hindsight of a couple decades I realize I'd really like the book if I hadn't been reading it as a 15 year old required to parse all the symbolism. This is along the lines of my Catcher hot take. I didn't care for it because as an arrogant teenager I thought I knew everything it was trying to express. The books subject can't really be its audience too, because teenagers are loving teenagers. So I feel like ones experience of Catcher is directly positively proportional to the extent that one aligns with their teachers methods. On the topic of fantasy though, anyone read the Crown of Stars series by Kate Elliot? I've had a couple false starts with it but the first book has finally grabbed me. I'm just wondering if anyone has thoughts about the series as a whole. Holy poo poo it's brutal, btw.
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Feb 1, 2023 15:31
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My favorite book read in high school was To Kill A Mockingbird. It's been 20 years now but I remember just eating that book up and never being able to put it down and I don't remember feeling that way about any other mandated reading. We didn't get Macbeth, we got Romeo & Juliet which, again, most people complain about having been forced to read. I still maintain more teenagers would relate to Antony & Cleopatra but...oh well.
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Feb 1, 2023 17:08
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BurningBeard posted:On the topic of fantasy though, anyone read the Crown of Stars series by Kate Elliot? I've had a couple false starts with it but the first book has finally grabbed me. I'm just wondering if anyone has thoughts about the series as a whole. Holy poo poo it's brutal, btw. Its very good and particularly so considering the first book came out in 1997. It has aged so, so well. Put it this way -- its probably the best of all the many 90s fantasy epics, and definitely the only one I'd recommend without hesitation. I finished Legends and Lattes and it mostly made me yearn for the dead genre of comedic fantasy. No one replaced Robert Asprin, much less Terry Pratchett. I wonder if part of the success of Isekai and books like Beware of Chicken is they actually make jokes. E: Not to keep beating the Spear Cuts Through Water drum but when it [rarely] decides to be funny it is pretty fuckin funny. Copernic fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Feb 1, 2023 |
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Feb 1, 2023 17:51
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Not being facetious - what else are you supposed to do with these kinds of books (Gatsby, catcher, etc) if not look for symbolism and themes and all that analytic stuff?
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Feb 1, 2023 18:21
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VostokProgram posted:Not being facetious - what else are you supposed to do with these kinds of books (Gatsby, catcher, etc) if not look for symbolism and themes and all that analytic stuff? This treats reading like a search-and-find for various literary devices and is tedious. My 4th grader has to circle the nouns and verbs on his worksheets, and it is still that, except you are now supposed to find metaphors and allusions. The educational intent seems to be to reveal the inner workings of great literature, like opening the back of a clock, so you can marvel at the complexity. But whatever this is, it is alien to why the author wrote the book and why the reader reads it. Certainly it is not entertaining. It also devalues the plot, the characters, the setting, and the overall intended effect. Like reading Steinbeck for his use of color metaphors, and failing entirely to mention the labor history of the United States. It tends to treat literature as practically gnostic. Books turn into puzzles that must be thoroughly examined to reveal their many secrets. The lesson learned is that books are hard and unrewarding absent unstinting effort and multiple close reads. It isn't even accurate to college-level literary criticism, which correctly treats this kind of analytics as mere technical analysis. This type of 'books as a math problem' analytics seems to be restricted to a certain type of high school teacher. I don't think its even that common in high school. But its unfortunate when it appears.
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Feb 1, 2023 18:33
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VostokProgram posted:Not being facetious - what else are you supposed to do with these kinds of books (Gatsby, catcher, etc) if not look for symbolism and themes and all that analytic stuff? Grossly misinterpret the material and make Gatsby an icon to aspire to.
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Feb 1, 2023 18:33
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VostokProgram posted:Not being facetious - what else are you supposed to do with these kinds of books (Gatsby, catcher, etc) if not look for symbolism and themes and all that analytic stuff? Just read them and enjoy them? I don't know, sometimes I'll see patterns and themes when I'm reading fiction generally, but it's not like I feel like I've flunked a test if I don't. It's not some deep moral failing not to see below the surface. Good novels have a surface that's appealing.
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Feb 1, 2023 18:36
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https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Humorous-Fantasy/zgbs/books/11764648011 alright I checked Humorous Fantasy and it looks like these books are either romantic fantasy, presumably with some quips thrown in, or isekai novels. I have not read the second book here, The City of Dreaming Books, but here is the opening line to sell me on it:quote:Optimus Yarnspinner’s search for an author’s identity takes him to Bookholm―the so-called City of Dreaming Books. I don't know. The third book is House in the Cerulean Sea which I did try to read. The male leads were so incredibly earnest and dull I quit. I knew I had read their humorless, keen, upright attitude before, and eventually it struck me. My brother-in-law sent me A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo to read to the kids. It is that tone.
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Feb 1, 2023 18:48
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Optimus Yarnspinner is a hell of a main character name.
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Feb 1, 2023 18:55
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Ravus Ursus posted:Grossly misinterpret the material and make Gatsby an icon to aspire to. :looks over at shelf full of unread books: Already half way there.
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Feb 1, 2023 18:55
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VostokProgram posted:Not being facetious - what else are you supposed to do with these kinds of books (Gatsby, catcher, etc) if not look for symbolism and themes and all that analytic stuff? Copernic posted:This treats reading like a search-and-find for various literary devices and is tedious. My 4th grader has to circle the nouns and verbs on his worksheets, and it is still that, except you are now supposed to find metaphors and allusions. The educational intent seems to be to reveal the inner workings of great literature, like opening the back of a clock, so you can marvel at the complexity. But whatever this is, it is alien to why the author wrote the book and why the reader reads it. Certainly it is not entertaining. It also devalues the plot, the characters, the setting, and the overall intended effect. Like reading Steinbeck for his use of color metaphors, and failing entirely to mention the labor history of the United States. It tends to treat literature as practically gnostic. Books turn into puzzles that must be thoroughly examined to reveal their many secrets. The lesson learned is that books are hard and unrewarding absent unstinting effort and multiple close reads. It isn't even accurate to college-level literary criticism, which correctly treats this kind of analytics as mere technical analysis. This, basically. The Scarlet Letter might resonate with kids more if you talk about what it's actually about. The plight of women, religious intolerance. how good people can do bad things. "Find the symbolism" makes it, as said, a math problem to be solved.
