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

@EvilCleverDog yes you get it!! There's people I know who only read 50 shades of grey/vampire-esque books and then claim that their fave books are by Jane Austen/Charles Dickens/Leo Tolstoy. It just doesn't add up.

Just because I don't enjoy the classics doesn't mean you all get to be patronising 😂. When I say effort, I don't mean I find them difficult to read language wise, I mean they just bore me to tears!

Thanks for all the advice to "keep reading you'll get there" I think I will be fine, I read 60 books last year (tracked with good reads). This is also what I mean. People are so pretentious when it comes to reading

They endure as classics for a reason. Aside from lasting through the decades and centuries, there's usually something masterful about the writing and story that brings the individual reader back time and time again (not that other books aren't worthy, more that there's a reason why lots of people are attracted to classics).

They're often the kind of books you could read and love at age 10, age 40, age 90... so people probably rate them as their all-time favourite even as their reading tastes have otherwise changed, but maybe they have a current favourite too.

Have you tried asking which great books people have read lately, or that they were pleasantly surprised by? I think you'd get a different response.

I can't agree with you at all unless your friends read Heat magazine and then claim to have just put down Anna Karenina, like those politicians that go on Desert Island Discs with their well-informed choice of Fado and opera when you know they never listen to any such thing.

You must like quite middle-brow stuff (no shame in that) or you would find it as inaccessible as the classics.

So OP, what is your favourite book? (see what I did there?)

Wuthering Heights is by far my favourite book. Have only read it twice but I usually only ever read a book once no matter how much I enjoyed it. I read a lot but I love the depth of despair in that book. It resonates with me.

Apart from books I studied at school, the only ones I can think of that I've read multiple times for pleasure are Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. WH is my favourite.

I also think if people have studied a book for say, A Level, it can become a favourite because they look at it in much more depth than if they were purely reading for enjoyment.
Curriculum books tend to be classics.

So you're asking if you're unreasonable to roll your eyes whenever you ask someone what their favourite book is and they say the name of a book.
Yes...yes you are.

I have 3 and technically I think two are classics Wuthering Heights (read it about 4 times), Anne of Green Gables and the Tale of Maurasaki.

That doesn't mean I don't love Harry Potter and the Hunger Games too though! It's all subjective and you can love the classics.

"People are so pretentious when it comes to reading".

Who is the one walking round asking people what their favourite books are and rolling their eyes?

I don't understand the concept of favourite book. It's like asking which your favourite child is. I can give you a list of maybe top thirty?

But yes it's annoying when people are all "Silas Marner, actually" when you know full well they did it for A level in 1975 and mostly read Danielle Steele now.

Not that there's anything wrong with a good bit of Danielle, of course.

Maybe it might be better to ask them what their holiday reading is. More likely to be escapist/frivolous type reading rather than a more 'weighty' classic. Think more Dan Brown/Nora Roberts best sellers rather than Dickens or Austen

You do know how silly this sounds don't you OP?

My favourite books include Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice. Does saying this make me a liar?

Reverse snobbery is just as ridiculous as snobbery.

I love anything by Austen and have read a few of her novels over and over! I love the humour, the language and the little glimpse into people's lives and attitudes in the past. I especially like them when I am feeling low as the stories aren't too dramatic and I find them comforting.

Ooo there is a lot of wuthering heights love ❤️ on this post.

YAmostlyBU.

I mostly read classics, including modern classics. As someone already said, they're usually classics for a reason, because the storytelling and the writing is good enough to stand the test of time. My book group has a habit of choosing books which have no merit beyond looking pretty in the bookshop window and they often turn out to be badly written with predictable plots. Nobody will be reading them in 20 years, let alone 200 years. When we read a classic, we generally find much more in it to talk about.

I do remember by teenage son begging me to read the hunger games when they were first published. I kept trying to resist but caved in in the end. I was like a bold child. I ended up reading until 4am on a school night, just one more chapter, just til the end of the next page etc... Couldn't believe all my teenage emotions came flooding back. I hadn't experienced that in a long time from reading a book.

I have a lot of classics as my favourites. Just because they're not your thing doesn't mean other people don't like them.

OP, you think people are pretentious, and undoubtedly some are. But there is also an anti-intellectual inverse snobbery to beware of.

I read and have read 1000s of books in my lifetime, many with huge amounts of enjoyment. The passage and writing style I come back to time and time again in my mind is from Mill on tne Floss. Quality sticks.

Another vote for 'Wuthering Heights' here, and Forster's 'Maurice'.

I read 60 books last year (tracked with good reads

I read 498 books last year. A mix of classics because I love them, new stuff (some I loved, some I hated).

I re-read WH probably 5/6 times last year.

I think being pretentious over reading could also include rolling your eyes at people because you don't believe their favourite book.

So you didn’t get the answer you wanted and now you’re telling people not to patronise you? Serves you right. FWIW I couldn’t name one favourite book but if you asked me to name my five favourite authors, Jane Austen would be in there.

YABU - for a favourite book people will choose something they know will age well.

If you want more current books you could ask what was the best new book they read last year etc.

“Classics” vary massively in terms of readability, yabu to dismiss them all. I don’t think you actually want to ask them what their favourite is, just something good they’ve read lately.