Monday, April 30, 2012

THE BEST OF APRIL

EURIPIDES - HIPPOLYTUS

"I would highly recommend this if you have a good supply of acid or a high tolerance for WTF."


HAWTHORNE - THE SCARLET LETTER

"I read this book as part of my background reading on the Gothic for my A level exams, and it left me asking two questions when I'd finished, first, how is this even slightly Gothic?"


KHAYYAM/FITZGERALD - THE RUBAIYAT

"I think that I just generally have difficulty enjoying 19th-century translations. I can tell that there is some beautiful stuff going on in here, but for me it is overshadowed by the flowery language of an English gentleman."


LADY MURASAKI - THE TALE OF GENJI

"it gave me headaches from all the words and whatnot. It's like they think i know ALL these stuff."


ARISTOTLE - PHYSICS

"Forget Plato. Forget Aristotle. What about that philosopher know as 'you'?"

"ARISTOTLE WAS AN IDIOT
Aristotelian logic is destroying our world. The world must stop adhering to this old style of logic and begin viewing all things as One if the human race is to survive for any decent length of time.

The way to sidestep around this trap of Aristotle is to see all things as One, with no particular leanings to either end of the pole. Be in the middle. Walk the middle path between the extremes. Observe with a scientific mind all that occurs before you in life."


SHAKESPEARE - A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

"For all intensive purposes, the commercials for the 1999 movie told me all I needed to know."

"i thought this book was stupid and kinda confusing... its a play and they do a play within a play, um no its just not gonna work out. its a stupid book because there are 3 worlds, none that would ever really be around, and faries are just no longer popular. so if shakesphere was actually a good writer then sure, but this book is just weird."


DICKINSON - POEMS

"It's really a crime...
...how Dickinson is still remembered today. There have been many bad poets in the world's history; Dickinson was about the worst. Buried in smug contempt and suffused with undeserved egotism, Dickinson's poems show not even the most minimal grasp of the English language. How so many people mistake Dickinson's muffled ignorance for thought is beyond me."

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Emily Dickinson - Poems II

"First of all, she's nothing but a case of early women poets being famous only because they are women. Seriously, nothing she did shook up the world of poetry. The only thing that made an impact was that she didn't have a penis. Secondly, she's famous for being a creepy recluse. Third of all, every one of my English teachers swore up and down that she purposely would break rhymes to draw more attention to the words of that particular rhyme. What we like to call slant rhymes. WELL, I CALL THEM BULLSHIT.

This is what really happened:

Emily: 'Oh, here I go. I'm going to write a poem. Let's see:

Roses are red, violents are blue.
Something about death here...
Or time... perhaps time...
Oh shit, what rhymes with this word?

...Oh fuck it!'"


"She lived in an attic and never came out. I have long held that her 'amazing/insightful/what-have-you' use of dashes was simply an utter lack of understanding of proper punctuation."


"she's a housewrecking bitch!! she only loves married men ! horny asshole =P"


"I love poetry more than anything and I HATE Dickinson. Her letter reveal her true purpose. She wanted to be weird and present shock value. She also begged for pity and was entirely self-concerned caring nothing for the happiness of others if it did not affect her."


"I wouldn't hate Dickinson so much if I didn't believe in poetry (and art) as a way to transcend ourselves by speaking of, and to, the universal."


"I looked up Emily Dickinson in the dictionary today. It said: 'See emo.'"


"It’s no wonder she hid these in a trunk."


"Emily Dickinson was the world’s first emo kid…"


"emily dickinson isn’t so special. unless you count her as being like the great grandmother of mediocre emo poety."

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Emily Dickinson - Poems

"Ugh. WHat a bore. I hate poetry."


"wah wah wah."


"It's no wonder Dickinson managed to produce the volume of material she did -- her work is almost entirely abstract and generally shallow; it can't have taken her more than a couple of minutes to vomit out each one ... No images are brought to mind and no emotional connection are made; the poems just sit there, Dead on the page. While they may have been True to Emily, these poems have nothing whatsoever to do with Beauty."


