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Dienes posted:Did your class need to read it out loud, in class, in its entirety? Nothing fosters a love of literature like the stumbling, monotone, bored recitations of teenagers. I had an English teacher who wouldn't correct anyone's pronunciation or explain when people obviously didn't understand something unless they specifically asked, so almost the entire class read "thou" as "though" and clearly had no idea what the words they were saying meant. That on top of the stumbling monotone of the semi-literate.
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Sep 10, 2016 05:13
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Dude You're right. You just want to say Rothfuss sucks and have everyone nod their heads in agreement. Mild dissent ruins the circle jerk.
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Sep 10, 2016 17:35
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there wolf posted:You're right. You just want to say Rothfuss sucks and have everyone nod their heads in agreement. Mild dissent ruins the circle jerk. Uuuuggghh that's not the problem
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Sep 10, 2016 17:38
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there are finer hills to die on
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Sep 10, 2016 17:39
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Ryoshi posted:I went through a lot of honors and AP English courses in high school and never, not once, was asked a question like that. It was all questions about interpretations, themes, and (obviously) some basic comprehension stuff to make sure you did the reading in the first place. You know, pretty basic reading and critical analysis, which seems fair.
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Sep 10, 2016 17:46
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Strom Cuzewon posted:If they still can't understand English then this is correct even if they're not still backwards hicks. Fair enough. My clunky vocabulary aside, I still find a lot of people in my hometown hate reading Shakespeare. There is no point arguing poetry with high school students who are mostly heading straight for the workforce rather than pursuing a career in literature.
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Sep 10, 2016 18:35
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Arcsquad12 posted:Fair enough. My clunky vocabulary aside, I still find a lot of people in my hometown hate reading Shakespeare. There is no point arguing poetry with high school students who are mostly heading straight for the workforce rather than pursuing a career in literature. Pretty much, yeah. I think some of it comes down to poor choice of texts - our lower sets at school did Macbeth which is bloody heavy, and the higher grades got Twelfth Night, which is not just easier, but loving hilarious. We also did love poetry with a cynical recent divorcee. Half the poems were about murderous lovers, the other half "come on, have sex with me, please, go on, you know you want to" Which is something that really speaks to a teenage audience.
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Sep 10, 2016 19:16
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We did Macbeth and it was boring as poo poo. Until they took us to a showing of Polanski's movie, which is the violent and bloody action flick the play deserves. That's how to capture the complete attention of bored teenage boys! After that we couldn't get enough of it. So! Take the kids to a good production or movie.
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Sep 10, 2016 19:33
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I hate the Time machine and i like alot of Well's other work. The only interesting part is how its structures(it's framing narrative and i have always been a sucker for that kind of device) and the beginning. all the parts where he is in the future are boring as poo poo and jack poo poo happens. I understand its sorta supposed to be a Socialist fairy tale(in the original fairy tale sense) and its weird view of Darwinian evolution where the workers turn into giant Gollum like people and the rich turn into weird childlike waifs with short term memory and a consumption look. Maybe it works better when it was written, but i just didnt care for it. I honestly think it would have been more interesting had it been longer and discovered more of the world or at least more time periods.divabot posted:We did Macbeth and it was boring as poo poo. Until they took us to a showing of Polanski's movie, which is the violent and bloody action flick the play deserves. That's how to capture the complete attention of bored teenage boys! After that we couldn't get enough of it. So! Take the kids to a good production or movie. thats what i always find interesting. Shakespeare was never supposed to be high art that are supposed be clinically read and dissected(i mean you can and the plays can be deep as gently caress, but doing it to a bunch of kids will turn them off it forever) but its supposed to be seen and experienced. Macbeth and Casare are some of my favorite stories because when they are told/shown the right way. they are awsome and gritty and tragic. Practical Demon posted:The problem with reading Shakespeare in English classes is that you're not supposed to read Shakespeare. It was never meant to be consumed as words on a page, and it's really unfortunate that that's a lot of people's first introduction to his plays. Going to see a good production would obviously be best, but is pretty hard in most places. And there's almost nothing worse to sit through than a bad production of Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet is his worst in my opinion, unless you view it as a dark comedy(which is how i view it personally) then its great and tragic and funny. Lunchmeat Larry posted:I always get the impression that these people just really hate thinking about books beyond a surface level. It's fair to say school isn't a good environment to encourage that way of thinking though, since it's supposed to be part of the enjoyment of reading and they by necessity turn it into a kind of work. Thats somewhat true. I think some of the problem is some of the critics (reading into books and finding new meanings/death of an author and all that) sometimes have their heads up their asses or they cant see the forest through the trees. its not a bad thing persay but i had a lit teacher like that and it was loving awful. we always had to come to HIS opinion and only HIS. my best English/lit teachers let the class discussed things and take their own interpretations. Dapper_Swindler has a new favorite as of 20:52 on Sep 10, 2016 |
