Monday, January 16, 2006
A Reading Failure: Dr. Faustus by Thomas Mann
For the first time since beginning townesvanfaulkner, I started a book I couldn't finish. Oh, how I hate to do this. I feel like a failure.
Please forgive me, but there was just no way that I could finish this book. I feel like I gave it my all. I read over 200 pages of a 500+ page book. Basically, my rules are that I must finish any book less than 300 pages. And that I won't give up on a book in the first 150 pages. These rules can be broken, but rarely ever are. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford certainly tested the first rule. And I couldn't help but break the second rule with The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
I recall reading a quote from Faulkner saying that he thought the best living writers of his day were Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, John Dos Passos, and himself. So I took note of this and thought that I still need to read Mann and Dos Passos. Well, maybe I should have started with Mann's Death in Venice. Maybe this is what I get for choosing the cheapest copy at the used book store. I don't know.
But this was just unbearable. Unbelievably wordy and the plot was going nowhere, absolutely unequivocally nowhere. It's supposed to be a fake biography of a german composer. And I read through his childhood and early musical training and early in his composing career. Maybe it gets better? Who knows? I've started boring books before and come to really like them by the end. It's possible. But, I don't think the world will ever know because I QUIT.
Has anyone else read this guy? Any thoughts? What are some notable books you've given up on? I also gave up on Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. However, I've managed to read the Bible cover to cover and it was a struggle but I made it through Anna Karenina.
Please forgive me, but there was just no way that I could finish this book. I feel like I gave it my all. I read over 200 pages of a 500+ page book. Basically, my rules are that I must finish any book less than 300 pages. And that I won't give up on a book in the first 150 pages. These rules can be broken, but rarely ever are. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford certainly tested the first rule. And I couldn't help but break the second rule with The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
I recall reading a quote from Faulkner saying that he thought the best living writers of his day were Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, John Dos Passos, and himself. So I took note of this and thought that I still need to read Mann and Dos Passos. Well, maybe I should have started with Mann's Death in Venice. Maybe this is what I get for choosing the cheapest copy at the used book store. I don't know.
But this was just unbearable. Unbelievably wordy and the plot was going nowhere, absolutely unequivocally nowhere. It's supposed to be a fake biography of a german composer. And I read through his childhood and early musical training and early in his composing career. Maybe it gets better? Who knows? I've started boring books before and come to really like them by the end. It's possible. But, I don't think the world will ever know because I QUIT.
Has anyone else read this guy? Any thoughts? What are some notable books you've given up on? I also gave up on Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. However, I've managed to read the Bible cover to cover and it was a struggle but I made it through Anna Karenina.
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I continue to give up on Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray during the first twenty pages. I always go back, and I always give up.
Thanks for dropping by Ophelia. I LOVE to get comments from people I don't actually know.
Don't feel too bad about Dorian Gray, sometimes you've just got to let it go. I usually try to follow up a stinker with something that I know I'm almost guaranteed to like, so as to get the bitter taste out of my mouth.
Don't feel too bad about Dorian Gray, sometimes you've just got to let it go. I usually try to follow up a stinker with something that I know I'm almost guaranteed to like, so as to get the bitter taste out of my mouth.
I read that whole sumbitch. I wonder what percentage of Christians can say that?
I lost interest when I got to the New Testament. The gospels get ridiculously repetitive and the Old Testament God is just so much more interesting than Jesus. I get a kick out of Christians having to even claim that God.
Plus reading the bible really helps with reading literature since so much of it is the same stories retold over and over, it's worthwhile to go to the source.
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I lost interest when I got to the New Testament. The gospels get ridiculously repetitive and the Old Testament God is just so much more interesting than Jesus. I get a kick out of Christians having to even claim that God.
Plus reading the bible really helps with reading literature since so much of it is the same stories retold over and over, it's worthwhile to go to the source.
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