"Why did I get this book? I knew Emily Dicknson was well known and I enjoy poetry. Poems are like snack or desserts for big readers depending on tje poem ... Why don't I like this book? It is an enigma. I can hardly understand what Dickenson is trying to say and some of the metaphors and similes are so confusing I wonder if the author herself even understood what she was jotting down on paper."


"It's really a crime...
...how Dickinson is still remembered today. There have been many bad poets in the world's history; Dickinson was about the worst. Buried in smug contempt and suffused with undeserved egotism, Dickinson's poems show not even the most minimal grasp of the English language. How so many people mistake Dickinson's muffled ignorance for thought is beyond me."


"I'm not going to read all the way through. Though some reference Jesus, she seems unable to comprehend what He means to her in her life or accept Him as her Savior... lots of doubt and cynicism."


"I'm really more of a concrete detail kind of girl. Every time she says 'transport' I start thinking about cinnamon rolls or something; ANYTHING is more interesting."


"I cannot stand Emily Dickinson and her random capitalization. No wonder she didn't publish one of her thousands of poems while alive."


"No one in the history of literature has a greater reputation based on less talent. She is respected not for her poetry, but for her relationship to her poetry; in other words, she is an intriguing figure, and her poetry gives us some insight into her, but the poems themselves are completely unremarkable, and the praise she gets for them is the same kind of praise I give to my undergraduate creative writing students when they make one good word choice in a ten-page story. I cringe every time I read a Dickinson poem."

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream II

"You know what? I didn't like this all that much. at all, really."


"fucking stupid"


"For: escapists"


"Magical suckism."


"A lot of irony, which helped me understand what irony is."


"The book was very hard to follow, and I am also not a fan of Shakespeare. The only reason I give this two stars instead of one is that Stephanie Meyer said in an interview that this book will be one of the boks that is mentioned in her next book Breaking Dawn!"


"I read this in my 10th grade English class. Thankfully my teacher just had us go to spark notes"


"I hate that extra play in a play thing at the end. You think the darn thing is over but then you have to sit through another 10 minutes."


"This is just too difficult to follow for me. I have a very hard time getting into a book that I cannot understand. The words are big and outdated. The writing style is long winded and over-worded. I just don't like it."


"Comedy?
Comedy schmodedy. If Shakespeare had meant it to be funny he would have put a joke in it. Me, I'm a fan of the Farrelly brothers. Like that bit in Dumb and Dumber when he's, like, laying this monster crap in the ski chalet. Classic. Now that's comedy."


"Uh... uh... I don't get it? It contained no real substance. I found my attention drifting far away from the text during the 15 minutes I devoted myself to it each day (I couldn't take any more than 15 minutes! I just couldn't!)."


"This book sucks.
Say, this fictional and capricious play by Shakespear (not an original printing, you should know)is a capital reading choice. I commend you for taking the time to read and admire the Immortal Bard's wonderful work. Alliteration, huh? pretty neat."


"i thought this book was stupid and kinda confusing... its a play and they do a play within a play, um no its just not gonna work out. its a stupid book because there are 3 worlds, none that would ever really be around, and faries are just no longer popular. so if shakesphere was actually a good writer then sure, but this book is just weird."

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream

"Shakespeare sucks and this book is no different. I have also seen the play and it sucks just as much."


"Far below the quality and enjoyability of the shakespeare works."


"I appreciate Shakespeare because it's expected for me to do so, but I don't enjoy reading his work."


"Each of his plays tends to offer nothing more than a decent fantasy tale and/or an uninventive guide to using basic flowery prosody."


"I sadly have to say that I didn't like this at all. Maybe because I have read too many Greek dramas and novels in the past and so the comical approach to this seemed completely disturbing to me. It was plain silly."


"What a horrible plot. The ending is just terrible - a play within a play? Sounds interesting, but it's not even remotely so."


"I think people make way too much out of Shakespeare. He was the creator of the trashy Hollywood movies of his day. Maybe in a couple of hundred years, people will obsess over the dramatic mastery of movies like 'High School Musical,' too."


"Sometiems the king of this story reminds me of my father... he is always chooseing thigs for me thinking is the best but in the end we always turn to arguments."


