Spike ,'Sleeper'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
I think if you like Ulysses, you will also like Virginia Woolf's The Waves.
I have a love of Thomas Hardy, and I seem to remember everyone else hates him. I can barely abide Hemingway (The Old an and the Sea alomost killed me. See also The Big Two Hearted River) and Steinbeck (that darned The Pearl). Of course, those were also books I had to read in school, where I think they mistook terse and short for easy to read and therefore OK for 7th graders.
Thomas Hardy! t hisssss
Actually, come to think of it, I hated many books we read in school-- I think I only liked The Great Gatsby, Silas Marner, and The Diary of Anne Frank. I have no idea what lead me to be an English Lit major after all those terribly boring books, and it was a little frustrating in high school that I was such a big reader and didn't like anything.
Oh, I also love Hardy! Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of my favorites.
I was assigned Pride and Prejudice in AP English and blew it off, did terrible on the test. And then, of course, I loved it. That was not one of my smarter decisions.
God bless Mr. Berryhill, who had Lord of the Rings as extra credit and The Hobbit as a required book. And whose Advanced English Lit course was really "How much Shakespeare can we cram into a schoolyear?"
Henry James is cilantro, I expect. I love his books, but a number of people don't care for them.
I probably should eventually read The Man Who Was Thursday. People who write things I love adore the book, so there's a good chance that it would be the sort of literary cilantro I love.
And now I'm wondering what else is literary cilantro.
I can, as an intelectual exercise, see where some of Ray Bradbury's work would be not to some people's tastes. In fact, there are times when I fear that Pete will eventually read Something Wicked This Way Comes or From Dust Returned and HATE them. And then I'd be horrified and sad.
Oh! Francesca Lia Block. I love love love her writing, but I'm certain other people think it's way too twee.
I have to confess I could not get through LOTR or the Hobbit, either...
Yeah, I tried Francesca Lia Block and couldn't do it. I wanted to like her, though.
I've never read LotR, either, and I doubt I will. I love the *story* but I know it too well by now to read what seems like sort of boring prose.