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

and I have got some fantastic ideas for new reads from this thread!

OMG I forgot to say Perfume a dark and brilliant book!
Brilliant read. You are right, it's darker than dark.

Is Robinson Crusoe a classic?
I keep going back to it. I think I've read it at least 6 times.

I'd say so, Icen.

I saw the movie Perfume (RIP Alan Rickman 😔). I didn't realize there was a book. I'll have to check it out.

I enjoy reading for escapism, too, but I have the opposite problem: lazy, badly-written, predictable books make me 'think too much'. I can't get immersed or involved if I'm constantly noticing cliched moments, unconvincing dialogue, and huge plot-holes, or trying to remember where I've heard all this before.

It's like watching a film where the scenery wobbles and the star's obviously wearing Nikes under her Regency gown. If a book's character stares at herself in the mirror, biting her plump lip and lamenting the largeness of her crystal-blue eyes, and never speaks a line of dialogue when she could sigh/shriek/wail/lament/exclaim it, and never does anything without ten adverbs attached, and there's an overwrought line in italics every page to denote her tedious inner monologue, then... where's the escape? This is utterly familiar territory, and not in a good way.

While I'm reading a really excellent book, which may or may not be in the canon or considered a classic, I'm not sitting there analysing it, because the author has been so successful that I'm completely immersed. There were probably at least ten words and references I don't get per page of 'The Line of Beauty', but I loved it anyway because I was (to use a cliche) completely swept along with it. The best writing doesn't exhibit itself for appreciation: it's so good you don't notice the technique, even if you do go back and analyse it afterwards.

You've nailed it.
You've said it exactly how I wanted to say it, but couldn't find the words.

fresta despite being a classics fan, I've never found a Dickens book I enjoyed. And George Elliot I find pretty tedious, I skim read for the actual plot, and still not exactly blown away. I also only enjoy Jane Eyre because of the writing/ plot, I don't really like the character herself very much. If anything I dislike her more with each reread. But that doesn't mean they are all bollocks, it's just my personal taste. Nor does not liking one author or book mean they are all the same.

I've never read Watership Down, though there is a copy in the attic, along with a similar story by the same author involving dogs. I might take a look

King Solomon's Mines is a book I remember reading as a child then rereading as an adult and enjoying very much. I also liked the Amelia Peabody books, along the adventure theme, but I'm unsure if they're considered classics. I'd like to think so.

Jane Eyre, Persuasion and Wuthering Heights are my favourite books and I don't much care what you think.

These are the ones I can read over and over and watch every single adaptation of!

Much of the rest of the time I read trash - and also write trash - and whilst I enjoy this it never stays with me like the above.

^ icenasliceplease: The Line of Beauty is ridiculously, stupendously good. As is The Return of the Native^, though the latter may of course. produce an eye-roll somewhere.

As you were.

Getting so many book ideas for my upcoming birthday from this thread - thanks all of you !

Rowling may not be a great prose stylist (though she’s infinitely better than Dan Brown) or present her characters with the depth of Austen or Tolstoy, but her plotting and pacing is brilliant, the depth of her worldbuilding is the product of real love and care, and her ability to sketch characters briefly and functionally is highly skilled. There’s a reason why she’s sold millions and the late lamented Diana Wynne Jones (who was a better writer on a sentence by sentence basis) did not - and it’s not because a hundred million children are the victim of publishers’ hype. It’s a phenomenon started at ground level.

I will openly admit to thinking that Jane Austen is a bit rubbish and best reserved for TV but 80% of the fiction I read would fall under the bracket of 'classics'. 50% is older classics like dickens or Dostoyevsky (is this what you mean by classics?). The rest are modern classics like Steinbeck, Orwell etc. The 20% that I read that aren't classics are contemporary literary fiction so generally of a similar quality to most modern classics. I don't read any pop fiction at all. Whatever it is chick lit, fantasy, crime. I stopped reading that kind of stuff altogether in my early teens. I can understand why people read it but I just don't really have the concentration levels for that kind of thing. I've often found that I've read a few chapters of that kind of thing but have been so busy thinking about something else that it didn't really register. Classics in contrast are often a pleasure to read in themselves. I often sit and reread sentences over and over again because that are so beautifully written or so expressive. You occasionally get this in less 'serious' writing but I suppose it comes down to there being a reason why classics are classics-it's because they are such a good quality that people love them.

