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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:
Jodee · 05/04/2006 11:25

if anyone's ever thought about reading anything by George Du Maurier, then really, really, do not bother.

I'm another one that has only ever managed two-thirds of Captain Corelli and I've tried at least 3 times!

booge · 05/04/2006 12:04

Absolutely love Wuthering Heights but can't do Jane Eyre, Rochester is just too sloppy and when he talks about taking her to the moon to eat cheese I just want to puke. I loved Wide Sargasso Sea though but that's a whole different genre. Couldn't finish David Copperfield or Mill on the Floss and only managed The Mayor of Casterbridge on about my 10th attempt. Had to read Bleak House for A level and it was a real struggle but I grew to love it...I don't think I would have finished it if I didn't have to.

Recently I'm another who couldn't get more than 3rd way through Captain Corelli's Mandolin and same with Sophie's World.

clerkKent · 05/04/2006 13:11

Hey Bink, you do not have to be female not to like Conrad - I should know, I'm not!

motherinferior · 05/04/2006 13:28

CK is devastatingly masculine Wink

clerkKent · 05/04/2006 13:34

Grin....Blush

moondog · 05/04/2006 18:40

Stendhal is fab!!!
Bowled me over at the age of 18.

singersgirl · 05/04/2006 19:12

Bink - Now Proust is a good idea. I read "A la recherche..." etc a long time ago when my French was better, but could manage the English now.

I studied Russian literature and did a special paper in Dostoyevsky, so have read all of those -really struggled with "The Brothers Karamazov" though. Liked Bulgakov and "Anna Karenina" too. But have to admit that after university I didn't read much more Russian literature.

amber5 · 05/04/2006 19:27

moondog, actually not; although my mum was a teacher (including english lit)

Ellbell · 05/04/2006 22:03

Maybe I should try again with Stendhal (have still got Le rouge et le noir, due to my congenital inability to throw books away) but without the rubbish lecturer to ruin him. (Though I'll still be thinking of the lime tree.)

Perhaps I'll take it on holiday with me...

expatinscotland · 05/04/2006 22:09

Oh, gawd. I had a married philosophy professor who gave me 'Possession' when I had just turned 20 and still believed in silly notions like amour fou.

So I read it and took the hint . . . Blush

Not one of my finer moments, admittedly.

eldestgirl · 06/04/2006 15:33

That's funny Expat, my Law professor gave me Possession for my 21st birthday, which did seem a little odd at the time, but as I never managed to get past the 30th page, I remain ignorant of any untoward intentions.

lusciouslynda · 06/04/2006 15:58

I have tried and tried but just cannot get into the Mill on the Floss or Middlemarch. Quite liked Daniel Deronda though.

Captain Corelli? Read it, thought some of it was good but the the hero and heroine are just weak.
It's hardly a classic!!

I thought the film was crap too.

layla · 06/04/2006 16:39

Moondog so glad you said that about Stendhal,I'm reading the scarlet and the black at the mo and am enjoying it.

nowanearlyNicemum · 07/04/2006 10:18

maybe I should try Stendhal again....
I was 21, had just arrived in France and asked a colleague to recommend a 'fairly easy going' classic to get me started with some metro reading. Le Rouge et le Noir is what she came up with - god knows what she was thinking of.
have resolved to dig it out, my french has improved since then so that's got to help :)

layla · 07/04/2006 12:53

Then again!I'm almost half way through it and am getting a bit bored of all the seminary/Bishop bits it's going on a bit I hope it moves on soon.

moondog · 07/04/2006 18:52

Oh no.
It's a cracker I promise you.
Thought I was soooooo cool reading it (in French natch)and smoking Gauloises when about 18.

DumbledoresGirl · 07/04/2006 19:01

All Dickens novels
All Geaorge Eliot novels...

In fact it would be easier to say whcih classic novels I have managed to read. from those listed here, I have read the Brontes and Thomas Hardy...oh and Capn Corelli's Mandolin, but the latter is hardly a work of great literature is it?

alexsmum · 07/04/2006 19:02

portrait of the artist as a young man.....bobbins!!!

Olihan · 07/04/2006 19:53

Dickens definitely, horrific, boring and far too long winded. TBH, anything that is on the GCSE/ A level english lit syllabuses (Syllabi?!) sends me to sleep.

earthtomummy · 07/04/2006 20:10

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - didn't get past page 2. Read War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but felt strongly like giving up.

earthtomummy · 07/04/2006 20:13

.. forgot to add, all of Henry James. Or should I be persuaded to try again??

moondog · 07/04/2006 22:32

Earth,but you did finish W&P right??
Hats off to you!

I did a few Russian classics when we lived there (something so dramatic about reading Eugene Onegin when it was -25 and snowing heavily)but W&P as yet untouched.
Blush

(Russians were so gloriously snotty and elitist about their literature. I worked in a very good university which made it worse.One woman told me I couldn't possibly get anything out of Pushkin in English and another was adament that Shakespeare was better in Russian than English!)

Eulalia · 07/04/2006 22:37

Having difficulty wading through "Now we are six" :-)

Nightynight · 07/04/2006 22:54

Captain Correlli's Mandarin is the worst written book I have been conned into buying in a long while. It really does not deserve all the extravagant praise heaped upon it by the British establishement.

Mill on the Floss is a good book though. Tom turns out good in the end, and Maggie is an idiot imo...

Middlemarch is fab. And I like Dickens.

moondog · 07/04/2006 22:55

I think Bridges of Madison County was the CCM of the 80s.