Which classic author or book can you not stand, and why?

[Caligulights]

Following on from what your favourite book is, who or what do you find unreadable?

Mine are DH Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway - turgid, turgid, turgid, and I've never been fond of the Brontes who strike me as depressing - the only one I like is Anne. I've always hated Charlotte since I found out she dissed Pride and Prejudice and since I tried to read Villette and failed.

but dino, how can anyone fail to love a book featuring a character called Titty?

Does it really, Spacemonkey? What does it mean in Russian?

not in crime and punishment!

defo agree with Mill on the Floss. lots of gratuitous Tom baiting defenceless animals scenes/being nasty to Maggie scenes. none of our book group managed to get past page 150 it was that tedious.

don't mind Henry James tho.

I know really spacemonkey, that was just my sad attempt at humour...

I shall slink off back to my DSs now...

Has no-one really not mentioned Trollope - can't believe it!

Madame Bovary is one of my favourite books!

oh! I thought you were referring to Titty Titanovich

PMSL spacedonkeymonkey....

sorry for not picking up on the irony dino

Dickens! God!

Austin, I just want to yell 'Get on with it!' Loudly.

Kids books, never got into Swallows and Amazons or Wind in the Willows.

pollyanna!

Yes, I thought the Wind in the Willows was a tad overrated...

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I really detest DH Lawrence - all that bloody earthiness and fecundity....just cannot bear him, and I think his poetry stinks too. Sorry!

Whoever it was that wrote Howard's End. Just wrist-slashingly boring. Film was just as bad. Flatly refused to do it for my English A Level, and plumped for Anthony Trollope instead. And I got to within 50 pages of the end of Middlemarch and gave up. Realised that reading was supposed to be FUN!

Howard's End was E M Forster - very overrated.

Can't stand Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, Wilkie Collins The Woman in White and (sorry, ks) Madame Bovary. I also detest D H Lawrence and Jane Austen - I know she's supposed to be lively and ironic but I'm sorry, she just bores me rigid.

I do like Hardy though ...

JoolsTide! ???? Am spluttering over my porridge, Mockingbird is my fave!

MariNativity play, LOL! Thought for a second you were dissing the lovely CSL, laughing out loud about elves!

Already been said - Dickins, James Joyce = Zzzzzz.

Oh and Phillip Pullman - couldn't have cared less about what happened to Lyra by the third book.

I can't understand anyone who doesn't adore Jane Austen. Unless they read Mansfield Park first!

No, I started with Pride and Prejudice, and I'm afraid I couldn't see what all the fuss was about ... I thought it was dry and dull, lacking in spark and humour.

yep agree about EM Forster. Passage to India - good. Maurice good. but Room with a View - romantic slush. and after seeing Howards End on TV, really couldn't face up to trying to read it

Moby Dick. was supposed to do it at college but couldn't get past the first couple of pages.

On the other hand my favourite book is Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. Does that qualify as a classic yet

ooh loved the Fatal Englishman by Sebastian Faulkes, but couldn't get on with Charlotte Grey (which I think a lot of MNetters love!). Just felt she was a bit of a wet lettuce, trailing over occupied france with her main motivation being to find her fella, rather than patriotism. felt it was a bit of an insult to the real life SOE women.

WWB - dry and lacking in humour??! Irony is the key with Jane Austen. She does not provide a punch-line, but lets the reader smirk at the character, which is really clever IMO. Gosh, I'm flabbergasted, but horses for courses and all that.