AIBU to think classics are bloody hard to read?

[Blackbootswithredribbons]

Now, don't get me wrong, I've read some amazing classics in my time (Lord Of The Flies, Jane Eyre etc) but it definitely hurts my brain sometimes! Amazing stories but the long, pointless descriptions, written in that old fashioned way that makes you feel a little stupid sometimes .

So, AIBU?

This is turning into a good thread for book recommendations! I'm trying to read books that are out of my usual genres, so might try Georgette Heyer and Wilkie Collins, although I don't normally do romance or detectives!

@Neolara

I attempted to re-read Jane Eyre during lockdown. That book needs a massive edit. Literally nothing happened in the first 200 pages. I gave up in total boredom. I seem to remember enjoying it when I read it as a child 35 years ago.

Astonished by this! I re-read it a few years ago and was transfixed by the first 200 pages. I found the story of Jane Eyre's childhood far more engrossing than the later sections. The appalling treatment Jane endured from her aunt and cousins was hard to read, but wonderfully evoked. Then the section at her school was very clearly based on the dreadful school the Bronte girls were sent to, where (IIRC) the two eldest girls died. One of the great what ifs of history (for me, anyway) is what were Maria and Elizabeth like? Would they have been writers too? Would Charlotte, Emily and Anne have been writers if they hadn't lost their sisters at such a young age?

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Have not read the whole thread, but has anyone mentioned The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins? I read that in my first year of secondary school, and have re-read it a couple of times since. I love classic detective fiction, and this is one of the first detective novels in English. Also has an interesting narrative structure, as there are several narrators, all with different points of view.

Yes! I read it years ago and loved it. I must read it again.

My two faves are The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey, both by the lesser known Anne Brontë.

Absolutely, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g. The early part is excellent, the Red Room gives me the chills. I wonder what those sisters would have been like.
I really liked the Moonstone. Although I think The Woman in White just pips it! The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Shirley are also good reads.

Depends what you mean by classics.
I dont think modern hectic lifestyles are condusive to heavyweight novels.
So many interruptions, small amounts of time, other commitments, distractions.
I read a stack of classic novels while in SE Asia some years ago- but it was easy. No phone, no internet, not much electricity, deep and focus for hours.

My two faves are The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey, both by the lesser known Anne Brontë

Mine too! She’s hugely underrated.

Jane Eyre is pretty good but all the other books by Charlotte Bronte are massive snoozefests.
Wuthering Heights starts off ok, I’ve started it a few times but actually never finished it - the characters start off interesting and then become unlikable (not in ‘love to hate’ kind of way, just plain irritating) and I then spend way to much time reading thinking they all need to get over themselves and I give up again.

I’ve read The Tenant of Wildfel Hall four times. I’d definitely read it again and I wished they’d make a proper cinema film out of it or a good Netflix series because it’s actually very ahead of it’s time and it’s themes very relevant still today.

I love Dickens. It probably helped me to get into Bleak House that I read it while working a stone's throw from Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn, where so much of it is set. Not sure whether my favourite is Bleak House or Little Dorrit.

My favourite Jane Austen novel is Persuasion, which is well nigh perfect. Sir Walter Elliot is a gloriously realised monster. The BBC film of Persuasion from the 1990s with Corin Redgrave in that role is really excellent.

Love Trollope too. Has anyone mentioned Vanity Fair? That's the only Thackeray novel I've read, but it's brilliant.

Middlemarch is wonderful, but my favourite George Eliot novel is Daniel Deronda.

Moving into the 20th century, Evelyn Waugh is not difficult to read and surely counts as a classic author. Anthony Powell perhaps needs more application, but A Dance to the Music of Time is well worth it.

@lnsufficientFuns

I simply do not understand the endless fawning fuss about Catcher In The Rye

That is all.

I read that at about 13 or something.

It's another example of something I just didn't get on with at all.

What I later realised was a thing with some really well regarded books etc, that they were v 'boys own adventure' as it were. And as such I simply didn't relate at all to the protagonist/s and when that happens well it's not v interesting engaging etc.

I remember some stuff in that about. Prostitution? I think. And back then I was just. Wow that's grim.

I’ve read The Tenant of Wildfel Hall four times. I’d definitely read it again and I wished they’d make a proper cinema film out of it or a good Netflix series because it’s actually very ahead of it’s time and it’s themes very relevant still today.

There's an old BBC series with Toby Stephens and Tara Fitzgerald. It's not bad!

Agree with you that Anne is very undersung. I'm a bigger fan of Villette than Jane Eyre - found Lucy Snowe more interesting as a narrator/protagonist.

