# Reading > General Literature >  The Worst Classics You Have Ever Read

## Adolescent09

Have you found any classics that were simply unappealing yet according to to the general public considered some of the most outstanding literary works ever? List classics you have read that have disinterested you and made you slog through several pages of pure banality.

Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:

1. Catch-22
2. The Catcher in the Rye
3. A Streetcar Named Desire 
4. slow, superfluous chapters in the middle of Moby Dick (although I love the beginning and ending)

If this topic becomes semi-successful it might even be good to state reasons why you found certain classics unappealing (without getting too controversial or starting rants). 

Good day, people  :Smile:

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## Aunty-lion

Ooooh. What a great idea for a thread! Well done Adol!

I must admit that I loved Catch 22. My mother always hated it until my father read it aloud to her. She thinks that it needs to be read in a certain voice, or, a in an assortment of different voices. But it sounds like her problem with the book was more to do with not really getting all the jokes or the tone of the book in general. It sounds like you have a different issue. Is it poorly constructed in your opinion, or just not your cup of tea??

A lot of my friends recommended Vanity Fair to me, but I gave up after the first 60 pages or so because all the characters just seemed so vacant and uninteresting. I suppose that's probably the point. Does anyone have an opinion about this?? Does it get better? Should I try again?

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## malwethien

> Have you found any classics that were simply unappealing, writtten poorly and devoid of a plot with any concievable substance, yet according to to the general public considered some of the most outstanding literary works ever? List classics you have read that have disinterested you and made you slog through several pages of pure banality.
> 
> Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:
> 
> 1. Catch-22
> 2. The Catcher in the Rye


Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye...are you serious?? These are 2 of my faovirte books! I think these 'devoid of plot with any concievable substance' is a bit harsh  :Biggrin:  Of course that is your opinion...but I'd like to know why you think so...

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## cuppajoe_9

_Middlemarch_, although my claim to have read it is questionable.

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## Adolescent09

Hello Aunty-lion and thank you for replying to this topic with warm appreciation. I find it interesting that you say your mother found interest in Catch-22 after it was read to her.. I have experienced certain books boring when read softly but far more interesting when read aloud but as for Joseph Heller's Catch-22 I believe believe my main grudge against it is the in the way he seems to convolude paragraphs with details upon details which seems to be arbitrarily sloshed together... Take this paragraph for example:




> Being born with a sickly resemblance to Hnery Fonda was the first of a long series of practical jokes of which destiny was to make Major Major the unhappy victim throughout his joyless life. Being born Major Major Major was the second. The fact that he had been born Major Major Major was a secret known only to his father. Not until Major Major was enrolling in kindergarten was the discovery of his real name made, and then the effects were disastrous. The news killed his mother, who just lost her will to live and wasted away and died, which was just fine with his father, who had decided to marry the bad-tempered girl at A & P if he had to and who had not been optimistic about his chances of getting his wife off the land without paying her some money or flogging her.


...Now I'm not claiming that this paragraph isn't amusing but can it seriously be called brilliant? I respect your opinion on the book and everyone else who is a die-hard fan of it and Joseph Heller's other works but I am baffled that a few people have claimed it is "the greatest classic of all time" while others have compared its humor to certain Shakespear plays. 

----

I'm sorry I can't give you an opinion on Vanity Fair because I haven't read it myself. I'll try to get to William Thackeray after I overcome this mound of Joyce/Dostoevsky.

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## Adolescent09

> Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye...are you serious?? These are 2 of my faovirte books! I think these 'devoid of plot with any concievable substance' is a bit harsh  Of course that is your opinion...but I'd like to know why you think so...


I guess Catch-22 is not my "cup of tea" as some might say it and the only part of The Catcher in the Rye I found interesting was near the very last page when Caulfield is with his little sister. The F-words were a complete turn off and made me almost rip the book from rage and Caulfield's stuck-up demeanor annoyed me. I didn't even understand the point of the book in general.. and if anything I believe the book conveys a false message by showing a protagonist who avidly smokes, drinks and excercises several attempts to get in contact with a girl who makes him feel amorous... let alone the hooker..

I'm sorry if my phrase "devoid of a plot..." has offended you or anyone else. It actually sounds a bit self-contradictory because I wanted this topic to be very open to diverse perceptions. I will see if I can edit that in my main post and thanks for replying  :Smile:

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## malwethien

> I guess Catch-22 is not my "cup of tea" as some might say it and the only part of The Catcher in the Rye I found interesting was near the very last page when Caulfield is with his little sister. The F-words were a complete turn off and made me almost rip the book from rage and Caulfield's stuck-up demeanor annoyed me. I didn't even understand the point of the book in general.. and if anything I believe the book conveys a false message by showing a protagonist who avidly smokes, drinks and excercises several attempts to get in contact with a girl who makes him feel amorous... let alone the hooker..
> 
> I'm sorry if my phrase "devoid of a plot..." has offended you or anyone else. It actually sounds a bit self-contradictory because I wanted this topic to be very open to diverse perceptions. I will see if I can edit that in my main post and thanks for replying


Adolescent don't apoligize...of course that is your opinion and I wasn't offended. Hmmm...where to start? I think I kinda understand what you are trying to say...and I actually can't explain why I or a lot of people like these novels. Maybe you need to read it in the context they were written in? Holden Caulfield is kind of an 'icon' representing the 'coming of age' of a young man...the frustration felt by teenagers of that age...I'm no literary expert so you'd have to excuse me - or the others reading this - my explanation is mine alone and comes from my own experience of reading the novels. Catch-22 is usually seen as an anti-war novel and I think the reason why it was written so...funny and absurd is because Heller was poking fun of the war - the absurdity of it all and how nonsensical it all is. Maybe if you read the background of these novels, you will look at it in another light? 

Just a thought...do you think that protagonists should be 'flawless?' Just asking since you pointed out that Holden is a protagonist that has lots of vices...so, do you believe in the protagonist who is all good and moral? 

I have also read A Streetcar Named Desire...but I can't remember the story so I didn't comment on it....

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## aeroport

> A lot of my friends recommended Vanity Fair to me, but I gave up after the first 60 pages or so because all the characters just seemed so vacant and uninteresting. I suppose that's probably the point. Does anyone have an opinion about this?? Does it get better? Should I try again?


I gave up near the halfway point, for much the same reasons. I was doing a project over basically any work of British literature before 1900-ish and thought I would be cool and ambitious, but it was just not the thing. However, it is definitely considered really great, and as I'm increasingly disgusted with this habit of mine of not finishing books I'll probably go back and do it sometime when there's less pressure.




> I'll try to get to William Thackeray after I overcome this mound of Joyce/Dostoevsky.


I rather wonder when Joyce will appear on this thread...  :FRlol:

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## nps_marina

What I actually like about Catch is how he starts telling you something completely off... and you wonder 'why was I reading about this in the first place?'. The Catcher in the Rye also has some of that, so perhaps we have found out your pattern, Adolescent09?  :Wink:  Just teasing.

Anyway, I have to agree on some of the ones you've already said: certainly Vanity Fair was a pain, I also dropped it after a while out of sheer boredom for whatever happened to the characters. One day they were showing the movie on TV, I watched just to see 'more or less' what happens, after all. Not that interesting.

And Middlemarch, on the other hand, interests me deeply. I have begun it a few times, but I suddenly get to the politics part and stop short- that's just so blah. But I'll have to finish it someday, just for the sake of the what-happens-next.

Definitely, though, my most-loathed classic would have to be Hemingway's Old Man & The Sea- that book was so disappointing! Supposedly one of the best things you'll read in literature... and I found it so boring...
Recently I thought of picking it up again, you know, perhaps when I had read it the first time I was too young and unappreciative; but my sister, who feels as I do about that book, shook her head vigorously.

I am open to being convinced otherwise regarding that book. So many people seem to like Hemingway, I believe I am doing something wrong...

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## Aunty-lion

I just wrote a great long post about why I love that passage from Catch 22 and I accidentally deleted it so I'm gonna just leave it for now.




> I actually can't explain why I or a lot of people like these novels. Maybe you need to read it in the context they were written in?


That's a really good point. 

Don't stress Adol, this is a really cool idea for a thread. I'm wondering if you didn't like the F-word in Catcher because you don't like cursing full-stop, or because you didn't think it added to the book.....

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## malwethien

I just realized that I haven't actually listed an answer. The thing with me is, when I find a book boring, I usually stop reading it, so I actually don't know what happens afterwards...ok, I have one.... The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner. I read that about halfway and thought...."huh?" James Joyce too..."The Portrait of an Artist..." and "Ulysses"

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## Aunty-lion

> I gave up near the halfway point, for much the same reasons. I was doing a project over basically any work of British literature before 1900-ish and thought I would be cool and ambitious, but it was just not the thing. However, it is definitely considered really great, and as I'm increasingly disgusted with this habit of mine of not finishing books I'll probably go back and do it sometime when there's less pressure.


Yeah, well that's the weird thing, I _never_ leave books unfinished...
Maybe I just didn't get it.

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## onyx

*Have you found any classics that were simply unappealing yet according to to the general public considered some of the most outstanding literary works ever?*

Yes, Wuthering Heights! Bloody boring book and movie too. Although I don't mind the Bronte family. I own all their novels, but can't say I've read any of them except Jane Eyre.

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## Aunty-lion

> Yes, Wuthering Heights! Bloody boring book and movie too. Although I don't mind the Bronte family. I own all their novels, but can't say I've read any of them except Jane Eyre.


What is boring about it? I don't know if I'd say it was my favourite book ever, but I certainly didn't find it boring. I always found it quite melodramatic if anything.

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## malwethien

> *Have you found any classics that were simply unappealing yet according to to the general public considered some of the most outstanding literary works ever?*
> 
> Yes, Wuthering Heights! Bloody boring book and movie too. Although I don't mind the Bronte family. I own all their novels, but can't say I've read any of them except Jane Eyre.


LOL onyx...why didn't you like Wuthering Heights? Was it the characters you dind't find appealing or just the story as a whole? You liked Jane Eyre better than Wuthering Heights? I'm the opposite....  :Wink:

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## Stieg

> Yeah, well that's the weird thing, I _never_ leave books unfinished...
> Maybe I just didn't get it.


Usually my policy too, but I have left a recent string of books unread -- a Russian fantasy, an Alan Ryan horror, and Mark Gatiss (two books I've since returned to the bookstore). From a lit stance, who cares that I didn't finish these. Experiments is what I rather consider them and I have bigger and better things to move onto besides.

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## bazarov

> I rather wonder when Joyce will appear on this thread...


Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man and Heart of Darkness.

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## Nossa

I don't know if it counts, but since you said classics..I'd go for ANYTHING by Ben Jonson...the guy was WAY better in poetry than he was in plays..I mean I almost always slept while reading Volpone or The Alchemist...they're just too boring!
And I really find it urgent to state that I'm a big fan of The Catcher in The Rye..lol

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## Nossa

> Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man and Heart of Darkness.


Yup I almost forgot to mention Heart of Darkness...this IS one of the least interesting books ever...wouldn't try to read it again in a million years! lol

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## Adolescent09

> Yup I almost forgot to mention Heart of Darkness...this IS one of the least interesting books ever...wouldn't try to read it again in a million years! lol


I couldn't agree with you more... and excuse me if I'm wrong about this but I think it was Joseph Conrad who said that Dostoevsky's The Brother's Karamazov (which is easily the greatest philosophical book I've ever read) was *dull* lol.... Dostoevsky's Karamzov runs to around 700 pages whereas Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is an 80 paged novelette(or is it novella?)... It took me a fortnight to read Karamazov and three months to hollow through Heart of Darkness--  :Sick:  

Here is Conrad's perception on The Brother's Karamazov (I got this from the comment section at the end of the B&N classics version.):




> I do hope you are not too disgusted with me for not thanking you for the "Karamazov" before. It was very good of you to remember me; and of course I was extremely interested. *But it's an impossible lump of valuable matter. It is terrifically bad and impressive and exasperating.* Moreover, I don't know what D[ostoevsky] stands for or reveals, but I do know that he is too 'Russian' for me. It sounds to me like some fierce mouthings from prehistoric ages. I understand the Russians have just 'discovered' him. I wish them joy


What irony...

That being said, I don't think many people can deny that Joseph Conrad did incorporate a certain degree of eloquence in his writing but just wasn't able to use his great vocabulary to his advantage like exceptional classic-writers Dickens, The Bronte Sisters and Dumas.

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## Nossa

I know!! I mean seriously, reading his remarks on The Brother's Karamazov made me think ONE thing..."look who's talking" lol

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## Adolescent09

LOL... glad we share a similar view on this matter, Nossa. Nice to meet you  :Smile:

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## Aiculík

Uh... in fact, there's quite a lot of classics I don't like:

Catch 22
Catcher in the Rye
Moby Dick
Anna Karenina
Sophie's Choice - that book almost destroyed my life. My teacher thought it was the best book of the 20th century... and I dared to disagree... (I tried to read it several times, but I never got beyond page 10.)

Plus, Dickens, Austen and Henry James - yes, all their works. Real pain to read them.

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## Adolescent09

> Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye... Moby Dick (some chapters in the middle)


I'm glad you agree with me to an extent Aiculk but I must disagree with your views on Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Dickens, Austen and James. 

I have been enthralled by their works for several years. Nice to see you posted though  :Smile:

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## Niamh

> _Middlemarch_, although my claim to have read it is questionable.


you took the word right out of my mouth cuppa. I too do not like Middlesmarch and my claims to have read it are also questionable! :Tongue:  



> *Have you found any classics that were simply unappealing yet according to to the general public considered some of the most outstanding literary works ever?*
> 
> Yes, Wuthering Heights! Bloody boring book and movie too. Although I don't mind the Bronte family. I own all their novels, but can't say I've read any of them except Jane Eyre.


most hated Evil book. Wuthering Heights :Sick:

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## Aiculík

Yes, we agree in some points... _but_ I like Heart of Darkness.  :Smile:  It's in my top 50, in fact.

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## aeroport

> Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man and Heart of Darkness.


Ah! Don't say that - I'm reading _Portrait_ for class next month!

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## kandaurov

I must've been lucky, for I can't say that I've been displeased after reading a classic. The closest I got to that was two days ago, after reading Sense and Sensibility... but even after that, I still managed to find it interesting. My reading experience of it was what can best described as being traumatic, but I still like the impression that lingers after the read. Weird, I know.

Oh, I found Wuthering Heights a treat. It surprised me, I thought it would be much more conventional (and a third as complex in terms of narrative). The film adaptation, however, is appalling, to say the least...

Hm, I'm planning on reading Heart of Darkness and Portrait of a Young Man as an Artist... should I drop them and read something else?  :Tongue:

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## grace86

So many HoD critics. I admit it wasn't one of my easiest to get through. It did take me forever to read it. Some points were rather dull, but overall I am very happy I read it.

HoD, I have trouble describing what I liked about it. I liked that it WASN'T an adventure. Maybe some who didn't like it thought it was?? I liked that it was a frame story, kind of like the reader was walking in on a story. Hmm...don't know, but it does deserve some credit.

But I don't like how Conrad bashed Dostoevsky, he's one of my favorite authors, in that case, I am not sure Conrad had a place to speak.

Hmm...in regards to my choices, I didn't particularly care for Austen's Sense and Sensibility (but will reread it) 

and then Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man...3/4 though this book I really had trouble figuring out what was going on, and what the point was.

You know, there was once upon a time when I would have included Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury because I saw the play done rather badly, but on reading it, there's really no way I could put it in this list.

But I was told you either love Fahrenheit 451 or you hate it.

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## Geoffrey

I think the real problem is that certain books are considered to be in the 'literary canon' while others aren't... 'classic' books really just represent the whoever is deciding they're classic, not the actual quality of the book... which is why I guess we get lists like these...

But anyways, I didn't really like Heart of Darkness (to racist for me) as well as Jane Eyre (I hate the way Bronte writes dialog). hmm, oh yeah, Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury. That books killed me... in a bad way.

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## Idril

> hmm, oh yeah, Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury. That books killed me... in a bad way.


I felt the same way about that book. It was the book where I decided that Faulkner simply wasn't for me.

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## mtpspur

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. Not a likeable charcater in the whole book. Had Ethan been born with a spine the story would never have been written.

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## scotpgot

Although I feel completely ill-equipped to pass judgment on any "classics", I will name two that I did not care for.

"Portrait of the Artist . . ." I found it difficult to get through this one. I think the style bothered me. However, I'm suspicious my mind might be changed by a 2nd or 3rd or 4th reading.

Also tried, unsuccessfully, to get through "Wealth of Nations". Bad idea. Too dry. Too old.

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## bazarov

> Ah! Don't say that - I'm reading _Portrait_ for class next month!


Sorry...Who knows, you might even like it!

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## F.Emerald

Wuthering Heights, Heart of Darkness.

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## grace86

> Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. Not a likeable charcater in the whole book. Had Ethan been born with a spine the story would never have been written.


Haha...that makes me smile for some reason  :Tongue:  Maybe cuz I voted for Age of Innocence instead!

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## kenikki

Frankenstein - Shelley. BUT only on the basis, I was forced to study it intensively for university. I will read it leisurely in the future as I am sure it cannot be that bad.

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## metal134

I must agree with the people who have said _Heart of Darkness_. I don't actually think it's a bad story, but I don't think Conrad did a very good job at making me care about what was going on. The events in the novel just didn't seem to be portrayed with any kind of significance attached to them.

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## drunkenKOALA

*Catcher in the Rye*
I really liked this one. The profanity or the protagonist's vices didn't really bother me in the least. 

*Heart of Darkness*
I remember Chinua Achebe had some pretty harsh things to say about Conrad that I wouldn't disagree with. But I still liked this novel, because it was insightful, even though in a somewhat rascist, Eurocentric way. 

*Wuthering Heights*
This one was alright. I enjoyed it, despite its being a bit too melodramatic. For me it's a bit better than Jane Eyre. 

Now, to what I *don't* like: *Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*. True, I don't think I understood what was going on most of the time. And I don't think I will like Ulysses either.

Oh I also didn't like *This Side of Paradise, Tender is the Night, The Beautiful and the Damned* (F. Scott Fitzgerald) and *The House of Mirth* (Edith Wharton). But I don't know if these are considered great classics.

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## Adolescent09

I loved Wuthering Heights. Exceptional writing style especially under the pressure of sexism a woman had to endure at Emily's time.

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## kilted exile

Anything by that dreadful Austen woman, so many times I have made an attempt to read her novels. Then I get this nauseous feeling in my throat and throw the thing away.

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## Scheherazade

> Anything by that dreadful Austen woman, so many times I have made an attempt to read her novels. Then I get this nauseous feeling in my throat and throw the thing away.


Come now, come now!
You don't have to be so harsh now!
I am sure you will learn to like Austen, too;
Otherwise, your lady friends will never forgive you!

(OK, I know! I can't write poetry. Let's move on now!  :Biggrin: )

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## grace86

> Come now, come now!
> You don't have to be so harsh now!
> I am sure you will learn to like Austen, too;
> Otherwise, your lady friends will never forgive you!
> 
> (OK, I know! I can't write poetry. Let's move on now! )


I'm a lady who is quite bothered by Austen. I can't get very far reading one of her novels. I will eventually try again in the future.

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## bouquin

*Moby Dick*
*A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*

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## THX-1138

The great gatsby-Northanger Abbey-Silas Mariner

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## Hyacinth42

Great Gatsby: I hate soap operas

Catcher in The Rye: There was no plot in that book!

Ethan Frome

100 Years of Solitude: See Great Gatsby

The Scarlet Letter: A whole page on a rosebush? And the whole book is like that!

Dracula: Grrr, the boringness of the first chapters is horrible

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## mtpspur

[QUOTE
Dracula: Grrr, the boringness of the first chapters is horrible[/QUOTE]

Strongly disagree with this statement. Its the middle section that puts one in sleepy haze but the castle scenes set a wonderful mood that never quite comes back to the book afterward. Just saying. Rich

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## motherhubbard

The Sound and the Furry - Faulkner is so gifted, I know, but he makes me feel like I need a shower.  :Sick:

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## Adolescent09

> The Sound and the Furry - Faulkner is so gifted, I know, but he makes me feel like I need a shower.


Make that a tub bath  :Sick:

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## Orual

Usually, I find that classics are classics for a good reason. There have been a few though, that I would not read again.

_The Lord of the Flies_ is one book that I didn't dislike while I was reading it, but the further removed from it I am, the more I think "that really wasn't very good." It didn't seem realistic to me; Jack declined too quickly and was too much of a outliar--he was corrupt beyond what I would expect from a twelve or thirteen year old bully. 

_Persuasion_ has poisoned my mind against Jane Austen. It was just so dull. The characters are introduced, they do nothing for a while, they go somewhere else and continue to do nothing, then someone almost dies but doesn't, then nothingness continues some more. I know the novel was not about action, but really. 

I didn't particurally like _The Great Gatsby_, either. I just found it mediocre, maybe because it wasn't what I was expecting.

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## chaplin

I don't know if they're considered "classics" but I did not enjoy either _The Godfather_ or _The Caine Mutiny_, _The Godfather_ especially. The whole book was gratuitous, from the violence and sex to the plot itself. The movie, for whatever reason (probably the cast), was an infinitely better work. Everything was sown up and tight and necessary, whereas the book is exhaustively superficial, wandering from gunshot to sexual encounter to gunshot with little aim except the gunshots and sexual encounters themselves.

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## Aunty-lion

> I must've been lucky, for I can't say that I've been displeased after reading a classic. The closest I got to that was two days ago, after reading Sense and Sensibility... but even after that, I still managed to find it interesting.


This might be a dumb thing to say, but I never liked Sense and Sensibility until I saw the movie. 
This was purely because I couldn't understand what on earth such a cool woman like Elinor could find attractive about Edward. However, when I saw Hugh Grant in the role, I was enlightened as to how such a soppy fop can be attractive and endearing. Kudos Hugh. :Thumbs Up:

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## aeroport

> I didn't particurally like _The Great Gatsby_, either. I just found it mediocre, maybe because it wasn't what I was expecting.


Agreed, but I'm going to _try_ to give it another shot some day.




> *Moby Dick*
> *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*


I'm beginning to worry about the books from my summer reading (including both of these) winding up on this list...

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## Stieg

That reminds me, _This Side of Paradise_ by Fitzgerald has convinced me not to touch this author's work for a very very long time.

The protagonist is pathetic, the novel revolves around him and his two prep-school chums dreaming about being snobbery elitists and climb the social ladder. They do this everyday, and when someone else succeeds and upstages them outside their small pathetic group they whine like lil'.... well you know what. 

This same protagonist also has a tendency to fall head over heals for every woman whom he catches their fancy. He instantly breaks out with the poetry, the roses, the marriage proposals everytime without failure. A real ridiculous chump.

I hope I didn't spoil any major spoilers but the book is that aimless and meaningless. These characters need a life or choke on fishbones or something.

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## bazarov

> 100 Years of Solitude: There was no plot in that book!


Exactly...





> _The Godfather_ especially. The whole book was gratuitous, from the violence and sex to the plot itself. The movie, for whatever reason (probably the cast), was an infinitely better work. Everything was sown up and tight and necessary, whereas the book is exhaustively superficial, wandering from gunshot to sexual encounter to gunshot with little aim except the gunshots and sexual encounters themselves.


I liked that book very much, it's one of my favorites and it's movie adaptation is rally great, probably the best. Everything is exactly the same, I was watching it and thinking to my self..Amerigo will say this, Micheal will say that...

