Quote Originally Posted by TurkSlayer View Post
How has Steinbeck not been mentioned yet? I've read four of his books (The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden), and only of Mice and Men did I like at all, and the width (107 pages) added to its merit.
I've only read Of Mice and Men and The Pearl, with Grapes of Wrath sitting on my bookcase desperately needing my attention. However, I've been told that The Pearl isn't his best work and I didn't enjoy it myself. Of Mice and Men is fantastic though.

Heart of Darkness I found a tad disappointing, but I really enjoyed The Secret Agent by Conrad. I read The Catcher in the Rye when I was 16 and even then I thought it was grossly overrated.

There seems to be an awful lot of Dickens hate a-goin' on here but - and please don't lynch me for saying this - I rather liked Great Expectations.

I rather enjoyed The Metamorphosis by Kafka and thought it was a really clever piece. I have it in a collection of other stories by him but have never really gotten around to dipping into any others. I did the Metamorphosis in conjunction with Camus' The Outsider, which I preferred. Camus I did pursue a bit further, reading The Plague.

I'm going to reserve judgement about the Lord of the Rings at the moment. I read The Hobbit when I was about 13 and loved it. I worked my way through Fellowship of the Ring and ended up not finishing The Two Towers. It's always been something that I've promised myself I'd go back to though. I think I might enjoy it now that I'm a bit older. As for Wheel of Time, good God I ploughed through with that series up until The Path of Daggers before I gave up. I really enjoyed the first five books, to be honest, but I appear to have ran out of stamina when I reached book eight. I ended up just finding the Forsaken to be the more interesting characters and just wanted more screentime for them. Again, I was about 15/16 when I stopped with WoT. Unlike LotR, however, I don't really feel I'll ever go back to it.

I never really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice. I don't think it was really my kind of book which is why I didn't like it. I appreciated that it was well-written and the plot was good, but it wasn't exactly to my tastes. Though I like to think that Austen included Mr Bennett purely so I'd get something out of it.