Which works of "great" literature have you given up on???

Ulysees (but that was a long time ago)
Shadowmancer because that is supposed to be a kid's book

But have done loads that appear on this list:
War and Peace
Lord of the Rings
The Bible
Great Expectations
All Bronte (that I have ever laid my hands on)
Middlemarch
Vanity Fair

so am feeling quite smug now. Despite the fact that the last book I read was a "historical romance".

Joseph Conrad - nostromo, so tedious. Most of Dickens except for Christmas Carol (sentimental at heart, you see).
Love Vanity Fair, all Austen..don't go a bundle on any of the Brontes..struggled with but then loved Chaucer, even Milton once I'd got to grips with it.

Couldn't manage Moby Dick (too much sea), Ulysses (nuff said) and somehow just can't stomach jane austen (not great as i'm doing an MA in literature). loved Anna Karenina, all of Henry James, Brontes, can do Dickens, Hardy and anything else melodramatic, Moll Flanders is a fun book too and I'm writing on Woolf though she is an acquired taste. Strangely I gave up on Captain Correlli's Mandolin, just so much tedious love-lorn ...

I've just started Moby Dick. How do you rate my chances to finish the book seeing that it has taken me a week to get pass chapter 1?

ah Moondog, a Stendhal lover
he is my favourite writer, I was in love with Fabrice from La Chartreuse de Parme for years
Le Rouge et Le noir is great too
I'm surprised so many of you can't stand Henry James, I love him too!
ashamed to admit I have never managed to get very far in Proust, yawn.........
or Dickens.....
but I love Hemningway and Fitzgerald (expat )

Alexandria Quartet
a couple of Margaret Atwoods
really struggled with Henry James

I loved 1984. Bleak and grim, but very easy to read.

I knew I wouldn't be alone with Captain Corelli but
I tried really hard with Orwell's 1984 but I just can't.
I hadn't read much Dickens but unabridged audio books are the way forward.

Wuthering Heights - I really tried but hated it and gave up.

Any Dickens

Lord of the Bloody Rings - I read the Hobbit it was alright, but nothing to write home about. Have never read more than the 1st third of the 1st LoR books. So many songs, so many characters, got really lost and bored. Dp loves them - he can read them to ds when he's old enough.

Dr Zhivago - maybe it was the translation but I couldn't get past page100.
I must be in the minority because I loved Captain Correlli - speed read the first part - it does get better and I do believe I cried at the end (and not through sheer relief that I'd finished it).

anything by Henry James..

Not read the whole thread... but ooh er.. Satanic Verses... read two chapters and would have preferred root canel treatment tbh.

Funny thing is dino, I have no recollection of writing my original post

I loved doing Chaucer for my A'Levels, but can't really read anything written after that until maybe the 1950s.........

I blame English Lit lessons at school tbh, boring, boring, boring. DH is still on the verge of divorce over the fact that I refuse to watch, read or touch anything to do with Dickens. We have a 6 hour extravaganza of Little Dorrit on video somewhere that I'm sure he's going to tie me down and make me watch eventually (maybe when I'm senile and can't physically get away?)

Also can't abide Hardy, any of the Brontes, Shakespeare (to a certain degree), actually pretty much anything that people feel I should read tbh.

Out of those already mentioned I liked Catcher in the Rye iirc but I was about 12 when I read it and don't remember much, liked The Hobbit, struggled but persevered with LOTR, read The Bible but agree the Old Testament wipes the floor with the New one.

Totally with expat, except that 50 pages seems very generous to me. I haven't the patience to go that far - 5 pages max.

I Caludius.
Would love to try again though.
Always wanted to read it but never mustered the energy.

Funny to read this thread though - I loved Tess of the D'Urbervilles & jane Ayre and adored Wuthering Heights and love love love Martin Amis, or did, has been a while since I read his books.

I loved Crime and Punishment. I've read it several times. And Moby Dick. And most of the great Russian novels (you do need a cheat sheet of all the characters names and relationship to each other).

But I struggle to finish a single page of any Jane Austen novel. Ditto Trollop, Dom Delillo and his American peers.

Diary of a Nobody was a realy struggle. Can't remember when I gave up on it. There didn't seem to be any point to it.

I haven't given up on any of them yet. I hope I've still got a couple of score years left to try again.

BUT I have taken a break of several years from The Alexandria Quartet and Love in a time of cholera.

Mill on the Floss was very dull.

Oddly enough, I got through every one of Thomas Hardy's books.

But I didn't really like them.

oh ha ha that doesn;t quite make sense, I was writing about Dickens whilsat reading the OPs first post.

"Tis a far far better thing I do than I have ever done"
We were forced to do Tale of 2 cities at school, but I don't mind Dickens. Mill of the Floss was dull though.

The only Dickens book I got through was 'A Tale of Two Cities'.

oh I quite liked Catcher in the Rye. To the lighthouse put me off Virginia Woolf fullstop, never tried her again!