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In a tale as old as time, here is a short list of classic books and other literary works that were originally attacked by critics and subsequently given bad reviews.

* A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakeaspeare - performed in London in 1662.
"The most stupid ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life."
- Samuel Pepys, Diary.


book pages
* Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift - 1726.
"..evidence of a diseased mind and a lacerated heart."
- John Dunlop, 'The History of Fiction', 1814.


* Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - 1857.
"Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer."
- Le Figaro.


* Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - 1877.
"Sentimental Rubbish"
- The Odessa Courier.


* The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1925.
"What has never been alive cannot very well go on living. So this is a book of the season only."
- New York Herald Tribune.


* Catch-22 - Joseph Heller - 1961.
"Heller wallows in his own laughter... and the sort of antic behaviour the children fall into when they know they are losing our attention."
- Whitey Balliett, New Yorker.


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US naval salute
U.S Naval salute - palm down.
Recently I was involved in a conversation where an American decided to, quite arrogantly I might add, tell an Englishwoman that the reason that the American military salute with their palms down (as if shading the eyes from the sun) is because they have never lost a war, whereas the British, who salute with their palms facing outwards, have lost in the past and therefore must salute as such.

Upon pointing out that they lost at Vietnam, the American initially tried to deny that it was actually a war, and when challenged on the issue subsequently snapped and the night turned into a smaller, but more tense version of Fawlty Towers ‘don’t mention the war.’

[ Click here to read more ]
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