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Which works of "great" literature have you given up on???

195 replies

ItalianJob · 01/04/2006 16:17

Couldn't get past page 100 of Mill on the Floss (no one else in my book group could either!!). Felt that I really didn't need to see any more examples of gratuitious violence to animals to get the idea that Maggie was good and Tom was nasty.

OP posts:
sfxmum · 01/04/2006 18:38

can't stand martin amis about 50pg of london fields hated hated hated

BettySpaghetti · 01/04/2006 18:40

Vanity Fair, many moons ago

spacedonkey · 01/04/2006 18:41

Anything by Dickens, Hardy or Eliot Blush

jayjaybaby · 01/04/2006 18:41

lord of the rings trilogy not read a single word

Oblomov · 01/04/2006 18:41

Like singersgirl & edam, No can do, Lord of the Rings - have tried many times- have given up now.

But Chandra,Love War & Peace - wrote my dissertation on it.
But, good job, for book shops, that we don't all want to read the same... drivell.

SorenLorensen · 01/04/2006 18:45

I've read quite a bit of Dickens, Hardy and Eliot - but not through choice Grin They're just so wordy, acres and acres of description. Cut to the plot, man (and woman)!

expatinscotland · 01/04/2006 18:47

where to start!? war and peace, for one. vanity fair, the wings of the dove, and anything henry james. all george eliot. the new testament - it just doesn't have all that smut and spice of the old one. most dickens excepting 'a tale of two cities'.

CODDYPANTS · 01/04/2006 18:50

expat

hola

spidermama · 01/04/2006 18:50

Yep. Anything by Dickens. Yawn!

To tell you the truth I get pretty fed up with the Brontes too.

expatinscotland · 01/04/2006 18:52

hola! did anyone else give 'villette' away? cuz i did.

i didn't finish 'wuthering heights', too, b/c heathcliff was a twat and catherine was a stuck up b*tch and life's full enough of those w/o reading about them.

cece · 01/04/2006 18:54

Anything by Dickens

Lord of the Rings

The Hobbit

HRHQueenOfQuotes · 01/04/2006 19:00

now I loved Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit - read most of the former on a very long (we got stuck outside Berwick for 3hrs for starters!) trip from Stevenage to Edinburgh on the train.

foxinsocks · 01/04/2006 19:01

hausfrau! must have taken you ages to get to that point - I'm a quick reader and it took me a week to even get through the first tranche of chapters - v annoying.

Littlefish · 01/04/2006 19:08

Not really a "great" work, but I've failed to read Captain Correlli's Mandolin 3 times - I just can't get past a third of the way in.

podkin · 01/04/2006 19:14

That Little Friend one I actually thought they had left some pages off the end of the book by mistake. It just stopped...very annoying.

Ullyses - looks good on my bookshelf, 'studied' it for my degree, wrote an essay on it ffs...still unread.

I am not one of these people who have to read to the end of a book once they have started it. I have the attention span of a gnat so if it hasn't gripped me in a couple of pages it's tossed aside in favour of Heat magazine.

Mercy · 01/04/2006 19:25

Anything by Dostoevsky or Mrs Gaskell

Ellbell · 02/04/2006 00:05

Couldn't get into anything by Dickens and hated Lord of the Rings (although I liked The Hobbit - maybe I just lack stamina).

However, loved War and Peace and Vanity Fair.

Kelly1978 · 02/04/2006 00:11

How can you not read mill on the floss? I've read lots of george elliot, it's very good and I don't think it's hard going at all. I'm quite surprised at some of the stuff on here, I love Thomas Hardy and Shakespeare. Also enjoyed the Lord of the Rings and the bible (even though not religious). Agree about Dickens tho, have read some, but foudn it very heavy going. I also found little women/little men very boring, although readable.

Chandra · 02/04/2006 01:11

It's OK Oblomov, I did my first dissertation in non-linear narrative and the second in cinema architecture and... still can't be bothered to read more about those subjects! Though I get a bit of a fit when somebody asks me if there is such thing as cinema architecture!

Chandra · 02/04/2006 01:14

Elbell... I couldn't finish the first chapter of Lord of the Rings, actually, couldn't pass from the first chapters of The Hobbit either... Blush

chipmonkey · 02/04/2006 02:10

Loved Ulysses, loved all of Joyce, so figured I'd love Finnegan's wake.
Wtf is it about?Blush

chipmonkey · 02/04/2006 02:14

As to the Bible, I found the Book of Revelations very scary. Was too frightened to finish it cos of the Chernobyl thing.

Ellbell · 02/04/2006 10:51

Ooh, Chandra, non-linear narrative sounds interesting. Heard a very interesting presentation the other day on the use of digression in literature... And I do have a bit of a soft spot for digressive texts (Tristram Shandy, loved Jacques le Fataliste when I was doing French, have already mentioned Orlando Furioso elsewhere....).

As for the Bible, I don't think it's meant to be read 'cover to cover' in that way. But it certainly contains some wonderful stories...

Ellbell · 02/04/2006 10:52

Chipmonkey - comment on the Bible was in general, not in response to your post, btw. Just meant that because it was written by different people at different times and in different places (unless you believe that the whole thing was written by God, of course...) then it seems OK to me to just sort of 'dip in' to it.

clerkKent · 03/04/2006 12:49

I am still working my way through Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but I am on a five-year break!