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Original poster

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

195 replies

ItalianJob · 01/04/2006 16:17

Couldn't get past page 100 of Mill on the Floss (no one else in my book group could either!!). Felt that I really didn't need to see any more examples of gratuitious violence to animals to get the idea that Maggie was good and Tom was nasty.

OP posts:
kittywits · 18/09/2006 21:53

martin Chuzzlewit, infact I can stand to read Dickens, far too wordy, but I loved the serialisation of Bleak House. I was completely addicted. I wish they would do another one like that.

expatinscotland · 18/09/2006 21:53

All her books made me lose the will to live, JJ.

I never got thru a single one.

Or Henry James.

Or Edith Wharton.

Yawn, yawn, yawn.

Miaou · 18/09/2006 21:52

Oh my Lord! So did I dino!!

expatinscotland · 18/09/2006 21:50

Catcher in the Rye.

I'm still trying to figure out how that became a 'classic'.

The guy was a prize wanker.

Jimjams2 · 18/09/2006 21:50

pmsl expat. I read the first chapter thinking it was a dream sequence or something, then read the second and realised it was the same. Flicked through the book. Thought "sod this" and returned it to the library. And I was in Japan- where seriously I read everything I could lay my hands on.

marz · 18/09/2006 21:49

Lord of the rings.
Catch 22 got as far as the catch22 and never went further.
The alexandrian quartet...sleep inducing
and Crime and punishment. Did anyone finish it ever??
oh, and recently cloud atlas. what is it all about???!

Miaou · 18/09/2006 21:48

Lord Jim

and The Scarlet Letter (twice )

expatinscotland · 18/09/2006 21:47

There's a lot of shit 'classics' out there.

Like the OP, I binned Mill on the Floss after it failed my 50 page rule - if it's still shite after 50 pages, life's too short to waste time reading shite.

dinosaur · 18/09/2006 21:46

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ at the poster's request.

expatinscotland · 18/09/2006 21:44

I agree, JJ.

I tossed my copy of that one on a camp fire.

I honestly did.

dinosaur · 18/09/2006 21:44

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ at the poster's request.

Jimjams2 · 18/09/2006 21:43

To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Good grief.

TheQueenOfEyeSpy · 18/09/2006 21:31

Mangaed to read Jane Eyre but it was awful. Will never re-read or watch on TV.

expatinscotland · 18/09/2006 21:29

Ernest Hemingway.

Just can't stomach him. Such a misogynist, chauvinist, arshole tosser.

What's so great about writing when you're pissed, especially as he was pissed all the time.

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Like a 1920s Julian Barnes. Who gives a toss about all this class crap? B-O-R-I-N-G.

Californifrau · 18/09/2006 21:26

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

rustybear · 18/09/2006 21:25

...and who can't spell 'librarian'

rustybear · 18/09/2006 21:24

Think I may be the only libarian in the world who hasn't read 'Wuthering Heights'

Tamz77 · 21/04/2006 21:44

George Eliot's shorter books are better, eg Silas Marner and Adam Bede. The latter is a real page turner, terribly sad; the story of a girl who gets pg, has the baby in secret and kills it, and the aftermath. Amazing writing.

I would love to love Iris Murdoch...but can't.

Have neglected a lot of classics through being told to read them at school; nothing more sure to put me off!

Shakespeare comedies always seem a bit daft; women dressing up as men, nobody noticing. Hmmm.

joelalie · 12/04/2006 12:56

Another vote for that bl**dy whale book.... hated it and lost interest very soon. Probably the only 'Classic' novel that I've failed on as I love reading them, the wordier the better. I love long passages of description. Real comfort reading. I find modern thriller type novels impossible to read as the style is too distracting. Tried The Labyrinth by Kate Mosse recently and although the subject matter was fascinating I found her style so irritating and hard to concentrate on. ANother book that had me really irritated was Time Traveller's Wife which I know loads of people loved - I hated the main characters so much, self-obsessed and duuuuullllll
Read LOTR a million times, love George Eliot, Dickens, all the Brontes Smile

tallulah · 08/04/2006 09:48

I tried to read the Hobbit in the last year at junior school but couldn't get into it. Tried again as an adult- no way. DS2 adores it and can quote chapter and verse.

moondog · 07/04/2006 22:55

I think Bridges of Madison County was the CCM of the 80s.

Nightynight · 07/04/2006 22:54

Captain Correlli's Mandarin is the worst written book I have been conned into buying in a long while. It really does not deserve all the extravagant praise heaped upon it by the British establishement.

Mill on the Floss is a good book though. Tom turns out good in the end, and Maggie is an idiot imo...

Middlemarch is fab. And I like Dickens.

Eulalia · 07/04/2006 22:37

Having difficulty wading through "Now we are six" :-)

moondog · 07/04/2006 22:32

Earth,but you did finish W&P right??
Hats off to you!

I did a few Russian classics when we lived there (something so dramatic about reading Eugene Onegin when it was -25 and snowing heavily)but W&P as yet untouched.
Blush

(Russians were so gloriously snotty and elitist about their literature. I worked in a very good university which made it worse.One woman told me I couldn't possibly get anything out of Pushkin in English and another was adament that Shakespeare was better in Russian than English!)

earthtomummy · 07/04/2006 20:13

.. forgot to add, all of Henry James. Or should I be persuaded to try again??