Great/classic novels you just don't like

[Thurlow]

Cloud Atlas (what prompted me to start this thread) - lesser than the sum of its part. It's all very clever and a very impressive exercise in writing and authorial(sp?) skill, but none of that makes for an enjoyable read. Too stop start, didn't like some of the stories, didn't feel the stories connected enough to make it feel like they deserved to be all wrapped up together. Emporer's New Clothes.

The Great Gatsby - too deliberate, too studied. I felt like Fitzgerald had written and rewritten and rewritten again every single word on the page, and so the story lost any sense of urgency or liveliness. It left me feeling very cold, which did annoy me as the bones of the story were really interesting.

Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist and The Life of Pi - couldn't read more than 2 pages of either of them, just hated them on sight.

Anything by Dickens - I just can't get into him . Ditto anything by DH Lawrence.

[Sammie101]

Wuthering Heights, I really just hated it! Didn't see the appeal of Heathcliff at all and Cathy was just a selfish brat

[HoratiaDrelincourt]

The Mill on the Floss. What a load of shit.

[FoxyRevenger]

Second anything by Dickens. Why his books are so beloved is beyond me; probably because it seems such a given people feel the need to agree, but have never read them...

To Kill a Mockingbird. Cannot be bothered with that children's style of prose.

Catcher in the Bloody Rye (as I believe it's called)

[kelda]

I've read several of Charles Dickens' but I found Little Dorrit just impossible.

[juneau]

Anything by Thomas Hardy - it sends me to sleep
Wuthering Heights - bored the tits off me
Cold Mountain - couldn't get into it all
Wolf Hall - I'm going to try it again some day, but it didn't grab me
Anna Karenina - too many long names and I kept forgetting who everyone was

[Tinlegs]

Lolita - just pisses me off.

[bimblebee]

Loved David Copperfield but hated A Tale of Two Cities.
Got a third of the way through Cloud Atlas and had to give up - found that I was just dreading picking the book up every evening.
Love everything by Thomas Hardy but hate Jane Austin. There you go.

[growltigersontheloose]

Mill on the Floss. Yawn.

Little Women. Oh I hate it.

[Thurlow]

I love Wuthering Heights and read it every year or so, but I like it because Heathcliffe is hideous and Cathy is a brat. I have no idea why people insist on seeing it as a love story though.

Cather in the Rye was just awful, I hated reading it. I don't think the 20th century American classics do much for me

Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment I managed to read at a time where I had very little else to read, though I remember skipping almost any chapter that mentioned farming within the first paragraph!

Crime and Punishment was a really odd one. I didn't enjoy reading the book at all - but I did think Raskolnikov was one of the greatest characters I've ever read, he just seemed so alive and so complex and so unique.

[magimedi]

Another one for Dickens.

Am I right in thinking that nearly all Dickens's novels appeared in serial form in the paper as their first publication? Maybe that is part of the reason they don't , for me, appeal as novels.

[Northumberlandlass]

Wuthering Heights

[growltigersontheloose]

Anything by Jane Austen, which I blame on A level English Lit. and having to reread Sense And Sensibility countless times and write tedious essays on tedious subjects such as 'the significance of communication via letters'. BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE PHONES OR EMAIL, DUMB DUMB! How else will some toff know what time to come for dinner? I'm still bitter that I only got a B, and it was half my lifetime ago.

[lambbone]

Come on! For sheer tedium you can't beat Henry James.

[ballroomblitz]

I also love Wuthering heights and read it about once a year Thurlow. Had my copy from I was 16 and it's falling apart.

Jane Austen - yawn. Must be an A-level English lit thing.

Crime and punishment I struggled to get through.

More recently the 100 year old man who climbed out the window. How has it got 1000s of good reviews on amazon? Gave up half way through. First book to every break me as I never not finish a book.

[ancientbuchanan]

Wuthering Heights. Self obsessed unpleasant people with miserable ending.

Emma. Up her own backside heroine who is also a bitch.

Madame Bovary. Selfish and stupid woman.

Anything by Thackeray, cynicism can only take you so far. Even in Vanity Fair.

Wolf hall. Too long.

A la recherche du temps perdu. Even longer

Almost anything by Henry James. Feels even longer than Proust, real achievement.

War and Peace.

Germinal. Gloomsville.

Les Miserables. Musical far far better.

[ancientbuchanan]

Wuthering Heights. Self obsessed unpleasant people with miserable ending.

Emma. Up her own backside heroine who is also a bitch.

Madame Bovary. Selfish and stupid woman.

Anything by Thackeray, cynicism can only take you so far. Even in Vanity Fair.

Wolf hall. Too long.

A la recherche du temps perdu. Even longer

Almost anything by Henry James. Feels even longer than Proust, real achievement.

War and Peace.

Germinal. Gloomsville.

Les Miserables. Musical far far better.

[Kveta]

anything by Jane Austen.

A year of studying 6 books in which NOTHING EVER HAPPENS to a load of chinless wonders, when the year above us got to study a selection of texts by Dickens rather put me off Austen.


I found Life of Pi deeply tedious too, nothing happened in that either. I dare not read Cloud Atlas, my father keeps raving about it, and his descriptions make it sound very very pleased with itself.

[MegBusset]

Jane Eyre, what a crock of shit.

[Kveta]

oh, and my studies were CSYS, so Scottish equivalent of A Levels - we even got bored by Austen north of the border!

[magimedi]

I have never read anything by Jane Austen - yet!!

Not encouraged by you lot

[Morgause]

Most French novels. Just when things can't get any worse they do.
Moby Dick.
Anything by George Eliot.
Anything by Joseph Conrad.
Anything by Walter Scott.

[HeartsTrumpDiamonds]

Wuthering Heights. I have tried and TRIED with this fucking book, and finally admitted defeat last summer. I will never finish it.

[MiddleAgeMiddleEngland]

I agree with Bimblebee, I love Hardy but Jane Austen? No, really can't read it. I've tried and tried, but just don't understand the appeal.

Anything by Tolkien. So boring.

On the other hand, I love some of the novels mentioned above, including Mill on the Floss, To Kill a Mockingbird, and quite a lot of Dickens.

It's good that we're all different

[TheSporkforeatingkyriarchy]

OP - Fitzgerald took a lot of his work from his wife and rewrote it, so likely your perception is quite accurate of what happened (the guy was a douche, would purposefully try to make her mentally snap).

[Weegiemum]

I've never understood why people like Jane Austen to much, it just reads like a bunch of tedious simpering to me, sorry.

Dickens! Aaaargh. Never was a novel more accurately named than "Hard Times".