Bad Reviews

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Kamrat X
This is the top 40 booklist in sweden 2004

As you can see the first (and only) Nobel Prize Winner is in 34th place...

A quick look at similar lists in Norway and USA (NY Times best seller list and Amazon.com) shows that they don´t have a single nobel prize winner anywhere.

Again popularity != good literature.

I love reading fluff novels that are quick reads, but I'll admit that they aren't "literature" in the sense that Faulkner or Joyce is literature. The latter two take a bit more work to read, but their work gives much more satisfaction. When I finished the Da Vinci Code, I felt like I had just finished a fun but simplistic movie. When I finished Great Expectations, I felt like I had been a witness to an intimate part of British history. That's a bit of a difference.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp


Or, indeed, have read a book.

True

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Again popularity != good literature.

I love reading fluff novels that are quick reads, but I'll admit that they aren't "literature" in the sense that Faulkner or Joyce is literature. The latter two take a bit more work to read, but their work gives much more satisfaction. When I finished the Da Vinci Code, I felt like I had just finished a fun but simplistic movie. When I finished Great Expectations, I felt like I had been a witness to an intimate part of British history. That's a bit of a difference.

When I finished The Brothers Karamazov I felt mostly confused, granted it was in high school. But nevertheless... I think "great litterature" is in the eyes of the beholder. But who decides what is "good" litterature and what is "bad"? People who read and write the "good" litterature!

[monolith94]

Authors, professional critics and scholars. I intend to be two of those three.

The Da Vinci Code is nowhere near nobel-prize worthy. The Club Dumas, on the other hand...

[mindseye]

I just finished Crime and Punishment. WOW.

A contemporary popular novel might be fun, but it won't be WOW.

[monolith94]

It could be WOW, if only authors have ambition and detirmination to make something great.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Kamrat X


When I finished The Brothers Karamazov I felt mostly confused, granted it was in high school. But nevertheless... I think "great litterature" is in the eyes of the beholder. But who decides what is "good" litterature and what is "bad"? People who read and write the "good" litterature!

no, you can look at description and a load of other things..

the Wheel of Time might be fun (might not even be that), but there is no arguing that it is poor writing

Jon Miller

[Sikander]

After the brith of the artist came the inevitible afterbirth of the critic.

History of the World Part 1

[Drake Tungsten]

When I finished Great Expectations, I felt like I had been a witness to an intimate part of British history.

Funny. After reading Great Expectations I felt like I had just been sodomized by a well-spoke of but ultimately boring and unfulfilling gentleman. Or is that the same part of British history you witnessed?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Kamrat X
molly, take a trip up to Sunderland or Newcastle and ask how many have read a book by Albert Camus.

Yeah, 'cos like I came from a really posh place, innit, and can't connect wiv ver street.

Thanks but my experience of the working classes is first hand- my family never owned a car, never owned a flat or a house, and neither of my parents completed their secondary educations.

It's an entirely erroneous notion that people from 'Oop North' or the working classes are ignorant of what constitutes good writing, or incapable of producing it themselves, or unwilling to read anything more edifying than Jeffrey Archer or whatever barely literate potboiler is at number one in the paperback bestsellers.


Perhaps on the 'bestseller' or mass of units shifted criterion, you imagine that the Bible and the works of Mao are the best texts ever written or collated.