post your unpopular literature opinions?

[MrShannon385]

Curly was the best character in mice an men

Shantaram was 500 pages of self-indulgent humble brag from a ex con turned white saviour.

Jeffery Archer writes a bloody good story.

Roald Dahl books are just wierd and not in a good way

Madame Bovary was funny.

Common phrase or Rivers of London fan?

it originates by Douglas Adams. I believe Aaranovich is a fan

Shakespeare is totally an emperors new clothes situation.

People say they love it to seem intelligent and cultured.

It is just unnecessary drivel.

There are far more interesting books to force our children to read.

Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan have been writing the same identikit middle-aged white-guy borefests for decades.

PG Wodehouse isn’t funny.

Reading Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels is like being hit repeatedly on the head with a spoon.

Seconded. Or thirded, or however many people agreed. First year Eng Lit was instant Dickens aversion therapy for me.

Jerome K Jerome in Three Men In A Boat tries too hard to be funny and fails.

Middlemarch is too long - decent editor needed to make it less wordy.

I've never read Catcher In The Rye, Catch 22 any JKR or Anne Frank's Diary and have no intention of doing so.

I don't believe in any of McEwan's characters, particularly the women. See also Sebastian Faulks.

Wuthering Heights is better than Jane Eyre.

Absolutely this!

Stephen King stopped writing decent books 30 years ago. His descriptions of women and girls are increasingly creepy.

Shakespeare is wonderful.

P.G. Wodehouse is very funny.

I was really surprised how derivative and badly written Harry Potter is.

Haruki Murakami writes drivel, but the western world laps it up because he is Japanese and therefore exotic and a bit mysterious.

Tolkien is unreadable except by teenagers.

Neil Gaiman is boring and derivative.

They were never on library shelves as considered low brow drivel.....

War and Peace is an endurance test.

I think it depends on the English Lit teacher, I really enjoyed twelfth night, midsummers night dream- but our teacher was amazing and brought it to life with participation.

Most literature is a biological drive and when fertility/virility finishes, it is not fit for purpose. Poetry especially shows this. Most poets would admit to this little known fact.

Shakespeare is meant to be watched, as Chaucer is meant to be listened to - not read in class.

Thomas Wyatt's poems are incomprehensible. They are coded messages about love affairs, court intrigues and political incidents and so context dependent as to be meaningless 400+ years later.

Top tip: I never read a book that's won an award. Learned after being stung by White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Beautifully written I grant you but the characters were without exception unlikeable and by the end I felt I was in purgatory.* *

Most ‘high brow’ booker prize winners are dreary and hard work.

A crime thriller or a Dan Brown is a much more enjoyable experience

Agreed.