Classic or renowned novels that you didn't enjoy?

This is such an interesting thread. Me and DD26 are big readers and in lots of ways have similar tastes. We share recommendations a lot. She LOVES Wuthering Heights, and hates Jane Austen, Jane Eyre and Northanger Abbey.
I read Wuthering Heights at her insistance and and loathed it. As someone else said upthread - confusing repetitive plot, everyone has the same names. Wuthering Shite

Also on my DID NOT ENJOY list:
I Capture the Castle
Old Man and The Sea (Thankfully short)

More recent renowned novel I could not get on with:
Normal People
A Man Called Ove
A Gentleman In Moscow

Classics I did enjoy:
Pride and prejudice (But I do maintain the BBC version with Colin Firth is as good as reading the book)
Jane Eyre
Anna Karenina
War and Peace
Most Dickens (Little Dorrit was a drag, but Love DC, OT and Christmas Carol)

I've got Middlemarch on my TBR pile this year - I'll report back

The moonstone by Wilkie Collins. I had it on a school reading list whee we n I was 15. I never got through it. Awful awful stuff

Lucky (pukey) Jim

I haven’t enjoyed any Jane Austen books

Loathed Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

And A Little Life it was just too much misery but the end I was thinking ffs what now has happened

The Secret History I really didn’t get what was so great about this book

Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite books I got totally lost in it

As I Lay Dying
Madame Bovary

Also Beloved, and I couldn't finish Bleak House - too bleak I guess .

We have always lived in the castle. Really not my thing.

Reading The Goldfinch at the moment though and so far so good.

Hate Wuthering heights and hate Hardy! I like some Dickens and could not get along with Wolf Hall!.
Agree with a poster about Tender is the night.
A favourite of mine is passage to India. not read any others of EM Forsters though.

I've also tried wuthering heights a few times and each time I can't get past the first few chapters. I just can't get a flow with it and get my head into the story.

Another one was crime and punishment. I tried a couple of times before making it to the end and all I felt was meh. Interesting concept but meh

Don't like any of the old stuff.
I haven't got the concentration span for them. I don't enjoy them. I don't feel the need to educate myself with classic literature.

Not the first to say it but I loathe Wuthering Heights.

Madame Bovary ;- I found Emma Bovary the most self-absorbed, irritating and entitled heroine I’ve ever come across.

Really struggled to get through Life of Pi. I did get to the end but only because I don’t like to give up on a book

Read a great biography of Proust but reading his seminal novel was dire. Gave up after a 30 pages

A Room With A View.

Nothing seems to bloody happen other than everyone wafting about a bit and getting angsty. Give me something with an actual plot.

The film was equally dull.

The Little Friend was worse and I didn’t bother with The Goldfinch.

Oh I was delightedly surprised by Voltaire who I thought would be deadly but candide is snappy and cool. Also like Austen, it’s like the Jenny holder, joan Collins chick lit of its day. I think the fascinating thing is that we cannot get into the mindset of the time so we are starting from a strange perspective.
Went to a david Bailey exhibit and what was obviously shocking and fresh in the 60s is still ok now but nothing like as surprising. And we just can’t see it with that background of poverty, rebellion, freshness etc. Coming as we do from a totally different world. That’s why I think classics are fascinating, you have to will yourself back into their time. Dd doing a poet ( lo chead) at school and didn’t get the poems because she doesn’t know what things are ( candlewick, Lino! That were super mundane at the time)

Nomoreusernames1244
You are so right about the Hobbit and LOTR. Mind numbingly boring. The books just go on, and on and on.
The films were no better- I got bored in 10 minutes.

Cold Comfort Farm is another MN favourite that I hate.

My controversial one is Agatha Christie. I’ve read three (and apparently three of the best) and I dread to think what the others were like. The prose was so simple and full of exclamation marks that I felt I was reading YA, and often the deductions were just lucky guesses. I think I’m about the only person in the world who doesn’t like her though! Maybe I should try again.

I started reading her before end of primary and then my teens were a mix of classics bought by my DP and historical books/novels bit of sci from school library. DDad was similar read her in his teens that's why there were books around the house. One of my DMum's friends who worked in my primary school had all her books and used to lend me some and I think she'd started reading her in her teens.

I've read some since as an adult and just thought they were the less good stories certainly the less famous ones but manybe it's a reading age issue.

I now tend to watch the TV adaptations though only like Joan Hickson Miss Marple and David Suchet Hercule Poirot - though I did liked the recent Kenneth Branagh Murder on the Orient Express which apparent if I was a true Agatha Christie fan I shouldn't have.

I really really wanted to love Wolf Hall. In theory, it should ticks a lot of boxes of things I generally enjoy, but I just became bogged down with it. I tried the audio book as well, because sometimes that's easier that wading through pages of text, but my mind kept wondering.

Strangely, I loved the TV version. I can't think of any other book where I have enjoyed a screen adaptation better - usually its the other way round!