Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Putting a Good Book Down

Page: 1(2)

Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes

08:15 / 09.02.03

I trawled through 585 pages of Robert Heinlens “stranger in a strange land” and then stopped 60 pages from the end. I enjoyed the first part of the book but as it went on I just couldn’t take the continuous moralising. I was also put off when one of the characters claimed that 90% of rapes were the woman’s fault, without argument or contradiction. I only feel guilty that I wasted time reading this tripe when I could have been reading something else. I have no plans to return to this book.

The Falcon

00:36 / 10.02.03

I gave up on Neuromancer twice; once quite recently, and once when I was 17-18 (five or six years ago.)

It was a library copy, which I suppose makes a difference, as if there's no great impetus to read a novel, then the return date grows larger on the horizon, and you either have to cram it or give up eventually.

The first time, I think I got only 20 or so pages in, the second about 60-70. I was not compelled, and found the language unnecessarily abstract and unhelpful.

I know this is sacrilege. I love sci-fi, and everyone hails this as the canonical book, but...

Oh, I'll probably try again sometime. Or I'll buy it, which'll necessitate my getting my money's worth.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:45 / 10.02.03

Chol- that'd be Richard Matheson. (sorry to be pedantic but I really, really like that book. And thought it was more misanthropic than misogynist, really. And the bit with the dog makes me cry every time.)

sfd- totally with you on the Icke, though I did make it to the end. But I felt like a real bastard for having done so.

I remember once getting my mum to read Borges' "The Library Of Babel" (cos I'd love it to be real, and I'd love to spend the rest of my life there), and her wonderful response being "That would be horrible. You'd always know that by the time you died there'd be huge amounts of books you hadn't read yet." Which I had no fucking answer to whatsoever.

Page: 1(2)

Add Your Reply