Please see Styx thread on the Registered Shipmates consultation for the main discussion forums - your views are important, continues until April 4th.
Heaven: I feel I ought to like this but I DON'T
TurquoiseTastic
Kerygmania Host
I am trying yet again to read Dante's Divine Comedy, which is supposed to be an awesome classical of mediaeval literature. Problem - I don't really like it at all. Maybe it is better in Italian or whatever.
Same with Bonhoeffer. Shame on you TurquoiseTastic.
In a completely different field I believe many people enjoy watching Formula 1 racing but.... it is really difficult to understand.... why??
What other books (or other things) have other Shipmates been encouraged to believe to be the epitome of incredibleness which have then turned out to be deeply disappointing?
Same with Bonhoeffer. Shame on you TurquoiseTastic.
In a completely different field I believe many people enjoy watching Formula 1 racing but.... it is really difficult to understand.... why??
What other books (or other things) have other Shipmates been encouraged to believe to be the epitome of incredibleness which have then turned out to be deeply disappointing?
Comments
Not at all. The trailers were enough to make me not bother.
I think there was a general highbrow snickering at Forrest Gump, much of it not entirely undeserved.
I will second fineline's irritation with Austen and you can add P.G. Woodhouse to that. Yes Pride and Prejudice is one of my best friends favourites and my Dad adores PG Woodhouse. But for me, they are just meh.
Bonhoffer -I am with you there. I can read most theologians, even the Greman ones, but not Bonhoffer.
Books - In Search of Lost Things, by Proust. I have actually got remarkeably far through, but it is so tedious. I cnanot read it for pleasure.
I also hate yoghurt. However you spell it. People keep saying it's a wonder food and probiotic. Sour milk soup. Disgusting.
* Gilbert and Sullivan is fine - can't get enough of it ...
eta: don't worry, NP - I hate country music too, and nothing will persuade me otherwise.
Others I don't feel guilty about. Crime and Punishment for me was unreadable. I got about as far as page 25. And of films, The Piano. It isn't even appalling enough to be funny. Just two hours of inflated tedium.
I have no idea what people find so wonderful in the Shipping Forecast on the BBC.
The Name of the Rose
Da Vinci Code
Nostalgia. We remember hearing it as kids. We didn't understand it then either. German Bight, Storm, Rain later. Good. Never understood why Rain Later was Good.
ABBA’s dancing queen - I like a lot of ABBA, can’t stand that song.
The Hunger Games films- my kids love them, I can’t bear them.
Blasphemer! Stone the blasphemer!
More seriously, it has many of the qualities of blank verse, without the burden of content (to at least 99% of listeners). The names of the forecast areas have a romantic air to them, and the tone and attention to cadence gives the whole thing a ritual quality.
I am not sure you are supposed to like that though. It is crap. I think it might have been intended to be crap.
No - it is a great piece. Fun power ballad. A good example of what it is - which is not prog, but is enjoyable.
Another one from me - Only Fools and Horses. I have no idea why it is considered so good. I would rate it mediocre, but there are many better series.
The mainstream Austen I'm allowed not to like, but I don't see the 'satire', the offbeat genre crossing ones I at least get.
The very later Pratchett was in my opinion disappointing (which I wanted to enjoy for personal reasons).
With a few exceptions, I don't care for anything set prior to about the middle of the 20th Century. That includes sword-and-sandals, historical epics, westerns, portryals of pre-contact indigenous life, etc.
I guess you could sum it up by just saying I don't like period pieces. The exceptions would be things related to still-current social/political issues(eg. Birth Of A Nation, morally reprehensible as it is), and where I have an ongoing interest in the director(eg. Barry Lyndon 'cuz it's Kubrick).
(And yeah, I realize that both Chaplin and Life Is Beuatiful deal with dark subject matter, but insofar as they are comedic, it's of the light-hearted variety.)
I love "Proper Opera"! Wagner can drive me to heights of ecstasy. (Gilbert and Sullivan makes a nice light snack.) All of which should mean that I like Puccini, but I need to take anti-depressants to attend his operas. Better yet, maybe he should have taken some before composing. (One exception: "Nessun Dorma" -- maybe it was ghost-written by someone else.)
This! I’ve tried, I really have, but I just can’t get it down. Ditto for hummus and guacamole. They all gross me out.
And speaking of things I’ve really tried to like, or at least get through, Huckleberry Finn. I’ve never been able to make it more than 30 pages or so. I finally decided that if I’ve lived this long without reading it, I can get through the rest of my life without reading it just fine.
On the other hand, I'm a little ashamed to admit I love Gertrude Stein, somebody most readers can't stand.
@KarlLB @NOprophet_NØprofit I find the Shipping News useful, but I grew up listening to it because we were in boats or planning to be in boats; there were maps of the shipping forecast areas around, so I can picture the map and know what is being said. It's succinctly giving weather conditions in each area in turn, iirc, clockwise around the British Isles, and there is a word allowance of 350-380 words for the 31 areas. Good refers to visibility - and often goes with Rain later as those two meteorological conditions are usually related. Today's Shipping Forecast written down. The broadcast version omits the Wind Direction, Visibility and other headers, as we all know that's what being said.
If I want to know what the weather will be like around here or for planning a day out to the beach (I wish) I would listen and plan accordingly. When I lived in the southwest, some beaches were better in one wind direction rather than another, for example. Looking at today's forecast I would be planning full waterproofs to go to the beach in the southwest of the UK as there are gales forecast for later (Beaufort Force 7) and rain or thundery showers.
@Firenze I had to read Conrad for GCSE; never, ever again - Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim was enough to put me off for life.
Things I’m seen as weird for not liking are football, Eurovision Song Contest, clothes shopping, Great British Bake Off, and milk in my tea.
Forrest Gump is Too Long.™
I would be happy to introduce you to a whole island full of people who mostly dislike that book.
I feel absolutely no guilt about disliking D H Lawrence, and concur with my late father-in-law's description of him as 'The man who made sex boring'.
And 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. Watched the first twenty minutes or so of it once, and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENED. Well, OK, there were a lot of fancily choreographed fights. But it was so dull! After 20 minutes I lost the will to live and turned the DVD off (it was painfully obvious to anyone who's ever read Agatha Christie that the 'mysterious' ninja was the sweet innocent teenage girl).
I've only seen the film, but one thing I thought was interesting about it was how Newfoundland was portrayed, for better or worse, as an entity unto itself, rather than as part of Canada. It wasn't like Kevin Spacey says he's going up to live in Canada, and then Newfoundland happens to be the province he goes to; it's just "I'm going to live in Newfoundland", and there we are, almost as it it's its own country, with no connection to anything else.
But yeah, stuff like...
A: If he died at 12, he couldn't have been my grandfather.
B: You don't know Newfoundlad.
...probably wouldn't endear it much to Newfoundlanders.
It was interesting to see Gordon Pinsent doing something outside of the CanCon ghetto.
I don't know when the book is set -- but if before 1949, then Newfoundland was a totally separate entity.
Became a bit fascinated with their fascination with "the sponge."
ETA: in the US, the show is known as The Great British Baking Show. We have a decades old contest here called the Pillsbury Bake Off, so I think their may have been copyright issues.
(Maybe I shouldn't include television in this thread, since it is not something "I feel I ought to like.")
Going to Church.
I remember someone very wise on the ship (Josephine, perhaps) saying that church is supposed to be many things, but it’s not supposed to be fun. I remember that often.
Basketball. Hockey. Baseball. Drying paint is rivetting in comparison.
But boringest of the ultra boring mega borefests - American football.