Classics you couldn't finish

[Tambatamba]

For me, Dracula. As compelling as it was, I had to stop reading it because I found it so sad and depressing.

Middlemarch. I feel like I need to finish it just not to be a cliché but I started it 18 years ago and not finished yet...

So many!

I did English at Oxford but switched to the Course 2 stream (old and middle English) because I couldn't stand the tedious classic novels.

Oh god so many! 2 that stick out
Out of Africa
Catch 22

David Copperfield. And some other Dickens that I can’t remember. Really don’t get on with him!

I can’t read Dickens- I find him verbose- same for Tolkien . Can’t stand George Elliott either.

Anything by Trollope. I have several literature degrees and sailed though lengthy novels considered challenging (Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, Gravity’s Rainbow, late Henry James, Faulkner, Proust), but Trollope isn’t for me.

War and peace!

100 Years of Solitude.
Catch 22 also!
Catcher In The Rye.

I recently tried to re-read Wuthering Heights (I pick it up every 5 years or so) , but couldn't get past chapter 3. Very much a young person's book!

As I've got older, I've got less patience, whatever the book. In the past I'd stick with it out of respect for the author and a sense of accomplishment/bloody mindedness; now I'll just yeet it. Life's too short!

• one I can't remember the title or author. Title is a woman's name, author also wrote The Mayor of Caasterbridge - I've woken up with a blank head!! Anyway, that book grrrrrr

Tess of the D'Urbervilles - thanks, google.

That shite, hated it, didn't finish.

100 Years of Solitude

Dubliners by James Joyce

I can't stand anything by the Brontes.
Tried and failed to read them several times.

Tale of Two Cities. I've tried & tried & tried but it just doesn't 'grab' me & make me want to read it.

Dracula because I get too scared...

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. I know the whole point of it is that it is infuriatingly digressive and slow, but FFS it was so infuriatingly digressive and slow!!

There are a couble of classics that I just know I wouldn't be able to finish so I have never even started them - Ulysses (Joyce not Homer) and Remembrance of Things Past. But the ones that I do start I tend to finish. Several of the books mentioned on this thread (esp Middlemarch and anything by Dickens and Charlotte B) are chocolate bars for me (one square and you have to finish the whole thing)

Oh, bloody Wilkie Collins. I did finish one or two books by him but by the time I got to the second halves I was just hanging in there for the sake of getting the answer to the mystery and I wasn't enjoying the journey at all. He is like those over-long box set series that you gallop through for the sake of a satisfying resolution and then find that the ending is weak cos the makers' real concern was to keep you clicking on a million episodes.

I studied Eng. Lit. at uni and also can't get along with Dickens. Far too bloody verbose for my liking.

We had Our Mutual Friend to read and none of us could get through it. So we tried to watch it instead. Also a hard no! 🤣

For those who find Dickens too verbose, I'd recommend giving the audio books ago. There are quite a few unabridged novels read by Martin Jarvis and he really brings them alive.

An audio book is the only way I could complete Middlemarch. I think Juliet Stevenson narrated that one. I'm pretty sure I would have given up if I'd been trying to read it.

The modern classic that I've given up on a few times is Gormenghast. Maybe I should see if there's an audio book of it.

I love Hardy though and have read and reread Tess of the Durbevilles.

'Why use one word when you can use 200?' is what I always say about Dickens. So tediously dull.

Anna Karenina

I generally get on well with most of the classics and love Dickens, Trollope etc.

But I will never, ever get the time back I wasted on ploughing through the turgid pile of crap that is Moby Dick.

Catch 22. Pages and pages and pages with zero plot development.

Lorna Doone. I seem to remember a lot of dialect that annoyed me.

Yeah- when I look at the classic authors I just can’t read- the common factor is the verbosity. Gormengast is the same. Rambling descriptions aren’t my thing.

Another Trollope refusenik here, although the Radio 4 adaptations are great.

Proust. Just no. No no non. Also Moby Dick, Ulysses.

Love Middlemarch (it's epic!), Dracula. Had to be in my late 20s to click with Dickens so love Bleak House, Great Expectations. Not read all of them tho. And now can't read his books without remembering how he mistreated his wife.