"I just don't have the time or the patience to plod through outdated language. And I don't feel any more intelligent or educated for having read it."


"While I was reading through it, I was quizzical about the fact that this was a comedy. The plot seemed tragic for me, especially the short play about Phyramus and Thisbe"


"For all intensive purposes, the commercials for the 1999 movie told me all I needed to know."


"I prefer post modern literature, didn't he get flunkies to write half his stuff? hmm"

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Sophocles - Ajax

"Knowing the flimsy plot on this one, I almost skipped reading it. I would not have missed much if I had."


"Oh dear. The Greek soap operas continue."


"come on, it’s a Greek tragedy. What else do you need to know? Some shit will go down; good people will suffer; death will be histrionic. It’s Titanic on a community-theatre budget"


"Once again I have trouble relating to Sophocles’ characters because I’m not all 'Suicide rocks!'"

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Alain Robbe-Grillet - La Jalousie

"according to the dictionary... novel (noun): a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.

if, as the new york times puts it, this represents the 'new novel,' i'd much prefer the backs of shampoo bottles and shaving cream cans that keep me company while on the toilet."


"I've been meaning to read this for years, but have been put off by how boring it sounds. Well, now I've read it and it was as boring as I imagined"


"reads more like a movie script for a shitty boring movie for shitheads"


"Robbe-Grillet seems to be going out of his way to write extremely boring, dead prose (think Camus, Flaubert)"


"This is by far the most confounding book we have happened upon during our college careers ... We left this book feeling dumber than when we started."


"sucks, boring writing based on obsolete philosophical theories"


"From the technical perspective, sure, it's probably a masterpiece. But it's impossible to enjoy, unless you get pleasure from thinking about a novel"

Monday, April 16, 2012

Aristotle - Physics

"dated"


"Aristotle was an Idiot. Really. Just a complete fuck-tard. His ideas are something I generally view as a plague that very actively inhibit understanding."


"Have you even listened to Aristlotle's rantings?Aristotle was an idiot."


"absolutely unquestionably wrong"


"virtually no relevance to contemporary science. Galileo et alia shattered the Aristotelean hegemony centuries ago."


"ARISTOTLE WAS AN IDIOT
Aristotelian logic is destroying our world. The world must stop adhering to this old style of logic and begin viewing all things as One if the human race is to survive for any decent length of time.

The way to sidestep around this trap of Aristotle is to see all things as One, with no particular leanings to either end of the pole. Be in the middle. Walk the middle path between the extremes. Observe with a scientific mind all that occurs before you in life."

YOU KNOW, JUST LIKE ARISTOTLE DIDN'T DO, AND DIDN'T WRITE EXTENSIVELY ABOUT


"Aristotle was an idiot who never thought to do even the most basic of science experiments, therefore to me he is completely irrelevant."


"Mmm..I believe Aristotle was an idiot (although I'm forced to recognize his small contributions to some areas in science and philosophy)."


"obviously Aristotle was an idiot. Happiness comes from loving and following Jesus Christ. When we look to others, others will always disappoint. When we look within, we will also find faults. But when we look to HIM, we can find love and purpose."


"I'm fairly convinced that Aristotle was an idiot and has done more to slow the technological advancement of mankind more than just about any single individual in the history of man kind."


"Forget Plato. Forget Aristotle. What about that philosopher know as 'you'?"

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Murasaki Shikibu - The Tale of Genji II

"I hate The Tale of Genji with a passion."


"it gave me headaches from all the words and whatnot. It's like they think i know ALL these stuff."


"If you know me, you know how much I hate the Tale of Genji, mostly because I took a class solely about it."


"Genji is such a douuuche"


"It's nice, but it's just not chick lit! I was expecting some love action, even some shopping and girl-talk. I got a thousand year old diary."


