I bet this has been done before, but what classics/modern classics have really left you baffled as to why they're so popular?

[Twinklemegan]

Brave New World for me

Wuthering Heights to an extent, though I might need to try it again

I know there are others, but can't think at the moment.

I'm with Bran on Dickens - bloody awful, the lot of them. Nothing like as good as Wilkie Collins. Brave New World also pants.

Captain corelli's mandolin

Agree with ScottishMummy about Ian McEwan. He has that self-conscious Dickensian thing going on, made worse for me because my DM thinks his stuff is great and keeps passing books on to me. On Chesil Beach has to be the dullest thing I've read in years.

that's ok scottishmummy.

ahem, it's marx - harpomanx is a mute tailless cat

Qwen Meaney, Atonement yawn yawn yawn

Dh made e read these Owen Meany I couldn;t even finish, Atonement just bored me syupid and fished without a result!!

Captain Corellis banjo mandolin

The Tenant of wildfell turgid Hall.

awwwwwwwwwww so sorry what a gaff!typing watching Dr Who on replay and Wine

I love Owen Meany

OMG! love this thread.

i can't for the life of me figure out why Catcher in the Rye was at all popular.

i also think that the reason it is connected with assasinations - is that after the assasins read the book - they were so pissed off - they shot some one

@ Custy

why still waiting WHY!!!!!!!!!????????????????????????????????????????????????????

def catcher, def lovely bones, and mos' def Anything by Martin Amis.

I don't know . I am relgious and it is the story of St. Peter and Jesus with embelishments.

hated lovely bones despite its rave reviews.still do

OH well I'm fucked then I am jewish

I managed about 30 pages before I simply gave up on that ine!!

I found the MIll On The Floss utterly turgid.

oh no i liked that first donna tartt v much. raced through it. (but as an adventure thriller rather than littyrature, iykwim?)

Donna Tartt- just so mediocre
Catcher in the Rye was zeitgeisty so it was ok than but why would anyone re-read it?

Personally I loathed Life of Pi: I hate those male books trying to be clever but never actually entertaining/ engaing you with the story.

I liked Atonement but again though it very male: no woman would actually have let things go on so long (even though sha was a woman) ie "rape' victim would have sorte dout sister much earlier on. It's one of those overwritten stories like any John Irving stuff.

But I love Middlemarch

Loved the first Donna Tartt, but agree re: Catcher in the Rye. Just Grow Up. Really irritating, and nothing like as good as the fab Franny and Zooey, obv.
Also hate Catch 22. Think they are boy books

I know it is not a classic but very popular and I just found it so clunky (sp?) - The Island by Victoria Hislop.

Also after Bleak House was on the TV I really tried to get into Charles Dickens and failed miserably. Too complex for my weary brain .

Trollope - barchester towers yeuch
Salman Rushdie
The Kite Runner - formulaic
Iain Banks - other than The Wasp Factory