To roll my eyes when someone says their favourite book is a classic

[Eyeroller100]

I'm an avid reader and I'm always looking for new books to read so I often ask people what their favourite books are. AIBU to roll my eyes every time someone mentions one of the classics.

I know people do love them and they may well be their faves, but I am quite skeptical as if they are saying it to make themselves sound better.

I've tried reading a lot of classics and I just can't get into them at all! They are pure effort

I love jane eyre. Read it over and over again when I was younger. So yes, yabu.

Watership Down might be my favourite too, MissWilmottsGhost. It's a close contender at least, along with 1984 and Animal Farm.

I have a list of favourite books, couldn’t choose just one. However, if I had to choose only 3 books to be stranded with on a desert island 2 of them would be Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights. I don’t really care whether people roll their eyes at me, think it’s cliched or don’t believe me because I don’t have an English Lit degree. Those books were part of my formative reading years and I love them wholeheartedly.

I don’t mind low-brow stuff either, as long as it’s well written. Some of my most enjoyable reads of last year were vampire based steampunk! They won’t go down as my favourites though.

Kannet Sun 14-Jan-18 16:23:08
"I have an English lit degree so I am very well read. I hate when people claim a "classic" as their favourite. I think people do it to sound clever, they also always say "great expectations" or "withering heights"!! Pretty sure they have almost never read them but will have seen one of the many adaptions on tv"

So did you deliberately go and do a degree in something you hate spending time on? Or do you mean, I have a degree in English lit. so I'm all right, but when other people claim to enjoy it, they're being pretentious?

What a weird reaction. Some people's favourite book will be Crime and Punishment, others' will be 50 Shades if Grey, just like some people enjoy listening to Mozart and others prefer Madonna. Most people will like a range of things. My favourites include Jane Eyre, Rebecca, Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent and any Poirot book.

I have an English lit degree so I am very well read.

The second clause in that sentence does not follow on from the first. There are many English literature graduates who have read very few books all the way through: degree courses often seem to take the same approach as GCSE/A-level courses of analysing excerpts without requiring anyone to have read the whole work. I don't doubt that you're well read but it's not because you have an English literature degree.

I hate when people claim a "classic" as their favourite. I think people do it to sound clever, they also always say "great expectations" or "withering heights"!! Pretty sure they have almost never read them but will have seen one of the many adaptions on tv

Then again, people might actually be answering the question they were asked. Why shouldn't someone prefer reading Georgian/Victorian/Edwardian fiction to contemporary stuff? If I were to list my five favourite novels the list would include only two published after WWII (Robert M Pirsig's Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [1974] and Saul Bellow's Herzog [1964]) and only one by a British author (Thomas Hardy: not sure whether it would be The Return of the Native [1878] or The Woodlanders [1887]). The others would be Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks [1901] and either Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome [1911] or Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf [1927]. The only ones I've seen adaptations of are The Woodlanders (made into a truly awful movie in 1997) and Steppenwolf (made into an ambitious but rather uneven movie in 1974). I would list them as favourites because I enjoyed reading them: yes, even the unwaveringly bleak Ethan Frome.

OP, I love the Kiterunner too - it's definitely one of my (many) favourites. But I wouldn't class it as an easy read or escapist - from an emotional point of view, it's a pretty tough read. So I don't really get what it is that you dislike about "classics", and can't help but feel that you're missing out on tons of brilliant books because of preconceived ideas about whether or not you'll like them.

My favourites change all the time but one of my ''desert island books would be 'war and peace' because the plot and characterisation is so good. There are very few books that stand up to multiple re-reads - this is one of them

I find most classics tedious. I recently read Watership Down and found it very difficult to really be that bothered about a bunch of anthropomorphic rabbits. I sped read the last half of the book to get it over with. I think it's bollocks that there was any deeper meaning in the story.

Haven't read the full thread so apologies if I'm repeating what's already been said but, YABU.

I read loads of different genres from classics, to chick lit, thriller and even fan fiction and guess what? My favourite book ever is a classic, Wuthering Heights to be exact.
I studied English Lit at uni but definitely don't consider myself a book snob by any means, but WH is my favourite because its a book my Dad introduced me too, we read together, we discussed it, watched the film. Even pulling it off the shelf brings back happy memories so I love it for all those reasons as well as it being, well brilliantly written IMO.

