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.

Middlemarch. FFS Dorothea, get a grip and stop being so noble.

Lolita. Just See the current thread on Lily Allen - I'm just referencing other people's inappropriate feelings towards children/twerking and showcasing them in some detail without actually exploiting children/twerking myself.

Almost all middle aged to elderly male authors who get to populate the "Great American Novel" scene - Philip Roth, John Updike. Ditto Kingsley Amis for Britain.

Not a novel but I enjoyed all my A Level texts with the exception of Byron's Don Juan. There's a reason why nobody reads Byron any more.

Catcher in the fucking rye. What a whiny little shit.

Mansfield park. For fuck's sake, fanny, grow a pair and ride the bloody horse in a canter rather than a walk!

Can't stand Shelley.

I never liked Mansfield Park either until I saw the BBC version with Sylvestra Le Touzel (best name ever) in it. Fab.

To Kill a Mockingbird. Pretentious and dull.

Anything by DH Lawrence (except perhaps Sons and Lovers).

The Great Gatsby. Like a poster upthread, it left me cold.

Cloud Atlas. Couldn't finish it.

Lolita. Absolute tosh, wouldn't describe it as a classic actually, it's just titillation.

Not a classic, but Kingsolver's La Lacuna was probably the worst book I've ever tried to read.

However I DO like: Hardy, Austen, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Catcher in the Rye, Wolf Hall (it was okay), The 100-year-old man, Life of Pi, some of Dickens but not all :)

Wuthering Heights. Makes me feel ill. Can't even look at those moors now without feeling sick.

I am so with you OP on The Alchemist - it was like a pretty average children's story, I was lent it by someone who was all "this book will change your life" - it really didn't!

The Lord of the flies by William Golding.
It gave me nightmares.
I enjoyed The spire, though.
I couldn't read Kes by Bill Naughton because it was so sad, so cruel. It was just too close to home for me.
Moby Dick - vile. Boring. Too long.

Kes was possibly the most depressing book I have ever read.

The only people I know who like Catcher in the Rye are men who read it as teenagers. Which says a lot.

Ha, yes Thurlow ! At my reading group this afternoon, in a straw poll all the men over 40 cited catcher as their favourite book of all time. Seconded were Catch 22 and the Da Vinci Code.
The women put - Jane Eyre, Little Women and Uncle Toms Cabin as favourites.

The Da Vinci Code!

How could you ever share a book club with someone whose favourite book is The Da Vinci Code? I just can't imagine how that discussion would work.

thats what makes our discussions lively and interesting. IHad.

Shit Thurlow. That's is:

1. True
2. A bit depressing and
3. The reason I feel a bit annoyed if H mentions the book again

Give a man The Bell Jar. I bet they'll hate it in return!

I've never actually read Catcher in the Rye, it's on my stupidly long to read list.

A Confederacy of Dunces - The author's story is tragic and compelling but the book itself is just tedious and boring.

Another vote for Wuthering Heights and Catcher in the Rye - these are quintessential teenage novels. Often beloved by those who first read them as teens but loathed by those who first read them as adults.

Yes, I quite liked Catcher as a teen, but I am in no hurry to re-read it. It seems a book for the young.

The Da Vinci Code is truly awful. The plot (which was ahem, closely similar, to a non-fiction woo book about Jesus having children) is quite ingenious, but the prose style is seriously seriously bad. I read two of Dan Brown's other books in a fit of desperation at my in-laws on holiday once, when I had read all my own books. Crickey, they were dreadful.

Oh yes

• Never let me go (horrendous book)
• The Slap (who gives a f**k, all the characters were horrendous)
• The Kite Runner (tedious, obvious ending)

Older classics

• Trollope (I did try but really)

Great Expectations
Huckleberry Finn
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
Moby Dick
Any books by James Fenimore Cooper - he of 'Last of the Mohicans' fame. Dire and boring books.

HOW has no one said Catch 22 for this??!

Captain Corellis Mandolin (love the authors earlier books though)

Midnights Children

On the Road, I so wanted to love it but couldn't finish it, the films ok though.
Loved Wolf Hall and bring up the bodies, found them thoroughly absorbing, can't wait for her next one.

Cloud Atlas was interesting but why the 2 male rape scenes? Added nothing to the stories

I liked Catcher in the Rye, read it in my mid twenties. The Great Gatsby I don 't remember enough of to hate- I quite clearly remember reading it, but have no memory of the actual story or anything else about it !

EldritchCleavage. I have a VHS copy