![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Aug. 5th, 2010 07:03 pmDay II: Least Favorite Book
I don't really have one. That is, there are books which I have disliked, and disliked intensely, for various reasons. I can't stand Toni Morrison, for example, in part because we read her out of white guilt in high school, as far as I can tell. Obviously what she's trying to do is important, but she doesn't have characters so much as points, and she doesn't suit her narrative style to her narrator, and there's at least one scene per book that's there mainly to shock. I realized, in 10th grade, that I couldn't write an essay about Song of Solomon because none of my points would stand, because she wasn't consistent enough. So I suppose you could say that that's my least favorite book. Certainly it has very few redeeming qualities that I can see. But "least favorite" to me implies that you think about it more often than when people ask you what your least favorite book is - I can't think of any books that I think about and think "God, that was awful," unless prompted. And in fact, some of the books that I think about and think "God, that was awful" are highly entertaining, because they were awful. (Shout-out to Karleen Koen's Through A Glass Darkly goes here.)
I have in fact been very lucky, or perhaps very good at choosing things I would like: out of the 30something books I've read this summer, I've disliked maybe five actively* and thought, "oh, this isn't really very good" about a couple more*. But I've absolutely loved a couple, been educated by some, and entertained by most.
So that was more positive than a least favorite book post probably should be, but really, livejournal, what is it about your fatal charm that makes it so...fatal?
--
*Ugh, Ibid: A Life in Footnotes. Cute idea, terrible, terrible execution.
*The Warrior Prophet: Very rapey, includes the line "his/her skin pimpled"(from fear, cold, etc) about a million times, includes the line "his eyes blazed glory" (at all) but I think twice. In fact, probably due a post.
I don't really have one. That is, there are books which I have disliked, and disliked intensely, for various reasons. I can't stand Toni Morrison, for example, in part because we read her out of white guilt in high school, as far as I can tell. Obviously what she's trying to do is important, but she doesn't have characters so much as points, and she doesn't suit her narrative style to her narrator, and there's at least one scene per book that's there mainly to shock. I realized, in 10th grade, that I couldn't write an essay about Song of Solomon because none of my points would stand, because she wasn't consistent enough. So I suppose you could say that that's my least favorite book. Certainly it has very few redeeming qualities that I can see. But "least favorite" to me implies that you think about it more often than when people ask you what your least favorite book is - I can't think of any books that I think about and think "God, that was awful," unless prompted. And in fact, some of the books that I think about and think "God, that was awful" are highly entertaining, because they were awful. (Shout-out to Karleen Koen's Through A Glass Darkly goes here.)
I have in fact been very lucky, or perhaps very good at choosing things I would like: out of the 30something books I've read this summer, I've disliked maybe five actively* and thought, "oh, this isn't really very good" about a couple more*. But I've absolutely loved a couple, been educated by some, and entertained by most.
So that was more positive than a least favorite book post probably should be, but really, livejournal, what is it about your fatal charm that makes it so...fatal?
--
*Ugh, Ibid: A Life in Footnotes. Cute idea, terrible, terrible execution.
*The Warrior Prophet: Very rapey, includes the line "his/her skin pimpled"(from fear, cold, etc) about a million times, includes the line "his eyes blazed glory" (at all) but I think twice. In fact, probably due a post.
