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

Hey... I'm female and I like Conrad. Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness are both classics.

Also agree with ClarkKent about the Calvino If on a Winter's Night... But I guess you need to know that it's meant to be like that...! Otherwise you're going to feel like Bink reading Proust with the pages in the wrong order!

Have never managed any Conrad. Against my principles, I suspect this is because I am female.

Singersgirl, Mason and Dixon is such a good example of this kind of problem - I could see, all the time I was struggling, that this was obviously a great ambitious intelligent Opus but I just couldn't manage it.

Proust ... I was having a lovely time reading a few pages a night (for those who've never tried, it's actually mostly vivid little gossipy anecdotes and in small bites not hard going at all) but came across one volume where the pages had been printed out of order - I could never again find my place and gave up. I keep thinking I should go to Hay on Wye just to find a correct copy of the volume that stumped me.

eldestgirl, do you mean "If on a winter's night a traveller" by Italo Calvino? I was thinking of re-reading it as I enjoyed it and it is a classic...

Agree with MI. Loved the Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, WH, Jane Eyre, Tess and Mrs Gaskell.
Also could not finish Anna Karenina (after the train scene, what was the point of going on?), Women in Love, (forced myself through Sons and Lovers for some reason), Possession, The Grapes of Wrath (got left on a tube).
I did make it through Portrait, all I can remember are the hideous details of hell. Never tried Ulysses after that!
The WORST book was On a Midnight's Tale a Traveller. Every chapter finished abruptly and the next one had nothing whatsoever to do with the last.
Am readin Cloud Atlas at the mo and was worried about a repeat of the above, but it's surprisingly good and there are links between chapters....

already mentioned, but james joyce "ulysses" I know they have a big day for it in ireland, but have the celebrants actually read it? I know it is a masterpiece, but brilliance escapes me.

Ooh MI I ws just thinking the other day how I understand Sons and Lovers a bit better now...

Trollope, definitely. and Conrad. also Silmarillian.

otherwise i like most of these, must have a low boredom threshold.

Heart of Darkness, Conrad.

I wish I'd given up on most of Henry Bloody James.

Oh, all of DH Lawrence. Sons and Lovers. Cringerama.

Tess of the D'urbervilles, oh how I tried to read this book, but I wanted to shake the heroine she was such a flipping victim, I asked my friend what happened in the end she told me (they'd watched the film as part of A level english Lit), and was glad I hadn't bothered.....

cant even get past the second page of ulysses

War and Peace - just lost the plot and got the hundreds of characters with Russian names mixed up. Think I should have been making notes.

LOTR I don't consider a 'genuine' classic - not high-brow enough. Although, who am I to judge? - having read only the first 20 pages of it and then giving up out of boredom.

I know, but all the Lady Dedlock scenes just make the hairs on the nape of my neck stand up.

Esther bloody Summerson makes me want to deck her one, though. All that false modesty. Dickens trying to do a female protagonist in a way that Our Great Charlotte does, of course, so much more superbly better in Villette.

Love Wuthering Heights. Love Jane Eyre even more though.

And I love Dickens. Bleak House may possibly be my favouritest book of all.

i didnt give up but have given up trying to see what all the fuss is about. I have read catcher in the rye about 4 times since I was about 14, cant see the cult status.

how can you not like WH? read it as a teenager, loved it, re-read it recetnly to see if I loved it cos I was a stupid teenager. loved it every bit as much. Dickens - always had a problem there. I am also - thuogh possibly for different reasons stuck half way through If This is a Man. Amazing book , beautifully written, but when I go to bed at night I just can't face it.

chipmonkey, snap re. Finnegan's Wake!

I have twice tried to read Crime and Punishment and made it to the end of the first bit, but baulked at the second.

And have never even attempted any other Russian lit. Much to DH's contempt, cos he thinks he's good cos he's read Oblomov.

Oh dear,I loved the book of Captain Corelli's mandolin.The film on the other hand was shite.Penelope Cruz couldn't act and spent the whole of the movie pouting'what for?.Couldn't see this annimated character that the book portrayed being Nicholas Cage.Not good.

The book I did try to read honestly but had to give up on was Anna Kerenina.I just couldn't get a hang of all the different names and got fed up with going back pages to see who was who.

Trollope - boring and maddening at the same time.

oh god! in first year at uni, i chose a year long honours english course w/a particular professor who offered an amazing book list. i mean, wonderful, stuff from all over the world. was SO chuffed!

first semester went brilliantly.

second semester, the prof reveals he's a joyce scholar, and how many of us would care to scrap the book list in favour of a delightful semester of portrait of the artist as a young man, ulysses and finnegan's wake. all these numpties, keen on nothing more than kissing arse to get a good referee, raise their hands.

well, i don't read things that require a guidebook to decipher.

i was assigned a ten-page essay to write about something from ulysses - i can't remember what.

i proceded to get drunk and stoned and make up a bunch of complete nonsense all night whilst toking off a bong and swilling rum and coke.

got top marks.

:o

Lord of the Rings. Got fed up with all the songs.