Books I Hate
October 26, 2006
Yes yes yes one mustn’t hate books but there are some books that I just hate and will never ever pick up them again…I do not know why, but i know why I hate them so. There is always that thin meandering line that exists – between liking a book and not-liking-a-book and its so easy for certain books to stay on the good side and so easy for other books to stray to the bad side. I mean I have also read books that I loved at the start but they lost me somewhere in the middle and I did not know whether or not I should bother but I do not give up on books that easy and I finished them only to realize that they were just terrible reads…Yes yes this is one of other lists…List of books I hate:
1. Anything by Paulo Coelho – Need I say more…Its Coelho after all who just doesn’t stop giving spiritual advice.
2. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts – I finished the book with great disdain and was left to wonder: Why me? Why must I go through such torture and then I came up with an idea: Praise the books and pass it on to poor unsuspecting souls who actually loved it…Damn!!
3. Maximum City by Suketu Mehta: I do not need an outsiders’ view to know my city and certainly not a lop-sided view. Bombay is not all about terrorists or poverty or gangsters or bars. I am sure they all exist in plentiful but there is also the way you write about it. You cannot live it so don’t claim to.
4. The Lord of the Rings: I know there will be Tolkien Fans who will hate me for this but guys this is my choice and this is my list and I tried with Tolkien and the conclusion was: Why bother with a bunch of creatures who aren’t even human? I am sorry but Tolkien just does not do it for me.
5. On Beauty by Zadie Smith: I loved White Teeth. Loved the entire diasporic thingy going on in that book but this one! This is a cheap imitation of Forsters’ “Howard’s End” which is a classic and this one – well….zzzzzzzzzzzzz……..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….
5 Seems like a good number to start with…I am sure there will be more that I will add to the kitty…
November 2, 2006 at 5:52 pm
One benefit of not having much patience is that I’ve never actually finished, voluntarily, a book that I didn’t like. Of course when I was in school there was a whole lot of rubbish that I had to finish whether I wanted to or not: The Confessions by Augustine and Chaucer’s Cantebury Tales are two supposed classics that left me cold at the time, there was a point where I was literally dragging my eyes from one side of the page to the other while being forced to pause periodically to wipe away the drool.
Also a book of poems by Louise Gluck, the name of which I can’t remember, was a dreary lowlight in an otherwise fascinating survey of modern American poetry. It was just full of abstract moralizing, and noticably empty of any memorable imagery or moments of inspiration. It was well recieved by the large feminist contingent in the room however.
As far as book-length fiction goes, I’ve was blessed to have only great professors in the couple survey courses I took, the only novel I didn’t really enjoy was one by John Updike, Roger’s Version (I think, been a while). It was very interesting in parts and my professor was even more interesting in discussions about why it was so profound in places, but the somewhat cold and intense glare of Updike’s imagination does not go well with explicit sex scenes. It wasn’t just that the scenes were so graphic but it was the way they were presented, without the barest hint of eroticism, as if they were getting it on in a petrie dish under an array of flourescent lights, that set me to squirming. In his defense, the style fit the subject matter (a loveless extra-marital affair), but still, not even close to an enjoyable read.
April 9, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Good site!!!