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Feb 1, 2023 18:56
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hot date tonight! posted:Empathy for fictional teenagers you say? This poster’s funeral will be a private affair and we ask that instead of attending in person you consider donating to a charity they would have supported I’ve done some soul searching and reminded myself that some of my resentment for Catcher in the Rye may have come from my teacher exploring “Hold on to the Caul, field” as our intro to literary analysis. In my classes the education was very focused on “literally everything is a symbol and represents a theme so write a paper on the imagery of drapes blowing as they relate to some socioeconomic issue.” I really, really hated that approach and like other posters have said, felt like it undercut everything about the book telling a story and not some weird puzzle. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Feb 1, 2023 |
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Feb 1, 2023 18:57
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My opinion: Literary analysis is fun if you ever had a good teacher actually explain how to do it and it's a way of engaging with the text beyond the plot. Annihilation, for instance, is more enjoyable to me as an exploration of grief, loss, and the changes that happen to those left behind to deal with it rather than "what is this weird alien, really". I really did have some dog poo poo teachers though that absolutely approached teaching it as a word hunt. Like, I'm still mad that a teacher I had didn't engage with my observation that the murdered woman in Of Mice and Men never even got a name when it's an intended and significant piece of the work. Thanks a lot! It really put my appreciation for literary analysis back a long time, lol. I mean I get that's not for everyone but there genuinely are books trying to tell a story that's more than the plot beats and character interactions.
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Feb 1, 2023 19:11
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Glad people are realizing I was right
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Feb 1, 2023 19:25
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NikkolasKing posted:My favorite book read in high school was To Kill A Mockingbird. It's been 20 years now but I remember just eating that book up and never being able to put it down and I don't remember feeling that way about any other mandated reading. In 9th grade (1984) we got to see the unedited 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet, even getting a caution from our English teacher that at one one point we would be watching a "bed room scene" AKA Olivia Hussey's then 17ish year old breasts. This was in the same school that still had a student smoking area in the Junior High so the 14 year olds could smoke. Everyone fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Feb 1, 2023 |
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Feb 1, 2023 19:37
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Maybe stop giving the troll trolling this thread attention or ignore list them. Anyway, part of the reason I think why Roger Zelazny's AMBER series hasn't had a live-action or animated adaptation is because Philip Jose Farmer is so embedded into the AMBER setting and his literary estate would need to be paid too. And if you're gonna pay both Zelazny's & PJF's estates, Riverworld is a much easier adaptation in every way.
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Feb 1, 2023 19:39
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Everyone posted:In 9th grade (1984) we got to see the unedited 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet, even getting a caution from our English teacher that at one one point we would be watching a "bed room scene" AKA Olivia Hussey's then 17ish year old breasts. The one the actors are suing over, mind. quantumfoam posted:Maybe stop giving the troll trolling this thread attention or ignore list them. I guess we'll see if Colbert's attempt pans out, then.
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Feb 1, 2023 19:40
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Tiny Timbs posted:This poster’s funeral will be a private affair and we ask that instead of attending in person you consider donating to a charity they would have supported oh god I'm so sorry. Holden is a child who is broken by trauma and will forever be stunted by it, and you can't read the book as an adult without feeling incredible empathy for him. assigning that novel to teenagers and expecting them NOT to try to identify with a teenage protagonist is folly, so of course they're put off by his actions and behaviors which are not at all explicable without understanding the trauma part. Salinger was probably appalled that it became a book taught to students.
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Feb 1, 2023 19:40
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Gaius Marius posted:Glad people are realizing I was right No you aren't. People are treating Catcher like a literal galaxy-brain meme that goes from "Wow I empathize with Holden" all the way up to "Wow I empathize with Holden". With worse "Holden is a poo poo and I hate him" takes along the way. However literature and the real world don't work that way, and you don't get an A+ Gold Star from a teacher for having the Best Take On Literature. Feeling empathy for Holden due to his insane upbringing and horrible situation is nice but it isn't objectively correct in any way. You don't get reader bonus points for feeling bad for Holden. You didn't unlock the Secret of the Book, demonstrating what a special reader you are. He's really lovely and does a lot of crappy things. Some people are going to look past that to his tragic past, some people just aren't sympathetic. It isn't "better" to always feel more empathy, there's only so much empathy one can have and it isn't a stat that levels up from use. Definitely using this to windmill-dunk is a laugh and shows how little you get the point. Do you really miss the point this thoroughly? I'll spell it out: you are dumping on people reminiscing from high school about their own emotionally-charged reactions from the time. Does that remind you of anyone? Anyone you are supposed to be showing special empathy for? "Look at how much EMPATHY I have, you teenaged MORONS" -- what a joke.
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Feb 1, 2023 19:43
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I feel retroactively much creepier now. 17 was bad enough, but 15? Jesus.
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Feb 1, 2023 19:48
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Maybe it will pan out. I think someone earlier in this thread wondered what Gene Wolfe written Warhammer 40k fiction would look like. The answer is that It already exists and is called E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy.
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Feb 1, 2023 19:54
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I said that people who still hated Catcher never got passed their highschool impressions, multiple people have went back and said that that was true
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Feb 1, 2023 19:58
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