Best/Worst Novel (2 Viewers)

[Demandred]

Heart of Darkness = increadibly painful to read. Try watching Apocalypse Now by Copolla, that's somewhere along Heart of Darkness but with more action.

 

[walrusbear]

Best: The Joy Luck Club- it was the first "adult" book I read and since then, my copy has become dog eared and worn. It was also the first book that made me cry.

Worst: The second book of the Philip Pullman "His Dark Materials" series. I think it was called The Subtle Knife. It could of been because I was too young to appreciate it, but its still sitting up on my bookshelf.

subtle knife was cool

fav book: 1984?? catch-22??? atomised??? crime and punishment???
worst: ...
i believe a book called 'klontarf' by a felcher called Colin Thiele is the worst thing i've read. we were forced to 'study' it for yr 9 english

 

[bug7]

Best: Frank Herbert's Dune series.

Worst: Harry Potter and anything vaguely related to it. Seriously people, it's just poor.

 

[reno2004]

Best: Rainbow Six, cover-to-cover action. also GRUG, so simple yet so entertaining when you are 6yrs old :uhhuh:

Worst: I agree with steph@nie, i found the subtle knife quite crap. dont know why, but i couldnt get where the story was going.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Heart of Darkness = increadibly painful to read. Try watching Apocalypse Now by Copolla, that's somewhere along Heart of Darkness but with more action.

Heart of Darkness is an excellent, clever novella, popularising literary innovations (for instance, the use of impressionism in Marlow's narration) and making a pointed social comment concerning imperialism that remains relevant, even despite Conrad's occasional racism.

I've read it three or four times.

 

[parfait]

conrad

I have to agree with Gregor, I think Heart of Darkness is brilliant. My literature teacher has an excellent taperecording of the novel and we sat in the classroom one night for three hours in the dark and listened to it, as if we were the Establishment onboard the Nellie. The language is so rich and the themes so profound that each time I read it I notice another striking irony or idea.

 

[Kwayera]

Dune = god of all books.

I don't really have a worst list, though.

 

[eth]

These aren't really novels but...
Best: Lord of The Rings triology closely followed by the Harry Potter series.
I don't have a worst.. i'll read anything

I didn't have a worst... Then I had to read Wuthering Heights. *shudder*

 

[walrusbear]

Has anyone heard of Seven Samauri? I think that's it's name, it was only mentioned in passing by my teacher way back when I made the mistake of taking Extension English. Anyway, I tried to find it because it's apparently very stragne - pages of stuff written in a weird language that doesn't exist, sections that are entirely pictures and pages that are even left totally blank.

erm only the awesome kurosawa movie

there was a recent novel called The Last Samurai or something.... (not the shitty tom cruise vehicle) that was about a single mother raising her son with that movie as a model of masculinity. or somethign like that. i read the back of it in a store once

english extension was my favourite HSC subject. did you drop it or what?

 

[steph@nie]

Best: Rainbow Six, cover-to-cover action. also GRUG, so simple yet so entertaining when you are 6yrs old :uhhuh:

Worst: I agree with steph@nie, i found the subtle knife quite crap. dont know why, but i couldnt get where the story was going.

yeh, thats why i didn't like it. the first one was great, I just thought it got a bit lost in the second.

i also love the life of pi. I can't stop reading it.

 

[walrusbear]

I dropped for two reasons:
A) I was waaaay outta my league and, more importantly
B) My Advanced English teacher and I had an Irreconcilable Conflict of Interests - she didn't think I should be in the class because I hadn't done well when she taught me in Year 10 even though I proved I could do the work. Plus she was really, really sexist, seemed to have this major problem with guys. I reckon she deliberately marked me down a few times as there was no way I'd only mentioned one Other Related Texts in the first assessment task.

I jumped ship and went across to Standard after three weeks and a fair few followed me, but I had to stop Extension.

that sucks!
i was lucky, i had a good teacher for english hsc. she taught us all 4 units

 

[mewcou]

Most enjoyable: Catch 22 by Heller
Most thought provoking: The Outsider by Camus or The Age of Reason by Satre (existentialism is an interest of mine).

Worst: Almost all the teen fiction I've ever read, and The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger (Didn't teach me anything new and Holden almost made my brain bleed).