And yes, Evelyn Waugh! Vile Bodies is a great book. More modern novels, Possession and White Teeth were fun reads, and I have a renewed love of Octavia Butler whose speculative/dystopian fiction I much prefer to Margaret Atwood's.

A book I think deserves to become a classic is Zusak's The Book Thief.

@Rosesareyellow

My two faves are The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey, both by the lesser known Anne Brontë

Mine too! She’s hugely underrated.

Jane Eyre is pretty good but all the other books by Charlotte Bronte are massive snoozefests.
Wuthering Heights starts off ok, I’ve started it a few times but actually never finished it - the characters start off interesting and then become unlikable (not in ‘love to hate’ kind of way, just plain irritating) and I then spend way to much time reading thinking they all need to get over themselves and I give up again.

I’ve read The Tenant of Wildfel Hall four times. I’d definitely read it again and I wished they’d make a proper cinema film out of it or a good Netflix series because it’s actually very ahead of it’s time and it’s themes very relevant still today.

I much prefer The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to Wuthering Heights.

@icelolly12

For those saying they hate or struggle with Dickens, what about A Christmas Carol? Very much a classic but not difficult to read and not overly long either and one that will have you in tears unless you're heartless!

The ghost idea was great.

The message is very heavy handed to me though and the end as well is really dunno. Too much what's the word. Skipping soon around with geese and tiny Tim and all that. Modern word is cheesy? I suppose.

I also find it extraordinarily unlikely that a man like that, who had been like that for so long, would change at all really. Let alone from freezing cold work Xmas level mean and cruel to jolly jolly jolly.

I do like this Muppets film version though. Muppets plus Michael Caine now we're talking!

Mind you I also dislike the night before Xmas which we got every year as a kid.

Our kids have father Xmas Raymond Briggs. It's got original story plus he goes on holiday. Brilliant when they were little with the pics.

Not everybody has the same tastes and that is perfectly fine.

The tenant of wilddell Hall is brilliant.
For anyone whose been in an abusive relationship pr one with a drunkard...

Yy to villette and Evelyn Waugh

Barbara Pym’s novels are considered rather more modern classics now. Not long before she died, she was shortlisted for the Booker with Quartet in Autumn, which IMO is a brilliant if rather sad and poignant read, but my favourites of hers are Crampton Hodnet (set in pre WW2 North Oxford and very funny), Excellent Women, and Some Tame Gazelle.
All are period pieces now, and relatively short, undemanding reads.

SarahAndQuack-

Agree.

When I was young parents would worry about children who could happily spend days reading and doing little else.

It's not good for you! It's a lovely day you should be out playing! Etc etc.

Then of course it was TV.

Any games played for hours. Dungeons and dragons. Manic miner on spectrum etc.

Any boys or girls who displayed in general a desire to do X for hours and hours. From experimenting with hair to making airfix models to obsessing over football/ pop stars / etc to organising/ looking through collections of whatever to yes reading...!

I've never read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, though I think I heard a chunk of it on the radio a few years ago. I ought to give it a go.

I don't think people change really.

The book industry has been on the ascendance for a fair while.

I noticed before lockdown that rush hour on tube it was almost all kindles for ages but before lockdown books. And that most people on the carriage would be reading one. Papers rare these days. Phones obv but underground rubbish for that. Books books books.

And gorgeous Waterstones everywhere! Massive lovely shops. I mean that's a positive sign no two ways about it.

I like Agnes Grey, because you get an idea what it would be like to be a governess.
Those women had few choices.

I find Dickens with his incredibly long sentences exhausting as a read. A genius though and I admire his books.

I find Jane Audten a good pleasure read though . I love Pride and Prejudice.

In Our Tme (radio 4, Melvyn Bragg) had a good piece on Tenant of Wildfell Hall recently, focussing on it as potentially the first feminist novel

@KitchenKrisis yes I’ve thought this too. I remember a few years ago when there started being a lot in the media about emotional abuse and gaslighting and how people assume abuse is always physical - this was a few years after I first read the book and I thought ‘err this isn’t a new idea, Anne Bronte wrote about this over 150 years ago…’ maybe they should focus on it more in schools rather than relying so heavily on Jane Eyre.

I'm another who loathes Catcher in the Rye. And for those with me on this, how do you feel about The Bell Jar? which i also loathe but for different reasons.

YY to Evelyn Waugh and a massive YES! to Olivia E Butler. The Parable of the Sower is so good it's almost perfect.

You do know that the marker of a good book is not whether it's an "easy read", right?

It is if that's what you enjoy reading. Who are you to tell someone else what makes good book and what doesnt?