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Post by GryphonMage on Aug 4, 2003 11:51:35 GMT -5
I confess! I despise Dickens!! I find him boring and self-important. Blah blah social reform blah blah poor orphans blah blah. That's pretty much how I feel about him.
Ooooh! and I also hated the Scarlet Letter. Probably unfairly, as I know that the story was representative of attitudes of the time, but it was so frustrating and annoying and made me want to smack people!!
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Post by Spades on Aug 4, 2003 16:56:50 GMT -5
Yes! Dickens is awful. He's a horrible writer. His stories are booooring. And socially important? Dickens has about as much social importance as Britney Spears. He might be worth a paragraph in a history book, but his stuff shouldn't be considered classic.
Jumping the pond, an American "classic" author I despise is Steinbeck. He seems to revel in cruelty. He even goes to the point of ignoring such tiny issues as the laws of physics just so he can have an infant's skull blown off. The man was evil! His books should rot on the shelf, not be taught in the classroom.
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Post by GryphonMage on Aug 6, 2003 12:32:04 GMT -5
He really has an infant's head blown off? Ew!! I've never had to read Steinbeck. Because of all the transferring around I did in high school I managed to miss every possible opportunity to read him in class. I almost read Grapes of Wrath once, but Sis got mad at me for reading all the books for her classes before she did and started hiding them. Totally unfair if you ask me. Just because I accidentally spoiled Handmaid's Tale. Seriously, she'd been reading it for two weeks. How could she not have been done?? Tsk.
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Post by Earthangel on Aug 6, 2003 13:41:12 GMT -5
I actually liked Great Expectations. It's not my FAVORITE book on Earth, but it's not that bad. It's just strange, I think. I also liked A Tale of Two Cities. Of course, I will admit that they're not books I go back to often. I read them twice and really have no innate desire to go back and read them again.
But more important, let us not forget A Christmas Carol. I can't think of a Christmas story more widely known AND loved. There have been so many different film versions of the story..it's been Disney-ized AND parodied (ever see Scrooged? Why do I love that movie?). I just LOVED Patrick Stewart as Scrooge, although I had this insane expecation that any moment, the doors of the Holodeck would open up, and Data would come walking in. And what's this I see? A Blackadder version of it? Now that I have to see.
I think Dickens is a good storyteller. I don't think that he is the BEST, but he spins a good tale. ^_^
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Post by GryphonMage on Aug 6, 2003 14:43:54 GMT -5
Fair is fair, I do love a Christmas Carol, but it's interesting to note that is a much shorter book than most of his others. Maybe he does better in novella form than in novel form??
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Post by Earthangel on Aug 7, 2003 14:10:02 GMT -5
haha...okay, granted I've never read David Copperfield but are you saying that not once in your life, you haven't cupped your hands and made puppy dog eyes at someone and said, "Please suh, may I have some more?"
LOL ^_^ Such a lovely quote. Dickens is very quotable. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." "It is a far far better thing that I do..." "God Bless us every one!" Again, I reiterate....not my favorite author, but there is a bit of charm to his strange characters. I still get eerie visions when I think of Miss Havisham sitting in her parlor in her yellowing wedding dress. And did it make anyone else angry that there were two endings to Great Expectations?
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Post by GryphonMage on Aug 7, 2003 14:55:20 GMT -5
Confession - Great expecations bored me so bad I never finished it. ^^; There were too endings?? I wonder if Dickens would have been so popular and become known as a great author if he had not also been so vocal on the concept of Social Reform (not unlike Steinbeck, actually). He does have some good quotes - but I guess he's just not my style.
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