so which 'classics' have you never read?

Jilkh, agree, her novels are a tough read but cripes is she good.

flork1, if someone went to a reading by Atwood/Ishiguro/whoever, stood up and told them their work was boring crap that would obviously show a lack of respect. And if someone said to my face I was an idiot for liking an author I'd think that showed a lack of respect. But to say it on an online forum ... I don't have a problem with that.

If all other books were lost in fire and flood, Middlemarch by George Eliot would stand as a testament to womanhood.

Plus it's a gripping read.

For a classic in the making, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. This lady is frighteningly talented.

You misunderstand. Everyone knows there are thousands of different opinions out there. I make a living out of literary criticism. I understand fully about 'dissing' writers. My point is WHETHER YOU LIKE THEM OR LOATHE THEM A LITTLE RESPECT IS REQUIRED. The last Ishiguro I read was banal and bizarre to say the least but I understand why people wanted to read it to the bitter end. To say writers are 'boring crap' so lightly is trite and ill-considered.

Oh, I don't know. Isn't it good to vent about things like that? I happen to dislike them both, apart from A Christmas Carol, Portrait of the Artist..., and The Dead. I'm not sure I'd say they were 'boring crap' but I don't much care if someone disses a writer I love; someone told me recently that they found Ishiguro's prose 'lame', which IMO is obviously bollocks but that's their view and they're entitled to it (I still privately think they're wrong and misguided, obviously .

I can't believe I just read this from a previous poster :

'Dickens is boring crap as is James Joyce'

Whether you like them or loathe them a little respect is required, I think.

(I happen to like them)

Christ yes. At least the film only takes two hours of your life though

BringBack, and it's so effing self-important, too. No, I didn't like the movie, either. What a load of precious twaddle.

sieglinde, GOD, Iris Murdoch! I've given her a good go, really I have, but shit it's turgid.

'I read one of the Marquez on a train travelling around India but I'll be darned if I can remember which one it was??'

That'll be because they're interchangeable!

mrswt - I must've attempted to read Villette every year for about 6 years a while back (ongoing New Years resolution to read a classic every month - oops!). Never managed to do it, even though it's not that difficult to read - another one to add to the list then!

I adore Hemingway. Don't care how misogynist he's supposed to be. but The Old Man and the Sea is one of his worst. Try The Garden of Eden or A Moveable Feast. I can't stand Henry James, though, and Iris Murdoch - blech. ON and on and on and on and on...

Ah, Hemingway! So, so tedious, he's DH's favourite author but I ust can't get past the first few pages. (I'm even less inclined to read him after hearing his wife's memoirs on R4's book of the week - miserable misogynist)

For me it is Dickens ,really haven't read anything other than David cpperfield anmd that was a chore.Have to say couldn't get through War and Peace or Anna Karennina .

Love Henry James though and Jane Austen,also keen on Iris Murdoch .i won Villette as a prize in U Sixth but have never read it

Ernest Hemingway - had to read 'The Old Man and the Sea' when i was at school - now I shudder at the mention of his name. I have never read anything so boring in my entire life!

Thomas Hardy .... yawn.

Wuthering Heights .... I didn't get it.

I enjoyed Dorian Gray, Frankenstein.

I don't think I've read any Dickens at all.

Beertricks, try We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea first.

Meditrina, my husband read all of Proust when he was 21....

I love all nineteenth century and most high modernist classics, but I absolutely hate the gritty realist people like the Amises, pere et fils, and I usually try NOT to read the Booker shortlist. Ugh. I also dislike Atwood, I'm afraid - smug and prim - and the current laureate.

The fact that a book is a classic doesn't necessarily mean it's a better or more worthwhile read - it just means that it has had a big influence on the history of literature, for whatever reason. And some of the books that are being published now will presumably turn out to be the classics of tomorrow.

After all When Dickens was alive, people read his books purely because they enjoyed them, not because they felt they ought to.

So I don't think anyone needs to feel guilty about their failure to read certain 19th century novels, just because somebody in authority says they are classics.

I can't do Joyce or Kerouac (?sp) either. Tried and failed. Miserably.

Love most of Greene (particularly Our Man in Havana which I thought was hilarious ) Orwell is brilliant, love a lot of his non-fiction too as is Huxley.

Austen is amazing and I read P&P at least every 2 years but I do alwayswant to know whether Jane and Bingley are really compatible and still happy after a couple of kids?

Orwell is ace- Burmese days is a good one

Can't do Hardy - at all, or Dickens

I fought my way through Ulysses, largely because my wife's birthday happens to be the 16th June. Bits of it are at least readable but the whole thing was an ordeal.

As for "On The Road" I agree with the critic who said "it isn't writing, it's typing and it isn't even good typing". And don't get me started on William S Burroughs (I have tried but they aren't readable at all).

And I keep thinking I should read more George Orwell, having read the big two - Animal Farm and 1984, but no more.

i wrote my dissertation on homer.

just thought i'd mention it, like.

Not impressed by the lack of Joyce love on here.