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

Wuthering Heights is my favourite book so disagree with that one.

Can't get into Lord of the Rings - have given up now (can only just sit through the films) but DH loves it (maybe it's a bloke thing.)

Dickens - I just don't get it. Had to write an essay on Bleak House for my English degree and tried so hard to read it but in the end bought York notes and just read the juicy bits !!

Never tried to sit and read the Bible so no comment on that one.

I disagree about most of these. WH v fabulous. Ditto Floss and Middlemarch.

Dickens - just can't get on with them.

Pruni,neither do I (see it as a classic)
I might try The Master and Margarita again seeing as I rspct U but am not holding my breath.
Last time I tried,we were living in Moscow ffs and I even went to find the pond that featured.
Even that didn't work.

O god hadn't thought of Captain Corelli's Mondolin as a classic.
Lots of people see the good in it but I hated it. (Well, the half that I read.)

Ditto something else by Gabriel G Marquez, I forget the name, v popular.

I did love The Master and Margarita though. And Dickens - fantastically biting wit - really worth it IMO.

Expat's summary of WH is a classic. Chandra - am PMSL at the idea of half a caveman wandering round your neck of the moors.

Oh the Brontes!

Read Wuthering Heights as a teenager, now when people back home ask me how is life abroad I just mention...

Have you read WH? well, that's were I live! (Do I hate the winter in small villages or what? fortun ately we have moved to a more populated area since, the isolation was eating me in especially, without the half-a-caveman wandering nearby which would have been far more interesting than those boring ducks! )

The Brontes....yawn

A.s Byatt possession....couldn't get into it.

Mill on the floss...shite!

Elbell, is was a bit more obscure than you imagine. It was about how to allow the reader to take the lead, and keep them interested in the argument, in the abscence of a narrator. A principle to be applied to e-environments
(have you yawned yet? )

Me too with the Dickens, I think that's one of the reasons the people interviewing for Goldsmiths showed me the door PDQ. Although spacedonkey assures me the tv adaptation of Bleak House is spiffing

Never liked Dickens (though I've read most of them through duty), struggled through "Middlemarch" and don't think I managed "Daniel Deronda".
Have given up on Thomas Pynchon but library shut till tomorrow so will have to read DS's "Horrible Histories".

Oh Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Shite!

okay then chipmonkey what is Ulysses about? I read it at college, even concocted some presentation about it, but never got the faintest idea wtf was going on.

I've never seen the point of Dickens, I've tried, but it's dreadful. Was forced to read A Christmas Carol for book group this year and it turned me into Scrooge, it was so bad.

Did like George Eliot though. And read War of the Worlds and it was fantastic.

in answer to your query about middlemarch - is it worth it to try again?

no.

Fascinating thread.
I vote for Middlemarch, gave up when nothing had happened after 200pp. I was about 18 tho. Is it worth trying again?
See lots of Dickens on here too. Hate Dickens with a passion tho have finished about 4 of his books.
Captain corelli, now that I have about five goes at. Littlefish, try skipping all the bits about Mussolini.
Not that it's as amazing as everyone says, even when you do get into it, IMHO.

finnegan's wake - barking mad!
chipmonkey - joyce said it took him 14 years to write it, & that it should take 14 years (!) to read it hmmm...

pruni - try seamus heaney's beowulf, it's top & v. readable.

Never managed to get more than a few pages into Tristram Shandy, but did grit my teeth and make it all the way through Ulysses.

Margarita (so boring can't even spell it right)
Semi classc 'I capture the castle'
Feck all happens!!

Tha Master and Margerita Yaaaaaaaaaaawn......

i think I lasted about a page with Ulysess. I stuck out a 1000 Years of Solitude and really not sure it was worth it

Moby Dick.
Three pages in, I realised life's too short.

Failed to read The Mill on the Floss at school, same reasons. Also Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Beowulf is another one I couldn't be arsed with, despite studying Old English at university.

I am still working my way through Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but I am on a five-year break!

Chipmonkey - comment on the Bible was in general, not in response to your post, btw. Just meant that because it was written by different people at different times and in different places (unless you believe that the whole thing was written by God, of course...) then it seems OK to me to just sort of 'dip in' to it.

Ooh, Chandra, non-linear narrative sounds interesting. Heard a very interesting presentation the other day on the use of digression in literature... And I do have a bit of a soft spot for digressive texts (Tristram Shandy, loved Jacques le Fataliste when I was doing French, have already mentioned Orlando Furioso elsewhere....).

As for the Bible, I don't think it's meant to be read 'cover to cover' in that way. But it certainly contains some wonderful stories...

As to the Bible, I found the Book of Revelations very scary. Was too frightened to finish it cos of the Chernobyl thing.

Loved Ulysses, loved all of Joyce, so figured I'd love Finnegan's wake.
Wtf is it about?