<p>^ I loved Catcher In the Rye! I mean, at one hand I get tired of privileged kids complaining about their lives but I think Holden DOES have a genuine voice in term of his complaints about triviality. And you forget after awhile (or at least I do) of Holden’s background and more about his internal conflicts. I have a lot of favorite parts in that book. </p>
<p>The Outsiders was okay but it was also written by a 15 year old girl and it’s not bad at all for what she came up with. I think it’s amazing that she wrote it as a refuge from a world of taking care of her father w/ cancer. </p>
<p>I read Of Mice and Men for freshman year and didn’t think anything of it. I still don’t understand it’s significance.</p>
<p>I’m really saddened that most people don’t like The Scarlet Letter. I seriously think it’s an amazing book. I can understand people not liking The Catcher In The Rye. I read it once during 7th grade and didn’t think anything of it but I read it again last year and it just really touched me. I guess I know how it is to want people to be passionate about life and feel frustrated because people can just be stupid sometimes. And the whole “you can’t write all of the obscenities off every wall” because a child will be exposed to it anyway has always been stuck in my mind.</p>
<p>I tried reading LOTR twice, never got through it. I think it was more intellectual immaturity than anything else. Catcher was excruciating to the point where I was constantly angry while reading it. Thank you, Holden.</p>
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<p>You like them to. They don’t necessarily want to, and you haven’t established that as something that is objectively good. Now, I am not saying that you are not entitled to believe your opinion applies to everyone (I do for mine), but at least recognize that this is a total assumption of what constitutes a good lifestyle.</p>
<p>Furthermore, your idea on literature is absurd. I can take from the book whatever I want. My own approach to literary analysis involves two components:</p>
<p>1) The correct interpretation, i.e. the one intended by the author (which may be “none” or “whatever you want”)</p>
<p>2) Interpretations developed by readers</p>
<p>One is not superior, but 1) is correct (IMO) in the objective sense. I am not bound by it, nor am I forced to even search for it or give it a place of primacy. </p>
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<p>Again, some people have no problem with reading things for entertainment. I’m sorry if that bothers you, but realize that they are only wasting time in your extremely narrow construction of what productive uses of time include.</p>
<p>Heart of Darkness was the worst thing I’ve had to read for school. I even tried reading it this summer to see if I liked it more without being required to read it and it still bored me to death.</p>
<p>I don’t think there was a single book of fiction I was assigned for class, ever, that I managed to like. Jesus christ, it’s like the pre-req for a classroom classic is to be utterly devoid of excitement. I don’t mind smart books, as I find Isaac Asimov’s stories to be some of smartest and intellectually exciting things I have read (though a bit dry and slow at some parts), but you’ll never find his stuff close to the classroom. Oy vey.</p>
<p>As much as I love to read, I couldn’t stand Frankenstein. It was literally excruciating. Only book I’ve ever given up on. Only time I’ve ever chosen sparknotes over finishing a book.</p>
<p>As far as reading books for English class goes: Fahrenheit 451 sucked. I did LOVE The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, The Odyssey and The Catcher in the Rye.</p>
<p>I did not like The Scarlet Letter. In my opinion, there’s only two good parts in the entire novel:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>“A good evening to you, venerable Father Wilson. Come up hither, I pray you, and pass a pleasant hour with me!”</p></li>
<li><p>The last part when SPOILER ALERT Dimmesdale reveals his scarlet letter to all END SPOILER.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Everything else sucks. Curiously I fit thischarmingirl’s rule of thumb: I liked The Great Gatsby.</p>
<p>A Tale of Two Cities is likewise garbage in my opinion. It may have been great when it was written, but it has not aged well at all. A Christmas Carol, on the other hand, is truly timeless.</p>
<p>I loved 1984, but I could not for the life of me get into Brave New World.</p>
<p>^ i have already said how much i love the scarlet letter. i am a huge hawthorne fan.</p>
<p>i think that i kind of noticed that coincidence because hawthorne and fitzgerald have completely different writing styles and focus their writing on completely different schemes. i prefer hawthorne’s writing. i find it more introspective and ornate (not in a prententious way but rather that he’s a master of stringing words not only to be coherent but invoke lots of spiritual/worldly implications). i just find fitzgerald to be really shallow while others may find hawthorne verbose.</p>
<p>and it took me the longest time to get into brave new world. the first few chapters really annoyed me. but then i stuck with it and gave it some trust (it’s my closest friend’s favorite book and we usually agree on a lot, so i felt like i should give it a chance) and i have to honestly say that while i enjoyed 1984 more, brave new world teaches the better lesson: that the majority of a society would be completely happy w/ a world that favors carnal pleasures and trivialities than venture into a world that is based on intellectual, monogamous, sometimes dogmatic (though not completely scientific ridden) society. this is more relevant today and is really the true 1984 in terms of what the year 1984 and onwards have become.</p>
