Love them / Hate them...

Just perusing my copy of 1,001 in which I put stickers next to all the ones I have read... stars and black spots. I have to really loathe a book to black spot it - or really love it to gold star it.

I was just wondering which books were coming up 'Gold Stars' and which ones 'Black spots'. I've read quite a few middling-to-fair books lately so I'm thinking of hitting some highs and lows for variety!

So what do you love? And hate?

My five-star books in 1001 list:
Pride and Prejudice
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
Invisible Cities
Foucault's Pendulum
The Remains of the Day
The Manila Rope
Everything That Rises Must Converge
Miss Lonelyhearts

and Watchmen even if I haven't rated it.

One star:
Mansfield Park
As I Lay Dying
Interview With the Vampire
And couple of books I dropped because I just couldn't stand them:
Remembrance of Things Past
The Devil and Miss Prym

Tastes may vary of course and all the usual disclaimers...

Cider With Rosie, Princess of Cleves, and Rasselas are about the most boring things I ever done did read ever. If I could give negative stars, or make a list of 1,001 Books to Avoid if You Want to Live, they would be on it. I feel like they sucked out my will to live. That's real.

However, my top choices would be:

War and Peace
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Remains of the Day
Persuasion
Mrs. Dalloway
Jane Eyre and
Bleak House

Tastes do indeed differ--Mansfield Park was a 4.5 star read for me.

Here are my 5 stars:

Robber Bride
The Hours
Like Water for Chocolate
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
the Garden Party
If This is a Man
Atonement
Confederacy of Dunces
Return of the Soldier
To the Lighthouse

Although when I look at my 4.5 and 4 star books, I see that some of those are equally as good as these.

One star books:

the Castle of Otranto
Thirty-nine Steps
Burger's Daughter
Parade's End
the Little Prince
Catcher in the Rye

Two disappointments so far:
Kristin Lavransdatter - I somehow made it through the first book, but then realized I couldn't take twice as much again.
Delta of Venus - made it through it, but it felt rather pointless.

Books I loved:
Emma
Ficciones
I, Robot
Mansfield Park (tastes certainly differ)
War with the Newts

I just can't stand either Fanny or Edmund, which ruins Mansfield Park for me...Persuasion and Emma are both great though.
Delta of Venus is underwhelming, I agree. Otherwise haven't read that much books mentioned in this thread, still plenty to do...

Hate 'em:
The Sea
Oscar and Lucinda
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
1984

Love 'em:
The Poisonwood Bible
The Things They Carried
Like Water for Chocolate
The House of The Spirits
The Book of Daniel
Catch 22
To Kill a Mockingbird
Rebecca
Gone With the Wind
All Quiet on the Western Front
Little Women
all of Jane Austen

Have you read a book off the list that is hardly ever mentioned/discussed but is absolutely brilliant? I feel that way about The Book of Daniel and I wonder if there are any other gems that I don't know about.

I'm pretty stingy with both 5's and 1's so I'm not sure they quite meet the criteria, but here are my picks.

loved:
Catch-22
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Ficciones
American Psycho (a difficult read, but spot on satire)
Alice in Wonderland

underwhelming:
The Shining
Treasure Island
Ethan Frome
Gulliver's Travels

loved:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Gone With the Wind
Like Water for Chocolate
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Anna Karenina
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
and many others..

rather disliked:
The Turn of the Screw
Austerlitz
Northanger Abbey
Youth

I haven't disliked too many, I tend to like books rather than loathe them, from this list at least. I only read books I might be interested in at the time of reading them, which tends to have positive outcomes.

Trinah, I hear you. When I sorted my 1001 books by rating, I was surprised at how many I gave 4, 4.5 or 5 stars. Even the 2 and 3 star books had something. I have no plans to read even half the list, but of the ones that interest me, it's mostly been a very good reading adventure. That's why I like the list.

Yes, I think as a whole the list is really quite good. Of course there's going to be a few we disagree on, and everyone's going to be different, but I'd say it's definitely likely that we'll find more that we enjoy rather than more we detest.

#10+11 I totally agree - I have been really pleasantly surprised in general. A lot of the books that I wouldn't normally have touched I've really enjoyed. Of course there are these ones;

Negative starred books...
On the Road
Tristram Shandy
Water Babies
Gormenghast
Catcher in the Rye

Oh and Tarka the Otter. Yuk.

Looks like I must pick up Ficciones again though - I have this out of the library at the moment and have only read the first three pages. Not sure about it...

My five stars - actually I have an awful lot of five stars. Just wondering if any are hardly ever mentioned ones as kiwiflowa noted.

Been away, filtered my excel list by star points (yes, I'm that much of a geek) and come up with these unusual(ish) ones that I have read and loved - or at least they are more rarely mentioned anyway;
The Monk
The Diaries of Jane Somers - my best surprise love on the list so far
The Crow Road
The Sound and the Fury

None are that unusual but all are (to me) brilliant.

I haven't read a whole lot of the 1001 books, but some of the books that I think deserve a high rating and a place in the 1001 list (and haven't been mentioned above) are...

The Handmaid's Tale
The Jungle
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Life of Pi
The Hobbit
The Master and Margarita
The God of Small Things

I have been REALLY disappointed by...
Anna Karinina - sorry, but in my humble opionion it was an epic soap opera
Tale of a Tub
Ovid's Metamorphoses
The Pilgrim's Progress - probably my own fault I didn't like this because from the title I was expecting something about Mayflower Pilgrims

#13 - The Pilgrim's Progress - probably my own fault I didn't like this because from the title I was expecting something about Mayflower Pilgrims

Well, you may have gone into Pilgrim's Progress with a mistaken idea of what it was about, but I don't think that makes it your fault that you didn't like it. I had to read and study excerpts for an English class and it made me want to stick sharp pencils in my eye. I think there are some old classics that really should be left to molder away in some obscure collection.

