Comments | substitute: dorkshelf

substitute

dorkshelf

Oct 04, 2007 11:43

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. Bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
( cut for highfalutin book meme thing )

thesethingsarenotmemes, books, memes

Comments 13

steph99 October 5 2007, 18:51:49 UTC

Man, i recently got through dune and it's an obsession now, trying to figure out why so many people i like and respect enjoyed this piece of shit. I hated all 300-odd pieces of homophobic, fat-phobic, misogynist, faux-mythological toilet paper that comprised that book. Every humorless sentence was like a tiny dagger jutting through my pupil and into my brain. I only vaguely enjoyed the epilogue. Granted, I didn't read it as a 14-year old boy, but people with good taste seem to reread this thing, even after they become thinking adults. Only one person so far seems to agree with me: anne tagonist breaks it down, and by "it," I mean thermodynamics and sandworm poop.

So, 'splain to me Lucy. If'n you have a moment.

substitute October 5 2007, 18:56:27 UTC

ANSWER: I read it as a 14-year-old boy. A few times.

steph99 October 5 2007, 19:06:18 UTC

OH THANK GOD. I will say that Sting in the movie (which i still haven't seen despite plaintive howling by all my friends at once, shame on me!) has inspired an auspicious pop culture twist. My circle have begun to substitute the standard fortune cookie "...in bed" with "...in space underpants." To wit: "Behind every successful man there are many more successful men in space underpants."

La Comédie Post-Humaine torgo_x October 7 2007, 11:08:31 UTC

I read the Dune books ages ago, and feel no
special attachment to them now.

How to explain them: think of them as if
Philip K. Dick and Nietzsche got together and
rewrote Lord of the Rings.

As to why people take the books seriously, I think
it's because
the books sure seem to take themselves very seriously.
Sometimes that's all it takes. The sententiousness, oh
the sententiousness.

Also, I think it's safe to say that Frank Herbert
was trying to be very insistent about many different
grand ideas and themes, but this came out so muddled
that the result is a swirling opaqueness
which, accidentally, is something into which people
project more texture and complexity
than are actually there.

James Joyce...shudder... kasheri October 8 2007, 16:53:25 UTC

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Pain in My Ass" is more like it. God, I loathed that book and I still haven't forgiven Ulander for making us read it. We spent an entire class session just talking about the title! (What makes it a portrait? Why is it the artist and not an artist? I don't freakin' care!!!) Reading that book was the literary equivalent of slowly pulling out my fingernails.