 

[mewcou]

Also, if you're into escapism, Feist writes great fantasy.

 

[mewcou]

Feist's Magician was good, but its sequels, Silverthorn and the third one (name escapes me right now) SUCKED. For some stupid reason the author decided that, for the sequels, he would abandon the main characters for the first book and instead follow the adventures of a secondary character who got about two lines in the original. The other series, Conclave of Darkness, Legends of Riftwar and a third (whose name escapes me right now) in the same world were also pretty sub-par.

Daughter of the Empire and Servant of the Empire, the spin-offs set in a second world from Magician were both terrific, but once again, the third book, Mistress of the Empire was terrible.

The only ones I didnt enjoy were the Krondor series. That was just stagnant and horrible. The Empire series was great, the Serpent-war series was ok, Silverthorn was a little boring but I didn't mind Darkness at Sethanon.

Anyway, It's been years since I read them. I had lower standards then. Perhaps if I read them again I would be less satisfied.

 

[grendel]

The only ones I didnt enjoy were the Krondor series. That was just stagnant and horrible. The Empire series was great, the Serpent-war series was ok, Silverthorn was a little boring but I didn't mind Darkness at Sethanon.

Anyway, It's been years since I read them. I had lower standards then. Perhaps if I read them again I would be less satisfied.

you are a bit hard on feist. his novel fairytale was fantastic.

and the krondor series had some good points. at least each novel was self contained.

robert jordan's novels series is up to about 8 or 9 books with no end in sight.

 

[mewcou]

you are a bit hard on feist. his novel fairytale was fantastic.

and the krondor series had some good points. at least each novel was self contained.

robert jordan's novels series is up to about 8 or 9 books with no end in sight.

Farietale was the first that I read of Feist. I loved it. However, the Krondor series seemed like nothing more than an attempt to get more money out of the concepts. They made a videogame called "Betrayal at Krondor" which triggered the Krondor series. The game was crap, the books ain't any better.

 

[grendel]

...the Krondor series seemed like nothing more than an attempt to get more money out of the concepts...

do i detect a hint of cynicism???

one of the interesting aspects of epic (multipart) fantasy novels is that on each subsequent novel, the reader already has a good idea of the world that it is set and has identified with the characters in it. the writer does not have to worry too much about dragging the reader into the story, at least not as much as a writer of a stand alone novel. maybe fantasy writers get a little complacent.

perhaps, also, the authors get a little caught up in their creation, lose objectivity and write stuff that is not quite up to scratch and publishers and editors who are more interested in the bottom line don't do their job properly for risk of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

immersing oneself in that world is the attraction i think for most fantasy readers rather than excellent writing. harry poter is so popular for the fact that all of the fans have identified with one or more characters and are fascinated with the world it is set in. rowling can write crap for the next 5 novels and theyd still be best sellers because everybody wants to catch up with the characters.


if you start reading fantasy novels with too critical an eye, most times you will end up disappointed.

i'll get off my soap box now

 

[mewcou]

do i detect a hint of cynicism???

Yes, and it's justified.

Like I said in an earlier post, I had low standards when I read them. I was reading them purely for enjoyment. However, the sharp drop in quality was noticable to me then. Open one of the covers of the Krondor series and look at the acknowlegements. He thanks the videogame company for coming up with the main concepts and characters that the book is based around (probably why they sucked so much).

 

[grendel]

Yes, and it's justified.

... I was reading them purely for enjoyment. ...

the best reason to read any book!

all novels should be evaluated on how enjoyable they are as well as the level of writing, originality, genre, style of writing...etc

if you find a novel that transcends all of these attributes then that is literary magic!

i have read many novels that have been critically acclaimed but were terribly boring (for me anyway).

escapist literature has as much value as any other type of literature, its all relative to the reader.

 

[joujou_84]

The best book in the world has to be "Angelas Ashes". Frank McCourt. brilliant. ull laugh, cry and really get into the book. i couldnt put it down and it has a real good sequal called "tis"

worst book. emma by jane austen. ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. didnt evn get past second page and managed to sit my HSC and write a bloody good answer for emma/clueless essay in english without having to suffer the pain of reading it.