I think you are being rather sneery to roll you eyes at someone that claims a classic is a favourite? Maybe its because of the reasons I said? Maybe it brings back fond memories for them?

Have you read many of the classics yourself? Is it perhaps a defence thing if you feel this way when people say one is their favourite?
Genuine question btw not being snarky.

Oh yes - one of my other desert island books would be 'The Siege of Krishnapur' by JG Farrell - so not a classic - but very much classic in feel - plots / characters / theme

Is this a case of "Those that look behind the bedroom door have hidden there themselves"?

Are the few that say they believe others are lying and/or "do it to sound clever" when they say they like a classic book saying it because that is what they do?

I ask because it would never occur to me to think someone was lying if they told me the name of their favourite book. It's so... random lol!

If I had to pick a favorite book, it would be The Great Gatsby. But I love so many different books, of many different genres, it's difficult to pin down a favorite, really.

On a desert island you want something really long and difficult. You don’t want something you can race through!

otoh I'm not sure I'd want Wuthering Heights on a desert island. That casement window scene... spooky!

On a desert island you want something really long and difficult. You don’t want something you can race through!

Like Anna Karenina or Take of Two Cities. One day I'll get through those.

I find most classics tedious. I recently read Watership Down and found it very difficult to really be that bothered about a bunch of anthropomorphic rabbits. I sped read the last half of the book to get it over with. I think it's bollocks that there was any deeper meaning in the story.

I find it sad that we are now trashing books which aren't to individual tastes, and decrying their one dimensionality simply because of a lack of personal insight.

I recently read Watership Down and found it very difficult to really be that bothered about a bunch of anthropomorphic rabbits. I sped read the last half of the book to get it over with. I think it's bollocks that there was any deeper meaning in the story.

Crikey. You didn't get on with it so it is crap!

ROLL UP ROLL UP we have found THE ARBITER OF TASTE

...or maybe just someone who didn't like a particular book!

I am a MASSIVE middlebrow fan. But I like twentieth century inter-war middlebrow. My fave book of all time is Catch 22 because it is both tragic and hilarious. And I LOVE loads of the authors you are dissing. I see a really clear trail through from much earlier than you are looking - lots of women writing. I adore Rebecca and all that jazz, but have read very similar stuff written earlier. I follow a middlebrow blog where the dude is obsessed with totally obscure women writers from the early 20thC.
I suspect you would see that as pretentious, but these women won’t ever be called classics

Dear me. My favourite two books are classics, but I enjoy a bit of Sophie kinsella and similar, to zone out and just switch off for a bit. People are able to like all sorts but still have a classic as their ultimate favourite.

That is, on the assumption Little Women and The Secret Garden count as classics in your eyes?

I really loved Great Expectations but it isn't my favourite, I very much enjoyed studying it.

What an odd post. Surely the idea that some people have different reading tastes to you isn’t that unbelievable? I love some of the classics and find some dull.

Ah, another MN "AIBU to completely fail to understand that lots of other people are very different from me?" thread. People who say they like things that are more highbrow than 50 Shades or chick lit are not necessarily lying, you know. I like middle to highbrow and well-written fantasy. I love some of the classics and dislike others. To claim they are all dull is dimwitted and ignorant.

I adore The Secret Garden.

I mentioned my love for Wilkie Collins up thread- he's a classic, but at the time was seen as pretty low-brow, sensationalist and a populist.

And I loved Crime and Punishment, because I found the writing of the story of a young and emotionally immature student who thought because he was clever he could step outside social mores and social consciousness and thus murder someone he deemed had no external value to the world- and then he discovered that actually morality is something deeper than just social construct to be really hard hitting.

But I love Marian Keyes (actually- I reckon hers are contemporary classics because they are so funny) and John Grisham. And I adore chick lit writers like Erica James and Jane Green.

I love buying some of my childhood classics like Tom's Midnight Garden, The LittlePrincess etc and can read and re-read.

And, I reckon Harry Potter is a modern classic. I find it extraordinary that JK Rowling could write a series where the books increased in maturity and darkness to suit the growing maturity of the ages of the character (and the readers). That is the hallmark of a truly gifted writer.

I love books. I love reading. I don't really care if they are 'classic'or not.

It's not really a classic as such, but I've read A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, by James De Mille three times.