OP, have you considered that some people don’t like reading and don’t read? I don’t. If you put me on the spot and asked for the name of my favourite book, I might just say the name of any book I could think of. So it could be a classic. If I knew you well enough and was confident you wouldn’t have some sort of judgy fit, then I might just say that I don’t read.

I think it is a bit sad when people limit their horizons. I think books are a fabulous way to see the world from another perspective or just to relax. I happily give most genres a try and I am sometimes pleasantly surprised. .
My two favourite authors are Jane Austen and Terry Pratchett (make of that what you will!)

I very much doubt whether many children at all are terribly interested in those books but the hype at the time of each release convinced them to be avid “readers” of the books and to acquire them.

Nonsense. Self-evidently, there was no hype at the time of release of the first one nor, so far as I remember the second - their popularity spread by word of mouth. The very first time I came across it, never having heard of HP previously, was when DS1 mentioned at age 12 that he'd read the Philosopher' Stone, enjoyed it, and thought DS2 would like it. I duly got it and read it to DS2 at bedtimes and he absolutely loved it - the only problem was that he didn't want to go to sleep because he wanted to know what happened next. And that was the experience of an awful lot of children and parents.

“Is Robinson Crusoe a classic?
I keep going back to it. I think I've read it at least 6 times.”

Nice juxtaposition with a Wilkie Collins fan :D

Are you Betteredge?

resta despite being a classics fan, I've never found a Dickens book I enjoyed.

My son was assigned A Tale of Two Cities in English, so I've read along with him. While I will concede the first 50 or so pages are incredibly hard-going, it has become one of my all-time favourites (although I'm only 2/3 of the way done).

I enjoy reading for sheer escapism.

Do you think people who read classics sit there with their York Notes and ponder themes and symbols? perhaps we enjoy a well crafted story?!

When looking for new books it's best to ask what was the best book they read last year or recently. "What's your favourite...?" Questions are like those quizzes you get in teen magazines. They don't provoke honest answers but usually just something that pops into the head, usually something famous and well known rather than thought out.

I sort of know what you mean OP. I would much rather pick up eg Helen Dunmore, Anne Tyler, Meg Wollitzer, Curtis Sittenfeld, Kate Atkinson, Marian Keyes than read a classic. That isn't to say I haven't enjoyed the ones I have read. I do think some people aren't aware of all the great contemporary fiction there is out there. It isn't crime novel/'chick lit' (hate that term) or classic. That said, everyone is different. I can't get into Terry Pratchett for example, to the bewilderment of many. I have also never read Harry Potter...

I thought that too Her!

I've just re-read The Moonstone for the nth time as it is the book set by my bookclub. I think I have read it so often I have memorised it. Miss Clack is the most perfect character, she delights me deeply.

PS I did Lit at Uni too. I was never more relieved than the day I no longer had to analyse books!

Do you think people who read classics sit there with their York Notes and ponder themes and symbols? confused perhaps we enjoy a well crafted story?!

I read a lot of Trollope about 20 years ago. I actually did spend quite a bit of time reading the endnotes and following some of them up. It's where my interest in mythological & religious themes in art came from. But the stories themselves were very straightforward and easy to read.

One thing that stopped me in my tracks, though, was reading The Way We Live Now and wondering how Trollope could write such an accurate biography of Robert Maxwell nearly fifty years before Maxwell was born. Sometimes it is really eye-opening reading descriptions of politics, business, etc. in Victorian novels and realizing how little has changed since then.

Kate Atkinson writes future classics, IMO.