[blah blah blah the radio sucks.]

[minervacat]

Happy happy birthday, sashybaby! I love you bunches and I hope your birthday is wonderful and I will buy you a drink tonight. ♥

In brief, the Cubs game last night.

Comments

[aussie_nyc]

1. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley. I hate when regular literary authors try their hand at SF and do a crap job and are fawned all over by critics for their brave efforts in breaking the paradigm. This book stands in for all such occasions.

2. Catch 22, Joseph Heller. So thickly written, I just gave up as I found myself rereading and rereading pages to try to figure out what had happened. Maybe I read it too young, but now I have no will to go back and try again.

3. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. What a giant, stinking load of moose poop.

4. Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce. See #2, but far more so. Except I don't think anything actually had happened. This also applies for Ulysses.

5. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein. See #3.

[tablesaw]

Reading Joyce is like taking a swim off of a boat that's already far out at sea. It feels kind of good, and it's an experience you should take if you get the chance and have the ability, but there's nothing around, you can't get anywhere by doing it, and eventually you'll have to go back to where you started.

[cincodemaygirl]

I didn't even make it through #5, mostly because I really hated the old rich dude, and felt that he was the author's stand-in.

[kimera]

Re: #4... also, he totally just stole the title from a song, which is something only fanfic authors are supposed to do ;)

[starfishchick]

Your Cubs update (and aussie_nyc's Jeter/A-Rod fic in my comments this morning) totally made my day.

So much love. (And poor Ugly! We kept seeing his name as "At-Bat" on the new funky screens at SkyDome Rogers Centre SkyDome last night.)

[insidian]

Hey, if you need more cheering up, I could send you the revision of The Toronto Song that Min and I wrote for the Cubs.

[minervacat]

MIKE REMLINGER SUCKS! MIKE REMLINGER SUCKS!

hi.

[insidian]

'Cause Zambranoooooooo doesn't suck.

[luna_k]

Totally have to agree with you on The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye. So incredibly overrated.

[minervacat]

barf, barf, barf, is how i feel abotu both of them. i love fitzgerald and i love salinger and i just. don't. get. those two books. it's completely incomprehensible to me, how they could be so well-loved. *confusion*

[blergeatkitty]

There's nothing I love better than slaughtering sacred cows!!

1. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace - Everyone tells me it's revolutionary and gorgeously written and 'oh, after you get past the first 100 pages you can't put it down.' As many times as I've read the first 100 pages hoping I could get into it, at this point page 101 would have to contain, like, a magic spell that would summon Jude Law to give me a backrub and feed me grapes.

2. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger - Agreed with you on that one. Seriously, what is the big deal? Why do people love this so much?

3. Every Dune book ever written, including those by Frank Herbert - I tried. I really did. But I just can't get into sci-fi. I read the first one and got through about a third of the second before I realized it was like beating my head against a brick wall. At least I got far enough that I can crack the requisite "walk without rhythm and it won't attract the worm" and "fear is the mind-killer" jokes, so my geek cred isn't totally ruined.

4. The

[irihs]

I started The Corrections, but couldn't finish it. My assessment is the same as yours, so now I feel better about abandoning it.

[minervacat]

I read The Corrections my senior year at Carleton, and it took me weeks, and I spent most of those weeks wandering around, complaining to anyone who would listen about how bad it was. Totally overrated, and that was really disappointing.

[tablesaw]

Please, please, please tell me you're basing your "I just can't get into sci-fi" statement on more than just Dune. I kind of like Dune, but I never wish it on anyone else.

[caffeinediary]

1)The Red Badge of Courage-Stephen Crane.

My number one most hated book. Over-rated, boring narrative crap. Hate it.

2)The Scarlet Letter-Nathanial Hawthorne.

It would be number one except for the number one I chose above.

3)The Sun Also Rises-Ernest Hemingway.

Why, why, why is is he so revered? His prose is so dry and ugh.

4)As I Lay Dying-William Faulkner.

I know a lot of people like him. I just can't.

5)Catcher in the Rye-J.D. Salinger.

Looking back I'll agree. At the time I read it I loved it. but I don't anymore.

3)

[penguingal]

Oh god, yes on the Hawthorne and the Faulkner! I just... I can't do either of them.

[mattador]

The Sun Also Rises is such total crap. I agree on Hemingway in general, but I'd say The Old Man and the Sea is an exception- for once, it seems like his style actually works.