Okay, folks, deep breath time.
We're discussing our
opinions of books, they are inherently subjective and largely matters of taste. While the opinions here haven't all been phrased in ways that make them clearly opinions, the whole thread makes it pretty clear that it was asking for opinions.
Whether something is well written or not doesn't really enter into it. I acknowledge that some of Dickens' work, for instance, is extraordinarily well written, but I really, really don't like it.
It didn't make my personal list of "worst" but only because there were other things I liked
less.
The best way to end the 'bickering' is for each person to recognize that the opinions expressed here aren't really comments on the value of a given book, but rather are comments on the poster's
view of it and to respect that each of us has a right to have their own view.
I very much agree that uniformed opinions are pretty valueless, and that those who stridently proclaim their ignorant opinions can be extremely frustrating, but let's work from the assumption that the opinions here aren't based purely on conceit. We have an astonishingly well educated and well read group of folks here -- what did that recent poll show? Something more than 40% of us either have graduate degrees or are in the process of getting them? (I ain't one of those) That's pretty impressive to me, and it also suggests that assuming that folks have based their opinion of various books on
something is more likely than not to be a reasonable move.
So anyway, now that I've banged the old "respect" drum a bit, let's go back to a discussion based on the assumption that we're not making actual value judgments of books, but rather expressing and discussing our reactions to and views of them.