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Sep 10, 2016 20:49
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Thinking of The Brothers Karamazov on the last page reminded me of possibly my least-favorite terrible books: anything translated by these  goddamn  hacks. I'm sure that they mean well. But we all know how the road to Hell is paved. There are really only two things wrong with Pevear and Volokhonsky: They can't do the one thing that they've set themselves to, and the credulity of the literary establishment and the reading public marginalizes the people who can - which is just about anybody else translating Russian literature. You go to a bookstore to buy some Russian classic, and you'll be lucky to see one other translator besides Constance Garnett (who wasn't terrible, but who's almost never going to be your first choice, and even then only with later revisions... which aren't public domain, so you won't see them anyway). Dostoyevsky has this the worst; I've seen displays with all of his major works, all in P&V translations. And even on Amazon, where you can buy any translation you care to, nine times out of ten, theirs are going to be perched at the top of your search results, basking in endless hopelessly naive five-star reviews. P&V are a loving cancer, but if I wrote that in Russian, they'd probably translate it as "a cancer that copulates". Here's how they translate. Volokhonsky is a native Russian speaker who just about knows English. Pevear does not know Russian. Volokhonsky goes through the Russian text and translates it word-by-word, with Pevear rewriting the resulting English into syntactically intelligible sentences. To what should be nobody's surprise, they manage to miss the most basic points of whatever they translate. Here are some examples that come quickest to my mind: Notes from the Underground is about a spiteful man. He is animated by his spite. P&V, bravely defying a century of tradition, have him describe himself as "wicked". Short of "bad", there could not be a more simple-minded rendering of the idea; in fact, it becomes all but meaningless in context. I'm not calling Volokhonsky simple-minded, but I am saying that her grasp of English is insufficient for her Dostoyevsky to be anything else. (I once saw a staff-written blurb in a bookstore for the P&V translation that called it "a powerful depiction of modern urban depression" - a pleasant enough description that has nothing at all to do with the book's philosophy. If that's the kind of impression you get from it, you might not actually be reading Dostoyevsky's book.) The Brothers Karamazov has a scene where the abusive Fyodor Karamazov mocks his son Alexey for his reverence to his dead mother. When Alexey breaks down sobbing, his brother Ivan, himself enraged, reminds Fyodor that Alexey's mother is his mother too. P&V's version reverses this, with him instead saying that his mother is Alexey's too, as if Fyodor had been thinking of her as "Ivan's" mother. This pivotal moment becomes complete nonsense. I could go into more detail, but other people already have (and they cover my Dostoyevsky examples, but I swear I found them myself). Honestly, though, most of the time they don't so blatantly mistranslate; it's usually a matter of being technically correct but bungling tone, a generalized numbing effect. It's still terrible. Don't read them. Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 03:09 on Jun 4, 2019 |
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Sep 10, 2016 20:54
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Dapper_Swindler posted:I hate the Time machine and i like alot of Well's other work. The only interesting part is how its structures(it's framing narrative and i have always been a sucker for that kind of device) and the beginning. all the parts where he is in the future are boring as poo poo and jack poo poo happens. I understand its sorta supposed to be a Socialist fairy tale(in the original fairy tale sense) and its weird view of Darwinian evolution where the workers turn into giant Gollum like people and the rich turn into weird childlike waifs with short term memory and a consumption look. Maybe it works better when it was written, but i just didnt care for it. I honestly think it would have been more interesting had it been longer and discovered more of the world or at least more time periods. Wow it's almost like he wasn't trying to accurately predict the future
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Sep 10, 2016 20:58
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Wow it's almost like he wasn't trying to accurately predict the future
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Sep 10, 2016 21:01
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Wow it's almost like he wasn't trying to accurately predict the future No poo poo. Like i said. I found it boring and dull. I guess i liked some of the ideas but it doesnt do anything except have the traveler exposit his theories then continue loving about. Like the invisble man and war of the worlds have long build up and a ton of interesting pay offs. the time machine doesn't. it kinda just meanders about until it ends. I also read Vern's around the world in 80 days and that book kinda sucked too but it was more interesting then the time machine because at least stuff happend, though Fogg is a unlikable character in my opinion. Dapper_Swindler has a new favorite as of 21:08 on Sep 10, 2016 |
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Sep 10, 2016 21:05
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Oh, speaking of Verne, the actual worst translation I've ever read was the public-domain Victorian one of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It depresses me to think of how many people think it's a bad book because they were introduced to it through that pile of poo poo.
