Thursday, December 19, 2013

CHOICE SCRAPS FROM UNPUBLISHED POSTS PART II

CONFUCIUS - ANALECTS

"It espouses an approach that I would consider soft (don't just focus on money, etc)."


SWIFT - A MODEST PROPOSAL

"I had a hard time with the thought of suggesting that the children of the poor be used as a source of food and clothing and just couldn't finish it."


PUSHKIN - EUGENE ONEGIN

"rhymed verse detracts from enjoyment of the novel."


DARWIN - ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

"still even today this books contradicts itself and it doesn't answer the most simple question,if we humanscare descending from monkeys,why and when did we became conscius ?!"

"This is just crud cause do you really believe that we came from monkeys I mean seriously. What comes after monkeys? MONKEYS! And what come after humans? HUMANS!! I'm a Christian and I believe what is true. I'm not trying to force religion on you (by the way Christianity isn't a religion it's a relationship with our one, true, living Creator) but how can you believe that we came from monkeys? Sure our skeletons look alike but that doesn't mean that we came from them! And how can Darwin ever be a Christian if he said we came from monkeys? How can monkey 'all of a suddenly' turned into humans? This is just pure crud."


SHAKESPEARE - THE TEMPEST

"The Tempest is an outdated attempt of a sci-fi story. Yes it may have been a basis for many other authors and even present day movies, but his stories are so inapplicable and painful to read that I think they should just be destroyed. Hypothetically speaking, if Adolf Hitler was alive today and were to burn all of William Shakespeare’s texts, I feel as if the modern college and high school students would praise him just for this noble act. The only version of Shakespeare I will ever spend another minute on is if film producers have taken his story and somehow made it into a bad ass movie with a similar plot line."


DE BEAUVOIR - THE SECOND SEX

"feminism has certain core beliefs that are simply crazy -- yet women listen to the philosophy anyway."


JOYCE - DUBLINERS

"the fact is just plain and simply that Irish politics and what Ireland was going through in the early 2oth century just is not important"

"Nearly all the stories are boring. Our modern sensibilities have us yelling mentally at them, or rolling our eyes."


LAO TZU - TAO TE CHING

"Not very impressed. Philosophic fumblings about a mysterious power. Makes me so grateful to have the restored gospel of Jesus Christ."


ARISTOPHANES - THE BIRDS

"this title makes you think that its a field guide to birds but if you arent familiar with the aristophanes it is just nonsense"


JUNG - THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

"i think we die millions of times like we dnt wake up the same the next day evan in a moment we die an r reborn how far into non exitence is yesterday its gone like it was never ther just the ties of repocution jus the memories of our consiousness its hard 2 explain sumthing i dnt understand evan in my head and 2 express acuratly but think about time patterns and blind spots the answers right ther but im not evan sure wat the question is"

"Jung and Freud were listened to only because they managed to convince people they knew what they were talking about. Their era was so filled with ignorance and illiteracy that everyone believe them, even though most to the time they were incorrect."

"Jung was an idiot who had little understanding of the life force."


DICKENS - A TALE OF TWO CITIES

"I read A Tale of Two Cities my freshman year of high school and it drove me crazy. That following summer, I went to London on a trip and toured Westminster Abbey. Most of the tour I avoided the graves as much as possible, but once I arrived at The Poet's Corner, I spotted Dickens' grave and, well...I was jumping up and down on the grave in a post-AToTC fury. The guide was appalled until my mother explained that I had read that particular novel for class only a month prior."


MELVILLE - BILLY BUDD, SAILOR

"Melville seemed to wonder off topic a lot, writing about stuff I really didn't care about."


DANTE - THE DIVINE COMEDY

"In the dark ages it seems the whole focus was on the negative."


ORWELL - ANIMAL FARM

"Well, I really did like how the book related to World War 2, I'm a HUGE history geek when it comes to World War 2"

"Very great way to exemplify Hitler's rule"

"ANIMALS RUN A FARM 15/10 LIVES UP TO THE NAME."


TOLSTOY - ANNA KARENINA

"Six words- That Anna is one jacked-up whack-o!"

"It took every ounce of effort to get through this never-ending novel. It's difficult for me to admit that I didn't find this book captivating. After all-I'm an English major!"


GENERAL ENGLISH MAJOR BULLSHIT

"I’m definitely aware of postmodernist tenants regarding having no universal truths and the subjectivity of individual existence…"

"I'll admit it: I don't read a lot of classics. I know, 'a real reader reads the classics' and all that but I have so many books to read that it just doesn't seem like I have time for a bunch of old books."

"Using Elvis Presley and christmas songs as an example, He still makes alot of money and we never hear new christmas songs, just remakes of the old classics, because they were first. Books are the same way. Certain books remain classics because they were first and people refuse to let go and move on and create newer books, songs, and artists to replace the original."

ON THE VICTORIAN NOVEL:

"Slightly different take, from someone with 2 degrees in English.

Yes, they do suck. . .

By OUR standards. They're over-long, end with deus ex machina too much of the time, depend on astonishing coincidence and 180-degree reversal, and all sorts of other stuff we would dismiss in our entertainment today.

But they're not writing for our market. They're writing for theirs, and understanding that is what makes them interesting to study.

200 years from now, Stephen King, Thomas Harris, Jane Green, Maeve Binchy, yes even JK Rowling, will seem boring/hideous/old/dusty to everyone too. That's just how it goes."

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