Classic or renowned novels that you didn't enjoy?

But reading Shakespeare is like reading the script for a movie - they’re meant to be played.

I found Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility to be very tedious. I am reading Emma at the moment and I am liking this one.

Others I didn't like include Mrs Dalloway, We Have Always Lived In The Castle, Bedknob and Broomstick, Peter Pan, The Little Mermaid, Wizard Of Oz, The Handmaid's Tale and Lord Of The Flies

I find Shakespeare really okay. I have liked some and disliked others, however I haven't read a lot. I think about 6 plays.

@IceandIndigo I didn't say it was rubbish. I said I didn't enjoy it.

I said a huge number of people, not everyone.

Let's leave it there. I suspect that you may be one of them, so it's pointless continuing with our little discussion.

[quote SkiingIsHeaven]@IceandIndigo I truly believe that a huge number of people say they like Shakespeare to sound intellectual or so that people don't think that they are stupid.

Look at the first person who responded to me. They implied that I don't read. I read lots of books and I'm not afraid to say when I don't like something.

That was the point of the thread. To discuss classics that you didn't enjoy.

I can't stand reading Shakespeare. What is wrong with that? I don't like horror films either. It is personal choice. [/quote]
Yes but there’s a difference between saying you don’t like something and claiming that it’s rubbish and everyone who does like it is pretending.

I didn't like Jane Eyre. Or Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

Have you read the essay? It's not at all spiteful, it's compassionate, if anything, and it's talking about KM as constructed by public discourses obsessed with her appearance, as they were with Marie Antoinette's, and her capacity to breed and continue the royal bloodline, like Anne Boleyn:

Kate seems capable of going from perfect bride to perfect mother, with no messy deviation. When her pregnancy became public she had been visiting her old school, and had picked up a hockey stick and run a few paces for the camera. BBC News devoted a discussion to whether a pregnant woman could safely put on a turn of speed while wearing high heels. It is sad to think that intelligent people could devote themselves to this topic with earnest furrowings of the brow, but that’s what discourse about royals comes to: a compulsion to comment, a discourse empty of content, mouthed rather than spoken. And in the same way one is compelled to look at them: to ask what they are made of, and is their substance the same as ours.

I used to think that the interesting issue was whether we should have a monarchy or not. But now I think that question is rather like, should we have pandas or not? Our current royal family doesn’t have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment. But aren’t they interesting? Aren’t they nice to look at? Some people find them endearing; some pity them for their precarious situation; everybody stares at them, and however airy the enclosure they inhabit, it’s still a cage.

The whole essay is worth a read -- she certainly doesn't spare herself as a royal watcher, either, or suggest she's not as guilty of curiosity as anyone else.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies

(I love Beyond Black, but if you'd said her depicting of Princess Diana's ghost in that is incredibly cruel, I'd agree with you. Brilliant, but vicious.)

@IceandIndigo I truly believe that a huge number of people say they like Shakespeare to sound intellectual or so that people don't think that they are stupid.

Look at the first person who responded to me. They implied that I don't read. I read lots of books and I'm not afraid to say when I don't like something.

That was the point of the thread. To discuss classics that you didn't enjoy.

I can't stand reading Shakespeare. What is wrong with that? I don't like horror films either. It is personal choice.

@SkiingIsHeaven you are of course welcome not to like Shakespeare but are you seriously claiming he’s actually no good and everyone who claims to like him is pretending?

Novel title that's a two syllable first name with a one syllable surname = bad vibes

Ethan Frome
Adam Bede

Wasn't there a BBC adaptation of Mill on the Floss - waaaaay back in the 70s, maybe - or am I misremembering? I do remember an adaptation of a George Elliot novel that was even more tedious than the BBC's normal Sunday night Dickens adaptations! It put me off ever reading any GE.

the Mill on the Floss!
I enjoyed Middlemarch so thought I would try some more George Elliot but man it was boring!

Shakespeare isn’t meant to be read like a book, it’s meant to be on the stage, where it is sublime. Even read aloud it is better.

@jeannie46 I have read lots of Shakespeare and do not like it.

The cult of people fawning over it to sound intellectual is utterly ridiculous.

Absolute case of Emperor's new clothes.

I hated Silas Marner. Such a dull story. Not one interesting character in it nor any other redeeming feature

I got half way through Little Dorrit last year (which is a feat in itself) before giving up. I hate Dickens' use of awful dialect and his sentences are insanely long.

I loved Jane eyre and sense and sensibility and all of Hardy, however.

Had to read Mansfield Park and Heart of Darkness for either GCSE or A Level English Lit. I forget which. I hate them both. Couldn’t stand any of the characters, wasn’t interested in what happened to them.

I did enjoy Vanity Fair though.

Jude the Obscure because fucking hell.

@tullig oh yes thank you it’s Honeymoon not Holiday.

Isn’t Murder Must Advertise the one where PDBW runs about all night dressed as a sadistic Harlequin or some such?! But agree the advertising office bits are good. Maybe he’s less awful because he’s pretending to be someone else :)

Every single Shakespeare play ever written.

Thomas Hardy not great either.

Sorry if you like that sort of thing.

It's written in third person limited present tense (google it)

I hate anything in the present tense. David Mitchell uses it occasionally and that's fine as he's such a good writer- but everyone else- stop it.

I haven't read Wolf Hall but I hated 8 and a half months on Gaza Street and Beyond Black

(Also I'm not a royal family fan but that comment about Kate was so spiteful)

Back on topic- any novel by D H Lawrence or Ernest Hemingway.

The great gatsby and catcher in the rye

JesusWeptLady Sun 23-Jan-22 15:48:44

I have struggled with pretty much ever Booker winner. There's always something on the long list or short list that I'll love and then the winner leaves me totally cold. I wonder if it's just personal taste or if there's some kind of other agenda at play for picking the winning book.

I have often thought the very same thing myself.
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