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## rafaelnadal

All stream-of-consciousness novels.

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## Adolescent09

> I liked that book very much, it's one of my favorites and it's movie adaptation is rally great, probably the best. Everything is exactly the same, I was watching it and thinking to my self..Amerigo will say this, Micheal will say that...


I must be a complete braindead. Other than the brilliant histrionic performances, camera angles and dialogues I find the plot to The Godfather extensively boring. (I know a lot of people get bashed for acknowledging this but I just had to say it... Perhaps I'll give Mario Puzo's book a look over and see if the source of the movie's adaption appeals to me  :Wink:

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## scotpgot

I would be interested to find out if there is a general divide between those who primarily consider themselves "writers" and those who primarily consider themselves "readers".

For instance, I read "The Portrait of an Artist . . ." primarily because I had read other novels and short stories that name that book as a primary influence. And it was mentioned quite a bit, so I thought, "I should read this". When I did, I found it hard to get through (the sermons in the middle particularly odd). I wonder if I were to go back and analyze the STYLE (as opposed to plot, or character development, etc.) if I would have a completely different opinion. I suppose I would.

I haven't read many of the books on this list, but from what is being said about Dracula, Moby Dick, and some others, I would think those who didn't like these books are primarily Readers. A long description of a house, or a flower, I suppose, is more interesting to a Writer than a Reader. Similarly, the amount of research put into the whaling sections of Moby Dick would probably be more interesting to a Writer than a Reader concerning the subject of research.

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## Adolescent09

> I haven't read many of the books on this list, but from what is being said about Dracula, Moby Dick, and some others, I would think those who didn't like these books are primarily Readers. A long description of a house, or a flower, I suppose, is more interesting to a Writer than a Reader. Similarly, the amount of research put into the whaling sections of Moby Dick would probably be more interesting to a Writer than a Reader concerning the subject of research.


Although this seems very plausible and in most cases these statements would be valid.. they are incorrect when you think in terms of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. People ranging in age from 9 - 40 (and typically higher) are enthralled by the lengthy descriptions of Tolkein's tale and the thought he incorporates meticulously into each description every paragraph. I've enountered several LOTR fans who love the trilogy but are not compelled to write themselves... therefore your theory that "The Writer is interested in lengthy descriptions whereas The Reader strives to see substance in plot and continuity" is in this case, inaccurate. 

In terms of classics, however, I agree with you completely.  :Smile:

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## drunkenKOALA

The Great Gatsby is my favorite novel! I must've read it at least three times. However, none of the Fitzgerald's other works are very good and, as mentioned, This Side of Paradise was so bad that I actually left it unfinished, which I almost never do. 

I read the Spanish translation of Godfather and thought that the movies were far better.

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## kenikki

> I didn't particurally like _The Great Gatsby_, either. I just found it mediocre, maybe because it wasn't what I was expecting.


I agree about the Great Gatsby, It is a really good novel, the story would have been flawless if it wasn't for Fitzgerald's sloppy writing. Before I read it, of course we all know about the brilliant idea of the story but the actually text itself is rather poor.

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## Stieg

> _The Lord of the Flies_ is one book that I didn't dislike while I was reading it, but the further removed from it I am, the more I think "that really wasn't very good." It didn't seem realistic to me; Jack declined too quickly and was too much of a outliar--he was corrupt beyond what I would expect from a twelve or thirteen year old bully.


But children particularly of this age bracket can be the cruelest persons of all. Now take them, isolate them, and perhaps leave them to fend for themselves. Observe how they begin working out social order amongst themselves. Whether on a deserted island, friends in a empty schoolyard, or hanging in abandoned field for a greater length of time.

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## manolia

Some of my favourite books are mentioned and some that i definately want to read as well..Oh well. I didn't like *"Madame Bovary"* but i always thought that it was the translation that was bad and not the book. Maybe it's a lot better in french.




> I just realized that I haven't actually listed an answer. The thing with me is, when I find a book boring, I usually stop reading it, so I actually don't know what happens afterwards...ok, I have one.... The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner. I read that about halfway and thought...."huh?" James Joyce too..."The Portrait of an Artist..." and "Ulysses"


Hehe Malwe you forgot "Emma".. :Biggrin:   :FRlol:   :FRlol: 




> Then I get this nauseous feeling in my throat and throw the thing away.


Maybe it is something you ate.. :Biggrin:   :FRlol:  
Typical male reaction (all my male friends loathe Austen).

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## chaplin

> I didn't particurally like _The Great Gatsby_, either. I just found it mediocre, maybe because it wasn't what I was expecting.


I actually liked _Gatsby_, but maybe it was just because my English teacher worshipped it and I needed a good grade.

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## grace86

I very much liked the Great Gatsby as well. 

But...you guys are going to shoot me down...I didn't care for To Kill a Mockingbird. EEEP running!!! It just kind of trailed on to me.

----------


## Pendragon

All time worst: _The Red Badge of Courage_ by Stephen Crane. I have others I dislike, _Great Expectations_, _Moby Dick_, for example, but I abhor Crane or anything written by Sherwood Anderson, even if he is a local writer and actually buried up the hill from my grandfather here in town.

----------


## Felixstowe

Wuthering Heights is terribly dry book. Not bad, but can be in some places.
To Kill A Mocking Bird. That is terrible. Took me forever to read through, and with my English not being very good took a long boring time. 
I hate not finishing a book, no matter how terrible.

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## Adolescent09

> To Kill A Mocking Bird. That is terrible.


!!O_O!!
I found this book virtually impossible NOT TO LIKE!


Can you explain your position in further detail Flexistowe? I would like to see specifically why you didn't like it  :Smile:

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## kilted exile

> Maybe it is something you ate..  
> Typical male reaction (all my male friends loathe Austen).


That is possible, but as a general rule I try to not eat anything I've made myself :Wink:

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## andave_ya

Wuthering Heights was kinda too melodramatic for me. Moby Dick. and Gulliver's Travels. It was just too dryly whimsical for me. I've "read" it several times, getting further every time but I don't think I've actually finished it.

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## marilee

_Emma_ and _Pride and Prejudice_

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## chaplin

> All time worst: _The Red Badge of Courage_ by Stephen Crane... I abhor Crane...


Why, exactly, do you "abhor" Stephen Crane? Abhor connotes some sort of personal resentement, and it seems it would be hard to abhor someone who wrote so little. 

He's not the greatest writer ever of course, but _Red Badge_ is a nice portrait of a young soldier facing the realities of war and death, a cliche now, but done well nevertheless. He died in his twenties so his best work was yet to come, and the _The Red Badge_ and _Maggie_ would have been the first steps of a good, if not great, American catalogue of works if his voice hadn't been cut short.

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## malwethien

> Hehe Malwe you forgot "Emma"..


Manolia...that's right....but technically, I have never actually _read_ *Emma*  :Wink:

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## manolia

> Manolia...that's right....but technically, I have never actually _read_ *Emma*


Yeah i know. We've discussed a lot about that. I am just teasing you Malwe  :Biggrin:  . My humble opinion is that you can read something else instead.

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## weepingforloman

I'd have to say that Catcher in the Rye was really not a good book- I suppose it was important in the development of English writing, but puh-lease! Not exciting at all, virtually no plot, just an insane, disgruntled, depressed boy talking about how "phony" everyone is. Also, The Old Man and the Sea- all Hemingway, actually. Most overrated author there is. Totally sparse writing, no passion or flavor to it, nothing good in it at all.

----------


## aabbcc

There were too many of them to even mention - the books which seem to be generally approved and liked, but which had the opposite impact on me; so here are only a couple that come to my mind amongst the first:

_The Catcher in the Rye_ (J.D.Salinger)
I could never entirely comprehend the anglophone world's admiration for such "mediocre teensy American pseudo-classic", as one of my friends put it in words in class discussion of it; and in fact, it remains the mystery for me till the present day. 

Certainly, when we studied it in our Literature class, we analysed all the symbolism in the book, references to popular culture, cut the book's contents literally in pieces as we all bloodily wanted to know what the hell is in that book that impresses the anglophone world so much (our professor was already going crazy with us, needless to mention, and was dying to move on something "more serious") and why the hell the book still seems so "dry" to us; we even read the damned book in original English instead in translation to our language, but even after all that, our opinions of the book were barely changed. Certainly we had some better and fuller picture of it and how (and why) it must be perceived by people who like it, but the book was so uncongenial with us, who grew up on and were educated in, I daresay, more "serious" literature (it was basically a black sheep in our repertoire) , that it still was for us barely something more than just another teen angsty book, just one in the row of many similar we have read outside of school - amusing, but nothing special and terribly, insanely overrated, and certainly not something that belongs to the shelf of "classics".

_The Great Gatsby_ (F.Scott Fitzgerald)
Had it not been, very honestly, a matter of the lost bet, and had I not been "forced" to read it that way, I would have never read it as I would have probably dropped it after ten pages. Whilst I was reading it I was thinking how the book should be used to keep the fire burning in the fireplace.

_Madame Bovary_ (G.Flaubert) 
It was one of the books from obligatory school reading repertoire which I could barely bring myself to finish. Unlike the previous books listed, it at least provoked in me some slight track of interest, or some of its parts proved to be borderline amusing, so it was certainly less of a torture to go through.

Also, all the books I have read - or attempted to do so - written by Balzac, Zola or Hemingway. Especially I disliked the books by the latter, whilst Balzac and Zola were not as _bad_ per se as _boring_ for me. 

I always try to make a clear distinction whether I disliked the book because I considered it to be very bad _per se_, or because it bored me to death, but I would still not argue that it is a bad-quality book as such.
_The Cather in the Rye_, for example, is something I truly consider to be bad book, whilst _Le Pere Goriot_ was "only" very slow and boring.

Only my opinion, though.

----------


## Athos

I hated 'Tale of Two Cities' and 'Great Expectations'.

Go ahead, maul me =P.

Oh dear...I loved_ Emma_...Knightley is my favorite character Jane Austen had ever designed, and I love the fact that Emma was the only pro-antagonist Austen created with no financial problem...We did Thorton Wilder's 'The Matchmaker' in our school and no one in the play saw the similarities but me; they all told me 'The Matchmaker' was based off of 'Hello, Dolly!' and nothing like _Emma_.

Stupid teenagers. =P

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## kathycf

It's been interesting reading through the thread and seeing what one person loves, another hates. I guess our likes and dislikes make us unique... :Smile:  

There have been books that I have not liked, but usually I find at least one redeeming passage in them. I had to read _Ulysses_ for a class and I just am not a big Joyce fan. However, there are some passages in there that are quite lovely. Too few for me to love the book though. 

One book I have never been able to progress through is Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein._ I am not quite sure why....but I always get *very* tired after reading about 15 pages....

----------


## NickAdams

Animal Farm!

----------


## Fango

I understand why a lot of people want to trash "Catcher in the Rye", but I think it won popularity due to its unqiueness, and its sense of simplicity.

Wuthering Heights... I fell asleep myself. The beginning just didn't grab me.

I gotta tell you, I have many classics collecting dust (from the noteworthily ugly Wordsworth editions) on my shelves and I dislike every one of them in every way, shape or form. But I understand HOW it may appeal other people, so it doesn't bother me that they're considered "classics". Though honestly I wouldn't read 90% of Wordsworth classics without banging my head on a wall after the first chapter. Then again, I'm sure they're more universal ones in the mix, but I'm too young to have a good answer...

----------


## Dorian Gray

I just like classics in general really.

----------


## JBI

> [rolls eyes] No offense but when I read some posts on here I can't help but wonder what some members doing here. If you don't like all these classics perhaps you should just hang out at Starbucks and discuss Stephen King.


You are just as bad as he/she is. He is entitled to dislike any author he/she wants. Just because he/she doesn't like Austen, doesn't mean he is an amateur reader, or that he doesn't like good books; it means plan and simply that his taste varies from yours.

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## kilted exile

disregard

----------


## Dorian Gray

A lot of people dislike Wuthering Heights. Too dramatic? I think it's beautiful writing myself.

----------


## kilted exile

Disregard

----------


## Dorian Gray

Never mind

----------


## kilted exile

Ok, I got angry in my last couple of posts here. Gone & forgotten

----------


## Stieg

> Animal Farm!


I wouldn't necessarily list it here but I read this novel immediately after being walloped by _1984_. The differences are monumental I basically lost touch temporarily upon finishing the latter.

----------


## Angstyface

My two least favourites would most likely be Great Expectations and Swann's Way.
Mostly Swann's Way-- It might be that I simply 'didn't understand the author's beautiful sense of whatever the story was about', but I found it unbearably slow.

Great Expectations just isn't my cuppa'. I found it boring. It's written, however, very prettily.

----------


## Set of Keys

'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. Or anything by Oscar Wilde for that matter. Unbearably glib.

----------


## 3kixintehead

What? Catch-22? (BTW this is @ adolescent from several pages back). That was one of my favorite books. 

Anyways, I suppose that I hated The Scarlet Letter the most. Monotonous unneeded detail to description is mainly why. But also because it was just a bad revenge story and not a great romance. If we're talking about literature in general, I also don't like Emily Dickenson's poetry. As a matter of fact she is my least favorite poet that I know of.

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## manolia

> Animal Farm!


I was wondering if i am the only one who didn't like this book..it seems that there are two of us  :Biggrin:

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## NickAdams

> I wouldn't necessarily list it here but I read this novel immediately after being walloped by _1984_. The differences are monumental I basically lost touch temporarily upon finishing the latter.


1984 does drop a heavy shadow on Animal Farms shoulders.




> I was wondering if i am the only one who didn't like this book..it seems that there are two of us


There has to be more.  :Wink: 

Who else thinks Yertle the Turtle is a stronger read?

----------


## Annamariah

I didn't like The Catcher in the Rye. Somehow it didn't make much sense... I like books that actually have a plot of some kind.

Wuthering Heights was a bit better when I read it for second time, but still there's something I don't like.

Anna Karenina was a bit too long and I found remembering the names of all the characters quite difficult...

I could list here some Finnish classics too, which I had to read at school, but no one would probably know them, so I'll just forget about them  :Biggrin: 

(But I DO like Jane Austen's books very much  :Biggrin:  I didn't, when I first read two of them, but now I do)

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## willq9

Confession: Based on the two works of his that I've read, I can't say I care too much for Dostoevsky. The Idiot annoyed me through both its unconvincing melodrama (Exagerated swagger may be convincing in a more fantastic, heightened reality, but in a realistic domestic setting, it comes across as almost campy) and its irritating characters. Notes from Underground.... Well, lets just say the French Existentialists would do similar things better. Sorry, but I think Nabakov may have had Fyodor pegged. Perhaps Crime and Punishment or The Bros. Karamazov would go down better?

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## RaatKiRanii

> I was wondering if i am the only one who didn't like this book..it seems that there are two of us



I didn't like it, i just could not get over those pigs walking and dressing like people. Stupid, i know. BUT still. i will say it was oddly interesting when everyone was discussing it's theme but those "themes" never crossed my mind while reading it. Once the teacher brought it up it was like, "ohhh...yeah. i guess that makes sense."

Oh and has anyone tried reading the English Patient? Geez, now that was a boring book. No matter how many times i gave it a chance I just couldnt get into it.

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## manolia

> I didn't like it, i just could not get over those pigs walking and dressing like people. Stupid, i know. BUT still. i will say it was oddly interesting when everyone was discussing it's theme but those "themes" never crossed my mind while reading it. Once the teacher brought it up it was like, "ohhh...yeah. i guess that makes sense."
> 
> Oh and has anyone tried reading the English Patient? Geez, now that was a boring book. No matter how many times i gave it a chance I just couldnt get into it.


Oh don't worry, i knew perfectly well what the book was talking about  :Wink:

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## Inderjit Sanghe

I have never really liked Hemingway, Faulkner or Fitzgerald-the (in my opinion) troika of American mediocrity.

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## Lote-Tree

> Oh don't worry, i knew perfectly well what the book was talking about


And that was?

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## NickAdams

> I have never really liked Hemingway, Faulkner or Fitzgerald-the (in my opinion) troika of American mediocrity.


Even so, you have to appreciate the fact that they, minus Fitzgerald, influenced at least three of your favorite authors. Especially Faulkner: the author who inspired Marquez to become a writer. :Nod:

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## Hyatt07

The Turn of the Screw and Great Expectations

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## manolia

> And that was?


Read it and see for yourself  :Wink:

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## kandaurov

Oh, c'mon, _Animal Farm_ is a terrific satire. Don't tell me you read it as if it were a boring fable involving pigs! And just because it's analogy is reminiscent of that of the fables and because it isn't wordy, _Animal Farm_ should by no means be seen as a lesser novel.

This is the humble opinion of a teen, bear in mind, and even though you are more than entitled to have your opinions, I'm also entitled to differ from them  :Wink:

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## NickAdams

For me, an allegory has to work in both its latent and manifested story.

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## manolia

> Oh, c'mon, _Animal Farm_ is a terrific satire. Don't tell me you read it as if it were a boring fable involving pigs! And just because it's analogy is reminiscent of that of the fables and because it isn't wordy, _Animal Farm_ should by no means be seen as a lesser novel.
> 
> This is the humble opinion of a teen, bear in mind, and even though you are more than entitled to have your opinions, I'm also entitled to differ from them


I didn't say that it is a lesser novel. I just said that i didn't like it at all. Can't one be entitled of his/hers own opinion?

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## kandaurov

> I didn't say that it is a lesser novel.


And I didn't say you said that  :Smile:  I'm just saying it should not be seen as one.




> Can't one be entitled of his/hers own opinion?


You are. Didn't you read me saying precisely that, in those precise words? I'm just giving my opinion, which happens to contrast with yours. That's what keeps debates going  :Smile:

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## manolia

> You are. Didn't you read me saying precisely that, in those precise words? I'm just giving my opinion, which happens to contrast with yours. That's what keeps debates going


Yes i agree. Here's what annoyed me a bit in your own words




> Don't tell me you read it as if it were a boring fable involving pigs!


It seemed that you were presuming too much. There are certain reasons why i strongly disliked this book and the one you suggest isn't even close. Sorry if i was a bit jumpy  :Wink:

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## Dorian Gray

Well, Animal Farm is no Dickens.

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## kilted exile

> Well, Animal Farm is no Dickens.


No, it sometimes seems unfair that Dickens got so much talent and people like Austen got so little  :Wink:   :Tongue:   :Goof:

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## kathycf

Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Sorry Hardy fans, but that just put me to sleep. If only sleeping medication was as reliable. 

Kilted, are we going to have to start calling you an Anti-Austenite?  :Tongue:   :Wink:

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## NotWoodhouse

Of Mice and Men I hate Stienbeck in general but this was what inspired most of that hatred.

----------


## ruhbr_ducky

Of Mice and Men shows one of the truest forms of love, how on earth could you hate it ????

----------


## NotWoodhouse

Because it was depressing.

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## ruhbr_ducky

a little yes, but when you really loved some one and you break up arn't you depressed but it was love so it was wonderful.

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## NotWoodhouse

I don't quite understand your logic. Love is wonderful but once you break up is the love still there?

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## Dorian Gray

> Kilted, are we going to have to start calling you an Anti-Austenite?


He's only saying that to annoy me. 

Hey Angry Scotman, did you get your kilt in a twist? :P

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## Annamariah

I forgot Age of Innocence from my list. I managed to read it through, but it wasn't the least bit interesting.

----------


## Set of Keys

Two modern classics that hurt.

'Zazie In The Metro'- Raymond Queneau. Piss weak. 

'Rabbit, Run'- John Updike. Debut novelist writes 20,000 words before thinking of idea for novel.

----------


## Nightshade

Tom Sawyer...( is it even called that? By Twain) Inever get past the fence incedent in the first chapter I just fall a sleep right off. Its rather ridiculous really.

----------


## kilted exile

> He's only saying that to annoy me. 
> 
> Hey Angry Scotman, did you get your kilt in a twist? :P


Quite true, and as for my kilt it has been in a permanent twist recently  :Tongue:  




> Kilted, are we going to have to start calling you an Anti-Austenite?



I may have to change "shiftless layabout" to reflect that.

----------


## aeroport

> Sorry...Who knows, you might even like [_A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_]!


****SPOILERS AHEAD****

You know, I didn't think it was so bad. I could have done with one or two fewer sermons in Chapter III, but oh well... I wasn't sure I would be too impressed, since he's kind of leading the reader to sympathize with his lapse into 'sin', his repentance and spiritual reawakening, _and_ his eventual rejection of everything. It seems like a pretty unreasonable ambition for a writer, but I think his use of fear to guide Stephen into repentance - rather than, say, contriving some kind of divine inspiration - actually works rather well. I was pretty terrified myself after those _endless_ descriptions of Hell...
I can understand people not liking it, though.

----------


## kathycf

> I may have to change "shiftless layabout" to reflect that.


Ah, very good.  :FRlol:  I really can't stand John Irving, even though he is supposed to be a modern "classic" writer. Maybe I should change my user description to reflect that... :Tongue:

----------


## ForKnowledge

david copperfield 
david copperfield 
david copperfield

----------


## aeroport

I want so badly to say _Waiting for Godot_, but...I'm really afraid there might indeed be something to it. Who knows.
I seem to be developing an interesting relationship with Mr. Beckett's works - I should like to call it "love/hate", but it really seems more often than not to lean towards the latter....

----------


## kandaurov

I read _Waiting for Godot_ and I loved it because I found it hilarious. All seemed so nonsensical to me. Later, in college, we had to analyse it thoroughly, and now I see quotes, references, symbolisms and frail aspects of the human condition everywhere. Even though one usually must be wary of over-analysing literary works (check Nossa's thread), I'm now quite sure that everything in that play has a purpose, and nothing is written at random, contrary to what I had originally thought. Like when I first read T. S. Eliot. Modernist writers, pfui  :Tongue:

----------


## Niamh

> I want so badly to say _Waiting for Godot_, but...I'm really afraid there might indeed be something to it. Who knows.
> I seem to be developing an interesting relationship with Mr. Beckett's works - I should like to call it "love/hate", but it really seems more often than not to lean towards the latter....


I have a love/hate relationship with 'godot'. And have had for six years now.

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## aeroport

> I have a love/hate relationship with 'godot'. And have had for six years now.


This seems all-too understandable. Unfortunately, I'm feeling that way about all of the novels we looked at in class as well, except perhaps _Murphy_. They're all pretty funny, but at some point they all turn into something like this: "Well, actually no, what I just said is wrong. Why would I have said that? Why do I say anything? So that I don't have to afterwards. To speak in order to eliminate the need for speech. To reach silence." Plus another hundred pages or so...
Or, even better: "Forgive me if I omit some of the important stuff. It's bound to happen. It's isn't that I want to necessarily, but I do get a bit hung up on the trivialities. But then how can I call them trivialities? What do I know and as a matter of fact what the hell do you know about trivialities. Most presumptuous. Forgive me or don't forgive me, as if I could really give a damn." ... and on and on and on.....
I would probably enjoy it all a lot more, I suppose, if we weren't covering several works each day. Beckett and Joyce have got to be the two writers least compatible with the rigor of a condensed three-week seminar... :Frown:

----------


## Behemoth

> Beckett and Joyce have got to be the two writers least compatible with the rigor of a condensed three-week seminar...


I have just had a very similar experience myself; 1 hour on Beckett alone was nowhere near enough, but combined with Conrad and Orwell this was just too much  :Eek:  So much for 'revision' seminars...

