I was reading some discussions online about recommendations for vampire novels and a bunch of people recommended GRRM's Fevre Dream. I'd never heard of it so I read the description and it sounds... pretty bland? It's about a riverboat captain on the Mississippi River in the 1850s who gets hired by an aristocratic vampire. While I'm sure the description is avoiding spoilers, that all sounds very boring to me. Yet the amazon page proclaims it "A THRILLING REINVENTION OF THE VAMPIRE NOVEL" so I must be missing something.
I'm guessing this is one of those dramatic period pieces with thought-provoking conversations between well-defined characters. And maybe I'm just a simple-minded idiot who prefers action movies like Underworld, Blade, and Van Helsing and this novel simply isn't for me. That's fair. Or maybe that description is leaving out too much and it's actually an action-packed thrill-ride. I have no idea.
So If you've read Fevre Dream before, what's the appeal? What's so great about this novel? It seems highly regarded but that doesn't mean it's for me. I'm sure there are other people here who might enjoy it though, so definitely check it out if you're curious. Obviously the novel does something right, I just don't know what that is.
I genuinely can't tell if this is parody.
Yes, everyone who disagrees with you is actually trolling there is no possible world where people can dislike a book author with controversial writing style. /s
I dunno what to tell you man, if you think Tolstoy is a bad writer maybe you need to reassess your standards.
Sincerely I believe his novels to be torturous and think of him as graphomaniac, there is weird cult around classic authors, like they were some kind of unbelievable geniuses. They weren't. Some were good, most were bad, same as today. Their popularity is due to being either part of the nobility and/or being one of the few authors at the time.
Yeah, it's fair to say you don't like Tolstoy. Every generation re-evaluates who they think of as geniuses and what the classics are. Every individual is free to say whether they agree with that or not. Personally I was forced to read Anna Karenina for school and I was kind of bored. Then I read War and Peace for fun and thought it was great, one of the best books I ever read.
But it's undeniable that Tolstoy was very influential both within Russia and in the general European intellectual community. Possibly you're right that this is because he was nobility and one of the few authors at that time. But having at least a familiarity with Tolstoy's writing is important for understanding European classical literature in general.
Like I've said multiple times now, it's fine if you prefer simpler writing but to completely dismiss writers like Tolstoy just because you're bored by them is just the height of ignorance.
It's you, not me, just accept that they aren't universally great. Again, your hubris is staggering, they aren't complex literature, they just old.
I'm curious what you consider to be great literature.