to pass the time away:

I shall ramble about two pieces of classic literature I do NOT like:

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Period. End of sentence. I don't like it. Maybe it was the circumstances around the time I was reading it (first lit class in college) or maybe it's the fact that I can tell that it has been translated from German to English and I don't like the way it sounds. NOT that I can read German fluently, but I can piece together enough and it just bugs me (oooo ironic) to knowing how the original sentence was probably written and how translating it made it...kinda crappy. I like the idea behind it, of course.

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. Again, I don't like it. I like to blame this lovely piece of literature (cough, cough CRAP) for making me fail a Southern Literature class. What? I failed. Are you sure? When CliffsNotes says to go ahead and jump in the river because there is no way you are ever going to get through it (I just might be paraphrasing here) you KNOW you've picked the worse possible book to read, ever.

Now I probably really hate this book, because I wasn't able to "get it" and therefore I felt extremely stupid. And when it comes to literature, I normally "get it" and thus, Absalom, Absalom! is my ultimate nemesis.

And since I got that off my chest,

~~J