Should I read the classics?

[Butterflyfriend]

Hello everyone.
I have to confess, I find reading Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare etc. a chore.
I have an English degree, so I can understand the language and appreciate their merit, I just feel they are mountains to climb rather than a pleasure.
Are they really worth persevering with?

[IndridCold]

I like the Brontes too, with the notable exception of Wuthering Heights. It's a blithering load of old tosh that is like a parody of itself!

[Movingonmymind]

I dont find Brontes difficult, in fact i like a challenge. But so boring, ridiculous plots. Each to their own. Love the satire and closely observed domestic world of Austen.

[QuietWhenReading]

Moving the Tennant of Wildfell Hall boring or ridiculous?! wash your mouth out!

Jane Eyre boring or ridiculous?

[Movingonmymind]

Am washing

[QuietWhenReading]

Quite right too Moving

[bigbadbarry]

Ah come on, Jane Eyre might not be boring but the telepathy bit is a bit ridiculous!

[QuietWhenReading]

How many millions of books, plays and films have some element of the supernatural in them? It's a pretty well known plot device.

Are they all 'ridiculous'? Because if so your viewing and reading is going to be severely curtailed.

[bigbadbarry]

Not all, no. Some are. I don't much like the ones, like Jane Eyre, that go along perfectly normally, have one instance of telepathic communication, then carry on as normal. But then I don't really like Jane Eyre at all. That's ok, isn't it?
I also dislike too many far-fetched coincidences in a story - and I suspect this is why I am not that keen on Dickens (although I do really like Dickens done by the BBC). Randomly bumping into people happens, sure, but not that often. Finding out people are long-lost relatives, ditto.
Sorry if that offends you

[QuietWhenReading]

bigbad oh come on, don't get huffy my post was tounge in cheek.

Yes of course you can dislike Jane Eyre if it's not your thing.

The moment that you dislike is just a plot device to give the character an excuse to return to the house of a married man who had previously threatened her virtue. The 'telepathy' bit is to make it 'okay' that she does a fairly shocking thing for the times.

Re the bumping into people coincidence - it doesn't happen much now (although we have an example in our own family) but there are 70 million people living in the UK now. The population was much less in Bronte's day. The characters are also moving in a pretty limited geographic area.


However once a again it's just a plot device. Feel free to hate it all you like.

[everydayinMK]

Funnily enough, there was a piece in The Guardian about this, this very week. Only 1% of the population has read Middlemarch. 4% have read War & Peace or Moby Dick. 21% have read Oliver Twist:

www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/jan/21/dont-read-classic-books-because-you-should-war-peace-fun

[Freya888]

Austen - yes
Brontes - yes
Dickens - yes
Eliot - yes
Gaskell - yes
Tolstoy - no

[AnneEtAramis]

Count of Monte Cristo is amazing (imo)

And IMO too. It took me a month to read, but was worth every single second.

I far preferred The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to Agnes Grey. I cannot remember anything about Agnes Grey and I only read it last year, but do think Tenant is a fantastic read.

Somebody mentioned Zola. I read The Dram Shop last year (it was obviously the year of giant books) and adored it but I love depressing books. Tess of the d'Urbervilles was great too, I am still recovering and it's been years.

I do agree that life is too short to be compelled to read anything. I won't touch science fiction because it just isn't for me.

For 20th c classics I like D H Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.