so which 'classics' have you never read?

[iwastooearlytobeayummymummy]

For me it's Wuthering Heights and the Russian stuff: War and Peace and Anna Karenina
Also never read Madame Bovary, but I'm sure I've started it before now
I love Margaret Attwood but have not got round to the Hand Maids Tale yet ( but it is beside the bed)

I can't believe I just read this from a previous poster :

'Dickens is boring crap as is James Joyce'

Whether you like them or loathe them a little respect is required, I think.

(I happen to like them)

Oh, I don't know. Isn't it good to vent about things like that? I happen to dislike them both, apart from A Christmas Carol, Portrait of the Artist..., and The Dead. I'm not sure I'd say they were 'boring crap' but I don't much care if someone disses a writer I love; someone told me recently that they found Ishiguro's prose 'lame', which IMO is obviously bollocks but that's their view and they're entitled to it (I still privately think they're wrong and misguided, obviously .

You misunderstand. Everyone knows there are thousands of different opinions out there. I make a living out of literary criticism. I understand fully about 'dissing' writers. My point is WHETHER YOU LIKE THEM OR LOATHE THEM A LITTLE RESPECT IS REQUIRED. The last Ishiguro I read was banal and bizarre to say the least but I understand why people wanted to read it to the bitter end. To say writers are 'boring crap' so lightly is trite and ill-considered.

If all other books were lost in fire and flood, Middlemarch by George Eliot would stand as a testament to womanhood.

Plus it's a gripping read.

For a classic in the making, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. This lady is frighteningly talented.

Jilkh, agree, her novels are a tough read but cripes is she good.

flork1, if someone went to a reading by Atwood/Ishiguro/whoever, stood up and told them their work was boring crap that would obviously show a lack of respect. And if someone said to my face I was an idiot for liking an author I'd think that showed a lack of respect. But to say it on an online forum ... I don't have a problem with that.