Originally Posted by Daithi

I don't care for a lot of classic literature -- old or modern. Much of the older classic literature is written in a style of English I don't care to read. I really have no desire to struggle with Elizabethan English in order to decipher a story by Shakespreare. The same applies older classic authors such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. I just like my sentences short, and older authors had a tendency to ramble on with sentences of a hundred words or more. I find this style of writing to be a constant struggle that gets in the way of the story. I really enjoy these author's stories, but I'd rather see them in film than read them in a book. For example, I loved watching Kiera Knightly in Pride and Prejudice but I had to force myself to finish the book.

I don't care for a lot of the more modern classics either. Stream of consciousness, long windy and flowery sentences full of metaphors and similes, experimental techniques where time doesn't flow from the past to present -- just give me a good story in which I can lose myself. Therefore, I'm not a big fan of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.

I enjoy Hemingway and Steinbeck. Simple sentences that don't get in the way of the story. Then again, when it comes to other forms of art, such as painting, I prefer illustrators like Norman Rockwell and Jack Rackham over modern artists such as Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol. I'm just simple minded I guess.