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Original poster

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:
dinosaure · 03/04/2006 17:17

chipmonkey, snap re. Finnegan's Wake!

thewomanwhothoughtshewasahat · 03/04/2006 17:23

how can you not like WH? read it as a teenager, loved it, re-read it recetnly to see if I loved it cos I was a stupid teenager. loved it every bit as much. Dickens - always had a problem there. I am also - thuogh possibly for different reasons stuck half way through If This is a Man. Amazing book , beautifully written, but when I go to bed at night I just can't face it.

lucy5 · 03/04/2006 17:30

i didnt give up but have given up trying to see what all the fuss is about. I have read catcher in the rye about 4 times since I was about 14, cant see the cult status.

dinosaure · 03/04/2006 17:31

Love Wuthering Heights. Love Jane Eyre even more though.

And I love Dickens. Bleak House may possibly be my favouritest book of all.

motherinferior · 03/04/2006 17:32

Esther bloody Summerson makes me want to deck her one, though. All that false modesty. Dickens trying to do a female protagonist in a way that Our Great Charlotte does, of course, so much more superbly better in Villette.

dinosaure · 03/04/2006 17:33

I know, but all the Lady Dedlock scenes just make the hairs on the nape of my neck stand up.

geekgrrl · 03/04/2006 17:33

War and Peace - just lost the plot and got the hundreds of characters with Russian names mixed up. Think I should have been making notes.

LOTR I don't consider a 'genuine' classic - not high-brow enough. Although, who am I to judge? - having read only the first 20 pages of it and then giving up out of boredom. Grin

treacletart · 03/04/2006 17:35

cant even get past the second page of ulysses

fuzzywuzzy · 03/04/2006 17:41

Tess of the D'urbervilles, oh how I tried to read this book, but I wanted to shake the heroine she was such a flipping victim, I asked my friend what happened in the end she told me (they'd watched the film as part of A level english Lit), and was glad I hadn't bothered.....

motherinferior · 03/04/2006 17:43

I wish I'd given up on most of Henry Bloody James.

Oh, all of DH Lawrence. Sons and Lovers. Cringerama.

clerkKent · 03/04/2006 17:55

Heart of Darkness, Conrad.

fennel · 03/04/2006 21:32

Trollope, definitely. and Conrad. also Silmarillian.

otherwise i like most of these, must have a low boredom threshold.

Pruni · 03/04/2006 21:36

Ooh MI I ws just thinking the other day how I understand Sons and Lovers a bit better now... Blush

christie1 · 05/04/2006 02:42

already mentioned, but james joyce "ulysses" I know they have a big day for it in ireland, but have the celebrants actually read it? I know it is a masterpiece, but brilliance escapes me.

eldestgirl · 05/04/2006 06:09

Agree with MI. Loved the Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, WH, Jane Eyre, Tess and Mrs Gaskell.
Also could not finish Anna Karenina (after the train scene, what was the point of going on?), Women in Love, (forced myself through Sons and Lovers for some reason), Possession, The Grapes of Wrath (got left on a tube).
I did make it through Portrait, all I can remember are the hideous details of hell. Never tried Ulysses after that!
The WORST book was On a Midnight's Tale a Traveller. Every chapter finished abruptly and the next one had nothing whatsoever to do with the last.
Am readin Cloud Atlas at the mo and was worried about a repeat of the above, but it's surprisingly good and there are links between chapters....

clerkKent · 05/04/2006 09:48

eldestgirl, do you mean "If on a winter's night a traveller" by Italo Calvino? I was thinking of re-reading it as I enjoyed it and it is a classic...

Bink · 05/04/2006 10:01

Have never managed any Conrad. Against my principles, I suspect this is because I am female.

Singersgirl, Mason and Dixon is such a good example of this kind of problem - I could see, all the time I was struggling, that this was obviously a great ambitious intelligent Opus but I just couldn't manage it.

Proust ... I was having a lovely time reading a few pages a night (for those who've never tried, it's actually mostly vivid little gossipy anecdotes and in small bites not hard going at all) but came across one volume where the pages had been printed out of order - I could never again find my place and gave up. I keep thinking I should go to Hay on Wye just to find a correct copy of the volume that stumped me.

Ellbell · 05/04/2006 10:16

Hey... I'm female and I like Conrad. Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness are both classics.

Also agree with ClarkKent about the Calvino If on a Winter's Night... But I guess you need to know that it's meant to be like that...! Otherwise you're going to feel like Bink reading Proust with the pages in the wrong order!

Waswondering · 05/04/2006 10:20

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Original poster
ItalianJob · 05/04/2006 10:24

I loved Middlemarch, so I was surprised at my reaction to Mill on the Floss.

I like WH - very OTT and gothic, but definitely has a lot of passion to it.

Also hated Gabriel Garcia Marquez 500 years of Solitude - guess that Magical Realism ain't my genre...

OP posts:
nowanearlyNicemum · 05/04/2006 10:29

Le Rouge et le Noir - Stendhal
It still haunts me.

amber5 · 05/04/2006 10:48

my maiden name was Katherine Earnshaw, so i felt i had to read Wuthering Heights, have tried numerous times and never finished it. Must admit to being not much of a reader anyway though. Blush

moondog · 05/04/2006 10:55

Were you named that deliberately KE??
Give it another whirl,I beg you.

expatinscotland · 05/04/2006 10:57

Henry James books are better as films. At least most of those you can stay awake through.

Ellbell · 05/04/2006 11:19

Aaargh, Stendhal... Was put off Stendhal by a terrible lecturer at uni. All I remember about Stendhal is that when he was staying with his brother (? - some relation, anyway) in Paris, he was so bored that the highlight of his day was having a pee up the lime tree at the bottom of the garden. Useful eh?