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

Classics you couldn't finish

211 replies

Tambatamba · 05/09/2023 05:07

For me, Dracula. As compelling as it was, I had to stop reading it because I found it so sad and depressing.

OP posts:
RoadLess · 05/09/2023 07:53

MissLucyEyelesbarrow · 05/09/2023 07:32

Another Trollope refusenik here, although the Radio 4 adaptations are great.

Show quote history

Yes, people keep telling me this!

AndThenItWas · 05/09/2023 07:51

Justbetweenus · 05/09/2023 07:27

Catch 22. Pages and pages and pages with zero plot development.

I love how different everyone is - so many posts about not enjoying this. I couldn't put it down, thought it was hilarious and bleak and wonderful.

EmmaPaella · 05/09/2023 07:47

ParadiseZity · 05/09/2023 07:39

Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina

I guess the Russian classics are not for me.

I can race through Wilkie Collins and Dickens no problem but those heavy Russian novels defeated me.

It’s all that endless stuff about the landscape which finished me off. Got halfway through both.

Lurkingandlearning · 05/09/2023 07:46

Little Dorit (Dickens) - unrelenting misery

Wherethewildthymeblows · 05/09/2023 07:45

Anything I have tried by Dickens, and Middlemarch by Eliot. It isnt just that I cant finish them, I cant get past chapter one!

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 05/09/2023 07:45

Daniel Deronda - never made it past the introduction
Most of Dickens apart from David Copperfield. Too verbose, annoying with his grotesque characters and his attitudes to women, esp the fallen variety.
Wuthering Heights
Looked at the length of Moby Dick and thought 'Nope. not reading all that about a whale, ta.'
Hardy. So bleeding miserable.

Middlemarch - the TV adaptation is on IPlayer and highly recommend that.

TheMildManneredMilitant · 05/09/2023 07:40

All George Elliot except for Daniel Deronda and that's just because I did English Lit at uni and was on the set list. Every line of plot or dialogue seems to then be extrapolated into something meaningful about the human race etc.

Catch 22 here too. It's an easyish read and witty but just never draws me in enough to keep going.

Mumteedum · 05/09/2023 07:40

Bleak House.... I have read and actually enjoyed a few Dickens but BH was just toooo many people to wrap my head around. I watched the TV show and that was brilliant. 🙂

Several are sat in my kindle. Have no excitement to read them but thought I'd try, but after several years... There's other stuff I'd rather read.

Moby Dick... barely made it past first few pages. Treasure Island...nope.

ParadiseZity · 05/09/2023 07:39

Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina

I guess the Russian classics are not for me.

I can race through Wilkie Collins and Dickens no problem but those heavy Russian novels defeated me.

Phos · 05/09/2023 07:37

Middlemarch - tedious beyond belief

I also skimmed through probably half of A Tale of Two Cities. I tried, and my husband raves about it, but I was bored stiff (and I like other Dickens)

My Sons Story by Nadine Gordimer is the worst book I’ve ever picked up though. Not sure it’s a classic as such but it is a Nobel laureate work and as such I thought it might be good. It’s dreadful. Give me Disgrace by Coetzee anyday (even if that one did make me angry)

EmmaPaella · 05/09/2023 07:36

Loads! Dickens, Tolkien, Jude the Obscure because it’s so depressing. I found Frankenstein really hard to get into.

DisplayPurposesOnly · 05/09/2023 07:32

Proust. Just no. No no non. Also Moby Dick, Ulysses.

Love Middlemarch (it's epic!), Dracula. Had to be in my late 20s to click with Dickens so love Bleak House, Great Expectations. Not read all of them tho. And now can't read his books without remembering how he mistreated his wife.

MissLucyEyelesbarrow · 05/09/2023 07:32

RoadLess · 05/09/2023 06:44

Anything by Trollope. I have several literature degrees and sailed though lengthy novels considered challenging (Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, Gravity’s Rainbow, late Henry James, Faulkner, Proust), but Trollope isn’t for me.

Another Trollope refusenik here, although the Radio 4 adaptations are great.

BigButtons · 05/09/2023 07:29

NoWordForFluffy · 05/09/2023 07:24

'Why use one word when you can use 200?' is what I always say about Dickens. So tediously dull.

Show quote history

Yeah- when I look at the classic authors I just can’t read- the common factor is the verbosity. Gormengast is the same. Rambling descriptions aren’t my thing.

ThreeKneeRepeater · 05/09/2023 07:28

Lorna Doone. I seem to remember a lot of dialect that annoyed me.

Justbetweenus · 05/09/2023 07:27

Catch 22. Pages and pages and pages with zero plot development.

MrHopsPortal · 05/09/2023 07:25

I generally get on well with most of the classics and love Dickens, Trollope etc.

But I will never, ever get the time back I wasted on ploughing through the turgid pile of crap that is Moby Dick.

KleineDracheKokosnuss · 05/09/2023 07:24

Anna Karenina

NoWordForFluffy · 05/09/2023 07:24

BigButtons · 05/09/2023 06:44

I can’t read Dickens- I find him verbose- same for Tolkien . Can’t stand George Elliott either.

'Why use one word when you can use 200?' is what I always say about Dickens. So tediously dull.

cariadlet · 05/09/2023 07:23

For those who find Dickens too verbose, I'd recommend giving the audio books ago. There are quite a few unabridged novels read by Martin Jarvis and he really brings them alive.

An audio book is the only way I could complete Middlemarch. I think Juliet Stevenson narrated that one. I'm pretty sure I would have given up if I'd been trying to read it.

The modern classic that I've given up on a few times is Gormenghast. Maybe I should see if there's an audio book of it.

I love Hardy though and have read and reread Tess of the Durbevilles.

NoWordForFluffy · 05/09/2023 07:22

Mendeleyev · 05/09/2023 06:42

David Copperfield. And some other Dickens that I can’t remember. Really don’t get on with him!

I studied Eng. Lit. at uni and also can't get along with Dickens. Far too bloody verbose for my liking.

We had Our Mutual Friend to read and none of us could get through it. So we tried to watch it instead. Also a hard no! 🤣

Random789 · 05/09/2023 07:19

Oh, bloody Wilkie Collins. I did finish one or two books by him but by the time I got to the second halves I was just hanging in there for the sake of getting the answer to the mystery and I wasn't enjoying the journey at all. He is like those over-long box set series that you gallop through for the sake of a satisfying resolution and then find that the ending is weak cos the makers' real concern was to keep you clicking on a million episodes.

Random789 · 05/09/2023 07:13

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. I know the whole point of it is that it is infuriatingly digressive and slow, but FFS it was so infuriatingly digressive and slow!!

There are a couble of classics that I just know I wouldn't be able to finish so I have never even started them - Ulysses (Joyce not Homer) and Remembrance of Things Past. But the ones that I do start I tend to finish. Several of the books mentioned on this thread (esp Middlemarch and anything by Dickens and Charlotte B) are chocolate bars for me (one square and you have to finish the whole thing)

MenopauseSucks · 05/09/2023 07:06

Tale of Two Cities. I've tried & tried & tried but it just doesn't 'grab' me & make me want to read it.

Dracula because I get too scared...

Hellohah · 05/09/2023 07:02

I can't stand anything by the Brontes.
Tried and failed to read them several times.