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Sep 10, 2016 21:14
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Oh, speaking of Verne, the actual worst translation I've ever read was the public-domain Victorian one of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It depresses me to think of how many people think it's a bad book because they were introduced to it through that pile of poo poo. My class used the Dover(orginal english print) of 80 days, so i am sure it wasnt great. parts of 80 days i did like was it was interesting to see "current events" and how the europians looked down on pretty much everyone. like the whole chapter with the mormans and the souix and how all the americans are just violent idiots.
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Sep 10, 2016 21:29
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I could go into more detail, but other people already have (and they cover my Dostoyevsky examples, but I swear I found them myself). Honestly, though, most of the time they don't so blatantly mistranslate: it's usually a matter of being technically correct but bungling tone, a generalized numbing effect. It's still terrible. Don't read them.
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Sep 10, 2016 21:33
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I think one of the worst pieces of dross I've ever had the misfortune of reading was The Redemption of Althalus by David and Leigh Eddings. I've been told that Eddings is actually a good writer really but if this is anything to go by I fail to see how. Most fantasy stuff is awful, but this manages to be both awful and dull at the same time. It's about this roguish thief type character who is tasked to steal a book from the house at the end of the world and when he gets there it turns out when he leaves it's thousands of years in the future and the cat he had to keep him company is actually a beautiful goddess who is loved by everyone and who loves Althalus especially, because he is the only one who can save the world from the vaguely defined evil that probably could have been stopped from taking over the world if they had told Althalus to kill this one specific dude who is behind it all to begin with instead of this house bullshit. That's really all I can remember about the book because the rest is just so painfully dull it's sort of leaked out of my brain without managing to catch anything on the way. Althalus and the Goddess are such blatant author self inserts that your mind automatically replaces the names completely unbidden.
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Sep 10, 2016 21:44
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pookel posted:Despite spending many years systematically reading every recommended Western classic I could get my hands on, I never got around to reading Dostoyevsky. Since I don't know anything about Russian translators, I'll take your word for it - so are there any translations you *would* recommend of him? That was the first Dostoyevsky I read, and I very quickly followed it with Crime and Punishment. I honestly can't remember which translation it was, though; my experience was (undeservingly) colored by how much smaller it felt than Karamazov. I need to go back and revisit it. In the case of The Possessed or Demons or Devils or The Devils or whatever they're calling it this week, I've only been acquainted with the MacAndrew and McDuff versions. My thoughts on their Karamazov translations apply here too. Never got around to The Idiot because of my favorite professor's distaste for it. I should give it a shot. As for Notes from the Underground, I prefer Ralph Matlaw's revision of Constance Garnett's translation, mainly for little idiomatic details. The voice that he gives the Underground Man is perfect. I've read one or two other versions, but I can't remember which ones; I might have read the original Garnett at one point. Regardless of translation, though, while Notes from the Underground is great, I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who doesn't already love Dostoyevsky. Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 03:29 on Sep 11, 2016 |
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Sep 10, 2016 22:06
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Ddraig posted:I think one of the worst pieces of dross I've ever had the misfortune of reading was The Redemption of Althalus by David and Leigh Eddings. In my early teens I read a shitload of Eddings (the early stuff is published as "David Eddings" but it later transpired that David and Leigh were collaborating from the start, their publisher thought that it would sell better without "and Leigh" on the cover). In retrospect, none of it is particularly good, and some of it is downright terrible. Their most well known works are 4 series, set in 2 different fantasy universes. The Belgariad/Malloreon and the Elenium/Tamuli. They are generally undemanding fantasy potboilers, the stories flow well enough, but they dont bear up to any kind of criticial reading. Even as an undemanding teenage reader I was slightly irritated how blatantly he reused character archetypes between stories (The Belgariads Silk is almost identical to... I think it was Talon in the Tamuli? Polgara in the Belgariad is pretty much the same character as Sephrina is the Elenium, there are others but its been probably 15 years or more since I looked at them). I also wasnt a massive fan of the plot point of the (18-ish year old) queen in the elenium being madly in love with the main character, who had been her bodyguard when she was a child. I mean, at least she wasnt still a child, Eddings isnt Piers Anthony or anything, it still felt kind of skeevy. They also published a book about writing the Belgariad, and in it they broke down the "formula" they used to write their fantasy novels, and once its been pointed out you cant NOT notice how slavishly they adhere to the formula. And having said all that, for all their problems those 4 series are STILL better than the Redemption of Altheas, which is the book that finally stopped me reading Eddings altogether.
