Great/classic novels you just don't like

[Thurlow]

Cloud Atlas (what prompted me to start this thread) - lesser than the sum of its part. It's all very clever and a very impressive exercise in writing and authorial(sp?) skill, but none of that makes for an enjoyable read. Too stop start, didn't like some of the stories, didn't feel the stories connected enough to make it feel like they deserved to be all wrapped up together. Emporer's New Clothes.

The Great Gatsby - too deliberate, too studied. I felt like Fitzgerald had written and rewritten and rewritten again every single word on the page, and so the story lost any sense of urgency or liveliness. It left me feeling very cold, which did annoy me as the bones of the story were really interesting.

Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist and The Life of Pi - couldn't read more than 2 pages of either of them, just hated them on sight.

Anything by Dickens - I just can't get into him . Ditto anything by DH Lawrence.

I was lucky to have a truly inspirational English teacher, I still love Shakespeare and the theatre in general because of him BUT we never read or studied novels in class. He regarded them as a second rate form of literature, behind plays, poetry and especially short stories. He also didn't like "old stuff" so we never studied anything pre WW1. I had to discover the classics for myself and now love many of them, but what he did impart was a love of literature in general. Watching my dd trudge through Jane Eyre last year made me very glad not to have done the same.

Having looked at the OP again I also hated Life of Pi (saw the film and felt it would have been improved if the tiger had not been an allegory and had eaten the boy in the first half hour). I enjoyed the Alchemist though.

Wuthering Heights is at the top of my list as well. It's a steaming pile of melodramatic wank

The style Wolf Hall was written in just made me cross and you could tell Mantell had a huge crush on Thomas Cromwell which just made me want to boak. I didn't finish it.

On the Road- v boring but at least short.

I enjoyed Gatsby at 17 but hated it when I reread it again at 40.

Le Grand Meaulnes - a love a bit of French literature but this was just really really boring.

Sometimes I think I'm too much of a cynic to enjoy a lot of books. I'm not sure I have a romantic soul.

I agree with audio books often being better than reading the thing. I hate Dickens because the sentences are so tediously long I've lost the will to live by the end of them. However I do enjoy them on an audiobook.

evilgiraffe Of course, minor early morning brain blip! I think I always lump them together as O Level English lit killed these books for me

I was once in a Post-Modern, post-feminist production of the Duchess of Malfi, set to trance music (outs self to anyone who might know me!)

Lord of the rings. Could Frodo be any more wet and annoying and just in need of killing off.!!

Oh yes I forgot bore of the rings.

I liked wolf hall though! yay! we found one! lol

I didn't finish wolf hall either, tho dh loved it. Also find dickens tedious yet enjoyed similar (Balzac, Zola, Flaubert) at uni

Interesting to compare this with the "5 books everyone should read " thread!

Don't like Dickens - all those idiotic names.
But my recent most not liked book is Never Let Me Go. Honestly,I can feel my blood pressure going up just thinking about it - what was the point? So gloomy and uninspiring - and it doesn't make any kind of sense as an alternative world.Bah.

The Great Gatsby bored me. 1984 depressed me.

(whispers in case i get hurt for saying this) - Rebecca. hate hate hate it - pointless little drip of a girl.
(runs away)

Ooh, glad some people agree with me on David Copperfield - all you Dickens-haters, just give it a go, honest - it's quite good and then you can say you've read Dickens and don't have to bother with the tedious ones

Personally, War and Peace and Anna Karenina - too long, too complicated - I read all the words but haven't got a clue what actually happened. And On The Road and Cloud Atlas as well - I just haven't got the energy for "clever" books any more.

There must be others. I'm a glutton for reading books just so I can say I've read them but then most of the time find I don't actually enjoy them. But there are enough nice surprises in there (and yes, David Copperfield is one of them!) that I keep going.

And eggy DH would agree with you on Rebecca. He's been not reading it for about a year now after I said how good it was. I need to read it again, am worried I read a different book to everyone else

Tolkein - No female characters so I just lost interest

Dear GOD! Joseph Conrad!!! A friend once gave me one of his books to read. I simply couldn't finish it. When I gave it back, he asked what happened because he couldn't get to the end and hoped I would instead.

Anything by Phillip Roth. The man can't write a decent female character for toffee. They are just all male fantasies. The same goes for Martin Amis and many of the other celebrated male novelists.

D.H. Lawrence's entire back catalogue is nothing more than an extended compendium of penis metaphors.

Dracula.

I know, I know, I'm a horror loving goth and I don't like Dracula. :(

So glad to find other Great Gatsby-haters. I just can't seem to get the point of it. I'm missing something, but what?

I liked Foucault's Pendulum, but could only get through The Name of the Rose by skipping vast sections, and have just given up on any of Eco's other stuff.

Like Jane Austen though, and really admired Middlemarch though I can't imagine tackling it again. Have never ventured on any of the Great Russians. They intimidate me.

I think many books appeal more to either men or women.

I'm surprised how many of you dislike a book because you don't empathise with the characters. You don't need to, surely, to enjoy it.

Also, what happened to historical context? What seems real for one generation or period of history might not for another, but it doesn't make it boring per de.

That said, Horatio's post made me laugh out loud on the train.

Per se

The "big Russians", by which I assume you mean the C19 novels like War and Peace, and ditto the French equivalents such as Les Miserables, are perfectly readable if you give yourself permission to skip the long essays and concentrate on the action/dialogue. It reduces the length of each book by at least a third and keeps things moving.

Works for Tolkien and Rowling too.

And it means they make great films, because a filmmaker can reduce all that flannel to a thirty-second background scene, or just pass it off to the set designers, props people, location scouts, wardrobe, etc. Picture tells a thousand words and all that.

I was once in a Post-Modern, post-feminist production of the Duchess of Malfi, set to trance music (outs self to anyone who might know me!)

Was it filmed? Because I really, really have to see that!

I love William Golding. All of it, even Pincher Martin.

Martin Amis is unreadable to most women, surely? Utter tit.

D.H. Lawrence is awful, incredibly tiresome, despite his talent for lyrical descriptions of nature.

Tried to read American Psycho once, failed to see any point to it at all and stopped.

Thank fuck, onefew, I thought I was the only one for a while there - sometimes not empathising with character is what makes them fascinating. A Clockwork Orange and Brighton Rock are great examples of truly wonderful characterisation, though the protagonists are terrible, terrible people.

I'm actually more drawn to books where I don't empathise with the character.

A PRAYER FOR OWEN FUCKING MEANY. Capitals deliberate. So long and tedious!

Brighton Rock is brilliant IMO.

Midnight's Children. Two different friends have given it to me as a present, I have tried and failed to read it at least 3 times.

Jane Eyre - drivel.

Atonement - hated everyone in the first 20 pages it.

A Suitable Boy - Three Whole Books and she chooses the wrong one!

I hated the first half of cloud atlas but loved it by the end of the second half.

I do find I have to like at least one person in a novel, unless it is either beautifully written or interestingly structured. There has to be something pulling me through the book. I guess I'm a lazy reader!

magaret drabble the waterfall

children of green knoll?

The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield needs his legs slapping, the whiny brat. Boring and forgettable.