Books I Loathed discussion

What a great forum, so glad I stumbled across it!

It's pretty difficult to think of books I really hated off the top of my head because I generally stop reading them as soon as they begin to suck, but the one that really sticks in my mind is Moby Dick.

I was about 15, I think. I bought this hated thing from the "classics" section of WHS Smith or some such bookshop for a pound.

And, because up until that point I had only read potboilery stuff, I forced myself to read it.

It took me two years, but I made myself read at least 1 page a night (okay, I read it so slow that I had to reread several parts just to remember what was going on).

It was utter, utter, junk. Okay, the last three chapters, when they FINALLY caught up with the whale, were quite good.

The five hundred odd pages before that were basically dull rubbish about life on a whaling ship, which is great if you want to become a whaler (not many careers in that, these days..!) but otherwise not very interesting when considered part of a story.

I loathe that book. I can still remember it sitting by the side of my bed all that time, underneath the piles of the books I'd much rather be reading, taunting me. What makes me hate it even more is that everyone I've ever spoken to about it has said something like, "Oh, that book's great". Sorry, if that's your answer, you didn't read it. You "heard" it was good from someone else. No one who's ever forced their way through such utter junk would ever say it's good.

Okay, rant over. Wow, I feel better!

Nice to meet you all, I'm Chris! :-)

Hated this book too - Although my 11th grade AP Lit teacher was kind enough to let us skip the technical chapters on whaling. Even without that junk, the book was miserable.

Chris wrote: "What a great forum, so glad I stumbled across it!

It's pretty difficult to think of books I really hated off the top of my head because I generally stop reading them as soon as they begin to suck,..."

Sounds to me like you'd hate Evangelion, or any other form of metaphorical literature/entertainment for the exact same reason. You thought it was about whaling. Ha.

That being said, I wouldn't expect a 15 year old to be able to pick something like that apart. Stuff like that tends to fly way over one's head, especially when they're at the proper age of getting off on popcorn entertainment video games like call of duty.

No - it is a great book with a whaling manual and a diary of a sailor interleaved into it. I keep expecting someone to edit a version of it that just has the story for more "modern: audiences. Interestingly, the book was a flop when it was first published in the UK under the title The Whale, then it went to the US, where it became a hit with the current name, and then was "re-discovered" by British publishers and imported back from the US.

Not surprising about its length since an author would have been paid per word at the time it came out. Same reason some of the other 'classics' ramble on forever before getting to the good stuff.

That may be the one thing have the hardest time suspending my disbelief over when it comes to Star Trek: the fact that all the characters practically worships that book. Melville is such a cocktease. He tempts you with the possibility of a killer white whale and a story about the futility of revenge, only to bog you down in constant stuff about whaling, the equipment used in whaling, the uses of whale oil, until you're like, "Hey, where the hell's that killer whale and futility of revenge I was promised?"

Though maybe we can blame that book for Khan turning evil; maybe if he'd been exiled with better reading material, he might have reformed and not been all Wrath of Khan.

I just found this discussion and I need to weigh in. I had to read this book in 10th grade and never made it through the first chapter. During class discussion one day, I actually threw my copy of the book out the classroom window. I gladly took my detention and the failing grade. I've gone back to this book a couple of times as an adult and have yet to make it to the end, and I even made it through all of Crime and Punishment. Moby Dick is far worse IMO.