Classic or renowned novels that you didn't enjoy?

[AlpacaTheBags]

I do generally enjoy the classics and I'm trying to read more of them this year but I finally read Jane Eyre last year and I didn't particularly enjoy it.

It took me 4 attempts to get through Pride and Prejudice, though I liked it in the end but I loved Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park and had no trouble getting through them.

I struggle with Hardy and I had to give up on Tess but perhaps I just haven't found the right Hardy for me.

Which classics didn't you enjoy?

@stupiduser

The moonstone by Wilkie Collins. I had it on a school reading list whee we n I was 15. I never got through it. Awful awful stuff

Gosh! I read The Moonstone at school and was entranced. Loved the device of having each section narrated by a different first person narrator.

I've gone on to read a lot of classic Golden Age whodunnits, and that has a fair claim to be one of the first in English. Bleak House is another one. I adore that book. Dickens is one of my favourite authors, possibly uniquely on this thread!

Jane Austen is another one. When I opened Persuasion for the first time, I was entranced by Sir Walter Elliott. So many wonderful characters in Jane Austen.

Going back to whodunnits, I think I have read almost everything Agatha Christie ever wrote, many times over. She's not an author to read for the language or characterisation. It's all about the plotting for me. I also like puzzles and trivia quizzes, and I think it's all of a piece.

Middlemarch is a wonderful book. So is Daniel Deronda. I read The Mill on the Floss when I was about 17 and wasn't hugely taken with it, so have never read it again. From memory, it's a very depressing book, whereas there's more optimism in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda.

I love The Hobbit and LOTR. I haven't read all that much fantasy/sci fi but when it's good it's excellent. Discworld and A Song of Ice and Fire are marvellous. I like getting lost in a whole world like that. The nearest to disappointment I've had in that kind of stuff is The Last Battle, last book in the Chronicles of Narnia, which I loathed.

As for books I didn't get on with, I wasn't all that taken with Wolf Hall and I positively disliked The Secret History. Didn't take to Catcher on the Rye at all. I've read I Capture the Castle and can remember nothing about it at all! Never got past page 3 of Ulysses.

I suppose I should also say although I enjoy reading Dorothy L. Sayers I absolutely loathe Lord Peter Wimsey. What a pain in the neck he was. I also had a nasty suspicion that DLS was besotted with him. Harriet Vane deserved better!

It’s interesting because Harriet Vane is a bit of a proxy for DLS (and a bit of a Mary Sue too!) but there doesn’t seem to be a Wimsey in her own life story. I quite like Wimsey in some of the pre-Harriet books and in Gaudy Night but he’s fairly unbearable in some of them, and Busman’s Holiday is just embarrassing.

I have struggled with pretty much ever Booker winner. There's always something on the long list or short list that I'll love and then the winner leaves me totally cold. I wonder if it's just personal taste or if there's some kind of other agenda at play for picking the winning book.

@suckingonchillidogs

Didn't like On the Road by Kerouac or Beloved.

Loathed both of them.

@Bladedancer

Madame Bovary ;- I found Emma Bovary the most self-absorbed, irritating and entitled heroine I’ve ever come across.

Really struggled to get through Life of Pi. I did get to the end but only because I don’t like to give up on a book

You haven't met Anna Karenina then?

I read both as a teenager and thought Emma and Anna were these wonderful free spirits, stuck with their boring husbands and children. Re- read them in my 30s and thought what a pair of spoilt, selfish brats.

Love all of Hardy, read several each year. Love most of Dickens. Love all of George Eliot except Middlemarch which is far too long.

Can't be doing with Tolkien at all.

Anna Karenina is far better than War and Peace.

Moby Dick is a classic I will never reread.

@Gremlinsateit

It’s interesting because Harriet Vane is a bit of a proxy for DLS (and a bit of a Mary Sue too!) but there doesn’t seem to be a Wimsey in her own life story. I quite like Wimsey in some of the pre-Harriet books and in Gaudy Night but he’s fairly unbearable in some of them, and Busman’s Holiday is just embarrassing.

Peter drives me mad. Hence I favour Gaudy Night of all DLS’s where he just gets wheeled in to buy Harriet a dog collar and a chess set. The bit in Have His Carcase where they both go swimming and Harriet scrutinises his body and sad ‘Strips better than I expected’ cracks me up. I agree he’s cringeworthy in Busman’s Honeymoon, but that’s a pretty odd affair all round.

Despite his omnipresence, I think Murder Must Advertise is a good novel.

@ForsythiaInBloom

Wuthering Heights’ popularity has always baffled me. Confusing, repetitive plot. Overwrought characters. Everyone has the same names.