----------


## Turk

Definetely Jean Paul Sartre's trilogy. Also Gogol's Dead Souls (mainly because it was unfinished).

----------


## NickAdams

> I want so badly to say _Waiting for Godot_, but...I'm really afraid there might indeed be something to it.


I feel the same about the Stranger; I enjoyed only two scenes from the book.

I do love Waiting for Godit. I haven't analyzed it much, but I still enjoy the story. Great humor and I would love to see this performed by actors with chemistry and great comedic timing.

----------


## aeroport

> I feel the same about the Stranger; I enjoyed only two scenes from the book.


Ah, yes. *reminisces..._not_ fondly*

----------


## Woland

> The Sound and the Furry - Faulkner is so gifted, I know, but he makes me feel like I need a shower.


It's thoroughly rancid and so one of my favorites.

----------


## paulweller

I usually don't leave a book unfinished but I gave up reading Henry James' Turn of the Screw halfway through.


__________________
Bill
Ford Ka Brochure 2007 by Ford Motor Company Limited UK

----------


## Mr. Dr. Ralph

I couldn't finish Fahrenheit 451 and sparknoted Dracula in high school. Kate Chopin's The Awakening wasn't good either, the same idea as Madame Bovary but much worse.

Catcher in the Rye was a phenomenal book, it isn't taught very well in school. Gatsby and Madame Bovary were excellent as well.

----------


## SteveH

Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde': unreadable, even in modern English translation. Pity, because I love much of his other stuff.

Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair': thoroughly nasty book, in which all the supposedly likable people, including Becky Sharp, are vile.

Proust's 'Remembrance of Things Past', in the early translation published under that title. Nothing ever happens, and it's described not-happening in unbelievably tedious detail, and ridiculously long and complex sentences, some as long as a very respectable paragraph, with clauses, sub-clauses, sub-sub-clauses, parentheses, parentheses within parentheses, and hell knows what else. Somehow, I made it to half-way through the second volume (of 12), before I gave up.

MDR, above, has just reminded me of 'Madame Bovary' (nasty) and 'The Awakening' (Bovary rip-off - nasty as well, and boring into the bargain).

'Jude the (deservedly) Obscure' by Hardy. Bored the arse off me. So did 'Return of the Native' and 'Far from the Madding Crowd'. I have not read, and will not read in the future on the strength of those three, any other Hardy novels. I quite like some of his poetry, though.

----------


## Lyn

I really like Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, but I did read it alongside Henrysons Testament of Cresseid which is pure brilliance.
I could never be bothered with Heart of Darkness. Didn't find it horrifying. Dracula I also found tedious.

----------


## Haven

The French Lt. Woman, liked the film but the book no.

----------


## Haven

In fact I think I took a viscious pleasure in reading almost all of the book and then not the last three pages.

----------


## Stieg

I did not enjoy _The Stars My Destination_ too much, the story started off thrilling and intriguing but as the novel progressed Gully Foyle the cro-magnon Merchant Marine quest of revenge begins to unravel in contrivance upon contrivance. And when I learned the whos and the whys of Gully's abandonment upon that derelict spaceship flotsam jetsam ... oh ... my ... gawd. How EVIL to put me through this mild endurance challenge just to bat me on the nose and poke me with a stick! 

Yarrrrrggggghhaiaiaiaia!

And my home went through some renovations recently and had stopped reading at page 207 of a 258 page book. Failed to finish it but still have my bookmark slapped between the pages.

I didn't even learn about the mystery behind the burning man... don't ask... 'less you've read the book.

----------


## Jennyfrijole

Oh dear god, it would have to be Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Though it is very very sad that he is dead, I hated that book. Because it was a classic I picked it for a book report, thinking _"hey, it's a classic, people talk about it, it's gotta be good!"_ So after I discovered I hated it I _had_ to finish it, unfortunately.

I was around 15 at the time, and sometimes I think _"well, maybe I was just too young to really grasp it's 'amazingness' or something"_ .... but nope, every time I pick it up again I still hate it.

----------


## fudgmonkees

> _The Lord of the Flies_ is one book that I didn't dislike while I was reading it, but the further removed from it I am, the more I think "that really wasn't very good." It didn't seem realistic to me; Jack declined too quickly and was too much of a outliar--he was corrupt beyond what I would expect from a twelve or thirteen year old bully.


I agree entirely!!!! What was especially frustrating was that EVERYBODY else in my english class loved the book and couldn't understand why I didn't. I dont care that Jack wears a mask -- 12 year old boys dont just become murderers, and wouldn't some of the other boys have questioned him instead of being such sheep? (the only people i have met who display such lack of individual thinking were my classmates) It's like Golding was so set on teaching his lessons to us that he sacrificed the characters.




> I didn't particurally like _The Great Gatsby_, either. I just found it mediocre, maybe because it wasn't what I was expecting.


I also didn't like The Great Gatsby. Again my frustration was increased by EVERYBODY else loving it including my english teacher. Pretty much its about selfish self-centered rich people and I found NO meaning into my own life and learned NOTHING from it. I remember my teacher saying that the characters are complex because "they are archetypical rich people except that they have problems" HELLO! having problems is what MAKES a rich person archetypical. when do we see rich people that dont have problems?

moby dick - boring

i loved catcher in the rye. perhaps i was lucky that the first time i read it my teacher led fairly in-depth discussions, because the second time i read it my teacher (the same one who loves fitzgerald) skipped over almost all of the things that i found important.

so maybe i would like gatsby more if it was with a different teacher?

----------


## jon1jt

> Have you found any classics that were simply unappealing yet according to to the general public considered some of the most outstanding literary works ever? List classics you have read that have disinterested you and made you slog through several pages of pure banality.
> 
> Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:
> 
> 1. Catch-22
> 2. The Catcher in the Rye
> 3. A Streetcar Named Desire 
> 4. slow, superfluous chapters in the middle of Moby Dick (although I love the beginning and ending)
> 
> ...



there are no "worst" classics, only worst readers of the classics.  :Tongue:

----------


## fudgmonkees

I should also add that though Hemingway is a little dry, it is exactly his sparsity that makes his writing impressive. Fitzgerald doesn't bother to find the mot juste, he just throws all of them in there. Extra words, however flowery they may be, make writing seem juvenile to me. It's almost as though only less-sophisticated readers "fall for" the wordiness.

----------


## Twister

Heart of Darkness
Turn of the Screw

I did, however, like Apocalypse Now which is an adaptation of Heart of Darkness.




> there are no "worst" classics, only worst readers of the classics.



I guess a newbie such as myself shouldn't try to tackle Conrad's work.  :Smile:

----------


## Stieg

> Oh dear god, it would have to be Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Though it is very very sad that he is dead, I hated that book. Because it was a classic I picked it for a book report, thinking _"hey, it's a classic, people talk about it, it's gotta be good!"_ So after I discovered I hated it I _had_ to finish it, unfortunately.
> 
> I was around 15 at the time, and sometimes I think _"well, maybe I was just too young to really grasp it's 'amazingness' or something"_ .... but nope, every time I pick it up again I still hate it.


15 is abit young for Vonnegut ... I think. I imagine he would have bored me to tears at that age. But this book when read in the correct context is a riot in short controlled bursts.

----------


## _Shannon_

Without a doubt- _Love in the Ruins_ by Walker Percy....ohhhh!! how I loathed that book!

----------


## linz

I had the idea once of reading the most famous of the classics, after Bovary I gave up on it. The town of Flaubert's novel was dull, as were all the people in it and the descriptions of it, which was his point I suppose. I still hated it!

----------


## Stieg

_On The Road_ is terribly dull and boring. 

Rucksack bohemians on the road to everywhere.

----------


## tudwell

I didn't dislike _On the Road_, but it's certainly nothing great. It was entertaining and perhaps it "captured the spirit of the '50s", but as a great piece of literature it just falls on its face.

Another classic I didn't care for is _The Old Man and the Sea_. Hemingway's prose, especially in this novel, is just too flat and boring, and his characters cardboard.

I'm kinda surprised, though, (and I probably shouldn't be) at how many people dislike Faulkner in this thread. I can't get enough of him!

----------


## Stieg

Oh man, I found the constant travel and occassion soap between the characters unbelievably tedious and disorientating with the protagonist's circle of friends seperating and regathering at popular "beat" places throughout the continental States (gee, a small world it had been back then  :Wink:  ) and hookin up with different lovers and one night stands.

Plus the dialogue was so blase. 

Maybe, in it's day it did "capture the spirit of the '50s" but to me downright trite.

----------


## Video Drone

The least satisfying book for me was The Great Gatsby. I cannot say that the book is bad, but, on the other hand, I think it was written for its time and intended for its time. Today, I see no point in reading it but for historical reasons. I don't see how it is relevant today. Perhaps I am missing something?

----------


## Mr. Dr. Ralph

Gatsby has many themes, most of which are relevant today, although the plot definitely reflected 1920's zeitgeist. People haven't changed much since then.

----------


## Video Drone

It seemed like a regular love story to me. Except from the 1920's. It was an interesting era, though.

----------


## Ineverland

On the Road was badly written and I hated Muriel Spark's prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It was dull and pointless.

----------


## Stieg

> On the Road was badly written


Prosaic styles is the main reason I give Fritzgerald and Kerouac wide berths on the bookshelves.

----------


## Monica

> Oh dear god, it would have to be Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Though it is very very sad that he is dead, I hated that book. Because it was a classic I picked it for a book report, thinking _"hey, it's a classic, people talk about it, it's gotta be good!"_ So after I discovered I hated it I _had_ to finish it, unfortunately.
> 
> I was around 15 at the time, and sometimes I think _"well, maybe I was just too young to really grasp it's 'amazingness' or something"_ .... but nope, every time I pick it up again I still hate it.



I also hate this book. Generally, Vonnegut. I've read several of his books and I don't like any one of them. He is the favourite writer of my close friend and we always argue about his prose. But I just cannot make myself like his books, however hard I try.

I also couldn't manage more than a few pages of Conrad's "Nostromo", it was a sheer torture for me.

----------


## beat wanderer

I wouldn't say that there are many classics that I hate. There are however quite a few I didn't enjoy as much as their classics status led me to believe I would. I usually find however that reading something a second time helps alot. Once i understand the plot and other basics i can start appreciating the novel alot more the second time around. I don't always find myself entralled reading classics but there is usually always something to be appreciated about them. Some books that i didn't even like the first time around have actually become some of my favourites after subsequent readings. These include On The Road, Catcher in the Rye and Slaughterhouse 5. I guess with those three what dissapointed me was expecting too much from their classic status from what i had read previously about them. But they all grew on me in a major way after time. I also found that Heart of Darkness is an excellent book. The first time around i found it boring and foggy, but felt I was reading 
something powerfull. After having to read it a few times for an essay i have found that it's one of the darkest and most powerfull books i've read. Also I loved Of Mice and Men. Yes the ending is incredibly depressing but I look for good books to move me emotionally in any way. A book doesn't have to leave me feeling good at the end for me to enjoy it. Sounds contradictory I know

Now for some of the classics i don't quite care for. Although I have only read them once each  :Tongue:  

Animal Farm: Although I get that it was about more than what was on the surface I still found it too simplistic. It just felt like I was reading a childrens book.

Catch 22: I actually found this book quite funny, but i found that it seemed to go no where and it felt like the humour was recycled and repetitive. I only made it half way through this one. It wasn't that it was that bad, it's just that i went on to something different and never went back. I'll read it again eventually though.

Pride and Prejudice: Although the writing itself is excellent I found that not enough happened to keep my attention. I also found that i hated most of the characters in the book with a passion. Also i grasped the irony at the start of the book but as i went on i found that I was ignoring it and taking everything that happened at face value

----------


## manfredk

I did not like this book very much. It's not the cruel parts in it which is dislike, but in my opinion Mr. Remarque has problems to really go on with the story. It's
something like carrying a heavy load of words, situations, relationships, but it all ends in a sort of 'making the way around it'. In German language it was the best selling book ever published. So this is a bit strange for me.

----------


## Moira

> Oh man, I found the constant travel and occassion soap between the characters unbelievably tedious and disorientating with the protagonist's circle of friends seperating and regathering at popular "beat" places throughout the continental States (gee, a small world it had been back then  ) and hookin up with different lovers and one night stands.
> 
> Plus the dialogue was so blase. 
> 
> Maybe, in it's day it did "capture the spirit of the '50s" but to me downright trite.


I was so looking forward to reading On the road, heard so many great thinks about the novel and i was really dissapointed. I'm glad to see i am not the only one :Smile: .

I'm not saying it's bad, it's just that it didn't do much for me.

----------


## Virgil

> I was so looking forward to reading On the road, heard so many great thinks about the novel and i was really dissapointed. I'm glad to see i am not the only one.
> 
> I'm not saying it's bad, it's just that it didn't do much for me.


I agree it's not a great novel. But I found it a fun read.

----------


## Moira

> I agree it's not a great novel. But I found it a fun read.


I didn't finish it. :Frown:  I've read half of it and gave up.

----------


## Scheherazade

> I was so looking forward to reading On the road, heard so many great thinks about the novel and i was really dissapointed. I'm glad to see i am not the only one.
> 
> I'm not saying it's bad, it's just that it didn't do much for me.


Couldn't agree more, Moira.

There have been lengthy discussion on this book if you would like to have a look:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...highlight=road

----------


## hastalavictoria

Lord of the Flies. every single second of it. absolutely the worst I have ever read. I don't even like to think about it, that's how much I hated it.

----------


## Moira

> Couldn't agree more, Moira.
> 
> There have been lengthy discussion on this book if you would like to have a look:
> 
> http://www.online-literature.com/for...highlight=road


Thanks Scher,

I enjoyed the disussions :Smile:  and feel better now for not liking the novel. :FRlol:   :FRlol:

----------


## Stieg

> I was so looking forward to reading On the road, heard so many great thinks about the novel and i was really dissapointed. I'm glad to see i am not the only one.
> 
> I'm not saying it's bad, it's just that it didn't do much for me.


Reading _On The Road_ was the literary equivalent of viewing "realism" in film.

I still haven't finished _Cat's Cradle_, I would rather bang my head against stones than torture myself through Vonnegut's drivel against the religious ... _see the cat, see the cradle_.

----------


## NickAdams

> Reading _On The Road_ was the literary equivalent of viewing "realism" in film.


That's a bad thing?

----------


## Stieg

> That's a bad thing?


Absolutely not but this novel has about as much excitement as watching paint dry. Very mundane content.

----------


## NickAdams

> Absolutely not but this novel has about as much excitement as watching paint dry. Very mundane content.


Bland content, but how's the prose?

----------


## Stieg

> Bland content, but how's the prose?


Didn't care for it, no milieu blasting off the pages IMO for a book of this nature. I think that is essential. Quite circular, redundant in subject matter a la "same things just different day".

----------


## Moira

> Reading _On The Road_ was the literary equivalent of viewing "realism" in film.
> 
> I still haven't finished _Cat's Cradle_, I would rather bang my head against stones than torture myself through Vonnegut's drivel against the religious ... _see the cat, see the cradle_.


I don't know about Cat's Cradle but i'm enjoying Slaughterhouse 5 very much at present. :Thumbs Up:

----------


## Stieg

> I don't know about Cat's Cradle but i'm enjoying Slaughterhouse 5 very much at present.


I loved _Slaughterhouse-5_ but I did not find _Cat's Cradle_ nearly as funny and the philosophical commentary, though layered on, is too tedious and not nearly driven home as deeply than in the previous novel. 

Though there is a few chapters (3 or 4) taking satirical jabs at Albert Schweitzer, his literary works, and some popular culture associated with him that ROCKED. Otherwise, the novel came across a soap box rant a dull one at that.

----------


## Sibyl

I didn't like Madame Bovary at all when I read it. I didn't like the plot nor Flaubert's writing style...
And I'm not too fond of Dickens either, but that's probably just because of personal taste, since long descriptions bore me.

----------


## Brigitte

I could never really fully appreciate Faulkner's work. I read three of his novels - three! I think it hurt me deep inside. xD I don't ever want to read a Faulkner novel again.

I read, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Intruder In The Dust.
*shudders*

----------


## barbara0207

> And I'm not too fond of Dickens either, but that's probably just because of personal taste, since long descriptions bore me.


I just skim the passages with long descriptions if they get too boring. Otherwise I love Dickens - except "The Pickwick Papers". I never finished them, although I tried several times. 
Another book I couldn't finish was "The Plague" by Albert Camus. But then I generally have a problem with French authors - we just don't seem to speak the same language, if you know what I mean ... :Smile:  I prefer German, British and American writers.

----------


## Mortis Anarchy

> Definetely Jean Paul Sartre's trilogy. Also Gogol's Dead Souls (mainly because it was unfinished).


I agree with Sartre...wow...I've only just started it a couple of days ago...

----------


## applepie

Grapes of Wrath was the worst for me. There was an entire chapter about dirt and a turtle. I'm sure this had some significance, but blech. I couldn't even bring myself to finish the book.

----------


## Brigitte

> I just skim the passages with long descriptions if they get too boring. Otherwise I love Dickens - except "The Pickwick Papers". I never finished them, although I tried several times. 
> Another book I couldn't finish was "The Plague" by Albert Camus. But then I generally have a problem with French authors - we just don't seem to speak the same language, if you know what I mean ... I prefer German, British and American writers.


Ooooh yeah. The Plague kept putting me to sleep. It took me an entire summer to read. Seriously. Argh. It was when I came back to school that I learned about existentialism and lalala. It's still a boring book to me, too.  :Tongue:

----------


## quasimodo1

Now here's an opportunity. While in university, after my third major change, it was Enligh Lit. One of the courses I signed on for was "Restoration Literature" and that was a mistake. Should have sampled it more first. It was really a dip in the quality of EL (e.g. "She Stoops to Conquer") and I voiced this in a final (essay question). Of course the prof. thought this not to be the case and failed me on that test. Although i pushed through the course...this didn't help. quasimodo1

----------


## chaplin

> Gogol's Dead Souls (mainly because it was unfinished).


I don't see how you can criticize a book merely because the author didn't finish a work, as in _Dead Souls_ case. That means that _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_, _Amerika_, _The Castle_ and many others are automatically devoid of any literary merit because they were not finished. I don't agree.

----------


## Turk

Do i have to like a half-novel? It's very natural to get disappointed when you finish the book in the middle of story.

----------


## ThousandthIsle

> _On The Road_ is terribly dull and boring. 
> 
> Rucksack bohemians on the road to everywhere.


Agreed! I think it was Capote who said, "That isn't writing - that's typing!"  :FRlol:  

I didn't enjoy it myself... Which is disappointing - you'd think that a text that sprang from a drug binge would have produced something that enhanced every day events, rather than dulled them down.




> Grapes of Wrath was the worst for me. There was an entire chapter about dirt and a turtle. I'm sure this had some significance, but blech. I couldn't even bring myself to finish the book.


I loved the _Grapes of Wrath_. I think the part you mentioned was one of the chapters where none of the characters appeared, and it described the dust bowl, the famine, the earth and humanity in general. Those chapters (which appeared in between every chapter of the Joads' saga) were my favorites - I thought they depicted the tragedy and suffering of the time beautifully, and drew empathy from the reader. I hated every single one of the Joads, was annoyed when any of them had dialog, but somehow I couldn't stop reading. Someone I discussed this with once said that the Joads are not meant to be liked... Maybe, with that in mind, more people would enjoy the book? 

I think the book was effective because the Joads were unlikable... I can't imagine I would be too likable under their living conditions either.

----------


## SnowQueen189

Alright, I didn't read all the proceeding posts, but for me _Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm_ was the most boring story on the face of the earth!!! It made me want to rip my hair out!

I didn't like _Anne of Green Gables_ much either, but by the 3rd one or so it got to be halfway decent (I received the entire series for christmas one year).

----------


## NickAdams

I'd like to toss One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on the dung pile.
I'm going through narrative therapy with Mr. Beckett at the moment.

----------


## chjjacks

Finnegans Wake

I did not really care for all the 'word-play'. I understand to really get something out of it, I would have to study it more in depth. But I don't find it as impressive as some scholars. I believe Joyce said he wrote it to give them (scholars) something to write about for 200 years.

My favorite thing about it is the first and last sentence (which are the same - - begins with the end and finishes with the beginning).

----------


## AuntShecky

I have to admit I loved the quartet you mentioned, even the inner chapters of "Moby Dick" (they are quite funny.)
the worst "classics" I was assigned to read (back when I was in school, during the Jurassic Era) were:
_Jalousie_ by Robbe-Grillet (if you take Ambien, etc. and have problems, just read that book. You'll be stacking zzzs
before you can say "Mon Dieu!")
and
_Lord of the Flies_ by William Golding. God, what a boring book, and yet I hear one of the networks is basing a reality show on it! Wow.
p.s. Cf. the blog site of yours truly, w. prior permission to post from the Forum's administrator

journals.aol.com/auntshecky711/aunt-sheckys-news-without-clues

----------


## metal134

I can't put my finger on why, but I wasn't terribly fond of "Heart of Darkness"

----------


## SnowQueen189

Oh! I thought of another one! I hated The Great Gatsby. I had to read it for my lit class last year. Everyone else liked it, but for some reason I just couldn't stand it...but I did like Fitzgerald's Winter Dreams...

----------


## metal134

> Oh! I thought of another one! I hated The Great Gatsby. I had to read it for my lit class last year. Everyone else liked it, but for some reason I just couldn't stand it...but I did like Fitzgerald's Winter Dreams...


I sort've agree with that one. I didn't hate "The Great Gatsby", but I left wondering what the big deal with it was. I thought it was OK, but I don't see why everyone fawns over it so much. And I very much like the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

----------


## Noisms

> Now here's an opportunity. While in university, after my third major change, it was Enligh Lit. One of the courses I signed on for was "Restoration Literature" and that was a mistake. Should have sampled it more first. It was really a dip in the quality of EL (e.g. "She Stoops to Conquer") and I voiced this in a final (essay question). Of course the prof. thought this not to be the case and failed me on that test. Although i pushed through the course...this didn't help. quasimodo1



God, yeah, I had the exact same experience in my English Lit. classes at university. Things really took a dip after Shakespeare died. But then again, Pilgrim's Progress was written around then, and I like that. And Paradise Lost.

Worst Classic Ever [tm] has to be The Scarlet Letter. Awful, turgid, dreary nonsense in page-long sentences full of words like "visage" and "interrim". I've never spent a longer two days than the ones I spent on that.

----------


## libernaut

Huckleberry Finn and Pride and Prejudice. So over rated.

----------


## PeterL

> I can't put my finger on why, but I wasn't terribly fond of "Heart of Darkness"


I can easily understand why someone wouldn't like that. It was written by a man who didn't really understand English, and he was trying to describe situations that were dark and unpleasant.

----------


## Video Drone

> Oh! I thought of another one! I hated The Great Gatsby. I had to read it for my lit class last year. Everyone else liked it, but for some reason I just couldn't stand it...but I did like Fitzgerald's Winter Dreams...


Same here, hated the book.  :Crash:

----------


## Dickens59

Pride and Prejudice.
I keep trying to read it and can only get half way through. I just don't care about the characters. I will try other Austen though.

----------


## Mary Sue

Silas Marner. I remember having to read this in high school, and how bleak and depressing I found it.  :Bawling:  I really enjoyed George Eliot's other masterpiece, The Mill on the Floss, but not this one.

----------


## Quark

> Silas Marner. I remember having to read this in high school, and how bleak and depressing I found it.  I really enjoyed George Eliot's other masterpiece, The Mill on the Floss, but not this one.


