I bet this has been done before, but what classics/modern classics have really left you baffled as to why they're so popular?

The Golden Notebooks - snooooooozerella, and so dated too.
White Teeth, Vanity Fair and The Lovely Bones.
Wuthering Heights - loved it when I first read it at about 17, but by 24 when I read it again I loathed it.

But love Catch 22, almost all of Dickens and Middlemarch.

The Great Gatsby.

I'm fully ready to be yelled it - did it at school AND university and was the only person in either class who didn't think it was the world's best book. All that irritating floating around in white dresses!>?? Ick.

Oh god, I had to study that for A level!

"The Heart of fricking Darkness."

I hated that book. Dunno why, tried to persist with it for ages (I never give up on a book i've started, it's a principle thing) but I eventually sacked it off and feel much better.

White Teeth
Atonement
Oryx & Crake

Surprised to see "Waiting For Godot" on this list - I think it is a work of dramatic genius!

I totally agree with "Attonement" though - I loathe Ian McEwan; have read "Attonement", "Enduring Love" and "The Cement Garden" and hated all of them passionately. He is just so knowingly "clever" and smug and I can't find myself actually caring about any of his characters: he just leaves me cold. DP loves him though and it is a bone of contention between us.

"Middlemarch" I've commented on before on MN and got told off. I found it unreadable to be honest and have never tried again.

Dickens - yawn.

"Wuthering Heights" - I don't actively dislike it but I really don't think it's all it's cracked up to be.

Jane Eyre - the second half is superb but the first half is just dullsville.

Somebody mentioned "Notes On A Scandal" and I agree. I thought it was cliched, stuffy and badly written.

"The Accidentals" by Ali Smith as well - I don't think anybody has tried classing it as a modern classic, so technically it shouldn't be on this thread - it is, however, total crap.

I had to read a lot of Thomas Hardy's novels at college, hated them all and have never gone back to him. Should I try again?

I think most of the older books you mention are superb. Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Dickens' novels etc but then I love 19th century fiction. Catcher in the Rye is very good. Catch 22 I haven't read. Nor have I read things like The Lovely Bones but the 19th century was the golden age of novel writing.

As for the Shakespeare dismissal.....I wouldn't know where to start.

I love Shakespeare (Macbeth is genius) but I can understand people not enjoying his work. I can't bear Dickens. I've tried many times.

Agree with all the people who think Wilkie Collins better than Dickens.

Oops Shakespeare, maybe it was the huge amount of his plays that I was taken to see before puberty that is the reason. But still think he is totally over-rated, a snap shot of England at a particular time but the comedies are bawdy tales of mistaken identity and the tragedies are interminable tales of incest, murder and misgovernance.

Boring...

Sits back to wait for backlash

Couldn't see what the fuss over Vernon God Little was about either. Didn't like it's tone or it's 'humour' and didn't find it funny either, just rather smug.

Vernon God Little (is that a classic?) have tried to read it twice and failed.

Also tried to read Wings of a Dove because I loved the film - unreadable.

With books, there are three degrees of praising. First degree praising is where you praise a book because you've read it and liked it. Second degree praising is where you praise a book even though you haven't read it, because you've heard it praised by someone who has, so you pretend you have too. Third degree praising is where you praise a book even though you haven't read it, because you've heard it praised by someone who hasn't read it either, but is pretending they have, so you pretend you have too. A book that has achieved third degree praise no longer needs readers at all. The process becomes self-sustaining.

Both Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22 passed into third degree praising a long time ago. I've read both those books (I have - honestly) and quite liked them at the time, though I can't remember praising them. But that was many many years ago. Since them I've come to regard both with a cordial loathing.

Where you most often find third degree praising these days is on the internet, often in someone's profile:

Interests: chillin. freakin out. doin stuff.
Books: Catcher in the Rye.

Oh yeah? Well, you can just fuck right off.

Any Thomas feckin Hardy, I just do not get his books, his poetry yes, his novels no.

ooh christiana, I liked The New Confessions (finished Restless last week- have you read it? Really enjoyed it)

Ah I liked Lovely Bones (not loved or thought it marvellous literature, but read it in the same way you'd read chick-lit by the pool on holiday).
Catcher in the Rye is one my DH is struggling through just because he's invested so much time in it - he has to finish it. I can't remember if I liked it or not (so I'm guessing not good
I'm trying to read the Grapes of Wrath as I have been told over and over again how marvellous it is. I can't get into it though. I loved Of Mice and Men though so should give it more chance I think.
Emma - Bloody Emma. Hate the book. Loathe the character.
I hated Animal Farm as well, but I think I may give it another go as I might understand it a bit more than when I was 16!!

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Wait a moment! OP posted under Adult Non-Fiction. Ahem!

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ah I see OP mentioned it

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MIddlemarch - agree. Has anyone said Wuthering heights yet. BIg pile of boring tosh.

ANd anything by Martin Amis - that man needs to get out of his own arse.

Now I love Catch 22 - one of my favourite books. But agree re On Chesil Beach - I didn't actually finish it.

Have just started Money by Martin Amis - apparently a modern classic - and it's annoying me already.