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Sep 10, 2016 22:15
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there wolf posted:You're right. You just want to say Rothfuss sucks and have everyone nod their heads in agreement. Mild dissent ruins the circle jerk.
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Sep 10, 2016 23:24
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Avshalom posted:he really sucks though, you can argue all you want but it doesn't change the fact that he sucks. the books already exist and i've read them and they suck. he doesn't realise they suck, so he sucks. everything he writes sucks more than the last thing he wrote, so he sucks. all his social media posts suck, so he sucks. he sucks. he sucks! Also Kvothe is a ridiculous Gary Stu
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Sep 10, 2016 23:33
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he sucks
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Sep 10, 2016 23:38
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A circlejerk is what happens when everybody disagrees with me.
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Sep 11, 2016 02:53
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I like to eat coldsores and everybody is like "man that's gross and really not healthy" man what a circlejerk.
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Sep 11, 2016 02:56
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:A circlejerk is what happens when everybody disagrees with me. This, but unironically
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Sep 11, 2016 03:00
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Guys I think There Wolf might have terrible opinion about books and women, and frequently misses the point:there wolf posted:I don't understand why Valdemar gets hit with being a bunch of creepy rape poo poo by so many people, and then I realize most people probably have forgotten everything else because it's all so very boring. Alternately they've never read any Anne Bishop and thus have a poor frame of reference. there wolf posted:Nice moral standard but it doesn't explain why everyone thinks Valdemar is some crazy rape-fest. Most of those drat books past your standards with flying colors, and the ones that don't aren't any more gratuitous or exploitative than contemporary novels of the same time. I guess she portrays rape as a violent act instead of couching it behind coercion like mind-control and soul bonds with dragons so everyone's twelve year old brain thinks of it as extra-bad.
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Sep 11, 2016 03:37
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Guys I think There Wolf might have terrible opinion about books and women, and frequently misses the point:
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Sep 11, 2016 05:26
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I just remembered a terrible book I got from the library once. It's every "scifi author has a STEM degree" joke magnified to absurdity. The main character is essentially the author, except he's a genius physicist who has a astronaut girlfriend, wins a full-contact karate tournament after his ribs are broken in the first round, and invents both a perpetual energy machine and a warp drive while he's high on painkillers. I quit reading early on after the RE ARR ROOK SAME Chinese showed up and sabotaged the space shuttle, and a Harrier jump jet was used as a cargo airplane, but apparently later on the author uses the perpetual energy machine to indulge his genocide fantasies against China and Russia, and there's a part where American commandos hijack airliners and crash them into Chinese cities. 
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Sep 11, 2016 05:47
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Flubells away! -John Ringo
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Sep 11, 2016 05:52
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SiKboy posted:And having said all that, for all their problems those 4 series are STILL better than the Redemption of Altheas, which is the book that finally stopped me reading Eddings altogether. If anything, the Eddings showed how you can take the most generic possible fantasy setting, and still make it an entertaining read. They're by no means great literature, but at least they know how to have fun and are self aware enough to mock the premises. I did like the meta humor in the Belgariad about all the Tolnedran hotels being exactly the same shape and layout. They know they are writing generic dross. The Mallorean however is pretty crap. The only decent book in that series is the first one, and that is only because the first half of the book is a hilarious look at the "what comes after the finale?" question of fantasy novels. Turns out that Garion and Cenedra are pretty terrible at their jobs and finances, and all their friends are just lazy idiots who nearly start a dynastic war until Garion disrupts an entire weather pattern to get them to calm the gently caress down.
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Sep 11, 2016 05:59
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Never got around to The Idiot because of my favorite professor's distaste for it. I should give it a shot.
