post your unpopular literature opinions?

[MrShannon385]

Curly was the best character in mice an men

I guess my (not so) unpopular opinion is that we generally shouldn't be wasting time in school with lofty classics. I think every book I read in school I hated, and then when I read as a grown up I loved. Yes, they were good, but I didn't have the experiences and mindset to get anything out of them.

I prefer Elizabeth Gaskell to Jane Austen. Austen is fun but I don't get quite why she's so feted.

‘A little Life’ is misery porn. Such a brilliant first 5 chapters and such a godawful, miserable, unable to write hope into it book for the rest. Horrible

A lot of dickens stuff was paid for by the word which explains why it’s so plodding, and I’m def with the ‘borderline unreadable’ poster! Seems to not be an unpopular opinion tho lol

I love the IDEA of Dickens but find it mostly impenetrable. Have tried to read Great Expectations many times but have always given up. And always intend to read A Christmas Carol in December and never do.
But ... I did love David Copperfield and managed to read it all the way through, many years ago. Have just picked it up again as Dickens characters came up as a question on Pointless earlier this week 🙂And I have a romantic fascination with Peggoty's boat / home on Great Yarmouth beach as come from Norfolk and long to be back there.

And, quite separately, I used to love Ruth Rendell / Barbara Vine but she was terrible at portraying working class women, and lumbered them with hideously clichéd names and ways of speaking and living.

Howard Jacobson's early books were very funny, but his more recent work is disappointing, unless you are interested in kinky sex. The Finkler Question is barely readable.

There are so many bits that just seem SO awful they actually make me laugh. The bit where Heathcliff is trying to hang a puppy??? I promise I’m not a psycho but IMO it’s up there as a gothic satire and a lot of it made me chuckle. Definitely not a love story as a PP said. I think people just find it impossible to imagine a Brontë girl being funny.

I agree about Zadie Smith. I did not enjoy her books at all (tried one more after White Teeth - should not have bothered). Meandering, muddled and boring. She had obviously done a lot of historical/cultural research and I became convinced that that, and her youth, has resulted in the awards overlooking the crap story and writing. Or maybe I'm just thick and didn't get it.

I was also really disappointed with Toni Morrison. I was really looking forward to reading Beloved as it sounded like just my sort of thing. But I couldn't make head nor tail of it.

My favourite Jane Austen character is Fanny Price. No one agrees with me on that. Usual consensus is that she is quiet and boring. I thought it was great to have a quiet heroine for a change!

Yes, I should have added him in to the trilogy of McEwan and Barnes — I suspect they’re actually the same person at times.

The Goldfinch was Donna Tartt's worst book by a country mile. I had to force myself through it and I love the others.

Martin Amis is basically unreadable.

Georgette Heyer is better than Jane Austen (who i love)

Too many celebs "write" fiction. Which for the most part is bloody awful..inc Dawn French and ruth Jones. This especially true of children's books at the moment

I think Milton is a bit light-weight.

JK Rowling is a terrible writer of adults books.
Two dimensional, 'perfect example' type characters, predictable story-lines, manufactured drama.

I LOVE the bones of her as a person but she can't write adult books for shit.

I have a lovely fridge magnet with a picture of Dickens on it & a quote from Dickens:

"There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best part".

Sums him up for me!

THANK YOU for saying this about Beloved. I kept seeing it on lists like "Top books of all time" and "Books you have to read before you die".

So I bought it and had really high expectations. I didn't have a fucking clue what it was about or what was happening. I couldn't decipher any kind of narrative or character development. It was just words on a page. I might as well have been reading a phone book.

I've been reluctant to buy any more TM books because of this.

I agree about Jilly Cooper’s descriptions of the countryside. They are beautiful.

I did like Birdsong, but OMG the depiction of the female characters. The bit where Elizabeth is getting ready to go out, including where “she checked her appearance in a mirror” left me seething.

@Hollyhead thank you, on behalf of children’s authors everywhere. I’m guessing they are ghostwritten, but that doesn’t excuse their awfulness.

Oh Beloved is brilliant. But I think studying it actually helped as I doubt I’d have got far enough into it to enjoy it otherwise.

Yes. People grousing about it not being romantic have just picked up a common misperception the novel isn’t to blame for. EB never intended it as a romance. I imagine she’d think people were on glue. It’s a locally-set take on her own roleplay universe that she had with Anne where they wrote stories about the characters, and poems from their pov. She just set it in Yorkshire rather than Gondal, her imaginary world, which is all feuds, deathbed curses, doomed love affairs between Gothic villains and imperious queens, battles, imprisonment etc.

The often praised (but only on MN!) Cazalet Chronicle books are absolutely crap!

And Patrick Gale. Sweet as he appears to be irl, he is so terrified of female sexuality all his female characters are frigid or nymphomaniacs. None have a healthy, positive, robust attitude to desire and sex.

that makes sense then, making a few of us at a time act it out in class wasn't just for the humour and why we enjoyed it so much

That people read literary fiction because it makes them feel clever - but most lit fic is just big word salad.

That TV/Film writing is lesser form of art than "real" books - I don't think people are truly aware of the skill in writing for the screen - let alone the creative skill that goes into filming a production (from writing, to sets, to costumes, etc.)

Exactly right, @StrangePaintName .
They all had a rich and vivid inner life, and probably maladaptive daydreaming.
I think WH is a great book, but it's not at all straightforward.

All non-rhyming and high-brow poetry is shit.

It's basically the kernel of an idea for a novel that the writer didn't have the time, energy or (most likely) talent to actually turn into a novel so just wrote a few lines and then gave up.

Give me a good limerick any day.
There once was a man called Rick.....

Too true, see Richard Osman.
Really lovely man, terrible books, imo.