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Original poster

post your unpopular literature opinions?

460 replies

MrShannon385 · 26/10/2023 00:28

Curly was the best character in mice an men

OP posts:
Brefugee · 26/10/2023 11:04

Echobelly · 26/10/2023 10:49

I prefer Elizabeth Gaskell to Jane Austen. Austen is fun but I don't get quite why she's so feted.

Georgette Heyer is better than Jane Austen (who i love)

murasaki · 26/10/2023 11:02

The Goldfinch was Donna Tartt's worst book by a country mile. I had to force myself through it and I love the others.

Martin Amis is basically unreadable.

StrangePaintName · 26/10/2023 11:01

MissLucyEyelesbarrow · 26/10/2023 08:14

I don't believe in any of McEwan's characters, particularly the women. See also Sebastian Faulks.

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Yes, I should have added him in to the trilogy of McEwan and Barnes — I suspect they’re actually the same person at times.

honeylulu · 26/10/2023 11:00

I agree about Zadie Smith. I did not enjoy her books at all (tried one more after White Teeth - should not have bothered). Meandering, muddled and boring. She had obviously done a lot of historical/cultural research and I became convinced that that, and her youth, has resulted in the awards overlooking the crap story and writing. Or maybe I'm just thick and didn't get it.

I was also really disappointed with Toni Morrison. I was really looking forward to reading Beloved as it sounded like just my sort of thing. But I couldn't make head nor tail of it.

My favourite Jane Austen character is Fanny Price. No one agrees with me on that. Usual consensus is that she is quiet and boring. I thought it was great to have a quiet heroine for a change!

WitcheryDivine · 26/10/2023 11:00

MissLucyEyelesbarrow · 26/10/2023 10:22

Interesting. The bit at the beginning of WH where the narrator mistakes a cat for a muff (or possibly the other way round - it's been a while) is genuinely funny.

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There are so many bits that just seem SO awful they actually make me laugh. The bit where Heathcliff is trying to hang a puppy??? I promise I’m not a psycho but IMO it’s up there as a gothic satire and a lot of it made me chuckle. Definitely not a love story as a PP said. I think people just find it impossible to imagine a Brontë girl being funny.

SchadenfreudeIstMeinMittelname · 26/10/2023 10:59

Howard Jacobson's early books were very funny, but his more recent work is disappointing, unless you are interested in kinky sex. The Finkler Question is barely readable.

RenoDakota · 26/10/2023 10:59

I love the IDEA of Dickens but find it mostly impenetrable. Have tried to read Great Expectations many times but have always given up. And always intend to read A Christmas Carol in December and never do.
But ... I did love David Copperfield and managed to read it all the way through, many years ago. Have just picked it up again as Dickens characters came up as a question on Pointless earlier this week 🙂And I have a romantic fascination with Peggoty's boat / home on Great Yarmouth beach as come from Norfolk and long to be back there.

And, quite separately, I used to love Ruth Rendell / Barbara Vine but she was terrible at portraying working class women, and lumbered them with hideously clichéd names and ways of speaking and living.

SnakesandKnives · 26/10/2023 10:54

‘A little Life’ is misery porn. Such a brilliant first 5 chapters and such a godawful, miserable, unable to write hope into it book for the rest. Horrible

A lot of dickens stuff was paid for by the word which explains why it’s so plodding, and I’m def with the ‘borderline unreadable’ poster! Seems to not be an unpopular opinion tho lol

Echobelly · 26/10/2023 10:49

I prefer Elizabeth Gaskell to Jane Austen. Austen is fun but I don't get quite why she's so feted.

aletterfromseneca · 26/10/2023 10:48

I guess my (not so) unpopular opinion is that we generally shouldn't be wasting time in school with lofty classics. I think every book I read in school I hated, and then when I read as a grown up I loved. Yes, they were good, but I didn't have the experiences and mindset to get anything out of them.

aletterfromseneca · 26/10/2023 10:46

According to this thread, my love for Ishiguro is controvesial! 😂

MorrisZapp · 26/10/2023 10:41

There will never be a better fictional teenager than Adrian Mole.

Iactuallydidit · 26/10/2023 10:39

@Hollyhead completely agree…I am so nostalgic for children’s books of my youth - Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, E Nesbit, Phillipa Pearce, Penelope Lively, The Worst Witch….could go on. Rather than the tripe that gets published these days! DW is a creep. Another unpopular opinion, I’m not a massive fan of R. Dahl…for the same reasons, full of nasty stereotypes!

ittakes2 · 26/10/2023 10:34

MrShannon385 · 26/10/2023 00:28

Curly was the best character in mice an men

I agree with you!

Katiemag · 26/10/2023 10:34

AngryBirdsNoMore · 26/10/2023 07:09

Dickens is borderline unreadable.

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I do find Dickens absolutely hilarious. But I admit to being very mid/low-brow

Hollyhead · 26/10/2023 10:32

David Walliams’ children’s books are only suitable for a bin. Badly written, and full of ridiculous stereotypes and tropes. It makes me despair how many genuinely brilliant children’s authors will be overlooked because they’re not a mediocre celebrity first.

GalileoHumpkins · 26/10/2023 10:30

Colleen Hoover is the greatest writer to ever live.

Restingbitch2 · 26/10/2023 10:28

I rolled my eyes when Jane says, “Reader, I married him.”

Iactuallydidit · 26/10/2023 10:26

To add, I love Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights!

minipie · 26/10/2023 10:25

Most literary books are overwritten.

Enough with the clever similes, get on with the plot. Oh there isn’t one.

Iactuallydidit · 26/10/2023 10:24

I have an English lit degree and love reading but I struggle to get through an Austen or Dickens book 🙈..Austen is slightly better and I love the storylines of P and P and Sense and Sensibility but the prose sometimes sends me to sleep 😴…I feel awful saying that!

marmaladeandpeanutbutter · 26/10/2023 10:23

Clive James was an excellent author.

Maireas · 26/10/2023 10:23

Heathcliff is violent towards women.

MyBlueDiary · 26/10/2023 10:23

BestIsWest · 26/10/2023 10:15

Jilly Cooper is one of our best descriptive writers when it comes to writing about the English countryside or gardens.

She’s also great on plotting, character and pov. Very underrated, like a lot of commercial fiction aimed at women.

Restingbitch2 · 26/10/2023 10:22

Middlemarch doesn’t need to be as long