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Jenniferinfl t1_j0m1ivt wrote

It's a brilliant work of fiction.

A lot of people confuse personal preference for being a fair critique of a work. Handmaid's Tale is great- you just happened not to like it.

I enjoyed reading Twilight. It doesn't make it a brilliant work of fiction. I disliked reading Moby Dick- Moby Dick is still pretty special even if it did nothing for me. I enjoyed Anna Karenina and it also happens to be a brilliant piece of fiction.

See what I mean? A great novel can still not be within the parameters of your personal preferences- but, that has little to do with the quality of the work. You loving a work can't make it great, you disliking a work similarly has no impact.

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pfroggie t1_j0o1l0q wrote

See, I would like to learn more about what makes a book great vs what I like/dislike. This thread has been interesting, because from his description I think I would've had similar thoughts on the book, but the replies show me that it probably is quite good albeit from a perspective not everyone will understand. I don't want to be told what to like, but I want to expand my horizons and understand WHY great books are considered great.

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No-Fig-3112 t1_j0pyy9d wrote

Have you taken English classes at a collegiate level? Not all of them, but some will cover what makes great writing great. The thing is is that what makes writing great can change.

In my experience, when someone says someone writes well, it's because they are taking as very complex idea and, using a narrative, are able to communicate that idea, on purpose, to a wide audience.

I can't use HT as a reference because I haven't read it, but I have read most of The Brothers Karamazov, and that is another example of "great" literature. In that case, while the story is quite simple ("father of three brothers is murdered, and everyone wants to know who did it" is the simplest summary I can think of) the ideas communicated in it about family, Russian society (at the time), even some ideas about what it means to be a man in a general sense (or at least not a failure of one) are all wrapped up in there. Not to mention the theological arguments Dostoyevsky talks about. That is a lot for one novel, even if it is several hundred pages. Taking all those potentially disparate philosophical arguments and combining them into one narrative is what makes the book great.

As I said though, what is considered great can change. I've also read some ancient Greek and Roman stories and they don't even have the basic idea of story structure we have today so no matter how great they were for their time, they sound awful to me. Like the Odyssey. It has some cool parts, but to me it's just a disjointed mess of all the crap that happens to this dude for no particular reason. Which probably sounded a lot better when that's how stories were written, to be more like how life happens to people. Gods apparently loved picking a punching bag back then.

Point is: what is great is also subjective, but if you want to know why we consider things great that we do, collegiate level English classes are probably your best bet, especially literature and composition ones

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pfroggie t1_j0qqez8 wrote

Yeah, just the gen English requirements in college. Someday I'd love to go back and take some courses just because they interest me, I'll add this to the list

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No-Fig-3112 t1_j0r0kdz wrote

I took two, I was a history major. One was about literature and one fictional composition. Would recommend anything like that

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CurlyDee t1_j0mkdgg wrote

OMG Anna Karenina. The Russian novels. The gothic novels like Jane Eyre. Similarities make me love them both so much.

You just made me hungry to read Russian or gothic.

I’ve read:

The Brothers Karamazov

War and Peace

Crime and Punishment

Fathers and Sons (Turgenev)

Jane Eyre

Wuthering Heights

Not sure what other reads fit in this category or if Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are in a category by themselves.

Recommendations to scratch the itch this post just caused?

Ami the only one who has an itchy reading spot that can be equallly satisfied by Russian or gothic novels? What do they have in common that I love?

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Jenniferinfl t1_j0mlwbe wrote

We have a lot of crossover. I have to assume you've read Wuthering Heights right? It's been years since I read it, but I mentally group it with Jane Eyre.

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Swimming_Badger760 t1_j0mkzw3 wrote

Well said. Side note, I can think of a few books I like that I wish were made great by how much they impacted me. Mostly stuff I read as a teenager that spoke to my adolescent intensity.

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Jenniferinfl t1_j0ngxia wrote

Yup, there are a pile of horse and dog books that are so intense for me to revisit I can barely believe they are mediocre.

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StoicComeLately t1_j0pxt0u wrote

Thank you for this. A lot of people cannot make this distinction. I very much enjoyed reading Twilight also - as well as 50 Shades, Flowers in the Attic, and Beautiful Disaster. I KNOW they are not profound, nor will they be considered great pieces of literature. But they are fun to read when your brain needs a break. Smut sells for a reason. 😉

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NocturnOmega t1_j0r1c20 wrote

I can understand not liking parts of Moby Dick, it can be quite meandering, but what about the first chapters or Ismaels meeting with Quequeg? That imo was pretty top notch and a treat to read. There’s a lot of parts where the narrator bangs on about old archaic whaling terms and instrumentation, but the tedium I don’t think was apparent all throughout the book.

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Jenniferinfl t1_j0r74ue wrote

There were parts of it that were great. I can't help but feel I would have loved an abbreviated version without all the archaic whaling terms and wildly inaccurate whale facts.

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NocturnOmega t1_j0rnuhe wrote

Wildly inaccurate whale facts? Lol. They were going off what they knew at the time. I hear you though, I dnf’d it years back for those exact reasons, but I’m so glad I went back and finished it. An abridged version just wouldn’t be the same. Sometime after I finished the novel, I saw a YouTube video about a Nantucket whaling vessel and the person in the video was going over all the trinkets and what worker did what and where on the boat, and while watching I literally could call out everything the person said before they said it. It was kinda cool, I didn’t really appreciate the lil things in the novel at first, but it’s really like a snap shot of a time and place.

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