Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
What we're reading

Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

Original poster

Which classic author or book can you not stand, and why?

87 replies

Caligulights · 13/12/2004 23:30

Following on from what your favourite book is, who or what do you find unreadable?

Mine are DH Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway - turgid, turgid, turgid, and I've never been fond of the Brontes who strike me as depressing - the only one I like is Anne. I've always hated Charlotte since I found out she dissed Pride and Prejudice and since I tried to read Villette and failed.

OP posts:
MaryChristmas · 16/12/2004 17:39

pollyanna!

happymerryberries · 16/12/2004 17:37

Dickens! God!

Austin, I just want to yell 'Get on with it!' Loudly.

Kids books, never got into Swallows and Amazons or Wind in the Willows.

spacedonkey · 16/12/2004 17:36

sorry for not picking up on the irony dino

DingDongDinosaurOnHigh · 16/12/2004 17:35

PMSL spacedonkeymonkey....

spacedonkey · 16/12/2004 17:34

oh! I thought you were referring to Titty Titanovich

monkeygirl · 16/12/2004 17:33

Has no-one really not mentioned Trollope - can't believe it!

Madame Bovary is one of my favourite books!

DingDongDinosaurOnHigh · 16/12/2004 17:32

I know really spacemonkey, that was just my sad attempt at humour...

I shall slink off back to my DSs now...

ks · 16/12/2004 17:31

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

feastofstevenmom · 16/12/2004 17:31

defo agree with Mill on the Floss. lots of gratuitous Tom baiting defenceless animals scenes/being nasty to Maggie scenes. none of our book group managed to get past page 150 it was that tedious.

don't mind Henry James tho.

spacedonkey · 16/12/2004 17:28

not in crime and punishment!

DingDongDinosaurOnHigh · 16/12/2004 17:27

Does it really, Spacemonkey? What does it mean in Russian?

spacedonkey · 16/12/2004 15:04

but dino, how can anyone fail to love a book featuring a character called Titty?

DingDongDinosaurOnHigh · 16/12/2004 15:03

Swallows and Amazons - could never get into it.

And DH thinks I am crap because I have only read half of Crime and Punishment. It was just so depressing.

lailag · 16/12/2004 14:43

Alice in Wonderland

Prettybird · 16/12/2004 14:31

David Copperfield. Uninteresting story about an uninteresting boy. I did enjoy Christmas Carol though.

logICICLE · 16/12/2004 14:22

Anna Karenina. You did way better than me, MancMum. I got about 7 chapters in and lost the will to live - oh and gained the desire to shred the thing page by page.

Arabica · 16/12/2004 14:12

Catch 22. What a load of sexist b**cks.

KateandtheElves · 16/12/2004 13:59

Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck. We read it at school (age 13 maybe?) and it was so boring.

Maybe I should give him another try now I'm older and wiser.

nailpolish · 16/12/2004 13:55

is 1984 a classic? i didnt like it - it scared me

CathB2 · 16/12/2004 13:53

Catcher in the Rye - I just want to slap him.

Also Proust- waded through Rememberance of things past (I had a long commute) and wanted to slap him too!

vict17 · 14/12/2004 20:57

Oh and Henry James - The Turn of the Screw...

vict17 · 14/12/2004 20:55

Another one for Joseph Conrad here - Heart of Darkness complete tosh! Also hated James Joyce' Ulysses - what was that all about?! And finally Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner

OhComeLetUsADiorHim · 14/12/2004 20:52

Can't get on with George Eliot. Got 2/3 of the way through Adam Bede, and just could not force myself to read another page.

pantomimEDAMe · 14/12/2004 15:30

William Golding, Lord of the Flies. Utterly depressing. A particularly irritating teacher tried to impress us by claiming it showed what people are really like once you strip the veneer of civilisation away. Peed me off as A. these are made-up characters and B. they are all boys ? so you can't really judge 100 per cent of humanity from them.

spacedonkey · 14/12/2004 15:05

and there was I just thinking my beloved tolstoy had escaped mumsnet wrath