"I hate the Tale of Genji with a fiery passion one usually reserves for puppy kickers and war criminals"


"a slice of Japanese soft porn written around 1000 AD by a woman for a female readership ... The book is written from a female perspective so that Genji's clothes, smell and beauty of movement are described in detail especially when he wears nearly transparent or other inappropriate dress ... Cleverly the author has made Genji a commoner notwithstanding that he is the son of an emperor. This means it was possible for any of the target female audience to imagine that they too could have an affair with him. There is a rivalry between Genji and his best friend To No Chujo, who is almost as beautiful and talented as Genji, and who competes in love and other affairs. For good measure there are also some moments of homo-eroticism thrown in."


"i hate this book only a little less than i hate 'twilight'."


"the first and one of the most grating mary sues ever created."

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Flaubert - Three Tales

"I hated the stupid parrot--that story was ridiculous."


"This book was, frankly, awful. I only got through the first tale, but it was clear that the rest would not improve. This is supposed to be Flaubert's 'light-hearted' work. Yeah. Right. It's as cross and old and dreary as 'The Tell-Tale Heart.' It's basically a fast-forwarded life story of a simple servant maid who does nothing special and is specifically stated as being very stupid. She has a stuffed parrot that reminds her of the Holy Spirit. Eventually, she dies, all alone. Need I say more?"


"I really liked the first two, but the last (Herodias) forced me to knock down my rating ... The story presupposes a great deal of historical/biblical knowledge on the part of the reader."


"completely flatlined for me. The dead parrot was more interesting than the main character."


"I feel that he missed an opportunity here, failed to make the words as captivating as they could be."

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths II

"An example of the King's New Clothes ?
I have read and enjoyed a wide variety of literature in my lifetime, but never before have I found such rubbish masquerading as itellectual work."


"Borges was an old man when he wrote these stories but why do they all have to be told by old men? It is a bit off-putting for this reader who is not an old man."


"And yet more elitist filth in print
I was recommended Borges' works by one of his innumerable over-educated sycophants and I will never forget the tremendous time I wasted attempting to grasp the supposed value of his life's work (when I should have been writing my dissertation). Each time I read one of his pedantic, mediocre peices of short fiction, I was convinced by these elite book review troglodytes that I would like other examples of his work if I continued reading since 'all of his stories are so unique.' ... The ideas were transperant, the language boring in the extreme. His poetry is trite. Who needs this? Borges reads like a petulant graduate student at University of Chicago who failed repeatedly to get his/her short fiction published in _The Atlantic Monthly_ ... Borges merely litters his works with elite literary references and a kind of faculty cocktail party wit to make it more palatable to the kind of people who never step foot out of Manhattan or Cambridge. If you're this kind of pompous fellow, you'll want to sleep every night with a portrait of Luis by your side and a series of mirrors, as it were, slowly attempting to seek some kind of trans-substantiation with this benighted old librarian. If you're the kind of person who prefers reading about interesting characters, enjoying nuanced use of language, and grasping subtle, daring ideas that transcend purile academic banter, run far, far away from Jorge Luis Borges ... 30min spent on one of his short stories gets you the drift of his entire body of work, and that's about as much attention as he deserves."


"Bad Boring SF
This book is filled with short stories of bad boring science fiction. References, complete with page numbers, to non existent books only add to the tedium"


"One of his logic traps claims that to get from one point to another, you have to get to a point halfway between them, because you can divide things in half forever, you never reach your destination. This seems clever at first, but eventually you realize that they have no effect on how you live your life ... This isn't great literature, it is a collection of logic puzzles. Save your money and buy a book of Sudoku."

Sunday, April 8, 2012

William Blake - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

"Utter rubbish
I found that most of the poems have all the substance of candy floss, and are written by a man who was utterly sanctimonious and a true prat ... Perhaps Blake's most irritating trait is his true ignorance of the countryside that he writes of- for example is assertion that 'the distant huntsman winds his horn' in the SUMMER, and his syrupy drool in 'The Lamb.' Avoid Blake unless you absolutely have to."


"Weird."


"Rubbish.
These books are meant to help you, however my own ideas were better than those in the book. Would not reccomend."


"Probably the worst piece of poetry I've ever read. This book has too much hype. It was lame and boring. If anything similar to this were to come out today, it wouldn't even get published."

Friday, April 6, 2012

Omar Khayyam/Edward FitzGerald - The Rubaiyat

"I don't like poetry.
I particularly don't like rhyming poetry."


