stolen from Ro.

[apiphile]

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen. [I've only read this and Sense & Sensibility after a silly childhood hatred of Austen; I really liked both, and have picked up a couple of other Austens for the glorious Time When]
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR. Tolkien. I cannot describe how much I hated this book, and I probably shouldn't because I know how

Comments

[inappropriately]

12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy. I would rather drink hot lead than read anything by Thomas Hardy.

For some reason I decided to plough through this last year. Waste of a summer. ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE SO ANNOYING and ergh.

[apiphile]

I cannot remember what utter shit of his I was trying to read but I reached a point quite early on where I would honestly rather have played chicken with an express train than read another word. So I stopped. DRUDGERY. Fuck Thomas Hardy in the eyes.

[attack_womb]

I'm curious about the review of Lovely Bones... do you have a link? I read that book, and felt really uneasy about the whole thing. chalked it up to subject matter, but would love to get a second opinion about it.......

also: Swallows and Amazons!!!! yes, JOY!

[apiphile]

I don't, alas. It was by someone on Lj - possibly yuki_onna? - about where Literary Fiction falls down in comparison to fantasy/sci-fi, and The Lovely Bones was used as an example of a story which did not follow internal logic. Ever since then I've been somewhat disillusioned by it.

[coniferous_you]

I always feel strange when I see one more commercially successfully but otherwise dubious contemporary book for every time this list makes the rounds. Same number of books, though. Nice to see a few Canadian authors (that aren't Atwood) though!

Also, I wonder if Ulysses is purposefully right above Bell Jar...

[coniferous_you]

PS - Someone did graintable synthesis using Finnegan's Wake as inspiration. Does it too sound like a box falling down a staircase? I don't know. I haven't listened to it, but it seemed relevant to your studies.

http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/river.html

[apiphile]

WE HAVEN't GOT TO GRANULAR SYNTHS YET.

Apart from watching a couple of Autachre vids, I mean.

[coniferous_you]

I remember you mentioned that on Facebook! How's buying their whole discography going? Based on this one fact, it sounds like an amazing class! I've never been told to listen to anything but Billy Bragg for a class.

[swear_jar]

I am a worthless human being made of flaming dog poo ):.

I never finished Lolita, despite finding the prose ridiculously beautiful (oh, jealousy, I did have some), because I could not stand to read another word out of the protagonist's head. I got halfway through and asked my mother to spoil the ending for me, and felt pretty glad I didn't finish. He was so real and so repulsive I couldn't handle it.

[apiphile]

It's weird, I find myself in a great amount of sympathy for him. He is terrible and he is deluding himself, but the one thing that above all others is true for him is that he really believes he loves Lo. So I see it as a catalogue of his sufferings as well as an attempt to hide from himself how he is harming Lo so badly by acting on these feelings.