{"id":2960,"date":"2016-01-16T12:01:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T12:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/?p=2960"},"modified":"2016-01-16T02:48:44","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T02:48:44","slug":"10-least-favorite-books-from-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/2016\/01\/16\/10-least-favorite-books-from-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Least Favorite Books from 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I supposed I should accompany my list of favorite books from 2015 with a list of my least favorite books from 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n<ol class=\"ol1\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>A Room with a View<\/em>, E. M. Forster<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Granted I read this book in a hair salon as I was waiting for my mother,\u00a0I\u00a0forgot what this book was about after I\u00a0finished it.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>The Fall<\/em>, Albert Camus<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">I just couldn\u2019t get into this one. More difficult than <em>The Stranger<\/em>, <em>The Fall<\/em> doesn&#8217;t posses the same narrative heft that <em>The Stranger<\/em> does, making it philosophically denser and unmitigated.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>Notes from Underground<\/em>, Fyodor Dostoyevsky<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Another philosophical novel that eludes me. I wanted to get into Dostoyevsky, so I started with this \u201cshort\u201d 130-page book. It was the longest 130 pages I\u2019ve read. I\u2019ll read this one, and Camus\u2019s <em>The Fall<\/em>, again when I have a more sophisticated mind and\/or a better taste for existentialism.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>Paterson<\/em>, William Carlos Williams<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">My experience reading <em>Paterson<\/em> reminded me of my first experience reading &#8220;The Waste Land&#8221;: basically, wondering, \u201cWhat is going on?\u201d (Grateful for teachers.)\u00a0There were some sections of this book-length poem that I liked, though my inability to appreciate the whole\u00a0made it hard for me to like the poem overall.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>The Sound of Waves<\/em>, Yukio Mishima<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">I (provisionally) blame this one on the translation. The plot drew me, but the patchiness of the prose (translation) prevented\u00a0me from enjoying the story. I read <em>The Sound of Waves<\/em> as an introduction to Mishima\u2019s work with the intention of then moving to his masterwork, <em>The Sea of Fertility<\/em> tetralogy. I haven\u2019t given up on Mishima, though my experience reading <em>The Sound of Waves<\/em> has lowered Mishima on my list of books to read.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>Monsieur Pain<\/em>, Roberto Bola\u00f1o<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">I discovered Roberto Bola\u00f1o during my sophomore year, and read a string of great books written by him (<em>Amulet<\/em>, <em>By Night in Chile<\/em>, <em>Distant Star<\/em>, <em>Last Evenings on Earth<\/em>, <em>The Savage Detectives<\/em>, <em>A Little Lumpen Novelita<\/em>, <em>2666<\/em>), so when I read <em>Monsieur Pain<\/em> I was disappointed. I never felt a sense of the narrative or of the characters while reading the novel. Admittedly, <em>Monsieur Pain<\/em> is not one of Bola\u00f1o\u2019s popular books.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>The Woman in the Dunes<\/em>, Kobo Abe<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Maybe it is a translation issue with these Japanese works, because I had the same issue reading <em>The Woman in the Dunes<\/em> that I had reading <em>The Sound of Waves<\/em>. The plot is intriguing: a man is held captive in a house at the bottom of a sand dune and spends his days shoveling sand. However, despite the promise of its premise, I couldn\u2019t get into the story, which is written in an artificially translated prose.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>The Sea<\/em>, John Banville<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">I had high expectations for this novel, given the stature of its author and the fact that it won the Man Booker Prize. That said, I did not\u00a0dislike the novel, though I didn\u2019t care much for it. My lukewarm response to the book was drawn out because of the hype it got and because I spent $15 on it.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>My Happy Life<\/em>, Lydia Millet<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">An underwhelming book in my estimation. Not altogether bad, but what could otherwise have been a compelling story is undermined by language that\u2019s mild at best.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>All the Light We Cannot See<\/em>, Anthony Doerr<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Yes, it won the Pulitzer Prize, but there\u2019s something about a writer who writes, \u201cShe wakes to Madame Manec\u2026 climbing to <i>the third floor the fourth the fifth<\/i>\u201d (instead of writing \u201cclimbing to the fifth floor\u201d or \u201cclimbing the stairs&#8221;) and repeats this technique every fifty pages that irks me. I know Marie-Laure is blind, but this over-repetition becomes tiresome quickly.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I supposed I should accompany my list of favorite books from 2015 with a list of my least favorite books from 2015. A Room with a View, E. M. Forster Granted I read this book in a hair salon as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/2016\/01\/16\/10-least-favorite-books-from-2015\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":318,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[540,118,117],"class_list":["post-2960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-10-least-favorite-books-from-2015","tag-chun","tag-cody"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/318"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2961,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2960\/revisions\/2961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}