Judging by the reaction around here, I’d say this was the popular opinion while my love for the book, especially its end, is the unpopular one.
I’m pretty sure Verhoven was mocking the book, the studio’s order for a big summer sci-fi blockbuster, and the audience that would think it was awesome to watch good looking model/actors blow shit up with nary a thought for why it was happening.
strutting around in the leather gestapo uniform seemed like a statement that the government were like Nazis.
It certainly was such a statement, though I never quite read it as Verhoeven saying “Heinlein is a fascist” – more him using the book to air out his own interests and preoccupations. But it’s not a reading I’ll defend with too much vigor. If the movie mocked Heinlein, and mocked him well, that would be fine with me. My main problem with Starship Troopers is that it’s never seemed to me as clever as it wanted to be, and is dragged down by certain technical flaws (including poor acting) which, whether intentional/satiric or no, are still there. I think it’s an interesting film but pales to the previous Verhoeven/Neumeier collaboration, Robocop.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being is the worst crime against humanity ever.
OK, Wikipedia says they started with an original concept and optioned the book in the middle. But parts of the plot of the movie clearly follow the precise plot of the book (though there is a lot of deviation), some of the character names match up, and so does much of the setting. So despite Verhoeven claiming he couldn’t bear to finish reading the book, the scriptwriters obviously did read it and someone decided to deviate from it in ways that seemed to be self-referentially mocking their own material.
Well, compared to the ending of Drood…
Brave New World is a better dystopian novel than 1984.
Conversely 1984 had a brilliant film of it made, BNW didn’t.
I’d been under the impression the ending of The Terror was the only unpopular thing about it. Certainly I loved it except for that.
For my part: the current wave of steamy vampire/werewolf/whatever urban fantasy romances is an unadulterated positive and there’s some really sharp writing going on in that area. (Other than Laurell K. Hamilton.)
I, too, loved Number of the Beast.
…when I was 12. They had an entire discussion in that book about bra size, if I remember. Woooohooooo. Boobies. I also liked Jack L Chalker and Piers Anthony when I was 12. I was a real fan of the Boobies.
I recently tried re-reading Anthony’s Split Infinity. I apparently was either drunk or incredibly deluded when I was younger. That sort of drivel is exactly why people shove science fiction into a corner and tell it to be quiet while the adults talk amongst themselves.
Can you name some names? I like urban fantasy
Haven’t read it yet.
C.E. Murphy. Kim Harrison. Rachel Caine. I follow a whole bunch of others, but they’re at or near the top of my personal list.
Anyone over the age of 22 who professes any fondness for Catcher in the Rye should feel ashamed of themselves.
I will happily profess it. I still think it’s a great book, although I put it slightly behind Franny & Zooey and Nine Stories. Salinger was my introduction to that whole set of mid-century modernist fiction - I read Salinger before I read Fitzgerald, Philip Roth, Updike, Vonnegut or even Hemingway - and I still think Catcher In The Rye is a great entry point for all of that.
I would add one to the list, I’m really enjoying Patricia Briggs’: Mercy Thompson novels from that genre.
Follow the hint from Malks first post and stay far away from Laurel K. Hamilton.
This is ridiculous. Edit: sorry, should only say that if it’s not in the “unpopular opinions thread” :)
Lord of the Flies has aged horribly.
Not that I would have a problem with the movie mocking the intensely shitty book, but I think you’re seeing what you want to see. As he always does, Verhoeven had his own idea of what he wanted the movie to be and freely deviated from the (after the fact) source material to accomplish that goal.
The film is exponentially superior to the book. I’ll have to watch it again with your viewpoint in mind, because if the film indeed is meant to mock the novel, that only makes me love the film more.
The novel is an ill-conceived genre and any era that enshrines it as its primary literary form is culturally impoverished.
Christie’s stories are still fun to read… once. Then you can resell the books. The crimes are terribly contrived, and unlike Arthur Conan Doyle she’s not a good enough writer for her stories to remain enjoyable once you know the solutions.
I think that real poetry has, if not meter, some sort of metrical scheme; otherwise it’s just prose broken up into funny line lengths.
That, too. Another example how art’s liberation from traditional form results in laziness and inferior quality.