Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Summer Reading? 100 Novels to Consider

How many have you read?  Like all lists of this kind, it's plenty arbitrary and subjective.

I must confess that I thought Joyce's Ulysses was a bloated behemoth and a hot mess that isn't worth your time.  I can be an insufferable masochist, and even I could not force myself to get past the first half of this miserable monstrosity.  If you want Joyce, do yourself a favor and read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Wuthering Heights is a bit of Gothic nonsense with two of the worst characters I've met in literature.  Heathcliff and Catherine are both terrible people, and they pretty much deserve each other.  There, I said it.  If you must read a Bronte, read Jane Eyre.

Read more Jane Austen, please.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's not about liking something but about understanding the history of the craft ;-)

Also, my nerdery ends when boredom begins. It takes a special person to go down the rabbit hole. Not to say that I'm not compelled to go down the occasional rabbit hole...

- Wodun

Mad Minerva said...

"my nerdery ends when boredom begins." Perfect articulation of what I was trying to get at! Yes, we can all intellectually understand the significance of Joyce's Ulysses project in cultural/literary history, but after about page 500 I don't care anymore, haha!