The problem with those old classics is that the influence the new works so much, you almost have to read them to get an idea of what more recent authors are talking about. Although, I'm of the mind you should just come up with your own ideas. But that's just me. And a lot of other people.

I loved most of the old classics that I studied at university, from the plays of the Ancient Greeks, through Beowulf and Chaucer and into the Enlightenment. But Pilgrim's Progress was pure torture. I'm just thankful we only read excerpts.

Pilgrims Progress has all the overbearing sermonizing and shoddy metaphor of the worst of morality plays if I remember correctly. Religious censorship is a terrible thing.

How could I forget the horrible Bonjour Tristesse?

Well, I'd be quite glad if I could. The language was so flowery as to make me gasp for air. Plot wasn't much better. Only positive thing was that it was so short.

I didn't mind Bonjour Tristesse - found it kind of middling.

#13 Tale of a Tub - nooo... I have this one from Daily Lit. every instalment sitting there waiting to be read. And I can't bring myself to do it! I've read the first section and it's just sooo appalling!

Oh and Handmaid's Tale and The God of Small Things are both definite 5 star reads for me.

I have the Master and Margarita at home too - must have a look.

#19 wait until you get to the chapter in Tale of a Tub about digressions praising digressions...I just kept thinking - what the what?!

...and I rather enjoyed Bonjour Tristesse. I am sort of curious about Pilgrim's Progress, generally I am fascinated by allegory and morality plays can be pretty interesting too, especially if I don't agree with them :) But so far haven't picked it up (I was leafing through one edition but it came up with extensive footnotes written in Watchtower style which was pretty horrible...if I am reading an allegory I don't want it to be constantly written open in "SEE THIS? SEE THIS?" manner)

#19- tale of a tub is pretty bizarre. I'm about halfway through on dailylit and allso having massive trouble. I don't think it really counts as a book. I'll finish it, in that I'm going to read all the words, but I don't understand it at all.

Wow, #7 (Kiwi), how could you possibly hate The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a really brilliant book, and also Oscar and Lucinda which I am reading now (but I have read quite a few other novels by Peter Carey so I'm not anticipating grave disappointment)? Tastes really do differ! I like some of the books you love, that's why I can't figure out your Muriel Spark aversion. Is it the style of writing? She has a very distinctive voice, as in fact does Peter Carey.
Now I'm thinking that I ought to read The Sea just to see if the pattern holds...

I think it would be boring if we all liked and hated the same books. Our differences are what makes these discussion so fun. Personally, I'm on the lukewarm side of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, although based on all the rave reviews, I think it might just have been my mood at the time. I was recently delighted to read and love Ethan Frome, which has been ripped apart by many LTers.

#23 anna

It's not a Muriel Spark aversion or any particular author... I would have to read more of their books first to claim that! However after the horror of The Sea I am reluctant to try reading another of John Banville's books. There are also other books on the list that I really liked but not loved so of course I haven't listed them on this thread. I also haven't listed the many other books I love but aren't on the 1001 list. So I don't think any conclusion of my reading tastes can be drawn. I agree with Nickelini that it's often about mood. I read Alice in Wonderland for the first time during a stressful time at work and it coloured how I felt about the book (very frustrated!!).

This is what part of my review of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the time I read it:

At first Jean Brodie seemed to be eccentric and silly but by the end of the book I had to ask, who was the adult here? It had the qualities of British women's writing pre WW2 (such as Nancy Mitford and Daphne Du Maurier) but didn't live up to them. I didn't appreciate the book very much and wouldn't recommend as a good read to others. However I felt that way about The Scarlet Letter and I still remember and think about Hester Prynne and odd aspects of that novel at odd moments two years on - maybe this will be the same? Appreciated over time?

My Review of The Sea:

What was good about this book is that it was only 300ish pages and the book had wide margins and double spaced lines so it was a really quick book to read. Which is good because there is no way I would have finished it otherwise. In the end I was just reading to see if anything HAPPENED. (It did in the last 30 - 20 pages and wasn't believable.) I think the draw card for this kind of book is the introspective brutal truth: getting to know yourself because despite growing up, marriage, parenthood and death of your spouse you still don't know who are, you still aren't honest with yourself. I think it's a crap genre myself. It reminded me of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan but was much much worse - at least I could see what McEwan was trying to do even though I didn't appreciate the book. I read a review of The Sea on LT by a fellow member which made me laugh: 'Is it possible just to be whelmed?' (ala 10 Things I Hate about You).

Oscar and Lucinda is a bit more problematic to discuss as I read it years ago in first year of uni when I was 18. It was not prescribed reading for a course. I remember the story being a bit icky, weird, odd and I didn't care in the slightest about the chracaters. I came to resent the book and I think it was probably one of the first books I ever decided to simply not finish. I had read The True History of the Kelly Gang when I was younger (15/16 possibly) and I finished and liked that so I don't think it's the author.

I'm another who is tepid about Miss Jean Brodie. I just thought it was all a bit blah.

Oh but Scarlet Letter - I missed that off my loathe it list above... yuk yuk yuk.

#22 I think I'll be the same. The words will get read becuase I refuse to quit, but it's not going to be pleasant!

But I on the other hand enjoyed Miss Jean Brodie a lot, the characters were interesting and I loved the writing style. And I will be reading more Muriel Spark in the future...