"The reason for the low rating: if ever there was a poet who was writing out of clinical depression, Khayyam would fit the bill. Most of these poems are about the futility of life, the lack of satisfaction from the carnal life of the moment, the lack of hope in the future. Reading them all in a sitting is like having coffee with Eyeore."


"I think that I just generally have difficulty enjoying 19th-century translations. I can tell that there is some beautiful stuff going on in here, but for me it is overshadowed by the flowery language of an English gentleman."


"Each quatrain is stuck at the top of the page in 'boring' Font ... Not a single illustration.
Words fail me to describe how poor this book is."


"Don't Waste Your Time With This Mush!
Don't waste your time with this trite collection of vapid, paganistic, intellectually lazy and self-indulgent quatrains ... What we have here is an unrepentant pagan being translated by a 19th Century neo-pagan, and the result is an incomprehensible, senseless mush. The writer and translator appear unwilling, or rather incapable, of plombing the depths of the questions raised here, rather opting for the trite, tired, vapid and unsatisfying answers of antiquity - -and this not out of any deep reflection, but rather as the result of intellectual laziness and epicurean self-indulgence. Make no mistake -- this is lightweight drivel."


"I really don't think I got an awful lot out of this book."


"Uh.

I'm not sure what I read, but I'm fairly sure I didn't like it.

Was Khayyam talking about becoming an alcoholic when he said he went and got married to wine?

I don't even know anymore."


"Something could have been lost in translation here."

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter IV

"I read this book as part of my background reading on the Gothic for my A level exams, and it left me asking two questions when I'd finished, first, how is this even slightly Gothic?"


"Horrible. The worst book I've ever read. In my experience classic books are the worst out there. They are generally poorly written, too wordy and lack entertaining plot devices."


"I'm reading this for English III... I want to barf. Maybe if he actually spoke in English when he wrote this..."


"Terribly overrated
Had to teach Scarlet at high school level and found it terribly dull. Do yourself a favour and consider an alternative."


"The story may have had some merit however the writing style was so archaic and verbose that it took 50 words to complete a sentence. After trudging through about 100 pages he never came to any points or conclusions other that some people can remember what they ate 20 years ago in detail. This guy (Nathaniel Hawthorne) could have competed with Marry Shelly for most long-winded of the year. Some of it may not be his fault due to the writing style of the time but we surly do not have to put up with this.
This is one time that just about any movie exceeds the book. If you insist on reading then it may be smart to find a child's version. Son one could get rich translating the book into today's English."


"Hawthorne's writings are dull, dry, and other words that mean bad that start with D. The character's a boring."


"Three hundred some odd pages just to tell the reader that she had sex with the preacher's wife and had his baby?"


"Most likely, of you're reading this, you haven't read this book, in which case, I firmly believe you are the smartest person on the planet for not sujecting yourself to such torture. The Scarlet Letter is summed up, in my opinion, as a short story turned novel. How was this done, you ask. Well, boys and girls, Hawthorne did the only thing he knew: added useless, boring details, symbolism, and overly annoying figurative devices. This had to have been written for the purpose of decoding in an English class, because that is truly all it is good for. Honestly, I have a complete, no-details-missing summary for you:
Hester has affair and baby
inner tuemoil of whether or not to tell boytoy's identity
enter hubby, with issues to spare
inner turmoil
hubby is pissed
inner turmoil
boytoy ill with guilt
boytoy confesses
Yay, its over! What a great story!
Yeah right. I wouldnt actually know. A plot was difficult to find among all the flowery shit. What with my eyes watering and nose running, I was pretty unsure of a plot.
What? Im allergic to flowers."

Monday, April 2, 2012

Euripides - Hippolytus

"Angry Greek women be CRaaazyy. haha."


"I just couldn't bring myself to fully appreciate the story due to the unfortunate mistreatment of the female characters and their general disposability/lack of worth/significance."


"I was not much impressed. Euripides read like the script of soap opera."


"Euripides despised women."


"I would highly recommend this if you have a good supply of acid or a high tolerance for WTF."