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Original poster

Which books or authors do you know you *ought* to like, but just can't?

65 replies

Cosmosis · 16/04/2009 11:33

I find both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights almost unreadable, and yet I know many people who love them both. It's not a Bronte thing I don't think, as I loved Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Also, other than Hard Times and Great Expectations, I really can't read Dickens.

OP posts:
yappybluedog · 16/04/2009 17:02

you really have to stick with Catch 22

it seems all disjointed to start with, but everything falls into place by the end

diedandgonetodevon · 16/04/2009 16:57

Love Catch 22!

However I cannot abide Thomas Hardy. I feel I should read his books, but I've not finished one yet I just don't like the stories or the way they are written.

steamedtreaclesponge · 16/04/2009 16:52

I've never managed to finish Catch 22 either

Or Anna Karenina - I keep trying to and then getting bogged down in all the stuff about peasant farming methods

And I second the no vote on magical realism - hate hate hate it, is a big pile of poo

fizzpops · 16/04/2009 16:47

Another vote here for Catch 22.

I HATE HATE HATE not finishing a book so sometimes I have to give myself a talking to and ask if I think I am really less able to read something than millions of other people. Usually works to a certain extent but usually don't really enjoy the book, just feel I am reading it because I ought to.

Still did not finish Catch 22...

Original poster
Cosmosis · 16/04/2009 16:36

PlumpRump, I have lost count of the number of times I have started war and peace and given up after checking the family tree thing for the umpteenth time!

OP posts:
lalalonglegs · 16/04/2009 15:57

See I luuuurve the Sturm und Drang but then, I was about 17 the first time I read it .

yappybluedog · 16/04/2009 15:26

anything by Salman Rushdie

Catch 22 is a fantastic book

PlumpRumpSoggyBaps · 16/04/2009 15:26

Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (sp?). And Lord of the Rings, too. It's the names- they don't stay in my head so I keep having to go back to the beginning to check who's who.....

Life's just too short.

midnightexpress · 16/04/2009 15:19

No, Middlemarch marvellous, obviously. But Wuthering Heights is rubbish, actually. All that Sturm und Drang.Great when you're 17; when you're 43, not so much.

lalalonglegs · 16/04/2009 15:13

Disliked magic realism so much that I now refuse to open book if blurb uses any of following words: "spellbinding", "enchanting" or, most damning of all, "dreamlike" - bleurgh, bleurgh, bleurgh.

Who are all these people who don't like Jane Austen or Emily Bronte? You better not have a go at George Eliot .

MarshaBrady · 16/04/2009 14:25

I find this happens..

I love one Paul Auster (New York Trilogy) but can't stand the others.

Love José Saramago Blindness but couldn't get through Seeing Double.

Loved Don DeLillo White Noise, but had to put down Underworld.

Other than that, found it hard to get through Heart of Darkness or to read any Annie E. Proulx.

Original poster
Cosmosis · 16/04/2009 14:21

Oh I love love love Austen.

LOL at Catch22. I've not tried it, it's sitting on our bookshelf, but after DH's slating of it I'm not in a hurry to try!

Catcher in the Rye I need to re-read as I was a teenager when I read it.

Swanriver, I liked The Road. Although having just watched No Country For Old Men, I'm not rushing to read that one.

OP posts:
Thunderduck · 16/04/2009 14:19

I agree with Lord Of The Rings.

francagoestohollywood · 16/04/2009 14:19

Hemingway

Sunshinemummy · 16/04/2009 14:17

Hate Martin Amis too but can't agree on Catch 22, Dickens, Toni Morrison, 100 years of Solitude, Austen or Rushdie.

Found Famished Road hard going but enjoyed it in the end.

littlelamb · 16/04/2009 14:16

Lord of th Rings. I just can't do it to myself. Catch 22 as well, and I have tried about 10 times with that one.
Love Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights though.

midnightexpress · 16/04/2009 14:15

With you on Jane Austen thunderduck.

Just can't be bothered with all that husband-huntin'. It's just the same story over and over.

Though must disagree on:
Catch-22
Dickens
Toni Morrison
100 Years of Solitude (though struggled big time with No One Writes To The Colonel - all those interminable sentences make for v poor bedtime reading)

Thunderduck · 16/04/2009 14:05

I loved The English Patient, though ''penis like a sleeping seahorse'' did make me think WTH?

Thunderduck · 16/04/2009 14:04

Pride And Prejudice. I can't get past the first few chapters.

swanriver · 16/04/2009 13:08

Loved TM but then suddenly got fed up with her after no 4. Often re-read Beloved.

swanriver · 16/04/2009 13:06

Also completely stumped by Brothers Karamazov and the Idiot - the Russian names were enough to defeat me, though remember reading C & P happily enough at 20 whilst interailing.

JustCallMeGoat · 16/04/2009 13:06

kathy i am with you on the toni morrison thing, i tried v. hard as an earnest youth but now i realise i just don't like her books.

swanriver · 16/04/2009 13:03

CANNOT understand Cormac McCarthy although for some reason terrifying "The Road" is easy perhaps because it is futuristic? Hate Ondaatje too.
Love all the things the rest of you hate though!!!Suitable Boy I thought just dull but pleasant.

jujumaman · 16/04/2009 13:00

I took Ulysses on a three week interrailing holiday aged 19. Nothing else to read - I ended up virtually learning the Thomas Cook international railway timetable by heart I was so bored.

Since then it has been Jilly Cooper all the way for me

Anything on the Booker Prize list is virtually guaranteed to fall into this category - books you are being forced to like. Hate them all.

Kathyis6incheshigh · 16/04/2009 12:57

Toni Morrison, Beloved and The Bluest Eye. I can't find a reason not to like them, just can't get into her style.

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