I don't think anyone should take this poll too seriously since some all time classic,which are anything but boring, are included in the poll - Hearts of Darkness at no 19 and The Grapes of Wrath at no 23. And The Lord of the Rings trilogy also features even further down the list.
Ahh well, no accounting for taste I suppose.
6 comments:
Honestly, Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series wound up turning me off to SciFi/Fantasy for about 15 years.
I've seen a few of his volumes in the discount stores for about $5.
I would have to say that the problem with these so called "boring" books is with the reader and not with the author at all. Most are not boring and deserve the classic designation.
I must say I agree with Walker, but I did try and read Twilight to see what all the fuss was about and I found it both terrible and boring. But then in fairness I'm not a part of the demographic the books are aimed at.
Agree, usually the readers are at fault. Maybe they can't cope with long books. Les Miserables is excellent (if you skip some of the technical stuff about sewers etc), while Middlemarch is a superb realisation of a time and place - as is Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. War and Peace is long, too - oh, shame on Tolstoy! It contained humour, which surprised me.
Moby Dick, 20,000 Leagues, and Robinson Crusoe don't deserve to be there, either, because they enlighten the reader while embarking on adventure and facing immense problems...
As for The Yearling, it's memorable and moving and certainly not boring. Conrad's books are never boring, either; he dwells in the psyche with cunning, which maybe some modern readers miss?
These lists never prove anything except to show how much smarter, more sophisticated, more hip, and certainly handsomer we are than those who created the lists. (But we knew that already.)
That's a new word on me - demographic.
I only ask as being someone who quite likes the 'Twilight' saga and the 'True Blood' stories does one have to be drawing one's pension in order to be a demographic?
I was always under the impression that books were written to be read and that the target audience was 'everyman' (which includes women and children to be pc).
'Boring' books come down to a reader's perception. And most lists are made up by people who do not read books - skim read, maybe - but not those who read. There is a differance. And then there are lists compiled by people who need to get a life.
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