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

My favourite books are classics (though only one is a 19th century classic; the others are 20th). I reread them every couple of years. I know how great they are, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if lots of other people also liked them, or similar.

It also wouldn't bother me if they were lying to sound dead clever like. I don't know why, I just wouldn't care. It doesn't affect my enjoyment of the books.

Sorry.

What is annoying you more: that some people lie about what books they read, or that some people genuinely enjoy classics? (whatever classics are: that's not a specific time-period or genre, so I don't know how they can all bore you.)

It's often an effort to read, for the first time, something challenging or complex or written in a different style to contemporary English. But sometimes the pay-off is so great you end up reading it again and again, until it's something completely familiar and comfortable, and you probably know chunks of it by heart.

Also interested in what people consider classics these days. I love Brideshead Revisited, The Age of Innocence, Lolita, Mrs Dalloway and The Great Gatsby: love, as in have read them multiple times, enjoy reading them, enjoy reading about them. Or maybe classics are much older books in middle English or before? Or maybe English is for lightweights and I should be reading the Iliad?

Either way, inverse book snobbery is such a waste of time. Also, given that there are roughly one trillion possible books to mention when asked 'what do you like reading?', I think it's quite natural to give something more well-known at first, since people will at least have an opinion on it and you don't get into long explanations about a book or author they've never heard of. (which I'm sure would become 'AIBU to roll my eyes when someone gives a wilfully obscure book preference to make themselves sound clever?')

I also love Wuthering Heights, and I read many all Charles Dickens books as a child and have a great fondness for them too. I also have read the hunger games, and loved it. Didn't finish Harry Potter, and only managed three chapters of 50 shades (didn't get to the steamy stuff, I'm not a literary snob, but the writing was DIRE). didn't enjoy one day at all, but love starter for ten by the same author. And I adore fairy tales - not the disneyfied version, but the originals.

No idea if you would roll your eyes at me or not! And don't care either way.

@JacquesHammer 498 books in one year? Good for you.

I read 60 books last year (tracked with good reads)
Well done OP, give yourself a pat on the back, you are doing amazing! Aren't you a clever person

My reception-year youngest child is reading 4 books a week on average,
as asked by the teachers (tracked with their homework record book). Keep up the good work OP< you'll get there

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.

I find it hard to imagine that once you've read Dickens or similar, you'd be able to deal with something like 50 shades of grey so I suppose I understand your skepticism.

I'd be skeptical if someone's list of great books included only the classics. I just read Paul Auster's 4321 over Christmas and I found it every bit as moving as I did Anna Karenina (which I'm afraid I do count among my favourites, sorry!).

It's a bit like television: once you've watched Breaking Bad, can you actually watch Scandal? (My husband and I tried so hard, but found it so silly).

Why do you think you can’t read trashy vampire movies but still say War and Peace is your favourite book?

To most people, a favourite means one that had the most impact/meaning to them and/or one they would read a second or third time.

My favourite book is Anna Karenina. I read it once 30 years ago and I never want to reread it because I know I will “see” it all differently. But I still remember how I was drawn into that world and how it ignited my imagination on fire.

I like Anne Rice vampire stuff too. It’s a page turner. Would never claim it’s a favourite, because it isn’t.

Books not movies

This is a milder version of the "don't have sex with men" thread. An OP who doesn't enjoy something comes on telling us all we shouldn't enjoy it, and when we respond that actually we do enjoy it, we are told again that no, we can't really enjoy it because it's not enjoyable.

OP, people are different. They just are. Some enjoy only one kind of literature, some enjoy all sorts of different kinds, some don't enjoy the process of reading at all.

How ridiculous to think that just because you find something difficult that everyone else must be lying if they enjoy it.

once you've watched Breaking Bad, can you actually watch Scandal?
Of course, why ever not?

@Eyeroller100

Yeah. Was bummed not to hit 500

Might re-read WH for the first time this year now

@Llangollen well if I was 4 and was reading kids books I'd be able to keep up with your 4yo.

Unfortunately I'm a mum to a 1yo with a job and housework to juggle, so sorry I can't live up to your wonderful child's high standards. Are you sending her to oxbridge next year? ffs.

Crime thrillers and rom com type books are fun but don't stay with you.

Certain books really affected me and stayed with me even though I read years ago. Isabel Allende house of spirits, middlemarch, time travellers wife, we need to talk about Kevin and Anna kareinina.

I agree in many ways - lots of people are very pretentious when it comes to reading. I love reading - I read anything from trashy summer romances to Dickens. I am as happy to discuss Austen as I am Twilight. However, YABU to say people only pretend to like classics - my favourite always has been and always will be Jane Eyre. And my battered copy will prove it - I have read it countless times!

Sorry, OP, you might be the loveliest person in real life, but your comments here aren’t doing you any favours... eye-rolling at people’s taste? Nice. Commenting pretty much only when a pp that ‘gets it’, and your comment to Jacques reads as snarky.

My favourite books are The Stand, ‘Salem’s Lot, and Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Do I get an eye-roll?

Sad that people feel they have to lie.

I think a lot of people like some of the classics such as Austen as it's a whole different world of manners & society.

I love Trollope's The Chronicles of Barchester-some of the few books that I have reread.

The characters, their interaction & way of life-love it!

Stop asking people what their favourite book is, OP, then you won't have to roll your eyes any more.

hahaha

Sorry you haven't got the tenacity to read a decent book OP

I’m joining in with the Wuthering Heights love. Read numerous times and am enjoying the new audiobook read by Joanne Froggart.

ShiftyMcGifty Sun 14-Jan-18 10:55:52
"Why do you think you can’t read trashy vampire movies but still say War and Peace is your favourite book?

To most people, a favourite means one that had the most impact/meaning to them and/or one they would read a second or third time."

This.

Most books that make it to the status of classics are really good reads, though many feel derivative and old fashioned because we are used to reading the stuff derived from them.

I'm always skeptical of people who claim to like 'literary fiction'- the kinds of books that are called classics, but don't actually have that much sales e.g.

Marcel Proust- À la recherche du temps perdu is often referred to as the greatest book ever. It's bloody awful.

Will Self is distinctive and clever, but that man needs a harsh editor to make him interesting.

OP, with reading, like most things in life, quality is far more important than quantity, therefore it reasons an avid reader of supermarket misery porn or similar drivel, whilst consuming copious quantities of books, can't consider himself/herself a literatus....
As mentioned above, classics are classics for reason.

I do think you're exaggerating. I haven't met anyone who does what you describe.