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Sep 11, 2016 12:47
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C.M. Kruger posted:I just remembered a terrible book I got from the library once. I want this guy writing the Ace Combat Assault Horizon sequel
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Sep 11, 2016 13:20
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All you ungreatful assholes complaining about having to read Shakespeare in shool. I had to read 'The Shrinking of Treehorn'. Try writing an essay on a book where you can open it to any single page, read it and literally be unable to describe what you just read as anything other than 'the man got smaller and no one listened to him'. It wasn't a metaphor or anything, it was a hosed up childrens book for six year olds and we had to do actual coursework and essays about that thing.
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Sep 11, 2016 13:31
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The worst books I ever read was The Girl With A Dragon tattoo series. The storylines were fine but the characters were just the absolute worst thing to read about. The heroes were all amazing in every single way and the baddies were incredibly evil in every single aspect. I think every woman in the book who meets the male lead comments on how handsome and charming he is, one even comments on how impressive his gait is for God's sake. It's probably worth mentioning that the author used to be a magazine journalist and the male lead is also a magazine journalist. The titular girl with the dragon tattoo is infuriating too because she could have been really great and interesting but she's probably the worst by far. She's painted as a total recluse and misanthropist but ends up sleeping with the journalist pretty quickly and then goes ballistic when he's not in love with her. She's also super smart and a genius hacker which is fine but as the series goes on she's also a master of hand to hand combat and eleven hundred other things. She solves Fermat's Last Theorem in her head like "Fermat must have done instead of that 100 page proof". She also gets new bigger boobs at one point "for herself" which I personally thought was a pretty loving weird chapter. Finally every single baddy wants to kill and rape her and we are treated to God only knows how many "I'll rape that loving bitch" internal monologues. That's not hyperbole by the way, a huge amount of baddies in the books are obsessed with sexual assaulting Lisbeth. Apparently the author witnessed a gang rape down an alley once and walked away without calling the police or trying to stop it and it was a huge regret of his. I can understand that influencing his writing but it doesn't excuse the books being bad or every villain being a rapist in my opinion. The David Fincher film ruled though.
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Sep 11, 2016 14:13
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You didn't even get into the male journalist being The Greatest Lover in the Western World, who all the women want to have sex with, including his married business partner who pretty much only exists in the story to have sex with him, and her husband is totally okay with it because why would he deny her such pleasure?
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Sep 11, 2016 15:30
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I forgot about that actually! Still I'd rank "The Greatest Lover in the Western World" less cringeworthy than being so handsome that women are turned on by how you walk.
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Sep 11, 2016 15:47
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EmmyOk posted:I forgot about that actually! Still I'd rank "The Greatest Lover in the Western World" less cringeworthy than being so handsome that women are turned on by how you walk. But what if they can tell by the way you use your walk that you're a womans man, not time to talk?
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Sep 11, 2016 16:39
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EmmyOk posted:Apparently the author witnessed a gang rape down an alley once and walked away without calling the police or trying to stop it and it was a huge regret of his. Oh, it's even worse than that. He witnessed a friend of his get gang raped, and did nothing to help. He later confessed to her, and begged her forgiveness, which she did not give. So he named the main character of his books after her, and has her get raped. But it's OK, because the fictional Lisbeth gets violent revenge-rape on the man who assaulted her, making up for the author not helping real Lisbeth. Fashionable Jorts has a new favorite as of 18:46 on Sep 11, 2016 |
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Sep 11, 2016 17:57
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Fashionable Jorts posted:Oh, it's even worse than that. He witnessed a friend of his get gang raped, and did nothing to help. He later confessed to her, and begged her forgiveness, which she did not give. ETA: I looked up this incident and it's a thing that he saw and didn't prevent when he was 15, and the perpetrators were his friends. I still think it's pretty lovely to use her for novel fodder, but I have more sympathy for a teenager than for an adult in that situation. He still should have called the police, but I could understand if he froze up and didn't know what to do. pookel has a new favorite as of 22:02 on Sep 11, 2016 |
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Sep 11, 2016 21:28
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His blatant author stand in also bones her senseless with his incredible sexual prowess. That's so hosed up, Jorts, I never knew it was that bad! Apparently a new one has been released even after the author died and my mam bought a copy. I'll have to read it now because it's one of the only things we have in common and she was so excited when I read the other ones. She'll get quite and sad for a few days if I don't read this one or tell he what I actually think of them.
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Sep 11, 2016 21:41
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