Re the names, many years ago I used to have a "counting sheep" variation for getting to sleep of putting all the births, marriages and deaths in Wuthering Heights in chronological order. It always worked but I've now long forgotten them.

I haven’t met anyone who has read On the Road and liked it.

It’s the most tedious book I’ve ever read.

Love some of the books on this thread but absolutely hated Narnia as a child and never bothered to re read as an adult.

@KimikosNightmare I love that! I’m going to try it. I have something similar where I try to remember the line of succession from queen Victoria downwards

@LawnFever

I also have the Hilary Mantel trilogy, I started on Wolf Hall as it was the first I found then couldn’t go backwards to Bringing up the Bodies.

I struggled so much with Wolf Hall, I was just so confused - I just couldn’t figure out most of the time who was saying/doing what and everyone seemed to be called Thomas

For context, I’ve got a degree in English but I just couldn’t get my head round the writing at all, but I’m clearly missing something!

I also have an English degree and struggled with it. I couldn't understand why it got such great reviews and yet I was struggling, until I looked it up. It's written in third person limited present tense (google it). Took me ages to get the hang of reading it. But loved it once I did. For what it's worth, I suspect she may have got some criticism for this, amidst the rave reviews, as she doesn't do this in Bring Up The Bodies, which is a much easier read.

@LittleDiaries

Wuthering Heights. I hated it so much.

Loved the writing but Heathcliff. How in god's name is he a heartthrob character? He's an abusive, psychopathic thundercunt. I just don't get it.

@Imissmoominmama

I haven’t met anyone who has read On the Road and liked it.

It’s the most tedious book I’ve ever read.

That's very true- regardless of sex, age, class, political leanings etc, etc.

JesusWeptLady Sun 23-Jan-22 15:48:44

I have struggled with pretty much ever Booker winner. There's always something on the long list or short list that I'll love and then the winner leaves me totally cold. I wonder if it's just personal taste or if there's some kind of other agenda at play for picking the winning book.

I have often thought the very same thing myself.
I

The great gatsby and catcher in the rye

It's written in third person limited present tense (google it)

I hate anything in the present tense. David Mitchell uses it occasionally and that's fine as he's such a good writer- but everyone else- stop it.

I haven't read Wolf Hall but I hated 8 and a half months on Gaza Street and Beyond Black

(Also I'm not a royal family fan but that comment about Kate was so spiteful)

Back on topic- any novel by D H Lawrence or Ernest Hemingway.

Every single Shakespeare play ever written.

Thomas Hardy not great either.

Sorry if you like that sort of thing.

@tullig oh yes thank you it’s Honeymoon not Holiday.

Isn’t Murder Must Advertise the one where PDBW runs about all night dressed as a sadistic Harlequin or some such?! But agree the advertising office bits are good. Maybe he’s less awful because he’s pretending to be someone else :)

@Imissmoominmama

I haven’t met anyone who has read On the Road and liked it.

It’s the most tedious book I’ve ever read.

Well this is embarrassing, but I did

Jude the Obscure because fucking hell.

@SilverRingahBells

I did Wuthering Heights for both O and A levels, so I've read it about six times, and can confidently say that I hate it.

I love Austen and a variety of Victorian novels, but have never really got on with Dickens. I actively hated Hard Times which I had to study at school because of the baffling anti-union plot.

Of course Jane Austen died 20 years before Victoria came to the throne so Napoleonic Wars was her background and she was a feminist and had a very critical and humorous eye. Compare Dickens' Tale of two Cities ( French Revolution insights, + power of love) - and wonderful! Both writers demand a lot of their readers' understanding but the rewards are huge. Also try Dickens' Little Dorrit or David Copperfield -

Had to read Mansfield Park and Heart of Darkness for either GCSE or A Level English Lit. I forget which. I hate them both. Couldn’t stand any of the characters, wasn’t interested in what happened to them.

I did enjoy Vanity Fair though.

I got half way through Little Dorrit last year (which is a feat in itself) before giving up. I hate Dickens' use of awful dialect and his sentences are insanely long.

I loved Jane eyre and sense and sensibility and all of Hardy, however.

@SkiingIsHeaven

Every single Shakespeare play ever written.

Thomas Hardy not great either.

Sorry if you like that sort of thing.

Shakespeare - 'has written better on any topic than any other writer" - try Anthony and Cleopatra for the power of love. Lear, Macbeth, History plays etc. Wonderful. 'Would you trade anything else in English History for Shakespeare?' If you have time to read anything at all, read Shakespeare. You'll be blown away. Arguably not only the best writer England has produced but the best in the world.