You found it depressing? Did you to the end? Silas regains his faith in humanity and Eppie gets married. I don't think there was a happier way to end that story. The last words Eppie says are, "O father, what a pretty home ours is! I think no one could be happier than we are". The Mill on the Floss ends with the drowning of the protagonist. Which is more bleak?

That being said, I do like the Mill on the Floss better. Yet, it's not because of the mood that I like one over the other.

----------


## Psychosis

I can name some classics that I had to read with anger (some books I read because I'm stubborn): 

- I'm sorry Virgil, but "Aeneid" is a very, very dry book... nothing to do with Homer's works (I just loved The Iliad and the Odyssey!)... this is a really boring book to read...

-"Thus Spoke Zarathustra", by Nietzsche. This was a hard book to read, though I like philosophy a lot.

- "Emma", since I'm not an Austen lover and I just can&#180;t stand those kind of stories. :P

- "The Great Gatsby", maybe because I was too young when I read it, but the story didn't move me at all.


Strangely, books like "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", "Heart of Darkness", "Drakula", "Moby Dick", "100 Years of Solitude" (some of the most hated book mentioned) are some of my favourite.

----------


## Fen

> - I'm sorry Virgil, but "Aeneid" is a very, very dry book... nothing to do with Homer's works (I just loved The Iliad and the Odyssey!)... this is a really boring book to read...


I love Aeneid in fact I thought the Odyssey,which I read a few years back, really dry and Virgil much better.

On the whole I don't think I have ever hated a book. Wondered who on earth would think it was well written, let alone great literature definitely but hated no.

----------


## the_black_skye

I love Wuthering Heights!!!
I couldn't get through War and Peace Tolstoy...

----------


## cipherdecoy

The Catcher In The Rye. And as for The Great Gatsby, I also feel I'm missing something.

----------


## Guinivere

I hated _Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen_. It is so boring compared to the others. And Catherine Morland is so naive, it really gets onto your nerves.
I really love Jane AUsten's style and her wit, but this novel was just way too benign.

I also had to plough through _Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks_, a German classic.

----------


## moranfan

First and foremost, _The Fountainhead_. I don't know which is worse: that Ayn Rand decided to write a book about architects or that I actually read the whole thing.

----------


## Kafka's Crow

_As I Lay Dying_.

----------


## kelby_lake

I love The Great Gatsby, although I understand why some don't like it. It's not very jolly.

To Kill A Mockingbird is rubbish. If someone published that now, I doubt anyone would care.

The Old man and The Sea. I can't get into it. Apparantly it's one of the most profound stories ever told which is the only thing my blurb said and somehow I can't see it yet

----------


## stlukesguild

As I Lay Dying

Kafka... I'm surprised at this one. But then there's no accounting for taste :Biggrin: . Seriously, I could never stand Steven Crane's _Red Badge of Courage_. Especially after being forced to read it by three different teachers who wanted to turn the experience into some grand social lesson. :Sick:

----------


## Kafka's Crow

> As I Lay Dying
> 
> Kafka... I'm surprised at this one. But then there's no accounting for taste. Seriously, I could never stand Steven Crane's _Red Badge of Courage_. Especially after being forced to read it by three different teachers who wanted to turn the experience into some grand social lesson.


I think I should re-read it and read some more by the same author and read it all with an open mind. I _want_ to like Faulkner, honest!

----------


## qimissung

> First and foremost, _The Fountainhead_. I don't know which is worse: that Ayn Rand decided to write a book about architects or that I actually read the whole thing.


I heartily agree. I despise Ayn Rand.

----------


## naomi moon

I really hated Madame Bovary.

It was too dry & full of unnecessary details, the end was so disappointing. ahhh!!! it simply bores you to death  :FRlol: , I don't know how I managed to read it all.

----------


## integrity

Tess of the d'Urbervilles made me want to slit my throat.

I read some of Hemingway's works in my early 20's and got nothing out of them. I remember being bored to pieces. I thought he was completely overrated and that his writing was bereft of beauty. But maybe now I'd be more in tune with him - not sure. Maybe I should give him another try, as I did Steinbeck (hated him in high school - love him now).

----------


## kelby_lake

> Have you found any classics that were simply unappealing yet according to to the general public considered some of the most outstanding literary works ever? List classics you have read that have disinterested you and made you slog through several pages of pure banality.
> 
> 
> 3. A Streetcar Named Desire


You clearly haven't watched the film.

----------


## MissCosette

Fountainhead, yes. Boring.

----------


## Melmoth

Salinger's _The Catcher in the Rye_, Eliot's _Middlemarch_, Austen's _Emma_... are some which come to mind...

----------


## kelby_lake

To Kill A Mockingbird. A patronising piece of coughing up chinese proverbs and giving us moral lessons which we are obviously so unaware of. thank god she didn't write another book.

----------


## CathyEarnshaw

I really loved _Emma_, it is one of my Austen favorites. But I could not get through Joyce's _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ without constant breaks.

----------


## Joreads

> Oh! I thought of another one! I hated The Great Gatsby. I had to read it for my lit class last year. Everyone else liked it, but for some reason I just couldn't stand it...but I did like Fitzgerald's Winter Dreams...


I didn't like it either I had to force myself to read it. Everyone I talk to loves it. I sometime wonder if people like these books because they have been classed as Classics and they feel they have to?

----------


## Equality72521

My classic hating is mainly directed towards Mrs. Dalloway. I really, really, really hate that book.

----------


## kelby_lake

> I didn't like it either I had to force myself to read it. Everyone I talk to loves it. I sometime wonder if people like these books because they have been classed as Classics and they feel they have to?


Like Gatsby or not, you have to admit that the writing is beautiful. I understand that the book's quite serious and contemplative, but it's hardly the worst classic- far from it.

----------


## WICKES

> _On The Road_ is terribly dull and boring. 
> 
> Rucksack bohemians on the road to everywhere.


To be fair, I think On the Road is a very misunderstood novel. People read it expecting a hedonistic, drug fuelled ride. In fact much of it has a rather sad, melancholy feel to it. Kerouac was by nature quite a shy, sensetive man and not the Keith Richards/ Keith Moon type extravert people imagine. 

I thought it was ok, but as a Brit I really see it as a book by an American for Americans- it is about reigniting/ reinvigorating a love of and appreciation for freedom/ space/ going west... all that stuff. The problem I had with the novel was that it felt like he did all that travelling just so he'd have something to write about- that seemed kind of inauthentic. You also sense that he didn't really enjoy it much and was often lonely and depressed.

----------


## Etienne

Traveling is not just about enjoying, relaxing having fun and tripping. That's vacations, authentic traveling contains it's dose of melancholy, sufferings, adventure and disgust. Why, would you ask me? Because authentic freedom and discovery implies this. Not everyone who travels "travels" in this perspective, and that's a big gap in understanding some things. Traveling with everything organized, or doing only the things where you know you have fun and comfort makes one miss many things, that while may be less "enjoyable" on a purely hedonistic perspective, might be much more rewarding in an inner, intellectual, or spiritual perspective.

In the same way, an intellectual or an athlete might suffer a lot during the process of doing what he does, how is that justified when it is not to make a living (and that person could actually earn more doing something else)? It's because the person loves what he is doing and it includes this suffering, and that doesn't mean that he is always happy about what he is doing and is having "fun", but these are the things that are, in the end, the most rewarding, those in which there is a part of suffering.

Some might call it masochism, but "masochism" as typically understood might very well be only a perverted version of a certain instinctual "love to suffer" which is a basis to self-improvement. There are many other illustrations of such a concept, namely in religions, or love relations.

That was a bit longer than I expected...

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## WICKES

I have bit of a problem with Brave New World. I do like it and I love Huxley, but the idea that after a cataclysmic war/ revolution/ upheval etc the world would be taken control of by a benign council of world leaders who would rule _in the best interests of everyone else_ seemed to me pretty optimistic. I found Orwell's vision more realistic.

If 1984 and Brave New World were the two great dystopian novels of the 20th century (funny, I've just noticed that they were both educated at Eton!) then for me Orwell's was far the superior and far more accurate.




> Traveling is not just about enjoying, relaxing having fun and tripping. That's vacations, authentic traveling contains it's dose of melancholy, sufferings, adventure and disgust. Why, would you ask me? Because authentic freedom and discovery implies this. Not everyone who travels "travels" in this perspective, and that's a big gap in understanding some things. Traveling with everything organized, or doing only the things where you know you have fun and comfort makes one miss many things, that while may be less "enjoyable" on a purely hedonistic perspective, might be much more rewarding in an inner, intellectual, or spiritual perspective.



But if you read his other stuff (and a biography) you get the impression that it really brought him nothing- certainly little inner/ spiritual growth or peace. He died very bitter, lonely and unhappy. He was looking for enlightenment, that is clear, what is also clear is that he never found it. People like Hesse are more rewarding. I'd recommend Siddhartha over all Kerouac's books any day.

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## Etienne

I'll have to agree with you on Huxley, and Huxley in general, not just Brave New World. He was a great intellectual and a very interesting person, but he is in general a boring writer, the form of essay suits him much more than that of, say, a novel.

I am not saying Kerouac is the greatest writer ever or that On the Road is a work of much depth, I was only objecting to that particular sentence of your, about the point of his travels, which, maybe you are right about in the case of Kerouac. Also my post does not exclude the fact that one dies bitter and sad afterwards, take the obvious example of Bobby Fischer, the chess player, if you look after his conquest of the chess world, you might wonder what in the hell was the point of it all. However are we going to call what he did futile and useless? I wouldn't.

Some people amassed huge fortunes, and died unhappy, bitter and sad, same goes for absolutely anything. For some people hedonism might be this very quest, and many of them will die sad and bitter.

But in all these cases, it is a matter of overburdening oneself (in different ways) rather than this simple beneficial suffering I talked about.

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## Hank Stamper

> My classic hating is mainly directed towards Mrs. Dalloway. I really, really, really hate that book.


+1

i dunno if i really really really hate it, but it is probably one of the most pointless books i have ever read and instantly forgettable

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## Scheherazade

> +1
> 
> i dunno if i really really really hate it, but it is probably one of the most pointless books i have ever read and instantly forgettable


Hallelujah!  :Biggrin: 

I can even start a "Mrs Dalloway Haters Club"!

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## Etienne

I've only read To the Lighthouse by Woolf, and even though it was good I was not so impressed, so I ain't going to join your club since I won't be reading it! Orlando looks like a very interesting book though.

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## JBI

I found Mrs. Dalloway to be breathtakingly incredible. I think though, that a lot of criticism on it is based on a mis-reading. The book in itself is a study of human vanity, tinged with a nice little King Lear subplot to add a little flavor.

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## mortalterror

> I found Mrs. Dalloway to be breathtakingly incredible.


At least we agree on that much.

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## book_jones

I can't believe that people hate Portrait of an Artist so much. That book is the reason that I love literature. I picked it up in high school and instantly fell in love with the style. I used to think that it was more real than anything else I had ever read. It really felt like real life. Since then I've been an avid reader.

This was a little hard for me because my tastes are pretty broad, but I did manage to think of one.

Light in August - I absolutely adore Faulkner, but this book I found a little hard to stomach. I thought it was slow, preachy, and linear. These are all the things that Faulkner usually isn't! I also felt that all the interesting characters had much too short of a part. I would talk about it some more, but I don't want to give it away for people who are going to read it. A lot of people like it, but I'll never understand how it got on the Modern Library 100 while brilliant works like Absalom, Absalom and The Hamlet got left off.

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## Etienne

I thought Portrait was good, but that's as far a praise it gets from me, I was actually disappointed, if we were to nominate overrated books, I would nominate it.

I would personally like to nominate Hermann Broch's Death of Virgil, but my opinion is that translation had a lot to do with my disliking it so much. Some parts were good but half of it is just pointless repetitions of nice words assembled to create contradictions in order to seem profound... although I can understand how the original German could be better.

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## Hank Stamper

> I found Mrs. Dalloway to be breathtakingly incredible. I think though, that a lot of criticism on it is based on a mis-reading. The book in itself is a study of human vanity, tinged with a nice little King Lear subplot to add a little flavor.


yes clearly i must have 'mis-read' it  :Thumbs Up: 

i think the reason there is a lot of criticism on Mrs Dalloway is because it is the most pointless book ever written, and if it is indeed a study of human vanity and how people can be massively superficial, it is the most tedious study of such ever conducted

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## Scheherazade

> I think though, that a lot of criticism on it is based on a mis-reading.


That is, no doubt, one misreading I can live with because I am not reading it again!


> The book in itself is a study of human vanity, tinged with a nice little King Lear subplot to add a little flavor.


I agree; it is about human vanity, in particular about Woolf's and I am not so keen on spending hours contemplating _that._

_Orlando_ is more interesting than _Mrs D_ but that doesn't mean much, does it?  :Wink: 

I gave up on _To The Lighthouse_ after couple of unsuccessful attempts.

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## Inderjit Sanghe

> If 1984 and Brave New World were the two great dystopian novels of the 20th century (funny, I've just noticed that they were both educated at Eton!) then for me Orwell's was far the superior and far more accurate.


Bleh. Orwell and Huxley are pretty much the same in my eyes, yes in some ways 1984 can be construed as being more 'accurate', but that does not stop it being any less tendentious. Personally, I prefer Nabokov's dystopian efforts, esp. 'Invitation to a Beheading', but then again I am a Nabokov-maniac. (P.S, 1984 is artistically superior to Brave New World, which was worse than mediocre.) 

On Virginia Woolf-I once tried to get through her books, most of them having the same affect as a heavy dose of soporofics, they were all pretty banal, but there is no accounting for taste, I guess. 




> I agree; it is about human vanity, in particular about Woolf's and I am not so keen on spending hours contemplating that.
> 
> Orlando is more interesting than Mrs D but that doesn't mean much, does it? 
> 
> I gave up on To The Lighthouse after couple of unsuccessful attempt


 :FRlol:  I like you.

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## aBIGsheep

Pride and Prejudice. 
Almost every gossipy woman I know adores that book. I can't get myself past the second volume.

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## Equality72521

> Pride and Prejudice. 
> Almost every gossipy woman I know adores that book. I can't get myself past the second volume.


hahaha. Pride and Prejudice isn't too bad, I do love the Austen books I must say but some women are a lil wacked about it.  :Tongue:

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## Domer121

> I can't believe that people hate Portrait of an Artist so much. That book is the reason that I love literature. I picked it up in high school and instantly fell in love with the style. I used to think that it was more real than anything else I had ever read. It really felt like real life. Since then I've been an avid reader.
> 
> This was a little hard for me because my tastes are pretty broad, but I did manage to think of one.
> 
> Light in August - I absolutely adore Faulkner, but this book I found a little hard to stomach. I thought it was slow, preachy, and linear. These are all the things that Faulkner usually isn't! I also felt that all the interesting characters had much too short of a part. I would talk about it some more, but I don't want to give it away for people who are going to read it. A lot of people like it, but I'll never understand how it got on the Modern Library 100 while brilliant works like Absalom, Absalom and The Hamlet got left off.


 I agree with you! I loved portrait.. granted it was a difficult read, it was well worth the time that I put into it... 
And though Joyce is obscure.... I think he is rather timeless..
.
Now... I didn't like Lolita....That book drove me insane.. because after the first few chapters I just wanted to put it down,, I did eventually finish it... but I just felt as though it did nothing for me... just perhaps made me thankful that I had grown out of my "nymphet" stage....

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## PabloQ

I promise to go back and read this whole thread. Seems like fun.
I'll nominate The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. I didn't care about any of the characters or what happened to them and as an author, Mr James did little to influence me to care. He did bore the living crap out of me. Finished it just to spite Mr. James, but bloody awful.
In second place, I'll nominate The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. His abuse of his main character was way over the top. "What else can Sinclair do to this poor chap." Read on. "Oh, didn't think of that." Once you get past the socially relevant portrayal of life in the stockyards, it becomes this preachy sermon on socialism that goes beyond overbearing. I still hate it.
I've read other works by both authors that I have enjoyed, but these two works are supposed to be crown jewels in the body of work for each of them. I say Phooey.

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## Kafka's Crow

> I promise to go back and read this whole thread. Seems like fun.
> I'll nominate The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. I didn't care about any of the characters or what happened to them and as an author, Mr James did little to influence me to care. He did bore the living crap out of me. Finished it just to spite Mr. James, but bloody awful.
> In second place, I'll nominate The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. His abuse of his main character was way over the top. "What else can Sinclair do to this poor chap." Read on. "Oh, didn't think of that." Once you get past the socially relevant portrayal of life in the stockyards, it becomes this preachy sermon on socialism that goes beyond overbearing. I still hate it.
> I've read other works by both authors that I have enjoyed, but these two works are supposed to be crown jewels in the body of work for each of them. I say Phooey.


I can't even start reading a Henry James book! About the _Portrait_: it is a beautiful book and consistently very, very interesting. The passages about the priest and his sermons about hell-fire stand out conspicuously as boring and trite but this is a part of the design of the whole book. Stephen renounces the boring, monotonous religion and looses himself in the pursuit of the artistic excellence. Joyce books are all about language and the beauty of human expression, its possibilities and its varieties. Anybody who finds it difficult to see what all the fuss is about, get an audio reading of these books. Good readers like Cyril Cusack and Jim Norton can bring out the real art in these works, specially the former. Cusack brings young Daedalus to life:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...0/thelibyrinth

This is what you are looking for.

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## book_jones

And so many people hate Mrs. Dalloway too? I mean, it's not even 200 pages. There are many more pointless novels that are much longer than this one. At least it only takes a few hours to read. Do any of you feel this way because you had to read the book for school? I've found that this can really change someone's opinion on a book.

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## Jozanny

> That is, no doubt, one misreading I can live with because I am not reading it again!I agree; it is about human vanity, in particular about Woolf's and I am not so keen on spending hours contemplating _that._
> 
> _Orlando_ is more interesting than _Mrs D_ but that doesn't mean much, does it? 
> 
> I gave up on _To The Lighthouse_ after couple of unsuccessful attempts.


Poor Virginia! :Smile:  We *did* TTL in university, which is probably why I understand it and see it as a novel which transcends the short-comings of her style, not that I am prepared to discuss the Ramseys here--but I think Woolf leans toward an almost utopian overview which prevents the reader from really identifying with her characters.

Say what you want about Flaubert, but Emma Bovary could be my vain younger sister--whereas Orlando is almost cartoonish. Woolf got it just about right in TTL though--there is a poignancy to Mrs. Ramsey and her strength in sustaining the fable, whether or not that strength actually gets us *to* the lighthouse.

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## kelby_lake

> I agree with you! I loved portrait.. granted it was a difficult read, it was well worth the time that I put into it... 
> And though Joyce is obscure.... I think he is rather timeless..
> .
> Now... I didn't like Lolita....That book drove me insane.. because after the first few chapters I just wanted to put it down,, I did eventually finish it... but I just felt as though it did nothing for me... just perhaps made me thankful that I had grown out of my "nymphet" stage....


I only really appreciated Lolita once I had read it twice because I didn't really get it the first time- but it's amazing.
I cannot bring myself to read Joyce, he annoys me. I read the first page of Portrait of The Artist as A Young Man and promptly returned it to the shelf.

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## Hank Stamper

> And so many people hate Mrs. Dalloway too? I mean, it's not even 200 pages. There are many more pointless novels that are much longer than this one. At least it only takes a few hours to read. Do any of you feel this way because you had to read the book for school? I've found that this can really change someone's opinion on a book.


the relative brevity of the book does not make it any less pointless

as Graham Greene said of Virginia Woolf's understanding of human nature, it is 'paper thin'

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## Inderjit Sanghe

> I cannot bring myself to read Joyce, he annoys me. I read the first page of Portrait of The Artist as A Young Man and promptly returned it to the shelf.



That is quite the prejudice! How can you dismiss an author, especially one as remarkable as Joyce, based on a page, of one of his more inferior stories?




> Say what you want about Flaubert, but Emma Bovary could be my vain younger sister--


Which is kind of the point-Flaubert admitted to the fact that the story was in itself, completely banal, as were the two main characters; Flaubert prided himself on being the first novelist to mock the two main lovers in his novel.

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## kelby_lake

> That is quite the prejudice! How can you dismiss an author, especially one as remarkable as Joyce, based on a page, of one of his more inferior stories?


My dad liked the book but it really didn't appeal to me, primarily because of the ridiculous way that that and the extract I read from Ulysses was written. If they count as great literature, I'm counting Mr Men along with them.

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## cipherdecoy

Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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## Michigan J Frog

The Scarlet Letter. Toilet paper is better than that piece of crap.

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## eyemaker

> The Scarlet Letter. Toilet paper is better than that piece of crap.


are you serious about this? I don't think it's just a piece of crap or some kind of a toilet paper(even though this is not one my favorite classic, I just can't consider this as a toilet paper as you do).. I totaly disagree with this. :Frown:

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## aeroport

> are you serious about this? I don't think it's just a piece of crap or some kind of a toilet paper(even though this is not one my favorite classic, I just can't consider this as a toilet paper as you do).. I totaly disagree with this.


Even if the poster is serious, the criticism clearly is not.

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## Michigan J Frog

Perhaps toilet paper was too harsh.
Let's just say I would rather read one of the modern best sellers than that book. And if all books were written like that one, I would completely give up reading.

On second thought, never mind, I did mean what I said. At least toilet paper has some use.

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## Michigan J Frog

Serious criticism about the book? sure.
That book felt like a daytime tv soap opera. At no point was I touched by anything in that book. It was not insightful, it was poorly written, the author would've done better to just write an essay. It had no artistic value, it was insufferably didactic, and soon after reading that book I dropped the class that had assigned that as a reading assignment.
The teacher actually tried to defend the book, and it really all came out absurdly funny, she even wore a damn scarlet letter t shirt, and after that, nobody really took the class seriously anymore.
As opposed to books that inspire people to become involved in literature, that book repels people away from it. Had I not read a good number of books that are worth something by that point, I probably would've not wanted anything to do with literature with the rest of my life.
I mean, really, can there be a shallower book with more pathos.




> Ah, of course. The first real American piece of fiction worth anything. Perfectly trivial. Inspiring future generations of Americans to develop something that isn't just a copy of the English. Useless. 
> Actually, 'if all books were written like that one', you would be used to it, no?


The book is not worth anything. I can't think of a good writer who was truly influenced by that book. I dismiss most of American Fiction. The ones I don't dismiss were written by American writers not influenced by that book. It is useless. It has no value (at least no positive value) to it.

And really, that's the only classic I would say that about. I dislike many other classics, but that book is really a waste of paper.

On second thought maybe it has some value. It could be shown to people so they wouldn't write or think like that.

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## Michigan J Frog

Keep in mind that all these are my opinions, very strong perhaps, but I did not look to to incite an argument, although the toilet paper comment might suggest otherwise. That was not an exaggeration, nor was there any purpose behind that statement. But after all these forums are for discussions, although from the looks of it I doubt either one of us will be convinced by each other. But, here goes nothing. 
The Scarlet letter is pathos, it is extremely dramatic over nothing. Had I not read introduction/author's background I would've thought that the author indeed wrote this book to mock a similar type of work. But the author was serious. That pretty much explains the soap opera comparison.
Certainly all fiction are written with ideas behind them, but this book almost shoved them down your throat. Sentences were just shortcuts to get to the next idea. After finishing it one feels like it was an essay, and not a novel. The book almost has a holier-than-thou air, it was making itself seem more important than it really was, at every opportunity. Flipping through the pages you can sense an unbearable smugness.
It was poorly written in that, the characterizations were completely ludicrous. They are nothing more than symbols. The plot itself was outrageous, and the storytelling was, essentially, boring. The story was simply unreadable, and it was unreadable with no purpose. The ideas it tried so damn hard to express were shallow. It was not touching at any point. A play is less dramatic than this book. Nothing in it was profound, nothing in it was interesting. I almost laughed after finishing the book. I looked at is a joke.

