Quote:
Originally Posted by Bluestar
I'm only responsible for my taste, not taste in general! I did absolutely love the kite runner. It was an amazing book, what about it didn't you like?
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Of course, I seem to remember you saying you like Jane Austen...
I took a course in British literature in college. I could never quite get into the novels. All those classic British authors have such a bad habit of trying to dazzle us with language, they'll take ten pages to write down two sentences. So those books never seem to go anywhere. I was told to read Mansfield Park in college and my professor said "Everyone should have a chance to struggle through a book like Mansfield Park!" So I got Mansfield Park and I struggled. And I struggled, and struggled, and struggled. Right up to page 30. After that I said "**** Jane Austen," threw the book aside and vowed to never try to read her work again.
I prefer American classic literature. Those authors really know how to tell stories. Even when I run into an American classic that I don't enjoy, I can at least hack my way through it. I swore off Ernest Hemingway in that same manner I did Jane Austen after reading The Sun Also Rises, probably the worst book I've ever read. But Hemingway used a deceptively simple writing style, so I was at least able to finish the book before throwing it into the fire.
Of course, in poetry it's the reverse. The British ligual style makes for some incredibly, beautiful, poetic-sounding passages. The American style just sounds like a bunch of people whining about how much life sucks. It's like we purposely lowered the standards of good poetry just so we could have good poets.
As for The Kite Runner, I hated how it became a string of tragedies. I wrote a whole review of it. Wanna see?