The public has spoken
Last week Omni linked to Time magazine’s list for the top 100 English-language novels that have been published since Time’s first issue in 1923. Now a writer at the Morning News site has excerpted reviews of some of those titles. The source of the reviews is the Amazon.com site, and the critical responses are, to put it mildly, highly subjective. One review brands the Narnia series as nothing more than an extended advertisement for Turkish Delight, which the reviewer seems to have mistaken for the brand name of a candy and not the candy itself. Many of the reviewers object to the content of the books more than the actual writing, finding fault with Nabokov for writing about a pedophile, Toni Morrison for depicting bestiality in Beloved, and John Steinbeck for focusing too much on dirt in The Grapes of Wrath. And one reviewer may never visit the local library after a run-in with The Lord of the Flies. “I am obsessed with Survivor,” the reviewer writes, “so I thought [Flies] would be fun. WRONG!!!”
Related links:
Read the critic’s excerpts on The Morning News