Anyhow you probably will disagree with all of this, as I can see your Henry James sig, and from that have a good idea of what school of literature you're interested in studying.
And let's just say there's a small chance of me ever taking that type of writing seriously, and leave it at that.

And we could go back and forth about this, but I doubt you would want to. You would most likely dismiss me as an idiot after reading that post, perhaps be enraged by it or scoff at it, but, I still maintain that The Scarlet Letter is the worst classic, and perhaps the worst book I have ever read. I do not think that it should be considered literature, and its value to me is even lower than a best seller.
And now I have business to attend to, but I would revisit this page when I have time, if you do indeed want to continue this discussion, although I see little purpose in doing that.

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## idiosynchrissy

I have learned that my tastes have changed over the years. The first time I read _Tess of the d'Urbervilles_ I hated it. I couldn't even finish it. That was in high school. I read it again in college, and I enjoyed it. The same with _The Great Gatsby_. _Ulysses_ was probably my least favorite classic so far just because the footnotes that go with the book are about five inches thick. When you have to read a footnote for each line of prose, it's too tedious to enjoy.

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## PabloQ

> Keep in mind that all these are my opinions, very strong perhaps, but I did not look to to incite an argument....


Boy are you in the wrong place. I see your new to the forum so welcome. One of the fun aspects to this site are the best/worst, underrated/overrated arguments. What's to great is no matter what you pick, someone else is standiing 180 degrees the other direction. You'll also find (oh, wait, you already have) that stronger you insult the work, the stronger the reaction you'll get.
This exchange on The Scarlet Letter is highly entertaining. Just so I keep enjoying it, Frog, I believe you wanted to say something about Henry James? Go for it. Jamesian will bite. :Biggrin:

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## Leabhar

> +1
> 
> i dunno if i really really really hate it, but it is probably one of the most pointless books i have ever read and instantly forgettable


That is kind of self contradictory. If it was instantly forgettable you wouldn't remember that you disliked it either.

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## Michigan J Frog

> Boy are you in the wrong place. I see your new to the forum so welcome. One of the fun aspects to this site are the best/worst, underrated/overrated arguments. What's to great is no matter what you pick, someone else is standiing 180 degrees the other direction. You'll also find (oh, wait, you already have) that stronger you insult the work, the stronger the reaction you'll get.
> This exchange on The Scarlet Letter is highly entertaining. Just so I keep enjoying it, Frog, I believe you wanted to say something about Henry James? Go for it. Jamesian will bite.


Ah, well I am glad to get a strong reaction, come to think of it. Although I am quite new to this forum, I get a feeling it's quite scattered in that there is not one or two consistent discussion but instead a couple of dropped line spread out in many topics. 
And about Henry James  :Smile:  maybe in another topic. His books aren't as bad as Hawthorne's, (you can say that almost about everybody) and isn't relevant to the topic because Scarlet letter takes that title by a lot.

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## kelby_lake

The Old Man and The Sea doesn't appear to have a story- it's just very boring.

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## Hank Stamper

> That is kind of self contradictory. If it was instantly forgettable you wouldn't remember that you disliked it either.


the content, not the fact i had read it or whether i liked or disliked it

 :Crash:  pedant

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## Leabhar

> the content, not the fact i had read it or whether i liked or disliked it
> 
>  pedant


Then the book wasn't forgettable.  :Biggrin:

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## kelby_lake

Well, it is if it's a blur. You can remember how it made you feel  :Smile:  Like dreams- you can't really remember all of them but you can remember how they make you feel.

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## WICKES

If I had to nominate just one book it would be 'To Kill A Mocking Bird'. Dreadful novel.

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## kelby_lake

Yes! The world sees sense! What a smug load of rubbish!

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## JBI

To Kill a Mockingbird isn't a classic yet - the original audience is still alive.

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## kelby_lake

Well, people lazily refer to it as one so I guess it's a 'modern classic'

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## RichardHresko

Henry James' "Turn of the Screw."

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## Jozanny

> Just so I keep enjoying it, Frog, I believe you wanted to say something about Henry James? Go for it. Jamesian will bite.


As would I if I thought it worth it against the naysayers, but I participate in LN for love of literature, not for smirking at it, so I am not sure what the detractors hope to gain. Disruption? Attention? (shrugs)

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## LitNetIsGreat

I think it is all but redundant to talk about a "worst classic." People change and with it attitudes to the books they have read. Largely, any faults with a classic is likely to lie with the reader, not the book.

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## Jozanny

> I think it is all but redundant to talk about a "worst classic." People change and with it attitudes to the books they have read. Largely, any faults with a classic is likely to lie with the reader, not the book.


I would take this one step further Neely, although I agree with the sense of your post. The phrase *worst classic* is nearly an oxymoron--which is not to say that tastes do not change, or that an author may become overrated while lower stars rise--but a classic is a classic for various reasons. It may represent the epitome of its era, like Dickens "A Christmas Carol" can arguably be said to do--even though the tale makes me wince I can appreciate it for what it is, what Dickens hoped it would illuminate, even change, about Victorian society. Or it may be the pinnacle of a literary movement, such as _Madame Bovary_ is to fictional realism, even a stepping stone to modernism, and so on.

Members should simply start five threads called "Books I want to trash!!!!" and we can keep Sche and Logos busy while they merge this and the *overrated* thread with it. :Biggrin:  :Wink:

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## LitNetIsGreat

Yes you are quite right "worst classic" is an oxymoron indeed. Like you, I don't particularly go for the unrealistic "change of heart" in _A Christmas Carol_, neither am I much fond of Dickens at all, but for me to start putting negative labels on his work would make me a fool, or more of a fool than I already am.

It is worth noting that classics as a general rule can also be labelled as such because they are the first of a type to do something, such as with Richardson, amongst the first novels, as well as the best of something. The label doesn't automatically denote the best, First/popular/best - maybe.

I remember trying to read _The Turn of the Screw_ several years ago, several times and just gave it up in the end, thought it was "overly wordy." Then I learnt Freudian analysis and the novel totally opened up to me and I judged it in a different light. This is one of the ways that readers change over time, a novel may not work for you, which is fine, but it doesn't mean it is trash. Also some classics represent a body of work that I may not fully be at home with. For instance the Romantic poets appeal more to me than say, the Realists, but it does not make their work any less good just because of my own personal tastes.

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## Jozanny

The Turn of the Screw took me more than one reading, for sure, but it is a masterwork because the unreliability of the narration presents itself as reliable.

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## LitNetIsGreat

Yes that is one of the many reasons it is a masterwork though there are many large and small, you have read it through Freud I suppose, it is a classic Freudian text is it not?

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## Lioness_Heart

I generally don't like Dickens that much. It's not really to do with his writing, because I think that his characterisation is amazing for certain characters. It just really irritates me that many of his books are a bit prescriptive: his heroes go through terrible ordeals, nobly rising above them all. Their true gentility shines through and it turns out that they are from wealthy 'good' families all along... it sometimes appears that he is trying to recreate himself in these heroes, which is all very well, but in a figure that is portrayed so much as an advocate of social justice, it seems a bit hypocritical that his heroes' good qualities are due to some sort of innate good breeding.

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## LitNetIsGreat

Yes exactly, I don’t take Dickens seriously as a writer at all. Of course his construction of language is first rate, but the psychological reality of his characters is not, though was probably never meant to be. His novels appear to be the soaps of their day, just better written and without the awful acting.

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## kelby_lake

He is very good at characterisation. There's tons of characters in Dickens novels, each with their own quirks.

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## WICKES

> He is very good at characterisation. There's tons of characters in Dickens novels, each with their own quirks.


Dickens is one of the greatest creators of characters in world literature. Harold Bloom writes that he is up there with Shakespeare and Chaucer (among the British writers), Cervantes, Tolstoy and Homer. For that alone he deserves a place in the pantheon of greats.

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## Lioness_Heart

> He is very good at characterisation. There's tons of characters in Dickens novels, each with their own quirks.


That's true, but his writing might be more effective if the hero was more realistic. Although, I suppose, they do engage the reader's sympathy, which might have been what Dickens was trying to do.

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## Etienne

Well I don't think Dickens should be approached like, say, Madame Bovary. Dickens reads more like a tale, and I feel that he should be approached in such a way. Even his writing conveys this feeling, it is always tender and light. I think Dickens is one of the greatest prose writers too.

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## LitNetIsGreat

Yes, the creation of character through quirks and description is first rate, but they have no psychological reality. People do not spontaneously change personalities on the eve of Christmas despite being visited by ghosts. With that said I am not Criticising Dickens for this aspect because he probably never intended psychological depth merely that I dont enjoy Dickens that much for this reason, though of course my opinions may change over time.

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## Etienne

Well even more so for Christmas Carol, it is not supposed to be a psychological study, but rather a light tale. So while I understand what you're saying, I feel it is just like saying "magic realism would be better if it was more realist". So it is not so much Dickens that you don't like rather the "genre" which he writes.

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## LitNetIsGreat

Yes, perhaps that would be a fair comment.

Though with the same thinking perhaps it is best not to praise the characters of Dickens at all, just the construction of his language and the enjoyable lightness of his tales?

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## Etienne

I don't praise the characters, I praise the overall work. I don't think dostoevskian characterization would be nice to have in a Dickens story  :Wink: 

Just like Dickens characters in a Dostoevsky novel would be ridiculous. And in this sense you are right that the main interest of a Dickens story is not characterization or psychology, but other vectors.

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## LitNetIsGreat

No, I agree, I wasn’t referring to you with the praising of characters, but to the above posters and to general comments I have heard before. Perhaps it would be more accurate to praise the characterisation within the particular genre itself, his characters work well within his novels, Dostoevsky’s within Dostoevsky’s.

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## kelby_lake

> With that said I am not Criticising Dickens for this aspect because he probably never intended psychological depth merely that I dont enjoy Dickens that much for this reason, though of course my opinions may change over time.


Yep, Christmas Carol is just a nice Christmassy tale. Because you don't really want misery at Christmas do you?  :Smile: 
A Tale of Two Cities has more depth, in the character of Sydney Carton, the drunk lawyer who sees in rare moments of sobriety how bad he is. Then the ending is famous.

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## Emil Miller

> Yes you are quite right "worst classic" is an oxymoron indeed. Like you, I don't particularly go for the unrealistic "change of heart" in _A Christmas Carol_, neither am I much fond of Dickens at all, but for me to start putting negative labels on his work would make me a fool, or more of a fool than I already am.
> 
> It is worth noting that classics as a general rule can also be labelled as such because they are the first of a type to do something, such as with Richardson, amongst the first novels, as well as the best of something. The label doesn't automatically denote the best, First/popular/best - maybe.
> 
> I remember trying to read _The Turn of the Screw_ several years ago, several times and just gave it up in the end, thought it was "overly wordy." Then I learnt Freudian analysis and the novel totally opened up to me and I judged it in a different light. This is one of the ways that readers change over time, a novel may not work for you, which is fine, but it doesn't mean it is trash. Also some classics represent a body of work that I may not fully be at home with. For instance the Romantic poets appeal more to me than say, the Realists, but it does not make their work any less good just because of my own personal tastes.


I remember when I started to read serious writers (eons ago) my local library had a number of Henry James novels on its shelves. They were impressively bound but what struck me most about them was their thickness. A cursory glance through one or two told me that James was an extraordinarily verbose author who would be unlikely to interest me. Years later I decided to read some of his less lengthy works such as The Turn of the Screw and The Europeans. I discovered that his reputation for wordiness was justified but he could write a good story. Later still I bought a copy of The American in a German translation because I thought that the use of compound words in the German language would make the novel seem shorter but I was wrong; the book was still unnaturally verbose.
Can anyone explain why James, a good story teller, was so long-winded, surely even a Freudian sub-text doesn't require such verbosity.

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## sharpie

Les Miserables - too simple, too didactic, too corny.... maybe i'm missing something

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## Niamh

Middlesmarch. Dont like Middlesmarch.

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## Sarida

I'm not sure if it is really labeled as a "classic," but it is the one piece of literature that I have read so far that I wanted to burn. (It belonged to my school and was an assignment, so I decided I probably should not. . .)
Oh. . . almost forgot to write it down: 
Franz Kafka's Metamorphasis. *shudder*

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## HyndmanStrider

The Great Gatsby

Don Quitoxe


Couldn't relate well to either novel.

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## bazarov

Some strange choices in this thread...

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## Kafka's Crow

> I'm not sure if it is really labeled as a "classic," but it is the one piece of literature that I have read so far that I wanted to burn. (It belonged to my school and was an assignment, so I decided I probably should not. . .)
> Oh. . . almost forgot to write it down: 
> *Franz Kafka's Metamorphasis.* *shudder*





> Some strange choices in this thread...


Yes I am appalled as well, Bazarov. They should ban schools from forcing real literature on students. It only breeds contempt for these great books. Schools should stick with _Gatsby_ and Dickens and James etc. Only a very few great writers survive school curricula. Jane Austen is a survivor, so is Gorge Eliot but most other great writers should be kept out of students reach. Who teaches Kafka to students? Maybe it was a German school. Still this is very indiscreet.

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## Jozanny

> I remember when I started to read serious writers (eons ago) my local library had a number of Henry James novels on its shelves. They were impressively bound but what struck me most about them was their thickness. A cursory glance through one or two told me that James was an extraordinarily verbose author who would be unlikely to interest me. Years later I decided to read some of his less lengthy works such as The Turn of the Screw and The Europeans. I discovered that his reputation for wordiness was justified but he could write a good story. Later still I bought a copy of The American in a German translation because I thought that the use of compound words in the German language would make the novel seem shorter but I was wrong; the book was still unnaturally verbose.
> Can anyone explain why James, a good story teller, was so long-winded, surely even a Freudian sub-text doesn't require such verbosity.


The best I can reply to this Brian, off the top of my weary head, and despite all my years of studying James, meaning that I am not going to post anything profound or terribly illuminating, is two-fold, or maybe three:

James was a Victorian American expatriate, and as such, would never explicitly say X meant Y; he wanted his audience to infer on their own *why* Millie Theale was dying of something entirely mysterious, or if the intimacy between The Prince and Charlotte was evil, and how, or why Strether would not marry Maria, or how Masie stayed innocent, or if he hints at lesbianism in _The Bostonians_. In short, James doesn't like to tell the reader much. He hints, and the reader infers according to how deeply or not the reader wants to.

2. He developed what critics call a "super-attenuation of manner" which pushed Victorian sensibility to extremes, and I am not sure, if, toward the end, he might have been going in his own modernist direction, if he had lived a few years longer, much like Joyce and Proust.

3. He was homosexual, and there is a roaring debate among contemporary scholars whether or not he was actively gay (keeping in mind that erotic homosexual sex was a criminal offense in James' lifetime) or repressed out of both the cultural norms of his era and his own fastidiousness. My friend Dr. Sheldon Novick created an uproar among contemporary academics when he suggests that James had an affair with Oliver Wendell Holmes. I take the fifth on the matter, but cannot help chuckling at the thought. :Tongue: 

3a. But my intent in pointing this out is James may have not been EM Forster, as Forster coded his sexual orientation in his work outside of Maurice, but it does suggest James had a reason to lean toward obfuscation.

4. One of his best achievements was playing tricks on the reader about the reliability of the narrative voice in the work, re: _The Turn of the Screw_.

I hope this is somewhat insightful.

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## kelby_lake

> Franz Kafka's Metamorphasis. *shudder*


What?! It's great!

I think there are some books that just don't stand scrutiny at school- it destroys them. The Great Gatsby is an amazing book but if you're forced to analyse it, it destroys the magic of the novel, which is key to whether you like it or not.

They can teach Mockingbird- it's pretty bad but you can write a lot of rubbish about it.

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## Emil Miller

> The best I can reply to this Brian, off the top of my weary head, and despite all my years of studying James, meaning that I am not going to post anything profound or terribly illuminating, is two-fold, or maybe three:
> 
> James was a Victorian American expatriate, and as such, would never explicitly say X meant Y; he wanted his audience to infer on their own *why* Millie Theale was dying of something entirely mysterious, or if the intimacy between The Prince and Charlotte was evil, and how, or why Strether would not marry Maria, or how Masie stayed innocent, or if he hints at lesbianism in _The Bostonians_. In short, James doesn't like to tell the reader much. He hints, and the reader infers according to how deeply or not the reader wants to.
> 
> 2. He developed what critics call a "super-attenuation of manner" which pushed Victorian sensibility to extremes, and I am not sure, if, toward the end, he might have been going in his own modernist direction, if he had lived a few years longer, much like Joyce and Proust.
> 
> 3. He was homosexual, and there is a roaring debate among contemporary scholars whether or not he was actively gay (keeping in mind that erotic homosexual sex was a criminal offense in James' lifetime) or repressed out of both the cultural norms of his era and his own fastidiousness. My friend Dr. Sheldon Novick created an uproar among contemporary academics when he suggests that James had an affair with Oliver Wendell Holmes. I take the fifth on the matter, but cannot help chuckling at the thought.
> 
> 3a. But my intent in pointing this out is James may have not been EM Forster, as Forster coded his sexual orientation in his work outside of Maurice, but it does suggest James had a reason to lean toward obfuscation.
> ...


Thanks for the information, it does go some way to explaining why James takes so long to get to the point. I am not sure, however, whether he participated in homosexual acts as Dr. Novick suggests, because in one of the Somerset Maugham biographies that I have read (I think it was Ted Morgan's), Maugham, a practising homosexual, once asked James why he didn't indulge in the practice, and James replied that he simply couldn't bring himself to do so.
Having read all of Somerset Maugham and most of E M Forster, who was also a practising homosexual, I can see that their comparative brevity contrasts greatly with James's circumlocution, so there may well be something in what you say about James's fastidiousness causing him to be evasive in expressing himself directy.

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## Vincent Black

I found it difficult to appreciate Dracula and Dangerous Liaisons, the middle of Dracula seems to just go on without anything happening.

And it's not just because they're epistolary novels, I loved Frankenstein.

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## Brendan Madley

I loved The Catcher in the Rye, yet hated things like For Whom The Bell Tolls. I love Dickens - he is the great storyteller.

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## Niamh

> What?! It's great!
> 
> I think there are some books that just don't stand scrutiny at school- it destroys them. The Great Gatsby is an amazing book but if you're forced to analyse it, it destroys the magic of the novel, which is key to whether you like it or not.
> 
> They can teach Mockingbird- it's pretty bad but you can write a lot of rubbish about it.


They Teach To Kill A Mocking Bird in Schools over here. I didnt study it though. I did Teh Silver Sword. The Hobbit, Goodnight Mister Tom. (best point out its done for the Junior Cert, so about 15 years old)

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## Stevie Ruggling

Moby Dick put me off reading for a long time. I really struggled through it, but didn't want to give up. As a consequence, reading ever since has seemed a bit of a chore, even though I am attempting it for pleasure. Seems I may need to get back on the horse...

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## LitNetIsGreat

> Moby Dick put me off reading for a long time. I really struggled through it, but didn't want to give up. As a consequence, reading ever since has seemed a bit of a chore, even though I am attempting it for pleasure. Seems I may need to get back on the horse...


Unless you are reading for study there is little point in trying to struggle through a book that is not working for you at present. There are millions of good books out there, don't discount ALL of them just because you couldn't get on with one. Take the same rule with people, if you can't get on with a particular person, do you shun the entire human race?

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## Jozanny

It saddens me to see so much hostility to Melville on The Literature Network. I dunno.

I am so weary of Dostoevsky that it may take me another 20 years to return to him with a fresh appreciation, but even though the taint of my personal prejudice, I am skilled enough, as a critic, to see the nearly revolutionary importance of Dostoevsky on fiction as a realist art. Melville carries the same importance for giving American literature a national identity, which is why Moby Dick should not be simply plunged into without preparation, and good critical notes. The whaling episodes are not just rip offs from whaling manuals available to Melville at the time. The reader needs to look at these passages in the _moral context_ of American Calvanism Melville portrays. Go back and read the sermon on Job, and tie that in with how the ship balances its industry of consuming whales, literally and figuratively.

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## ladyflorange

I really, really, really did not enjoy To the Lighthouse. I also did not enjoy Women in Love, both of which I had to read for university, whilst studying Modernism, which I didn't understand. The analysis may not have helped, but still.
I do however very much enjoy both To Kill a Mockingbird, and Catcher in the Rye, amongst others that people hate... 
It's weird how much opinions vary...

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## learntodiscover

> I guess Catch-22 is not my "cup of tea" as some might say it and the only part of The Catcher in the Rye I found interesting was near the very last page when Caulfield is with his little sister. The F-words were a complete turn off and made me almost rip the book from rage and Caulfield's stuck-up demeanor annoyed me. I didn't even understand the point of the book in general.. and if anything I believe the book conveys a false message by showing a protagonist who avidly smokes, drinks and excercises several attempts to get in contact with a girl who makes him feel amorous... let alone the hooker..
> 
> I'm sorry if my phrase "devoid of a plot..." has offended you or anyone else. It actually sounds a bit self-contradictory because I wanted this topic to be very open to diverse perceptions. I will see if I can edit that in my main post and thanks for replying


I'm on the fence with Catcher in the Rye. As a book on the whole I enjoyed it, the really connected with holden, I felt so very depressed whilst reading it and I thought it was good that salinger was able to get me so involved. However, I absolutely understand with the swearing and the fact that he never gets around to doing what he really wants and all that smoking drinking and swearing started to get on my nerves.

Another book that didn't live up to its expectations was THE DA'VINCI CODE, I couldn't get past the first few pages and also digital fortress. My friends tried to get me to read both and I just got so bored.

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## carrotcake

I would have to say "The Old Man and the Sea"...

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## kelby_lake

I so didn't get the old man and the sea

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## bounty

jozanny....eek...i do appreciate your insight but i am sorry to say my vote here goes for moby dick...

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## kelby_lake

Well, it's good if you like whales. If you aren't completely in love with whales, it can get a bit boring.

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## JBI

Yes, but the virtuosic prose more than makes up for it.

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## wonderwall

i agree with you on Catch 22, i can never fully get into it (even though ive read it thrice!!) i find the attempts at satire lethargic and drawn out.

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## Michigan J Frog

Catch-22 is one of those books that I have read where I feel that the writer is admiring himself as he writes. One book that I didn't feel bad about picking apart.

Not good to see Da Vinci code mentioned here... people consider it a classic?

And speaking of rereading books, I still cannot see why Grapes of Wrath is considered a classic. Forget about historical significance, it's not a well written book.

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## kelby_lake

Haven't read Grapes of Wrath but I thought Of Mice and Men was well-written

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## Hank Stamper

> Haven't read Grapes of Wrath but I thought Of Mice and Men was well-written


does anybody have an opinion on cannery row and tortilla flat? not read either but considering a purchase!

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## Michigan J Frog

I just don't understand why so many people like Steinback. Someone said that his books are easy to read and that's why people like him and why critics don't think too highly of him but his books are just really boring to me. I guess I might give East of Eden a try but if I don't like that books then I am completely done with Steinback. (I have a strong dislike toward The Pearl, Grapes of Wrath, and of Mice and Man.)