<p>I fear “Twilight” might become a classic and I really don’t feel like going into how much I hate that book. Sadly, if you do like this and don’t think there’s anything wrong with the book (there are people who like it for the “guilty pleasure” and I don’t mean it), I do think less of you. I’ve tried to be objective but I’m just going to be honest and say, nope, I can’t be in terms of “Twilight.”</p>
<p>I tried reading Candide which I was really excited for since I love Voltaire but for some reason, I couldn’t get into it. I’ll try again though.</p>
<p>I’m a self proclaimed movie connoisseur (even took a junior college class on movies and techniques of directors) and I have seen tons of classic movies. I usually enjoy most classics, but I can not watch the Godfather for more than 10 minutes. I don’t know why, but I always just get bored. I love mob/mafia/crrime movies (GoodFellas and the Departed are two of my favorite movies of all time), but I can’t say that I like the Godfather. One of these days I’m just going to have to force myself to sit through the entire film and see what all the hype is about.</p>
<p>IamPOS- I’m not a big fan of black and white movies, but I thought that both Casablanca and Citizen Kane were timeless classics. Orson Welles FTW!</p>
<p>RE: Asimov: our eighth grade class devoted several weeks to “The Time Machine” way back in 1980/81. I don’t remember a thing about it today, but I do remember we enjoyed it and even discussed it outside of class. I’m exaggerating a bit, but not by much. On the other hand, I deeply enjoyed “Grapes of Wrath” and “Gone With The Wind.” The one that really had me hooked and left me aching for more at the end was “The Fountainhead.”</p>
<p>Shakespeare is lovely - it helps to read it aloud and sorta translate each sentence in your head to realize what it’s saying and means. Hawthorne is delicious…dark stuff, kinda like the Stephen King of his time, IMO. </p>
<p>Books I hated for no real reason? “The Great Gatsby,” although I may give it another chance. Everything I’ve tried to read by Jane Austin. </p>
<p>I’m currently re-reading “Sister Carrie” by Theodore Dreiser, and enjoying it quite a bit. Third time was the charm for that one, as I found it unbearable the other two times I’ve tried. Another one I might retry is LOTR. I adore the movies, but haven’t yet been able to make it through the books. </p>
<p>Something that helps me when I read a classic is to give the Wikipedia page a quick scan to get the characters straight in my head first.</p>
<p>Wuthering Heights might be easier to get into if you realize the time structure of the book. It begins near the end of the chronological plot, when the narrator arrives at the house for a couple of visits - and the atmosphere at the house is so weird that he asks the housekeeper to tell him what is going on. That makes up most of the book - her retelling of the past. Then the story catches up to itself (at this point you will want to go back and read the beginning because it will now make sense) and continues from there. </p>
<p>If you like melodrama & soaps, you will find a lot of that in WH, keeping in mind that this came first when hardly anyone wrote about people who treated each other this way, or who were this violent & destructive toward others. </p>
<p>Something silly that nevertheless worked for my niece 10 years ago: if you are familiar with the soap GH, there is a hell of a lot of Heathcliff/Cathy/Edgar in Sonny/Brenda/Jax. Even the Sonny/Claudia marriage was oddly similar in motive and atmosphere to the Sonny/Isabella marriage - except Claudia was nothing like Isabella. Sonny is the typical dark & damaged lead character on GH – both he and Heathcliff are the “Byronic hero” character type, and both have suffered abuse as children and re-created themselves with money and power so it can never happen again.</p>
<p>I love GH and am now tempted to read wuthering heights.</p>
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<p>I find that comparison really interesting, because I love fitzgerald and loathe hawthorne. Though I read The Scarlet Letter again as an adult and disliked it a bit less than I had at 16, it really feels pretentious and needlessly drawn out to me. But on the other hand, I hated Hemingway at the time too if memory serves because I felt his writing style was too bland.</p>
<p>You know, I read Tom Sawyer in elementary school and I really liked it. I am guessing I just did not have taste then, but I am not sure. I read Huck Finn in high school and hated it with everyone else. I thought perhaps I might be the exception to the rule since I enjoyed Tom Sawyer, but no luck.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, Huck Finn. Never have been able to make it through all the oddly-spelled dialogue. Gives me a headache. </p>
<p>Glad to hear my GH/WH comparison inspired at least one person to pick up WH and try it. Maybe when you start reading the book you can picture Heathcliff as present-day Sonny when he’s unshaven & brooding & ready to throw some barware. Keep the timeline in mind and you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Also, the above WH post won’t let me edit, but I do have a correction:</p>
<p>“the Sonny/Claudia marriage was oddly similar in motive and atmosphere to the Sonny/Isabella marriage” Obviously that last should be Heathcliff/Isabella.</p>
Maybe when you start reading the book you can picture Heathcliff as present-day Sonny when he’s unshaven & brooding & ready to throw some barware. 
Keep the timeline in mind and you’ll be fine.</p>