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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:
DrFosterWentToGloucester23 · 05/09/2023 06:56

Dubliners by James Joyce

NegativeCreeep · 05/09/2023 06:50

100 Years of Solitude

elQuintoConyo · 05/09/2023 06:49

Tess of the D'Urbervilles - thanks, google.

That shite, hated it, didn't finish.

elQuintoConyo · 05/09/2023 06:47

100 Years of Solitude.
Catch 22 also!
Catcher In The Rye.

I recently tried to re-read Wuthering Heights (I pick it up every 5 years or so) , but couldn't get past chapter 3. Very much a young person's book!

As I've got older, I've got less patience, whatever the book. In the past I'd stick with it out of respect for the author and a sense of accomplishment/bloody mindedness; now I'll just yeet it. Life's too short!

  • one I can't remember the title or author. Title is a woman's name, author also wrote The Mayor of Caasterbridge - I've woken up with a blank head!! Anyway, that book grrrrrr
Persiana · 05/09/2023 06:46

War and peace!

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.

BigButtons · 05/09/2023 06:44

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

Mendeleyev · 05/09/2023 06:42

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

StrictlyAFemaleFemale · 05/09/2023 06:40

Oh god so many! 2 that stick out
Out of Africa
Catch 22

PurpleChrayne · 05/09/2023 06:38

So many!

I did English at Oxford but switched to the Course 2 stream (old and middle English) because I couldn't stand the tedious classic novels.

Xiaoxiong · 05/09/2023 06:37

Middlemarch. I feel like I need to finish it just not to be a cliché but I started it 18 years ago and not finished yet...