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## kelby_lake

East of Eden is pretty long. If you didn't like Of Mice and Men, which is tiny, then you probably won't like east of eden. Did you like the ending of Of Mice and Men?

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## LitNetIsGreat

> I just don't understand why so many people like Steinback. Someone said that his books are easy to read and that's why people like him and why critics don't think too highly of him but his books are just really boring to me. I guess I might give East of Eden a try but if I don't like that books then I am completely done with Steinback. (I have a strong dislike toward The Pearl, Grapes of Wrath, and of Mice and Man.)


I personally wouldn't bother, if you didn't like three of his books why read a fourth? There are far too many good things out there why punish yourself reading for pleasure if it is not bringing you pleasure. You may find that in time you may come to like Steinbeck, you may view him in a different light as you get older, but if not, so what.

Personally I am indifferent to Steinbeck though perhaps feel that he is a little overrated.

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## PabloQ

> I would take this one step further Neely, although I agree with the sense of your post. The phrase *worst classic* is nearly an oxymoron--which is not to say that tastes do not change, or that an author may become overrated while lower stars rise--but a classic is a classic for various reasons. It may represent the epitome of its era, like Dickens "A Christmas Carol" can arguably be said to do--even though the tale makes me wince I can appreciate it for what it is, what Dickens hoped it would illuminate, even change, about Victorian society. Or it may be the pinnacle of a literary movement, such as _Madame Bovary_ is to fictional realism, even a stepping stone to modernism, and so on.
> 
> Members should simply start five threads called "Books I want to trash!!!!" and we can keep Sche and Logos busy while they merge this and the *overrated* thread with it.


Jozanny,
This may be the best entry in any of worst/underrated threads. I'm probably some version of a sick puppy, but I get a kick our of how someone's opinion inevitably sets off a powder keg. Sometimes it's the way the opinion is expressed. Sometimes it's the work or the writer. (Ulysses or Joyce usually makes for lively debate.) My intention in provoking Froggy to take on James was to get the type of intellectual exchange that you've brought to this thread. Quite enjoyable. I don't dislike James, but The Wings of the Dove gave my nothing to cling to -- plot, character, style. I've enjoyed others of Henry James's works, but this one just bored the crap out of me.
What really entertains me is the lack of foundation behind why someone puts forth a work. I didn't like Moby Dick because I almost choked on a bone I found my fish sandwich in the cafeteria when I was 10. Sometimes these "negative" threads are like walking through a field of crap trying to find the pony, but eventually, an actual literary discussion arises.
Thank you for bringing it to this not just once (James), but twice (Melville).  :Thumbs Up:

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## Jozanny

> Jozanny,
> This may be the best entry in any of worst/underrated threads. I'm probably some version of a sick puppy, but I get a kick our of how someone's opinion inevitably sets off a powder keg. Sometimes it's the way the opinion is expressed. Sometimes it's the work or the writer. (Ulysses or Joyce usually makes for lively debate.) My intention in provoking Froggy to take on James was to get the type of intellectual exchange that you've brought to this thread. Quite enjoyable. I don't dislike James, but The Wings of the Dove gave my nothing to cling to -- plot, character, style. I've enjoyed others of Henry James's works, but this one just bored the crap out of me.
> What really entertains me is the lack of foundation behind why someone puts forth a work. I didn't like Moby Dick because I almost choked on a bone I found my fish sandwich in the cafeteria when I was 10. Sometimes these "negative" threads are like walking through a field of crap trying to find the pony, but eventually, an actual literary discussion arises.
> Thank you for bringing it to this not just once (James), but twice (Melville).


Like everything else, electronic interaction between individuals has its detractions as well as its virtues, and my love/hate relationship with online communities will probably never quite be resolved. The only reason the powers that be haven't had to lasso me and stick a bar of soap into my account, ahem, where the sun doesn't shine :Biggrin: , is because I am a little too weary to wail and beat my breast daily for virtue of public display, and two, it has no real healing virtue, three, I've learned when not to push back, and four, won't allow myself to care--but posting about anything isn't all it is cracked up to be, and I am symptomatic of that as much as any other member, in not taking the time to make relatively invested arguments.

There is a difference between personal opinion and critical evaluation of merit--and that can often get lost on posting boards or comment threads--even in email groups--not that it is all bad, but it isn't all beneficial for continuing education either.

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## jaywalker

Hardy,Thomas. Depressing or Wot,mate. Brontes and ,another sacrilege, Grahame Green.

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## mona amon

I've liked most of the classics I've read, which is not to say that a lot of them weren't pretty boring in parts. But I can put up with quite a bit of boredom to get what the book has to offer, and with a classic I'm rarely disappointed. 

Some classics which I was never able to get through- Boswell's Life of Johnson, Dante's Divine Comedy, all George Elliot's novels except Middlemarch.

I didn't like Oscar Wilde's Dorian Grey, I found it totally pointless. I don't even know if it's a classic.

Les Miserables disappointed me a bit. I thought it was going to be really great, and I did like quite a bit of it, but on the whole I felt it was a big , huge, silly story!

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## LitNetIsGreat

Quote:
I didn't like Oscar Wilde's Dorian Grey, I found it totally pointless. I don't even know if it's a classic.

That's one of my personal favourite, favouritistist novels, of alllll time.: :Bawling: 

<<<< that's a picture of Mr Gray there as my avatar.

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## mona amon

Aww...Neely, I didn't mean to make you cry! If it's any comfort, some of my favourite novels like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and Ulysses and Catch 22 have been listed here as 'worst classics'!  :Biggrin:

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## kelby_lake

I found Dorian Gray hard to read as the constant wit really bugged me. Do we need an epigram in every line?!

And To Kill A Mockingbird- smug self-righteous propaganda.

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## LitNetIsGreat

Do you begrudge the man his genius? Of course anything written by Wilde is going to have natural flair and wit, but this doesnt intrude, for me, into the text, the author remains hidden enough for the wit to be played by the characters. 

Dont forget that Lord Henrys art _is_ his language, just as Basils art is his paint brush, just as Dorians art is his beauty. By all means it is not a perfect novel, but it is bloody damn good.


Before I disagreed with this thread topic, now I hate it and vow to stay away.

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## Christophe

I read On The Road whilst travelling around Nepal. They both coupled each other in a a beautiful shambolic way. I'm lucky enough to travel a bit and always try to marry up the right book.

For me this question is a little hard, I don't really finish most of the rubbish, poor books should be abandoned. Middlemarch would be one of those. Most of the rest would be considered pap anyway, so I shalln't include those.

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## Etienne

> I found Dorian Gray hard to read as the constant wit really bugged me. Do we need an epigram in every line?!


Yes, yes, I was slightly annoyed by that too. However, I thought that The Picture of Dorian Gray was a great book.

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## kelby_lake

I think once I reread it it will be. It's just irritating having every line as an epigram.

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## muazjalil

Care to explain why Jean Paul Sartre's Nausea so famous. I am no philosopher and i guess that was my problem. couldn't make head or tail of the book!!!

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## LitNetIsGreat

> I think once I reread it it will be. It's just irritating having every line as an epigram.


Every line? That is a little hyperbole, but I suppose I know what you are getting at. If you have time read it again, I'll be interested you know what you think of it. You could even flick at random on nearly every page and find something of value there. Let's try it, for I am in a funny mood:

Flick:

Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Worlds! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

Dorian Gray on the language and corruptive philosophy of Lord Henry. I like Wilde's allusion to the mystic world of music, Dorian himself being a pianist of sorts obviously seeing the world to some extent in these terms, maybe taking comfort in them having had his world rocked by the silver tongue of Lord Henry. Wilde here is a little too rhetorical perhaps, a little too many exclamations, but as ever his words flowing beautifully. I could read a shopping list forever if it was written like this.

Another flick:

Anyone you love must be marvellous, and any girl that has the effect you describe must be fine and noble. To spiritualise one's age - that is something worth doing. If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world.

This is Lord Henry on hearing of Dorian's affection and engagement to Sybil. What struck me here as I was typing it out, was how it both praises and laments at the same time. It is a stirring piece of writing, but underneath comes sadness that Dorian is not to be Henry's, that he has potentially lost some of his affection due to this young girl, who so realistically re-creates the beauty of Shakespeare's women. You could play around with the "adoration" part too, the real adoration is that of Henry's to Dorian's and ultimately not Dorian's to Sybil's. Also that Sybil fails so miserably to gain any adoration from the public at all, once her spell is broken by "Prince" Charming.

Wilde is often passed off as a writer of wit and social comedy, even by the top critics, but there is much more to Wilde to the writer than that, even in his comedies. Wilde is often much deeper than people give him credit for, not that I ever meant to prove that with these quotations, I was merely showing how you can find something of value on every page, or nearly every page.

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## ksotikoula

The portrait of lady by Henry James. So wordy and perplexed for no apparent reason, without any meaning and with a pathetic and masochistic ending for a so called clever heroine.

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## Apocrypha75

> _Persuasion_ has poisoned my mind against Jane Austen. It was just so dull. The characters are introduced, they do nothing for a while, they go somewhere else and continue to do nothing, then someone almost dies but doesn't, then nothingness continues some more. I know the novel was not about action, but really.


How Ironic. I really loved Persuasion (my first Austen) but loathed Pride and Prejudice, which takes the crown for my worst classic (so far); didn't care for it one bit and struggled all the way to the end.

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## kiki1982

I am afraid I'm also not a huge fan of _Dorian Gray_... I think it would have been very good as a play, because Wilde certainly had a very clear idea of what the stage was supposed to look like and what the character was supposed to feel... But to me, he goes too much in detail... 

Nonetheless, it is a very good and deep story. Just not well-written as a novel. (I find) Particularly Lord Henry would work very well on stage with the right manners, posture and tone of voice, but on paper to me he becomes annoying. Only because there is nothing else but his speech. If there was something else to look at, then he would become amusing. 

I just find it a shame that there is nothig to be discovered in that book. It is just plain and clear that the portrait is supposed to be Dorian's soul. In my opinion, Wilde put in his story a lot of directions for the actors, but of course, it is not a piece of theatre... On the other hand, not bad writing. Very beautiful wording, and very philosophical.

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## prendrelemick

Dickens is the best and worst, Martin Chuzzlewit is unreadable. Overblown in style, too wordy and frankly boring.

A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, all excellent.

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## kelby_lake

> I am afraid I'm also not a huge fan of _Dorian Gray_... I think it would have been very good as a play, because Wilde certainly had a very clear idea of what the stage was supposed to look like and what the character was supposed to feel... But to me, he goes too much in detail... 
> 
> Nonetheless, it is a very good and deep story. Just not well-written as a novel. (I find) Particularly Lord Henry would work very well on stage with the right manners, posture and tone of voice, but on paper to me he becomes annoying. Only because there is nothing else but his speech. If there was something else to look at, then he would become amusing. 
> 
> I just find it a shame that there is nothig to be discovered in that book. It is just plain and clear that the portrait is supposed to be Dorian's soul. In my opinion, Wilde put in his story a lot of directions for the actors, but of course, it is not a piece of theatre... On the other hand, not bad writing. Very beautiful wording, and very philosophical.


I heartily agree that the theatre is Wilde's true medium, not the novel. With theatre you can excuse self-indulgence (that is what wit boils down to) and bring out the wit and style that Wilde has, whereas in novel form, it's just distracting and mildly irritating:
'Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade', as Noel Coward said.

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## Dionido

I never managed to finisch _Moby Dick_; I just got too bored during those long dissertations concerning whales and whaling etc. (similar dissertations didn't bother me for example in Hugo's _Notre-Dame_, don't know why).

Another one I was a bit perplexed about was _Tropic of Cancer_ by Miller. I had a bit of a hard time appreciating it's confusing and nonlinear style. (similar style didn't bother me for example in Burroughs' _Naked Lunch_)

Also I would mention _A Farewell to Arms_, I'm finishing now and still have mixed feelings about it. Will have to think about it.

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## emily00

> Dickens is the best and worst, Martin Chuzzlewit is unreadable. Overblown in style, too wordy and frankly boring.
> 
> A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, all excellent.


 :Alien: What? How can you *not* like Bleak House, David Copperfield or Dombey & Son?

(emily00 goes to lie down in darkened room with cold compress to her brow)

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## kelby_lake

> I never managed to finisch _Moby Dick_; I just got too bored during those long dissertations concerning whales and whaling etc. (similar dissertations didn't bother me for example in Hugo's _Notre-Dame_, don't know why).
> 
> Also I would mention _A Farewell to Arms_, I'm finishing now and still have mixed feelings about it. Will have to think about it.


Agree with you on the above. I never finished A Farewell to Arms.

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## meh!

> Hello Aunty-lion and thank you for replying to this topic with warm appreciation. I find it interesting that you say your mother found interest in Catch-22 after it was read to her.. I have experienced certain books boring when read softly but far more interesting when read aloud but as for Joseph Heller's Catch-22 I believe believe my main grudge against it is the in the way he seems to convolude paragraphs with details upon details which seems to be arbitrarily sloshed together... Take this paragraph for example:
> 
> 
> 
> ...Now I'm not claiming that this paragraph isn't amusing but can it seriously be called brilliant? I respect your opinion on the book and everyone else who is a die-hard fan of it and Joseph Heller's other works but I am baffled that a few people have claimed it is "the greatest classic of all time" while others have compared its humor to certain Shakespear plays. 
> 
> ----
> 
> I'm sorry I can't give you an opinion on Vanity Fair because I haven't read it myself. I'll try to get to William Thackeray after I overcome this mound of Joyce/Dostoevsky.


Why on earth would anyone compare Catch-22's humour to Shakespeare?

Catch-22 is funny  :Confused: 

On topic:

Never really got on with Thomas Hardy.

Jude the obscure... just... 

I can't really communicate how much I don't care about how exactly the grass on the riverbank was being blown...

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## kelby_lake

> A lot of my friends recommended Vanity Fair to me, but I gave up after the first 60 pages or so because all the characters just seemed so vacant and uninteresting. I suppose that's probably the point. Does anyone have an opinion about this?? Does it get better? Should I try again?


Vanity Fair is genius. It's 900 pages, but well worth reading.

It's a 'Novel without A Hero'- Becky Sharp is a social climber, Amelia is soppy, George Osborne is selfish, Dobbin is stupidly selfless...just like real people:

'Ah! Vanitas vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.'

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## Stargazer86

I didn't like Pride and Prejudice. I wouldn't say it was the "worst". It just didn't appeal to my taste at all and I didn't enjoy it personally.

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## Page Turner

The Sound and the Fury. I tried, I really did, but I couldn't get through it.

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## mayneverhave

> The Sound and the Fury. I tried, I really did, but I couldn't get through it.


Difficulty is not an aesthetic quality.

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## Page Turner

> Difficulty is not an aesthetic quality.


That's true. I've read other books that took a couple of readings to sink in but this one didn't work for me. I haven't read any other Faulkner. Can you recommend an easier intro?

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## mayneverhave

> That's true. I've read other books that took a couple of readings to sink in but this one didn't work for me. I haven't read any other Faulkner. Can you recommend an easier intro?


The Sound and the Fury was the one I actually started with, but since this option is out, I would suggest either _As I Lay Dying_, _Light in August_, or some of his short stories - definitely not _Absalom, Absalom!_

_As I Lay Dying_ is, I would say, just as difficult as _The Sound and the Fury_, only its chapters are far shorter, its overall length shorter, and these two qualities make the reading relatively easier and more enjoyable. Either way, I suggest using Sparknotes, books from the library, or maybe _The Sound and the Fury_ hypertext that is available free online to approach the books.

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## Scott89119

For me personally, Dracula got to be a complete bore after awhile (I read it when I was very young, so maybe my perspective has changed enough for me to be entertained by it). Another classic that was a chore to finish was The Hunchback of Notre Dame- a very fine novel, but unflinchingly, pervasively tragic near the end.

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## Dostoyevsky

The Bible, no contest

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## Psynema

I never quite read any classics that I hated...but some commentary none the less

1. Great Gatsby - read it in High School, the teacher just said "its' about the recklessness of the 20s". Pretty much that was it and I couldn't really gather much more out of it - sure there's materialism/greed/lust issues, but didn't find it to be really original or thought provoking and couldn't empathise with it at all.

2. Brothers Karamazov - still a good book, but didn't find it as great as others mentioned. Non religious folk won't find as much as christians and it just doesn't feel like Dostoevsky's other works. 

3. Sirens of Titan - call me dumb, I get the main idea, but nothing resonated with me - someone tell me what I missed and feel free to argue, but just seemed like a cartoon of a very tired issue beaten do death ten million times. Didn't find it original and at times felt like I was reading a children's book.

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## higley

> 2. Brothers Karamazov - still a good book, but didn't find it as great as others mentioned. Non religious folk won't find as much as christians and it just doesn't feel like Dostoevsky's other works.


Kind of funny considering the comment before yours.  :Wink:

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## billl

It's been a while, maybe I've matured or something and would have a different opinion now, but a collection of Guy de Maupassant's short stories (maybe the best short story writer ever!) and a collection of Montaigne's essays (near the top in the genre!) both really disappointed me. Maybe there was too much hype. One thing's for sure, I didn't get anywhere close to reading them all so... maybe not fair.

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## Tupelo

Moby Dick!

<shudder>

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## alexar

"Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago."

Nah it ain't that bad.

Middlemarch! 

Narrators do NOT know best.

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## kelby_lake

> I never quite read any classics that I hated...but some commentary none the less
> 
> 1. Great Gatsby - read it in High School, the teacher just said "its' about the recklessness of the 20s". Pretty much that was it and I couldn't really gather much more out of it - sure there's materialism/greed/lust issues, but didn't find it to be really original or thought provoking and couldn't empathise with it at all.


Sounds like you got a bad teacher because there's loads in Gatsby and it's certainly original. People just assume it isn't because they're used to reading loads of modern rip-offs.

It's a tragedy about the destructive power of dreams, and the death of dreams. There isn't anyone in the world who can't empathise with wishing they could recreate some lost moment of their past, or love something in vain.

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## five-trey

First off, I would like to say that I LOVED Moby-Dick. Its quite possibly my favorite novel, on level with Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Many readers lambast it for its long chapters on marine biology and whale anatomy and such, but those chapters are essential to the novel. When you are reading about something as rare as whaling, it is a tremendous help to actually understand what goes into it. Not only do these chapters help us gain a full understanding of the exerience described, but they also immerse us further in Melville's world. Aside from that, Moby-Dick is one of the deepest books I have ever read, wreathed in allegory and meaning. Despite the constant apostrophes, Melville's characters maintain their sense of authenticity and their interactions with each other are tense and emotionally charged. As far as Melville's language, I can gush about it all day. Melville does better than Charles Dickens what Charles Dickens is so well known for; that is, the use of figurative language to create an image.


As far as works I did not quite fawn over, A Tale of Two Cities and A Streetcar Named Desire top the list. 

In A Tale..., all the characters outside of Sidney Carton seem flat and two-dimensional. Because of this, it feels like I'm reading a soap opera more than anything else. Not to say that I didn't like the whole novel, but it really failed to make a great impression on me. Dickens's portrayal of the French Revolution is masterful and his prose is excellent, but the characterization is too weak.

A Streetcar Named Desire, I just could not understand. I could understand the play very well, but I could not understand what makes it great.

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## valleyjune

I liked the "Street Car..", though it's probably not my favourite of T. Williams's plays. I consider it atmospheric in a kind of dark way, but generally I prefer more light-hearted readings for the time being. I mean, I find it a little bit hard to handle the violence in all the plays of his that I've read -except "The glass menagerie" which is my favourite. 

Anyway, the so-called masterpiece I could not stand reading -unfortunately, I had to, though- was "Gulliver's travels". What a bore!

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## jocky

Anything written by Jane Austin, If I had to read one more eulogy on the excruciating Mr Darcy, suicide would be a serious consideration. She does write about what she knows but, my God, her subject material is limited to say the least. You would hardly be aware that Britain was in a life or death struggle with the French, but she certainly knows all about polite conversation at the dinner table. Give me the gutsy Bronte sisters anyday. Getting that of my chest was so cathartic.

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## snowangel

Anything by William Faulkner, but especially The Sound and the Fury. Anyone how admits to writing without grammer or plot is not being innovative, they're just being an a**hole.

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## kelby_lake

> A Streetcar Named Desire, I just could not understand. I could understand the play very well, but I could not understand what makes it great.


The film  :Smile:  It's not as fun on the page as some of them (Cat on A Hot Tin Roof and Glass Menagerie read much better) but the film's a good adaptation, although they've watered down Blanche's misdemeanours.

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## teashi

I've had mostly bad luck with classics. I've tried to read the usual acclaimed authors and titles, I've wanted to like them, but it almost always fails with me.
Add another for 'Catch-22'. Monotonous writing, I'm not a big fan of satire, and the characters were all idiots and jerks. Think I wanted Yossarian to just die already. 
Another for Jane Austen too. Bloated old-style writing that just gets in the way. Same for Dickens, especially with 'The Pickwick Papers', think that book acually gave me a headache.
Hemingway. Yep, he's boring, maybe not _horrible_.. The overlong sentences in 'A Farewell to Arms' were something different, so I kind of appreciate styles that aren't the norm, even if the story and writing don't interest me. Same for 'Blood Meridian', which might count as a classic.
And 'Dune' by Frank Herbert (sci-fi classic) too much royal political stuff and bland characters who act too much alike, just didn't care enough to keep reading after about 150 pages..

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## rozreads

Worst classics is an oxymoron..

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## Dr. Hill

> I've had mostly bad luck with classics. I've tried to read the usual acclaimed authors and titles, I've wanted to like them, but it almost always fails with me.
> Add another for 'Catch-22'. Monotonous writing, I'm not a big fan of satire, and the characters were all idiots and jerks. Think I wanted Yossarian to just die already. 
> Another for Jane Austen too. Bloated old-style writing that just gets in the way. Same for Dickens, especially with 'The Pickwick Papers', think that book acually gave me a headache.
> Hemingway. Yep, he's boring, maybe not _horrible_.. The overlong sentences in 'A Farewell to Arms' were something different, so I kind of appreciate styles that aren't the norm, even if the story and writing don't interest me. Same for 'Blood Meridian', which might count as a classic.
> And 'Dune' by Frank Herbert (sci-fi classic) too much royal political stuff and bland characters who act too much alike, just didn't care enough to keep reading after about 150 pages..


You just don't like good books :P

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## kiki1982

> Another for Jane Austen too. Bloated old-style writing that just gets in the way.


That is probably what people will say about our contemporary writers when they are about 200 years old...

Of course it is bloated, but whether we should reproach her that is the question... But hey, this is 'the worst classics'-topic so I should not comment...

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## mayneverhave

> Anything by William Faulkner, but especially The Sound and the Fury. Anyone how admits to writing without grammer or plot is not being innovative, they're just being an a**hole.


For someone who complains about grammar, they certainly don't pay much attention to their own.

As for Faulkner writing without plots, I don't see how this is at all possible. If there is one thing that Beckett has shown us: you can strip fiction down to its barest components, but there must be plot. 

And that's entirely besides the point. Faulkner's novels all have plots. How can you read _As I Lay Dying_ and not gather anything of its plot?

The Sound and the Fury's grammar is completely traditional for the bulk of the novel, and this includes the First Section, and the final two. Faulkner's grammatical innovation in the Second Section (Quentin) is a development on the stream of consciousness technique, which attempts to represent the innerworkings of the human (in this case, neurotic/diseased) mind. The mind, especially when in a state of anxiety, often does not work in complete, declarative sentences.

