post your unpopular literature opinions?

I like Wuthering Heights, but why it's portrayed as a romance beats me. It's very Gothic and very strange. Also Heathcliff is vile. Compelling read, though.
I've found every Jane Austen book to be dull, and don't find them witty at all..

Bloody hell! I'd echo this post down to its last letter.

Me neither. Very overrated IMO.

Haha, was going to post the same! Had to read Never Let Me Go for a book group and felt like throwing it across the room at the end. I cannot understand why people love it, it was completely obvious what was happening from the beginning and it was just so flat and dull.

Of Mice and Men, and Lord of the Flies are both crap. I truly cannot understand why of all the incredible books that have been written in the English language these are the two that pretty much all school children are expected to read

I'm truly grateful that i never had to read these at school. Ditto The Diary of Anne Frank and To Kill a Mockingbird (the latter I read in lockdown and is bloody brilliant). OTOH if I never read 1984 again (A level text) it'll be too soon.

1 Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is unnecessarily gratuitous and really disgusting. Aside from those bits it's a banal, fairly tedious read, and its author isn't so hot on women's rights, either. I keep thinking of more. Re. dystopian women's stuff, Octavia Butler beats Atwood's speclative fiction hands down. Her 'Parable' novel pairing is brilliant.

2 Likewise, 1984 is more journalistic/propagandist than literary. Kafka is far better.

3 Shakespeare was the middlebrow playwright of his day. His plots are repetitious, his characters often two-dimensional, but the plays are so witty, funny and entertaining they're a rollicking good watch from start to finish. Erudite, cultured, and making their watchers look 'clever?' No. They were the soap/middlebrow noevl of their day (NB. nothing at all wrong with middlebrow, despite Virginia Woolf's snobbish dismissal!)

4 Agree on Dickens. I do like Bleak House, but understand why other people don't.

5 Ethel Lina White is fab. She should take her rightful place among the Agatha Christies and P D Jameses of the detective fiction genre (and a lot of James's characters are thoroughly unlikeable, not least the morose, judgemental Adam Dalgliesh).

6 Agree with the comment upthread that George Eliot is amongst the better Victorian writers. And although Wilkie Collins was lambasted as a lightweight, his books are readable, fun and entertaining: preferable any time to Dickens.

7 Long live cyberpunk.

8 Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy and May Sinclair are the best modernist women writers.

9 Books should not be banned because their authors have opinions some people don't happen to like. Don't like, don't read. Others can make similar judgements for themselves.

Rials Dahl write fantastic books for children

I agree. I genuinely don't get the love for it.

I think Agatha Chrsitie is actually underrated as a writer. Yes, some of her prodigious output is dross but the best of her novels are worthy of comparison with male writers who get far more credit (Wilkie Collins, Poe, Raymond Chandler etc)

I agree. Self indulgent twaddle. Best read by moony teens

Hilary Mantel's writing style gets in the way of a jolly good ripping yarn. Can't read any of her stuff

Of Mice and Men, and Lord of the Flies are both crap. I truly cannot understand why of all the incredible books that have been written in the English language these are the two that pretty much all school children are expected to read. I loved English at school but these 2 books were almost enough to put me off it completely.

I really enjoy watching Shakespeare plays but cannot understand why we make school children sit and read them in classrooms. I can only assume that it's intended to put most people right off in order to keep up the pretence that it is a high brow. If we really want teenagers to be interested in Shakespeare we should take them to watch it acted well and start the lessons by looking at all the dick jokes and crude bits.

Shakespeare🥱

Hated it at school, hated it at A level. Hated it ever since. I know he’s a national obsession. But I find it all really really boring. And I love reading, so will read anything. But Shakespeare.

If a book has won an award or is featured in Reese Witherspoon's book club, I know it's wise to avoid

Also - ignore all the glowing recommendations on the cover. In some sort of inverse ratio, the more glowing the recommendation, the worse the book (especially if one of those glowing recommendations comes from Stephen Fry 😀)

Most literature is a biological drive and when fertility/virility finishes, it is not fit for purpose. Poetry especially shows this. Most poets would admit to this little known fact

@peppermintcrisp That's interesting. Can you expand on it, and/or point to any references, studies or articles?

Never Let Me Go made me really angry. EVERYONE i know was all "you'll love it, it's fantastic" It. Is. Drivel.

yy to George Elliot. Silas Marner is a thing of beauty.

But all the "oh HP is so derivative" - well yes. Lots of books/literature is/are. Shakespeare recycled the good plots, as did Tolkien, Dickens, anyone else you care to mention. And everyone doesn't have to like everything. but "oh it's so derivative" isn't the put-down many people think it is.

Same. If a book has won an award or is featured in Reese Witherspoon's book club, I know it's wise to avoid

Absolutely, although I would phrase that as "never read a book that's recently won an award". Prizes now are a joke.

Agatha Christie books are simplistic rubbish.
Only rescued by by dramatised versions on film or radio

Is this a controversial opinion?

Normal People - absolute crap. Nothing happens and the characters are irritating as fuck (especially Marrianne).

The Hobbit was not a great read either. I saw the film first and expected it to be a much more entertaining book. But it was incredibly dull.

Dickens: Turgid

Hardy: Turgid

Wuthering Heights: not romantic at all, full of awful people

Catch-22: urgh

(I'm sure there's more I can add to this, potters off to ponder some more...)

Oh my god, Thomas Mann. Why did I slog through the Magic Mountain? I kept expecting some sort of plot or interest to develop. Nichts.

Hamnet. Three hundred odd pages of angst for a denouement that takes half a page.

I thought that was quite a popular opinion! I'm always a bit embarrassed to admit I liked a couple of his novels in front of certain trendy intellectual friends! 😆