[bookshare-discuss] five books I wish I'd never read.
- From: "Duane Iverson" <diverson@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2011 21:16:51 -0500
First a couple I'd like to put here I don't remember the title or author.
1, Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.
I hated that book. I hated it because I was 17 at the time and was all the way
there with Holden Colfield. Since I was already living too much of that life I
didn't need to read about it.
I forgave J. D. though when I read a short story The Catcher in the Rhine, by
Harry Turtledove collected in the Book The Chick's in the Male by Esther M.
Freezner on Baen Books.
It is a perfect send-up of that novel.
2. A science Fiction book on NLS. I don't remember the title but the plot is
that a machine civilization sees man starting for the star and comes up and
blows up the son.
every body dies. I don't mind sad endings, but I hate books that turn out badly
but at least the characters had a chance. You can always think that if. . . but
when someone comes out of space and blows up the son? well!
3. Romio and Juliette. Had to read it as a freshman in highschool. it ruened the
play for me. wish they had wated two years. Loved Shakespear except that play.
4. Cats Cradle by Curt Voniget. See 2 Above.
If you read inferno by Pournelle and Niven they say everything I ever wanted to
say about Voniget. I tryed God Bless you Mr. Rosewater and Player Piano. If you
care I'll print the passage below my signature.
Player Piano was pedestrien but stomachable.
5. The Whole Thomas Covenant Series. I didn't like Thomas and hoped he'd die,
but he didn't He starts out with a wrape and goes down hill from there.
Sincerely Yours:
Duane Iverson
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may
be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than
under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes
sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us
for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of
their own conscience."
C.S. Lewis
From Inferno.
"Allen? What is the trouble?" Benito's anxious voice was far away. "Come on,
let's get moving. This place gives me the creeps." Corbett shoved at me with his
toe.
I tried to speak. It wasn't worth the effort, but finally I heard my own voice
saying, "We're dead. Dead. It's all over. We tried to make lives for ourselves,
and we didn't make it, and we're dead. Oh, Corbett, I wish I'd died like you."
The gay sweet music mocked me. Dead. Dead. Dead.
Green light blink~d on and off in the corner of my eye. It was annoying, a
disturbance, an irritant in the thick cotton closing about me. I could see the
source without turning my head, but it was an effort to move my eyes. Why
bother? But the light winked on and off, and eventually I looked at the source,
a neon sign blinking far down at the dead end of a corridor of the dead. It
echoed my thought:
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
-off and on, endlessly, in green neon.
Unreachably far away, on another world, in another time, Allen Carpentier had
been buried like a potato in a closed coffin ceremony. The fans had come to the
funeral, some of them, and a few writers had come, and afterward they'd gone off
to have a drink and talk about new writer& Carpentier was dead, and that was all
there was to it. I could speculate forever about Big Juju's moral superiority, I
could wander forever through Hell, and so wha;?
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
Corbett's voice came dimly. "We may have to leave him. I saw this happen to a
guy, once, in the war. He's going autistic."
"I have seen it also. Many times. Would you leave him here?" I thought Benito
was shaking my shoulder.
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
-what was the blinking neon sign doing in this place?
A horrible suspicion filtered through the blankets around my brain. I pushed
Benito away and surged to my feet. I walked, wobbling, toward the blinking
light. So it goes?
At the end of the corridor was a tremendous square.
cut edifice in black marble. The epitaph beneath the
neon sign was long and wordy, couchedin words of
one syllable and short, simple sentences. A man's life
history, a list of books and awards-
Corbett and Benito stared.when I came back. Corbett said, "You look like you're
ready to kill somebody.
I jerked my thumb behind me. At first I couldn't speak, I was that angry. "Him.
Why him? A science fiction writer who lied about being a science-fiction writer
because he got more money that way. He wrote whole novels in baby talk, with
sixth-grade drawings in them, and third-grade science, and he knew better. How
does he rate a monument that size?" Benito's smile was lopsided. "You envy him
that tomb?" "If you must know, I was writing better than he ever did before I
left high schooll"
"Being dead hasn't hurt your ego," said Corbett. "Good. We thought we'd lost
you." -
"He's got vases bigger than the bottle they put me inl" "You were an agnostic.
Selfish, but not viciously so," Benito said. "If I judge rightly from the size
of his tomb, he must have founded his own religion. And possibly worshiped
himself."
"No, they were jokes, sort of. But he did found at least two, not that there
ever were any followers, or that he even intended there to be. One of them had
everyone telling comforting lies to everyone else. The other was the Church of
God the Fairly Competent. Maybe I should have gone in for something like that."
"Why didn't you?" Corbett asked.
"Because what's the point of mocking people whove found something to believe
in." I turned toward the big, gaudy edifice. "That's the point."
Benito shook his head wonderingly. "I question your sanity. He is in there. You
are out here, free to escape."
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