It is generalized statements like these, with no evidence, no argument, that cause these negative reputations to develop.

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## Dr. Hill

Don't worry, more respectable people appreciate Faulkner than attack him without warrant.

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## amarna

I confess I don't like Roman epic poetry very much for it is pompous and overloaded with florid metaphors.

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## mayneverhave

> Don't worry, more respectable people appreciate Faulkner than attack him without warrant.


Hah. Yes, that was a little too vehement, I must admit.

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## DisPater

emile zola, theodore dreiser - to mention only two names.

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## Lynne Fees

> Anything written by Jane Austin, If I had to read one more eulogy on the excruciating Mr Darcy, suicide would be a serious consideration. She does write about what she knows but, my God, her subject material is limited to say the least. You would hardly be aware that Britain was in a life or death struggle with the French, but she certainly knows all about polite conversation at the dinner table. Give me the gutsy Bronte sisters anyday. Getting that of my chest was so cathartic.


I think Jane Austin wanted to bring something new to the reading public - real characters in real life struggles. It's not deep on an international socioeconomic level, but her characters really bring me in so that I care about them. There's an art to that, n'est-ce pas?




> I liked the "Street Car..", though it's probably not my favourite of T. Williams's plays. I consider it atmospheric in a kind of dark way, but generally I prefer more light-hearted readings for the time being. I mean, I find it a little bit hard to handle the violence in all the plays of his that I've read -except "The glass menagerie" which is my favourite. 
> 
> Anyway, the so-called masterpiece I could not stand reading -unfortunately, I had to, though- was "Gulliver's travels". What a bore!


This is one of the few classics I couldn't even get through. I even read _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_ all the way through, but could not glean the point of _Gulliver's Travels_.

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## Josh Wardrip

I concur on several that have already been mentioned (_Gatsby_, _Dorian Gray_, _Tropic of Cancer_). One that springs to mind is _The Moviegoer_. Percy's prose is excellent at times, but he's a bit hamfisted with his themes -- ie., the constant talk of "the search," malaise, despair, et cetera. He even directly references Kierkegaard, as I recall.

It's not an awful book by any means -- I was just disappointed, given its status. I wouldn't rate it very high in the canon of existential fiction.

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## Scheherazade

> Anything written by Jane Austin,





> I think Jane Austin wanted to bring something new to the reading public


Who is this Austin you guys keep talking about? Related to Austin Powers by any chance?

 :Biggrin:

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## Adderhead

I totally disagree with you on you stating that Catch-22 is a bad classic. It is absolutely one of the best books I have ever read, in my opinion. But what makes me angry is that a small portion of the intellectual community determines what books are "classics" and which books are not. To me, there is no such thing as a "pure classic." However, I do agree with you on Catcher in the Rye. The only reason the book is considered a classic is because J.D. Salinger is a social recluse. One book considered a classic that I cannot stand is The Red Badge of Courage. It is one of the most boring books that I have ever read.

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## DrkAngL

i've gotta say George Orwell's 1984, and Shelly's Frankenstein

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## blp

_Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde_ is pretty poor.

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## Mr Endon

> _Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde_ is pretty poor.


Really? I wonder why you think so. About that short story all I can remember is thinking I hadn't enjoyed reading it as much as I could have because I knew the ending before having read it.

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## rozreads

I should be so unfortunate as to write a "worst classic." That phase is an oxymoron.

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## kelby_lake

People are just citing books they didn't enjoy. You should cite books that you think don't deserve classic status. I found Moby Dick boring but it is sort of a classic.

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## My name is red

First of all i find this thread very useful to avoid meaningless duty-readings(if this is the right word).People always feel uncomfortable when it comes to criticize classics.
I would start with;Dead Souls and Emma.
After i finished them i got this very same feeling that i've lost a great deal of time.

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## Pryderi Agni

> Anything written by Jane Austin


Hear, hear. I swear to God, if I were to become Secretary-General of the UN, I'd make dead sure to burn every copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ that ever existed.

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## hampusforev

I suppose that I can understand why the "classics" are classics, it just makes sense. Even though I might've not enjoyed them. But kelby, the thread title is "The Worst Classics You Have Ever Read", so citing classics which you didn't enjoy makes sense, doesn't it?

I really don't care for most of Dostoevsky's oeuvre, too many names, and the text is just gravid with superfluous worrying. The murder scene in Crime and Punishment is awsome though, so I see why some people consider his stuff classic.

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## kelby_lake

A lot of the classics cited have been massacred by high schools.

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## jocky

Sorry, I am a computer illiterate, Lynne Fees I totally accept your point about Identifying with the characters, but where does Jane introduce any real personalities? Servants dont exist, politics are within a domestic environment, foreign affairs are non existent and it comes down to the wonderful qualities of the aristocracy. Who would you want to connect with, say its not Mrs Bennett! She is a quality writer but her talents were wasted. The Bronte sisters, are not better in a lterary sense, but they write about real hardship, which we can all identify with.

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## EPluribusUnus

I don't know if someone has mentioned these books already.

_Of Human Bondage_ tops my list of books overrated and un-readable. 

_1984_ was torturous and a little too flagitious for me. 

_For Whom The Bell Tolls_ was a beautiful story made derisory by strange medieval language employed as an explanation for Spanish vernacular. I liked the book, but I couldn't bear to read the employment of "I obscenity in the milk." and the like which were supposedly transliteration from Spanish.

I didn't see a lot of complaints about Woolf. How did she escape this list?  :Smile:

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## amarna

The worst classics I have ever read, or at least half read, is Robert Musil's _The man without qualities_. I started reading it three times and always lost courage and interest after 400, 500 pages. It's so awfully boring.

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## jocky

What about 'Waiting For Godot ' by Samuel Becket, clever yes, but enough to put you into a coma. How about ' Look Back in Anger ' hardly Burton's finest hour. 'The Lodger' by Pinter, how depressing was that?. Thought I would just inject a bit of levity into the argument. Even Hamlet got rid of his enemies with a bit of humour, though he came to a bad end. Literature is not always about the authors but, about the readers, sentimentality, tragedy, humour. Enjoying classics always always says more about the reader than the author. Love from Jocky.

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## Mathor

War and Peace. It just doesn't do anything for me.

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## wessexgirl

> The portrait of lady by Henry James. So wordy and perplexed for no apparent reason, without any meaning and with a pathetic and masochistic ending for a so called clever heroine.


I couldn't agree more. I thought I must be missing something, as I couldn't warm to the character at all, and really didn't care what happened to her. I liked Ralph though.

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## ksotikoula

> I liked Ralph though.


Yes! The men of this book were capital, the three of them (the businessman, the lord and the cousin)
which makes the heroine even more absurd for making that choice of hers. They were so wasted on her!

Now that I think of it Isabella Archer is in this respect even more stupid than Scarlett o Hara,
who couldn't see that Buttler was her man. At least Scarlett lost one, not the three of them. Lol!

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## ImaginaryFriend

Bleak house nearly drove me mad. Almost put me off dickens completely. Esther was so meek and insipid, Richard was a moron and Ava was pathetic. Dickens focused so much on trivial things like how foggy the fog was or how muddy the mud was i only made it to the end out of spite cos my mum couldnt finish it  :Smile: 

ok. . . end of that rant.

The trial by Kafka was so irritating. i get where he was goiog with it and i suppose the point is that it should frustrate you but still i would never read it again. The same with 1984.

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## meh!

I can't say I was that fond of Jude the obscure. meh.

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## PoeknowsProse

Like some, I'm surprised by a few of the books that people have listed. 

For me I would have to say Dracula - super melodramatic and downright tedious.

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## Dr. Hill

> Who is this Austin you guys keep talking about? Related to Austin Powers by any chance?


Why IS it that no one can spell Austen? Isn't this a literature forum?  :Sick:

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## jocky

Hands up Doctor Hill, spelled Austen wrong, however that does not detract from the point that the lady writes about absolutely nothing. Her literary talent is indisputable and I truly believe, were she alive today, she could scriptwrite for all the soaps. Why dont you answer the point? What has she contributed To English literature? I see by your Avatar that you are a Wilde fan, Oscar may have been a bit Quirky, but he dissected the class system effortlessly, humorously and ruthlessly. Ask yourself this, what is memorable about Jane? This is the literature channel, but a spelling mistake does not mean that the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater. Best wishes from Jocky.  :Smile:

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## kelby_lake

> How about ' Look Back in Anger ' hardly Burton's finest hour.


I like Look Back in Anger, although Burton was a strange choice as Jimmy teases Cliff about his welshness. Kenneth Branagh's Jimmy Porter was much better.

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## Dr. Hill

> Hands up Doctor Hill, spelled Austen wrong, however that does not detract from the point that the lady writes about absolutely nothing. Her literary talent is indisputable and I truly believe, were she alive today, she could scriptwrite for all the soaps. Why dont you answer the point? What has she contributed To English literature? I see by your Avatar that you are a Wilde fan, Oscar may have been a bit Quirky, but he dissected the class system effortlessly, humorously and ruthlessly. Ask yourself this, what is memorable about Jane? This is the literature channel, but a spelling mistake does not mean that the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater. Best wishes from Jocky.


I don't think she contributed anything to literature.

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## MANICHAEAN

"Catch 22".
Loved it. Page to page & could not put it down.
Classic in the formal sense? Perhaps not.
Heller at his solitary peak & the books he wrote after, not in the same league.

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## kiki1982

> Hands up Doctor Hill, spelled Austen wrong, however that does not detract from the point that the lady writes about absolutely nothing. Her literary talent is indisputable and I truly believe, were she alive today, she could scriptwrite for all the soaps. Why dont you answer the point? What has she contributed To English literature? I see by your Avatar that you are a Wilde fan, Oscar may have been a bit Quirky, but he dissected the class system effortlessly, humorously and ruthlessly. Ask yourself this, what is memorable about Jane? This is the literature channel, but a spelling mistake does not mean that the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater. Best wishes from Jocky.


While I do agree about the nothingness of her writing, I do think there is one thing Austen actually brought us: understanding about the system of courtship and marriage. It figures in other books, but is never dwellt on. The thing about Austen is that it is only about that and like that we have a better understanding of what happens in other books and what the issues are. 

There is, in my mind, also an art as to writing about nothing... But I to have to say that I found her last book better than her first. Se died to early if _Peruasion_ was anything to go by.

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## Janine

> I like Look Back in Anger, although Burton was a strange choice as Jimmy teases Cliff about his welshness. Kenneth Branagh's Jimmy Porter was much better.


*kelby_lake,* can't tell you how many times I have watched this production starring Branagh; I own the DVD. I just love it. One hates and loves Jimmy Porter at the same time. I never read the actual play, but I would like to. It's fantastic. I heard Burton was good in it, but I have never seen that version, have you? The actor who played Cliff in the Branagh version is great, too and of course Emma Thompson is top-notch always. By the way, it was directed by Judi Dench. How can one go wrong?

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## jocky

Point taken Kiki 1982, she did point out the historical difficulties of human and social relationships in her musings about the period she lived in. Nothingness, is perhaps a hard thing to articulate, and Jane did it brilliantlly. Still prefer the Brontes though. Good observation.

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## kiki1982

> Point taken Kiki 1982, she did point out the historical difficulties of human and social relationships in her musings about the period she lived in. Nothingness, is perhaps a hard thing to articulate, and Jane did it brilliantlly. Still prefer the Brontes though. Good observation.


I prefer at least _Jane Eyre_ (the rest I have not read yet). Austen just dwellt on the same topic all the way. I do not think she could have got into the classics list if she hadn't been of real use. Although she is witty, she is nothing more but witty. But she does it well...

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## kelby_lake

> *kelby_lake,* can't tell you how many times I have watched this production starring Branagh; I own the DVD. I just love it. One hates and loves Jimmy Porter at the same time. I never read the actual play, but I would like to. It's fantastic. I heard Burton was good in it, but I have never seen that version, have you? The actor who played Cliff in the Branagh version is great, too and of course Emma Thompson is top-notch always. By the way, it was directed by Judi Dench. How can one go wrong?


I saw the Burton version- there's a trailer on YouTube if you're interested. Dench's production of the play is pretty spot-on, I'd say, and Branagh captures Jimmy's antagonism and yet his...anachronism very well, not tipping over the edge between Jimmy just being a...well, I don't think I can swear here  :FRlol:

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## mollie

> War and Peace. It just doesn't do anything for me.


+ 1 

I threw War and Peace in the bin three times while I was reading it, and fished it back out again because I had promised myself I'd read it. I hated every page!

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## Emil Miller

> + 1 
> 
> I threw War and Peace in the bin three times while I was reading it, and fished it back out again because I had promised myself I'd read it. I hated every page!


zw3

It never ceases to amaze me that people submit themselves to books for which they are temperamentally unsuited and struggle on because it has "classic" status. I haven't read War and Peace because I know what it is about and intimate family sagas set against panoramic backgrounds of historical events don't particularly appeal to me.
I much prefer to be selective in the kind of books that I read and am definitely not swayed by any feeling that I am obliged to read certain classics.
This is where the cinema is useful, I saw the American version of War and Peace and I knew I would not enjoy reading the story. Similarly, I saw the US version of The Brothers Karamazov and was bored to distraction.
My current Film Guide says that it was a rather stodgy MGM epic but, given the plot line, I fail to see how it could have been anything else.

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## mollie

I didn't think I was temperamentally unsuited to it, that's the thing. I don't have a problem with intimate family sagas set against backgrounds of historical events. I loved Middlemarch and Shirley and Jude the Obscure and North and South (not the John Jakes one  :Smile: ). War and Peace irked me because I expected to find exactly what you have described, and what I read sounded like Tolstoy's Hymn to Himself (extended mix). And not in the good, Leaves of Grass sense of the phrase. I kept reading in the expectation that it would eventually stop setting my teeth on edge, but it didn't. I'm sure Tolstoy's traumatised  :Smile:

----------


## Dr. Hill

I love the first part of War and Peace. Then I can't do it anymore.

----------


## Adagio

> Similarly, I saw the US version of The Brothers Karamazov and was bored to distraction.


See, now that book could never be a decent film. Perhaps you've read it and agree, but if not you should give it a go. The narration is what makes it so fantastic and is certainly something that cinema cannot capture.

----------


## Janine

> I saw the Burton version- there's a trailer on YouTube if you're interested. Dench's production of the play is pretty spot-on, I'd say, and Branagh captures Jimmy's antagonism and yet his...anachronism very well, not tipping over the edge between Jimmy just being a...well, I don't think I can swear here


*kelby_lake,* cool tipping me off about the video on Youtube. I want to take a look at that Burton version. I saw the extra commentary on my DVD, with a now 'older' Branagh discussing their production; but he mentions the earlier production with Burton. He is very respectful and gracious about it. It's interesting to listen to Branagh's descriptions of their own first production of this play on stage in a huge ventue. He said it was like seeing the characters as postage stamps. I can't imagine them pulling it off in that way; nor how actors can project that far and still maintain all the emotions and the nuances of their performance. He said there were a lot of mixed reactions; some cheered and some even booed. He seemed to take it all very lightly and in good humor. I really loved the way he played it on the DVD. I know what you mean by the blanks...I can fill them in...NO, one can't use those words on here - the program would just look like this ****!  :FRlol:

----------


## Remarkable

I did not like "Madame Bovary". I do get the point and I understand her, I can see where all her problems come from, how the situation evolves and why for the given conditions there is no other alternative to the ending. I just can't bring myself to read it out of pleasure. It's like a piece of work that conveys only a message but no style. 

"The Sufferings of Young Verther" absolutely irritated me. I could not get the point of any of his actions. I found Verther thoroughly and unjustifiably passive, a very non-typical young person. Youth is full of energy and love, full of courage and hope!

Sometimes I wonder whether I feel this way because I have read these books while still young. Still, I have also read Joyce and Zweig at quite a young age and I am blindly in love with both of them.

In the end, maybe that was the point of both books. Maybe Verther is supposed to be inssuportable, maybe it is meant for one to get tired of him fastly. Maybe "Madame Bovary" becomes boring and ureadable for the exact purpose of illustrating Emma's dull life, for giving the example of failed expectations...

----------


## AmericanEagle

I had to read Heart of Darkness for English class, and I did not like it.

----------


## stlukesguild

It's like a piece of work that conveys only a message but no style. 

_Madame Bovary_ no style!? Its all style. The language is absolutely magnificent.

----------


## eyemaker

> It's like a piece of work that conveys only a message but no style. 
> 
> _Madame Bovary_ no style!? Its all style. The language is absolutely magnificent.


I agree even more stukes. Flaubert did an excellent masterpiece. Primarily for the stylistic precision and dispassionate rendering of psychological detail. He diligently researched his subjects and infused his works with psychological realism with the goal of achieving a prose style as rhythmical as verse and as precise as the language of science. That perhaps made Madam Bovary qualify as one of the World's most well-written work of art. :Thumbs Up:

----------


## Akeldama

I couldn't stand Kate Chopin's _The Awakening_. I did manage to finish the book (thankfully it's short), and I can most certainly understand and appreciate the value that many see in it, but it just didn't connect to me.

I simply found little in the book that was relevant to my life, although it shouldn't be surprising that an 18-year-old male couldn't connect with a turn of the century feminist story. Overall, I didn't feel particularly connected or empathetic towards Edna (again, should be unsurprising) and felt that she was rather shallow in her actions and her motives for those actions than being a truly empowered individual. To me, it just felt like Chopin was skimming the surface of what could have been a much more powerful story, but didn't quite reach what she was aiming for.

Of course, I may be placing a more modern, extreme standard for "rebellion" on Edna than was truly reflective of society in her times (does that even make sense?). Regardless, _The Awakening_ is a novel I don't intend to revisit.

----------


## Remarkable

> It's like a piece of work that conveys only a message but no style. 
> 
> _Madame Bovary_ no style!? Its all style. The language is absolutely magnificent.





> I agree even more stukes. Flaubert did an excellent masterpiece. Primarily for the stylistic precision and dispassionate rendering of psychological detail. He diligently researched his subjects and infused his works with psychological realism with the goal of achieving a prose style as rhythmical as verse and as precise as the language of science. That perhaps made Madam Bovary qualify as one of the World's most well-written work of art.


I am sorry, I did not mean no style in that sense.I acknowledge that literary it is a very good piece of prose, although I don't enjoy it even in that sense. Pardon me if my conception of style confused you.

Style to me is not just the way a work it is written. Style to me does not signify words alone, poeticity... Style to me is what a writer uses to _convey_ the message, how I, as a reader, understand what he has given me. Style is the ability of the writer to get in me, to slide in me through narrow passages... I call it style when I can not only grasp the meaning of goal of the author, but I can grasp it beautifully. Even if it's a horror story.

Maybe, as I said, I will have a different view when I grow up and re-read the book. For now, since even style is a private and personal conception, "Madame Bovary" remains one of my least favourite works of literature.

----------


## mikemaster70

the one classic i cannot stand to read would have to be The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. i understand the impact it had during its time but throughout the book i found myself thinking "what is this?" and "when is it just going to end!". previously to it i read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, much like many other kids have done, and enjoyed it, however in Huckleberry Finn i began to loathe the character Tom Sawyer and, frankly, just wished he would die. the only character in there that i liked was jim and found, suprisingly, that he was the only smart one. i mean for god sakes it made no sense to me how tom could read so many books and yet be so stupid! i disliked it so much i refused to read, however i had to for my english class. i also found the majority of my class hated it as well.

----------


## varnish7

Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. I had to read those books for high school English, and I ended up forgetting every single word of them the second I finished reading them, they were just that boring. Plus, the guy in Heart of Darkness was supposed to become really evil and corrupt or something, right? Does it actually show that in the book? Because, honestly, I don't remember seeing anything like that. Of course, I don't even remember the basic plot. 

I think the thing that's a problem with me is when they say a classic is the best example of say a love story ever, and I read it and either I don't see it at al,l or I see it, but it honestly doesn't seem that much more romantic or scary than any piece of contemporary fiction. I mean, I've read classics that I've liked, but it's never been like "Oh my God! The scales have fallen from my eyes! I now understand the true meaning of life. I'll never read commercial fiction again!" I think when you read a book that you know is a classic, that's the kind of reaction you expect to have.

----------


## Lynne Fees

> I don't know if someone has mentioned these books already.
> 
> _Of Human Bondage_ tops my list of books overrated and un-readable. 
> 
> _1984_ was torturous and a little too flagitious for me. 
> 
> _For Whom The Bell Tolls_ was a beautiful story made derisory by strange medieval language employed as an explanation for Spanish vernacular. I liked the book, but I couldn't bear to read the employment of "I obscenity in the milk." and the like which were supposedly transliteration from Spanish.
> 
> I didn't see a lot of complaints about Woolf. How did she escape this list?




Someone mentioned Austin Powers...sounds like one of his words!
Honestly, I had to look that one up on Dictionary.com. Love new words...

----------


## Lynne Fees

> Why IS it that no one can spell Austen? Isn't this a literature forum?


Sorry sometimes I'm in a hurry when I make my posts.
As far as "real" characters, we don't have servants per se, but we do have many, many people in service jobs. We don't have aristocracy, but we have rich neighbors, friends and family. I don't think the basic character of man and woman changes much over time, really.

----------


## Night_Lamp

Over the few pages of this thread that I read, I disagree with many choices: but, they are personal choices, so who am I to disagree with an opinion.

I love Anna Karenia, and several of Tolstoy's other works; but I didn't enjoy War and Peace. And, I know this is likely blasphemy for an english major to admit aloud, but I really, really, hate Joyce. Ulysses is the longest sentence in literature, as the old joke goes.

----------


## Cossack

Great Gatsby, Cantenbury Tales.

----------


## feministdoris

cossack, I found The Great Gatsby a bit disappointing as well. Sure, it's the roaring twenties, but I still think the novel lacked some fundamental requirement for 'incredible novel'.
Oh, and I find Austen's and most of Bronte sisters' novels very tedious and frigid (perhaps Wuthering Heights not included). While I appreciate social observation, I'm still not at ease with some naive views (though understandable at the time).

----------


## MSDGreen

_Clarissa_ Something about a 1500 page book in letter form that I find undesirable.

----------


## Nightshade

> _Clarissa_ Something about a 1500 page book in letter form that I find undesirable.


epistolery form, and Clarissa was the longest novel in the English langugae for a fairly long time. It is probably worth reading if for no other reason than the way it affected the development of the novel and the fact that latere 18C and 19th C books often had referances to clarissa and lovelace. 

And now I sound like a literary snob, Im really not. Its just while Richardson is rather hard to stomache I tend to find that by the end of struggling through one of his books you have learnt all sort of intresting little factoides.

----------


## MSDGreen

> epistolery form, and Clarissa was the longest novel in the English langugae for a fairly long time. It is probably worth reading if for no other reason than the way it affected the development of the novel and the fact that latere 18C and 19th C books often had referances to clarissa and lovelace. 
> 
> And now I sound like a literary snob, Im really not. Its just while Richardson is rather hard to stomache I tend to find that by the end of struggling through one of his books you have learnt all sort of intresting little factoides.


letter form, while epistolary form covers a novel written entirely in letters I find the correction unnecessary. Plus I hate being corrected when my statement is fully understandable. Just a character flaw I guess. 

The character developement was interesting in Clarissa, I thought this was a small redeeming factor. Maybe I was a bit harsh, but of all the novels I have read, Clarissa for most of it is very very dry.

