Huckleberries Online

Zelda Krup: Just Say ‘No’ To ‘Lord Jim’

May 2, 2009 12:05 a.m. • 15 comments

Zelda Krup: It’s still hard for me to believe that books such as “Catch-22” and “Rabbit Is Rich” were on the bestseller lists compared to the crud that populates the it today. Maybe the tipping point was “Valley of the Dolls” (yeah, I read it in high school). Naughty. Everybody has a lit. survey book that knocked them unconscious. “Lord Jim” was pure Seconal for me. But one or two bad experiences shouldn’t make you abandon yourself to pulp fiction.

Question: The required-reading classic that was sleep-inducing for me during my high school days was George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.” I gave it a second chance as an adult — and was still bored to death of it. What required-reading school days classic was seconal for you?

15 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

Fork on May 02 at 4:08 a.m.
C.S Lewis was “seconal” for me, lol.
Narnia got me reading because Lewis made it fun, “Mere Christianity” taught me a lot about spirituality and “A Grief Observed” helped me deal during a hard time in my life.
I think it was my dad, though, who told me to look up words like “seconal” if I didn’t know them and I love him for that. And other things. :). Good man.
trishgannon on May 02 at 6:42 a.m.
Aw, DFO… I read Silas Marner when I was 9 and liked it. Haven’t read it since, though, and I’m a bit more critical now… I read Heidi a few years back. I thought the book was magical, but as an adult, I didn’t think it was particularly well-written.

Amy took an online AP English class this year and the books they were assigned were horrid yawners. The Best American Essays edited by Joyce Carol Oates - there were only a handful that I thought should have been included. Bill Bryson, Made in America - my god, why did the teacher choose that one when she could have chosen A Walk in the Woods? Stephen Jay Gould’s Dinosaur in a Haystack when almost anything else he wrote would have been a better choice. I bought ‘em, read ‘em all, turned ‘em over to Amy and told her - when you finish these and decide you never want to read anything ever again, let me give you a couple of GOOD books.
Cindy_H on May 02 at 9:32 a.m.
This thread prompted a great discussion with my three teenage boys. Without question they all hated Johnny Tremain and loved The Red Badge of Courage.
The two older boys enjoyed Of Mice and Men and Lord of the Flies. One son had pronounced Whirligig the worst book ever. And my oldest son surprisingly adored the Scarlet Letter but HATED the Diary of Anne Frank.
So interesting.

My seconal was definitely Moby Dick. Gag. Also, I felt reading Canterbury Tales was cruel and unusual punishment.
Cindy_H on May 02 at 9:33 a.m.
BTW: I think some kind of award is in order here. I had a discussion about literature with three teenagers at 9:15 on a Saturday morning!
No one even grunted at me!
marmitetoasty on May 02 at 10:09 a.m.
Your teenagers are out of bed at 9.15 on a weekend? lol

x
Cindy_H on May 02 at 11:06 a.m.
Even scarier, one has already mowed the front lawn and the other has vaccuumed the living room, and yet another brought me coffee!
I suspect they think it’s Mother’s Day weekend. LOL!
Shhhh…let’s not tell :-)
Phaedrus on May 02 at 8:11 p.m.
Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Escapee on May 02 at 10:11 p.m.
Definitely “A Tale Of Two Cities”. I’d swear at least one of those cities was Dullsville, man…

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D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.