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Mar. 18th, 2010 12:22 pmYou know, by now I should pretty much take it as a given that when I bear an irrational dislike for a book, the rest of the class will enjoy it greatly and the professor will think I am a little crazy. *dramatic sigh*
Although seriously, if anyone thinks Bannockburn: The Triumph of Robert the Bruce was novelistic, they have been reading the wrong novels, and I will have book recommendations after class. I'm actually pretty surprised there was such a general concensus that the book was novelistic, because...no, it wasn't. Sure, David Cornell talked a lot about how the battlefield looked afterwards, and how tired and sore the English soldiers must have been after sleeping in their armor, and how cold the waters of the Bannock Burn must have been, but that hardly makes a book novelistic. Also, seriously, for the love of God, stop talking about how Robert Bruce "would have thought" or King Edward "must have felt" or how the soldiers "might have considered", because that's just annoying. And that does not make a book novelistic either. Nonfiction doesn't have to be novelistic to be good, or even readable! Do you know how many bad novels there are? Yearning for a book to be novelistic does not make it good, and in many cases, can just make it (a) bad or (b) annoying.
I've been thinking about this, about my reaction to this book, and -- it's not the book is bad, because it's not. It has several actual flaws (MAPS PRAISE ATHENA), but by the end it -- didn't leave me cold, but it left me wondering why I had just wasted several days of my life reading the book, when Cornell's general conclusion was that the battle was utterly pointless and had accomplished a grand total of nothing. At that point I was just left going, "Why the hell did I read this book to figure that out? Why the hell did you write this book?" Because that's what it came down to -- maybe it was just his writing style -- but I got the distinct impression that Cornell just didn't give a damn about anything he was writing about. It read like -- a paper, that someone does for a class, but not an actual topic that he was passionate about. The other book that we read for class, King John, was something that you could actuall tell W.L. Warren was excited about. Cornell -- it just read like he was intellectually interested in the subject, but he didn't actual care, he wasn't excited about it. And it could have been really interesting -- engaging, even. And it wasn't hard to read, wasn't boring, but the book just lacked that spark that would have made me excited about the subject, and now I just kind of want to avoid Scotland and England fighting for the next century or so (which is evidently going to be a little hard to do, because next up is the Hundred Years War).
Also, the other thing he did? Left out the juicy little bits that will grab a reader's attention. History's full of them, but did we get any of them? No. Thus adding to the "he didn't really care" feeling I got off the book.
Although seriously, if anyone thinks Bannockburn: The Triumph of Robert the Bruce was novelistic, they have been reading the wrong novels, and I will have book recommendations after class. I'm actually pretty surprised there was such a general concensus that the book was novelistic, because...no, it wasn't. Sure, David Cornell talked a lot about how the battlefield looked afterwards, and how tired and sore the English soldiers must have been after sleeping in their armor, and how cold the waters of the Bannock Burn must have been, but that hardly makes a book novelistic. Also, seriously, for the love of God, stop talking about how Robert Bruce "would have thought" or King Edward "must have felt" or how the soldiers "might have considered", because that's just annoying. And that does not make a book novelistic either. Nonfiction doesn't have to be novelistic to be good, or even readable! Do you know how many bad novels there are? Yearning for a book to be novelistic does not make it good, and in many cases, can just make it (a) bad or (b) annoying.
I've been thinking about this, about my reaction to this book, and -- it's not the book is bad, because it's not. It has several actual flaws (MAPS PRAISE ATHENA), but by the end it -- didn't leave me cold, but it left me wondering why I had just wasted several days of my life reading the book, when Cornell's general conclusion was that the battle was utterly pointless and had accomplished a grand total of nothing. At that point I was just left going, "Why the hell did I read this book to figure that out? Why the hell did you write this book?" Because that's what it came down to -- maybe it was just his writing style -- but I got the distinct impression that Cornell just didn't give a damn about anything he was writing about. It read like -- a paper, that someone does for a class, but not an actual topic that he was passionate about. The other book that we read for class, King John, was something that you could actuall tell W.L. Warren was excited about. Cornell -- it just read like he was intellectually interested in the subject, but he didn't actual care, he wasn't excited about it. And it could have been really interesting -- engaging, even. And it wasn't hard to read, wasn't boring, but the book just lacked that spark that would have made me excited about the subject, and now I just kind of want to avoid Scotland and England fighting for the next century or so (which is evidently going to be a little hard to do, because next up is the Hundred Years War).
Also, the other thing he did? Left out the juicy little bits that will grab a reader's attention. History's full of them, but did we get any of them? No. Thus adding to the "he didn't really care" feeling I got off the book.