Dumbest Literature Mistakes You've Made

My biggest literature mistake?

I read Naomi Klein's No Logo.

In all seriousness, this book caused a major flareup of my OCD that I'm still recovering from two years later. And on top of that, Klein's writing style is positively painful.

I decided to read a version of Don Quixote that didn't have any footnotes. Needless to say every bit of satire and every reference to contemporary Spanish culture was lost on me which made for a very boring and confusing book.

edited 28th Jun '12 6:44:14 AM by Kostya

Following Klein's footnotes is an experience in itself. Especially the book-throwing that comes from diving down the rabbit hole to the original source and realizing it has nothing to do with her narrative.

edited 28th Jun '12 9:35:58 AM by Taifun

When I first started Jhereg, I thought that the Dragaerans were Lizard Folk because of the name and it took me a while to realize that they looked like Tolkein elves. Part of it is that they come across as somewhat morally alien, and Morrolan's Proud Warrior Race Guy mannerisms made me think of Klingons and other alien races like that.

I read Dune expecting an interesting story instead of endless political machinations.

(raises flame shield)

edited 7th Jul '12 3:04:43 PM by JimmyTMalice

Dude, political machinations make for hella interesting stories. What I wasn't expecting from Dune was the giant, blaring I Was Written In The Seventies earmarks.

It took me forever to work out that there were both animals called teckla and a house called Teckla. I went through the first half of the book thinking that teckla were some sort of talking sheep.

I used to always confuse HG Wells, George Orwell, and Orson Welles. That famous Orson Welles radio play adaptation of H.G. Wells' War Of The Worlds probably didn't help things.

edited 8th Jul '12 3:23:33 PM by MikeK

^ Story of my middle school literary life.

BREAKING NEWS: Ivanhoe is not about Idaho or potatoes.

I must be slapped.

I am not sure if finishing The Iliad was worth it. It sure did have some very colorful descriptions, but it had so much padding and took me a lot of time.

...

I know, right?

That was actually a few years ago, though. The "Breaking News" bit was for humor.

edited 10th Jul '12 1:53:15 AM by SnowyFoxes

Yeah, but...the thing about it being about a Russian potato farmer is like the oldest joke in the world. I thought it had entered the collective consciousness that Ivanhoe + potato = joke so that people came popping out the womb already equipped with that knowledge...

edited 10th Jul '12 3:00:36 AM by InverurieJones

Literature mistakes, huh? Well, I once attempted to have a serious discussion about the attributes of the characters in The Great Gatsby with people whose main interests are pornography and Gears of War.

I rarely sought out any literature of my own volition. I think in all of school, pretty much the only things I read that weren't handed to me (or read to me in class) were: the first 4 Harry Potter books (didn't like), comic strip collections, Mad magazine, Uncle Johns Bathroom Reader, Dave Barry columns, and books about Mac computers.

By the time I got out of high school, I did start reading a little more, but that basically amounted to me trying to get every Redwall book at a different bookstore, then dig up the first 4 Animorphs books at a used book store because they were cheap.

My problem is, I have such a narrow repertoire that I don't know what I would or wouldn't like. And reading just feels like such a chore to me, even if it's something good.

With regards to the comment on the first page of the thread about idolizing Tyle Durden in Fight Club...

I actually very much agree with much of Durden's philosophy, and consider myself an anarchist in the purest sense of the word. Perhaps that's a mistake, but it takes only a cursory look at today's world to realize just how fundamentally flawed the majority of assumptions made by society are, not least of which is the opinion that democracy is the ideal societal model and that it leads to anything other than the dictionary definition of a fascist state.

As far as ACTUAL mistakes go... For some time I believed that Twilight was a decent series. It wasn't until rereading it that I realized the author butchered her own story idea horrendously. So much potential in that story, tragically squandered.

edited 2nd Aug '12 7:51:28 AM by Azkayzaj

"I decided to read a version of Don Quixote that didn't have any footnotes. Needless to say every bit of satire and every reference to contemporary Spanish culture was lost on me which made for a very boring and confusing book."

Thing is, if you're trying to get the humor through footnotes, you're not really getting the humor.

Don Quixote is just not a book that needs to be read in it's entirety. It has no plot to speak of, it's mostly the same idea over and over, and a significant portion of the text consists of characters telling stories that seem to be nothing more than the contemporary writing of the time played straight.

It's one of those works whose derivative ideas are more interesting than the work itself.

x9

Agreed on The Iliad. The Odyssey is pretty good, but as I remember it most of The Iliad is just lists of warriors, and then lists of who slew whom, with very small amounts of plot. It doesn't even have any of the famous parts (e.g., the Trojan Horse),

edited 2nd Aug '12 5:31:41 PM by WarriorEowyn

I used to think I was all cool and grown up, reading Walter Farley books. Kid me was kind of stupid sometimes.

And yeah, I thought Eoin Colfer was a girl too.

We had to read Of Mice and Men for freshman English last year. So, I got away with skimming through the first chapter, but I found it wasn't a good idea to do so with the second; I got Candy and Curly's nameless wife mixed up somehow. Maybe because Candy can be a female name. Yeah. Guess who failed their quiz.

My friend Madison and I had a long discussion about how Curly's wife was never given a name. We concluded on it being her position in the story. Hell, we were sure no one, not even Curly, bothered to learn it and just referred to her as something along the lines as "Curly's bitch".

Since I was directed here...the H in Chaldean is silent...I will come up with something worse later.

On a similar note, I made awful messes in trying to pronounce "Albert Camus", "Eurydice" and "Pulitzer".

Denying myself the pleasures of the 1632 books, the Vorkosigan Saga and the Belisarius Saga. For years, after I first encountered them on a library bookshelf. Reading Pet Sematary.

Not reading Harry Potter until after the fifth book and I think at least the third film had been released.

Reading Left Behind.