----------


## aeroport

_The Castle of Otranto_ kind of fizzled for me. Redeemingly short, though.

----------


## weltanschauung

kerouac's on the road.
YAWN.

----------


## bohn

> List classics you have read that have disinterested you *and made you slog through several pages of pure banality.*
> 
> Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:
> 
> 1. Catch-22


Totally agree with you.. just finished Catch 22 and had to reopen this thread to let everyone know  :Wink:

----------


## Nemo Neem

1. The Jungle 
2. Gulliver's Travels
3. Robinson Crusoe
4. Walden

----------


## kiki1982

> Cantenbury Tales.


_The Canterbury Tales_? But that's hilarious, isn't it?

----------


## Onikeflava

> kerouac's on the road.
> YAWN.


Wash your mouth out.

----------


## husker du

> _For Whom The Bell Tolls_ was a beautiful story made derisory by strange medieval language employed as an explanation for Spanish vernacular. I liked the book, but I couldn't bear to read the employment of "I obscenity in the milk." and the like which were supposedly transliteration from Spanish.


Don't know if this has been mentioned, but this whole "obscenity in the milk" business was Hemingway's way of getting around the censors and making it painfully obvious that he was being censored.

----------


## blazeofglory

Old English novels are rather clumsily boring to me. I choose to read Russian and French classics and they are far better

----------


## chrismythoi

i thought the count of monte cristo was very dull in general. the characters had little depth either. and was he selling his books by the word?

----------


## kiki1982

dull?  :Confused:  Did you read an abridged version? 

He published his books in newspapers per chapter. That, yes. 

I cn't recall any shallow characterisation, though.

----------


## Lulim

This was probably mentioned before: Dan Browns Da Vinci Code

----------


## mal4mac

> This was probably mentioned before: Dan Browns Da Vinci Code


Classic?

----------


## Inka

well, I know I was dwelling on the importance of every book, still to me the worst is Marcise de Sade. In Russian his name sounds magically and I was enchanted by it only I didn't expect that his writing proved to be such vulgar.

----------


## Red-Headed

Les Misérables.

----------


## ForKnowledge

david copperfield oliver twist and heart of darkness though I do like conrad lord jim and the secret agent were good.

----------


## neilgee

I liked Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim but not The Secret Agent which I thought was abit silly, and that guy with the bomb ready to blow himself up all the time really irritated me, but then everyone gets something different out of each book I suppose.

What really put me off Conrad was when I found out how he treated his children in real life.

The 'classic' comedies have often been disappointing to me. I can think of 3 without racking my brains: Swing Hammer Swing by Jeff Torrington, The World According to Garp [can't recall author] and Travels in Nilihon by Alan Sillitoe all began brilliantly with inspired humour and the sense of an author really enjoying himself but they all seem to lose inspiration about halfway through and seemed to be a chore for the author to finish.

----------


## IceM

Heart of Darkness was miserable. I thought Candide was poorly written, and Walden was infuriatingly boring through most parts.

At least I finished Heart of Darkness though.

----------


## Nipponnay

Ugh, Heart of Darkness is next on my list!  :Brickwall:

----------


## Inka

> Ugh, Heart of Darkness is next on my list!


cross it off then =)
well, I'd give u a piece of advise: don't judge the book basing on smb's opinions, read it yourself and then decide if it's worth reading, so in your place I wouldn't have been bothered)

----------


## Lulim

> Classic?


Oh, excuse me. Of course that's not a classic. But one of the worst books I had the bad luck to come upon nevertheless.

I second IceMs comment on "Candide".

----------


## Dinkleberry2010

The worst classics I have ever read include "Pamela" by Samuel Richardson, "The Mysteries Of Udolpho" by Ann Radcliffe, James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake," and Hemingway's "Across The River And Into The Trees."

----------


## sinskeep

Okay, well classics that I haven't enjoyed...

1. The Sun Also Rises 
2. Anna Karenina (Part 4 killed me!) :Sick: 
3. Farenheit 451
4. Brave New World 
5. Moby Dick




> I couldn't stand Kate Chopin's _The Awakening_. I did manage to finish the book (thankfully it's short), and I can most certainly understand and appreciate the value that many see in it, but it just didn't connect to me.
> 
> .



Definately agree with that one it was kind of pointless...

----------


## Patrick_Bateman

Dickens


that is all




> okay, well classics that i haven't enjoyed...
> 
> *3. Farenheit 451*



whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

----------


## spookymulder93

> Okay, well classics that I haven't enjoyed...
> 
> 1. The Sun Also Rises 
> 2. Anna Karenina (Part 4 killed me!)
> *3. Farenheit 451
> 4. Brave New World* 
> 5. Moby Dick


I can't believe you don't like those 2. F451 is definitely either my favorite or second favorite novel. I have to read Animal Farm again to make my decision though.

As far as worst classic I don't know. I haven't read that many classic, but I did stop reading Frankenstein because it got too boring.

----------


## Darcy101

Catcher in the rye (oh Please)

Far from the madding crowd (just dont care)

----------


## WildWildEast

*Charles Dicken's Great Expectations. It is one of the worst books ever and I just don't see why it is on list of the 100 books you need to read before you die.*

----------


## mal4mac

> *Charles Dicken's Great Expectations. It is one of the worst books ever and I just don't see why it is on list of the 100 books you need to read before you die.*


I think most Dickens novels are amongst the best books ever, definitely including Great Expectations. He usually (rightly!) get several entries in top 100 lists, from "before you die" lists to lists produced by serious critics. I'll be re-reading his major novels several times before i die, that's for sure!

----------


## victorianfan

> As far as worst classic I don't know. I haven't read that many classic, but I did stop reading Frankenstein because it got too boring.


Frankenstein is a true horror! It gave me a splitting headache.  :Mad2: 




> *Charles Dicken's Great Expectations. It is one of the worst books ever and I just don't see why it is on list of the 100 books you need to read before you die.*


Based on what criteria, please?  :Skep:

----------


## DonovanTalbot

> Frankenstein is a true horror! It gave me a splitting headache.


Frankenstein not that bad, it is just Victor Frankenstein's inner dialogues are abit too wet and melodramatic combined with the Romantic prose Mary Shelley uses. I remember hating Frankenstein the first time around, I despised it, but then cruising through it the second time around without the least bit difficulty and a great deal more of enjoyment.




> I found it difficult to appreciate Dracula and Dangerous Liaisons, the middle of Dracula seems to just go on without anything happening.
> 
> And it's not just because they're epistolary novels, I loved Frankenstein.





> For me personally, Dracula got to be a complete bore after awhile (I read it when I was very young, so maybe my perspective has changed enough for me to be entertained by it).



Dracula ranks as one of my current favorite classics. Might well be my favorite book. I loved every word of it. Full of chilling atmosphere and unforgettable imagery. Tho, the middle parts does mildly drag as Dracula himself appears to fall off the pages and is rather spoken of in the third person but the antics of Renfield alleviate the absence of the grand bloodsucking archfiend.

----------


## stlukesguild

Charles Dicken's Great Expectations. It is one of the worst books ever and I just don't see why it is on list of the 100 books you need to read before you die.

Based on what criteria, please?

I wondered as much. :Sosp:

----------


## dafydd manton

Isn't choice wonderfully arbitary! Let's face it, if we all liked the same thing, we'd all be up to our eyeballs in Mills and Boon, or Harry Potter.

----------


## WildWildEast

> Based on what criteria, please?


*It is a personal opinion I guess. Honsetly, I found the element of coincidence in this novel ruining the plot. 

as for the list of the 100-books-you-need-to-read-before-you-die, it is like any other list that includes the best 100 books ever. And Great Expectations's Charles Dickens.*

----------


## grechzoo

rabbit run  :Tongue: 

couldn't get through it. just didn't get on with updikes ideas.

----------


## blazeofglory

The worst classic I have started off never to complete and never to satisfy myself reading is Ulysses. I have began to read the book with the intent that this is always a number one and textually it could be the à la mode but I shrank back after going through some pages. I found some of the epical poems of Milton, Pope and even Shakespeare unappealing. I like War and Peace somewhat more than any fiction of Sartre for after a careful study we will be in tune with the book. 
Let the book be an appetizer and let it thrill and engage and at the same time instruct us. Siddhartha for instance is a book that I find philosophical and fictionally moving. So is the Brothers Karamazov. The book that always propels my imaginative faculties and inspire and transform me all the time is the Prophet by Gibran. Kafka is at times a hard read yet it is not as intricate as James Joyce and I like the Trial despite the fact that at the outset I found the book rather tortuous

----------


## kelby_lake

The Trial takes some getting used to; The Metamorphosis is a better place to start.

I don't really think the point of reading classics is to try and judge their right to be a classic- after surviving so long, it's kind of a given. I think it's quite sad that people can't find anything at all to appreciate in a novel- even in To Kill A Mockingbird, I appreciate that its message and style may resonate more with younger/other readers (if you want examples of prejudice and racism, read the newspapers) and that it might be a simple introduction into more 'worthy' books.

----------


## Three Sparrows

I can't say I enjoyed The Good Soldier, too much "This is the saddest story I have ever heard...".

----------


## kiki1982

Yes, Kafka can be a handful. Yet his writing, by moments, is simply brilliant and that is still not adequately expressed actually. or at least it is in German anyway. Kafka can be very dry though, and I would understand that some people will find him insufferable, but he's got this great irony and I think once one gets it, he is absolutely hilarious.

----------


## Rores28

I don't know if I would say I hated these two but I found them pretty disappointing for "classics".

Dracula - good parts and some of the themes and conversations were pretty interesting but for me it just became really tedious at points.

The Invisible Man (Note: not Invisible Man) - all I can say is meh.

----------


## Night_Lamp

http://www.cbc.ca/wiretap/index.html?copy-audio[/URL]

For those of you how have never heard CBC's Wiretap, The best of season four has an episode called: 'The Lives of Bugs and Men', which has a great skit with Gregor Samsa and Dr. Seuss are penpals. Really funny. Sorry if my link doesn't work correctly.

----------


## theologystudent

> Hello Aunty-lion and thank you for replying to this topic with warm appreciation. I find it interesting that you say your mother found interest in Catch-22 after it was read to her.. I have experienced certain books boring when read softly but far more interesting when read aloud but as for Joseph Heller's Catch-22 I believe believe my main grudge against it is the in the way he seems to convolude paragraphs with details upon details which seems to be arbitrarily sloshed together... Take this paragraph for example:
> 
> 
> 
> ...Now I'm not claiming that this paragraph isn't amusing but can it seriously be called brilliant? I respect your opinion on the book and everyone else who is a die-hard fan of it and Joseph Heller's other works but I am baffled that a few people have claimed it is "the greatest classic of all time" while others have compared its humor to certain Shakespear plays. 
> 
> ----
> 
> I'm sorry I can't give you an opinion on Vanity Fair because I haven't read it myself. I'll try to get to William Thackeray after I overcome this mound of Joyce/Dostoevsky.


I think the Man who was Thursday to be a very strange and unpredictable novel.the first page aof the path to Rome gives a clue that G.K. is highly creative and individual.I didn't understand(I mean notice) the decadence in the novel.

 :Hat:  :Sosp:  :Cheers2: What do you think of Chesterton's politics?Is he pro law and order or not?

 :Hat: Do you like the path to Rome?

 :Hat:  :Arf: I like Vanity Fair because of the way Becky seems to polite but is really rude because she uses 
french and Long words.

 :Hat: I like Branaghs Hamlet because of the beautiful way he depicts Elsinore and I love conquest of Fortinbras scene.Wow :Hat:  :Sosp:

----------


## ayesha.maya

1) Les Miserables (tried reading years ago and then abandoned it out of sheer boredom  :Tongue: . Maybe I'll try again...)

2) One Hundred Years Of Solitude (took my YEARS to finsh this one. While I liked it immensely in places, and I REALLY like Marquez otherwise (The first Marquez I read was Love in the time of Cholera at age 12 and I had lovely sappy dreams about it for weeks! I was one obsessed 12 year old...), This book, however, dragged so much it gave me a headache!)

3) Vilette (meh) 

4) Mansfield Park (Thought it was very appropriate for its time, and probably much more accurate in that respect than P&P will ever be! But god, it was an awful read!! I don't usually take an instant dislike to protagonists unless their as goody-two-shoes, priggish, judgemental and moralistic and dear Fanny Price and Cousin Edward  :Sick:  )

Incidentally, I really liked Catcher in the Rye- it reminded me of my brother who is 16 and going through this VERY angsty teenage the-world-is-****-hole phase right now  :Yesnod: 

LOVED Streetcar (very very sexy!)- though seeing Brando in the role soon after reading the play might have helped in that regard.

----------


## mastermind23

Catcher in the Rye is just terrible imo.

----------


## OrphanPip

I love Fielding, but I find Tom Jones to be an excruciating read. Joseph Andrews and Shamela are quite readable though, and the Author's Farce is one of my favourite plays.

----------


## mal4mac

Ulysses, "the" Bible

----------


## Yulehesays

The Grapes of Wrath. What's the appeal?

----------


## YesNo

I agree with mal4mac except that I haven't actually read Joyce's Ulysses and so I figured it doesn't count in my case. I did get through the first chapter, about 50 pages, and enjoyed the first 20 pages or so--well, maybe the first 10 pages. I skimmed through the rest--quickly--enough to convince myself that it didn't get any better and stopped. 

The classic that I actually read and love to hate and label as the "worst" is Eliot's The Wasteland. If I were an expert and more well-read, I'd probably be able to come up with many more titles to hate.

----------


## Lykren

I wouldn't actually apply the word hate here, but I found it pretty hard to enjoy Tristram Shandy.

I also thought Gulliver's Travels was a shoddy bit of writing. So was Ivanhoe.

----------


## hannah_arendt

> 1) Les Miserables (tried reading years ago and then abandoned it out of sheer boredom . Maybe I'll try again...)
> 
> 2) One Hundred Years Of Solitude (took my YEARS to finsh this one. While I liked it immensely in places, and I REALLY like Marquez otherwise (The first Marquez I read was Love in the time of Cholera at age 12 and I had lovely sappy dreams about it for weeks! I was one obsessed 12 year old...), This book, however, dragged so much it gave me a headache!)
> 
> 3) Vilette (meh) 
> 
> 4) Mansfield Park (Thought it was very appropriate for its time, and probably much more accurate in that respect than P&P will ever be! But god, it was an awful read!! I don't usually take an instant dislike to protagonists unless their as goody-two-shoes, priggish, judgemental and moralistic and dear Fanny Price and Cousin Edward  )
> 
> Incidentally, I really liked Catcher in the Rye- it reminded me of my brother who is 16 and going through this VERY angsty teenage the-world-is-****-hole phase right now 
> ...


I think that "100 anos de soledad" is one of the best novels ever written.

----------


## mona amon

> The Grapes of Wrath. What's the appeal?


 :Iagree:  
But then I skipped every alternate chapter!

----------


## Desolation

"Worst," of course, is a silly word. Rather, here are some undeniably great works that I personally did not enjoy:

War and Peace (first half had me hooked, second half was a slog)
The Grapes of Wrath
Paradise Lost
Catcher in the Rye
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Naked Lunch
The Trial
The Castle (honestly, I don't like Kafka...which is strange, since I like everything he's associated with...maybe it's a translation issue)
The Power and the Glory
Sister Carrie
1984
Dubliners (other than "The Dead" - which was amazing)
Walden

----------


## kiki1982

> The Castle (honestly, I don't like Kafka...which is strange, since I like everything he's associated with...maybe it's a translation issue)


Kafka is an acquired taste.
What was wrong with it? If it was slogging, heavy, looooong, repetitive, bad/turse in style (not really beautiful, he doesn't care about that, it's factual), chaotic (wanting to cram everything and anything in one sentence) and weird and surreal, then it wan't a translation issue.
In fact, most parts of Kafka translations I have read, tone it down a fair bit. He can go on and on and on and on and on and, oh yes, ON. But he can be hilariously funny (that story of Momus there, for example, about the little grain in the mill was hilarious because he was telling K that in fact he had unmasked them all, but sadly K was asleep by then  :FRlol: ). Sometimes, the officials remind me distinctly of Sir Humphry in _Yes Minister_. For themselves, they make perfect sense, and looking at it from their point of view, it also makes sense, only their sense isn't really the rest of the world's.

His short stories are better though. As he doesn't have so many pages he is free to fill, he remained concise, if that exists in Kafka.

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## Desolation

I've read (or rather tried to read) three different translations of _The Castle_, two of _The Trial_, three of his collected stories, and some of his diaries...I really, really want to like Kafka. I love absurdism, surrealism, modernism, and existentialism, all of which Kafka is associated with. Weird, chaotic, and long-winded work for me (I am a Pynchon fanatic, after all). So Kafka always seemed like he would be a perfect match for me. I don't know why, exactly, but his works have just never moved/interested me. It's a shame - I feel like I'm missing out on something amazing.

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## FenwickS

I've found Moby Dick tedious and unrelenting with uninteresting cetological descriptions. I felt like I had whale oozing out of my ears!

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## Hal

i enjoy reading classics and I am a budding scholar of literature, however, many classics are not to be read for enjoyment. They are to be read because they are seminal texts in the evolution of letters. Middlemarch is not a joy to read anymore than Ulysses is. Parts of Moby Dick are really painful. But I think even the most difficult and boring of these books teach us something.

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## kev67

> The Grapes of Wrath. What's the appeal?


I did not enjoy that book much neither. As I was reading it I thought that Woody Guthrie handled that subject much better. Then I learnt it was _The Grapes of Wrath_ that inspired Woody Guthrie to write those dustbowl songs, so I will have to let Steinbeck off.

Recently finished _The Lord of the Flies_. I thought it was powerful writing, psychologically astute, but deeply unpleasant. It was an effort to start each chapter. It is often used as a set text for school exams, but its effect seems to be to put a lot of kids off reading.

I am concerned _Catch-22_ has been mentioned so often. I have that waiting on my bookshelf to be read. I started it aged 14 when I was in hospital, but I did not think much of it and put it down. I was more interested in real air battles at the time, and did not like this clever-dicky stuff. It is quite a thick book too, so it will prove a chore if I don't get on with it again. Still, it's one of those iconic books that everyone's heard of, even if they have not read it. At least it should be a good companion piece to that other war-is-insanity novel, Slaughterhouse Five.

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## Adolescent09

> Recently finished _The Lord of the Flies_.


How it is possible for anyone to like any part of 'The Lord of the Flies' whether it be the writing, the characters, the message or even the title is completely beyond me, but I respect your opinion.

I loved 'The Grapes of Wrath' but preferred 'East of Eden' and I absolutely adore Steinbeck's 'The Moon is Down' which to me is hands down one of the most underrated and least read war novellas sketching the emotional toll of war. Specifically World War II, but applicable to war in general. It might even be my second favorite novella overall after Hesse's Siddhartha.

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## lichtrausch

> I've read (or rather tried to read) three different translations of _The Castle_, two of _The Trial_, three of his collected stories, and some of his diaries...I really, really want to like Kafka. I love absurdism, surrealism, modernism, and existentialism, all of which Kafka is associated with. Weird, chaotic, and long-winded work for me (I am a Pynchon fanatic, after all). So Kafka always seemed like he would be a perfect match for me. I don't know why, exactly, but his works have just never moved/interested me. It's a shame - I feel like I'm missing out on something amazing.


It must be a translation issue. I read Kafka in the original and he taught me to love absurdism and surrealism.

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## Yulehesays

> I did not enjoy that book much neither. As I was reading it I thought that Woody Guthrie handled that subject much better. Then I learnt it was _The Grapes of Wrath_ that inspired Woody Guthrie to write those dustbowl songs, so I will have to let Steinbeck off.
> 
> Recently finished _The Lord of the Flies_. I thought it was powerful writing, psychologically astute, but deeply unpleasant. It was an effort to start each chapter. It is often used as a set text for school exams, but its effect seems to be to put a lot of kids off reading.
> 
> I am concerned _Catch-22_ has been mentioned so often. I have that waiting on my bookshelf to be read. I started it aged 14 when I was in hospital, but I did not think much of it and put it down. I was more interested in real air battles at the time, and did not like this clever-dicky stuff. It is quite a thick book too, so it will prove a chore if I don't get on with it again. Still, it's one of those iconic books that everyone's heard of, even if they have not read it. At least it should be a good companion piece to that other war-is-insanity novel, Slaughterhouse Five.


I am glad I am not the only one who feels this way about The Grapes of Wrath. I can see it's a great book, but I didn't enjoy it. 

I read the Lord of The Flies and can't really remember what I thought of it because I was only about 15 when i read it. For this reason I'm re-reading it as soon as I finish Ellman's biography of Joyce. 

Catch-22 is another one that didn't thrill me. Parts were funny, and I did enjoy it, but I wouldn't rate it as a classic or something that's a must-read.

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## mal4mac

> I agree with mal4mac except that I haven't actually read Joyce's Ulysses and so I figured it doesn't count in my case. I did get through the first chapter, about 50 pages, and enjoyed the first 20 pages or so--well, maybe the first 10 pages. I skimmed through the rest--quickly--enough to convince myself that it didn't get any better and stopped.


I think reading fifty pages is more than enough to have an opinion... I haven't read much more of Ulysses myself. I don't read novels, in full, if I don't like them, and consider it an an act of masochistic idiocy to do so! There are dozens of modern novels that I gave up on very quickly (e.g., yesterday, I managed about ten pages of Chris Cleave's "Gold" before giving up...) 

P.S. Use the library and then you don't find yourself thinking, "I spent 10 quid on this, so I'll force myself to read it..."

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## YesNo

Reading 50 pages, or the first chapter, was probably a mistake and I did it twice which means I'm a slow learner. 

In a separate thread, Finnegans Wake was discussed and conveniently it is on the internet in full, free display. I don't think I read more than 50 words of that before giving up. So maybe I'm improving.

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## Ughek

> I've found Moby Dick tedious and unrelenting with uninteresting cetological descriptions. I felt like I had whale oozing out of my ears!


I agree with you. That's the first book that came to mind when I read the thread title. There's a good book hidden in there somewhere, though.

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## mona amon

> I think reading fifty pages is more than enough to have an opinion...


This may be true of some books or even most books, but not Ulysses. When I first read I liked the first three chapters, but was getting a bit tired of Stephen's stream of consciousness, then in chapter four there was Bloom and his pork kidney and I knew I was hooked. After that each chapter is so different from the others that one never gets bored (bemused maybe), so I think just the beginning chapters are definitely not enough in this case.

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## Desolation

I don't know...There were years, before I felt ready to read the novel in its entirety, when I would just read the first 3 episodes of _Ulysses_ over and over again. If they were enough to convince me that I would love the book, I don't have any qualms about saying that they're enough to convince others that they won't like the book.

Stephen's scenes are still my favorites - especially episode 3 (the infamous "ineluctable modality" on the beach episode, with the most heavy stream of consciousness).

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## Yulehesays

> This may be true of some books or even most books, but not Ulysses. When I first read I liked the first three chapters, but was getting a bit tired of Stephen's stream of consciousness, then in chapter four there was Bloom and his pork kidney and I knew I was hooked. After that each chapter is so different from the others that one never gets bored (bemused maybe), so I think just the beginning chapters are definitely not enough in this case.


I had a very similar experience while reading Ulysses the first time. I loved the opening but was feeling a bit baffled after Proteus. Then when I read about Bloom's pork kidney sizzling on the pan I knew I was going to love it! That chapter made me so hungry

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