what is your 'emperor in new clothes' book?

[MuchLessTiredNow]

what have you NEVER got, although you keep being told it is a classic, etc?

I read Martin Amis the Rachel Papers and just didn't get it. I might have enjoyed it if I was a 17 year old boy

Also tried Vanity Fair recently but couldn't get into it either.

Lol @ Moondog and the made up story... who is going to break the news about the rest of fiction....?

McEwan - I did child in time for A Level and loved it, I own loads of others, but have been a bit by most of them. Enduring Love and Amsterdam are the only 2 I have gone back to - EL because I did an essay on it, and then read another book that I realised would be so much better for my comparison book (I compared novels by same author, would have been better with subject matter), so I re-read it thinking about what I could have said . Amsterdam because I can never remember how they get to the end of it and in the final situation.

I feel like I want to re-read curious incident now, when I read it we were just learning that DSis probably has AS, so it was a good learning curve.

Catcher in the rye I didn't "get" either. Assumed I was just thick (or odd, as I didn't see anything "wrong" with him much tbh). I do still wonder where the ducks do go at winter though...

Jane Austen
The Man With No Shoes (or something,can't even remember the title it was so crap) William Horton (I think lol) biography.
Philip Pullman (I tried, I wanted to, but I just couldn't)

Loved Lovely Bones and Kevin though.

Anything by Alain de Botton.

I am so glad I am not alone! I've never got the time traveller's wife either - although no-one has defended it here. I hated Catcher in the Rye too - and never finished a Prayer for Owen M either. I've never been able to take to Thomas Hardy, either.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but I really hated Brick Lane. It was just so badly written.

To the lighthouse and in fact anything by Virginia Woolf.

The Rachel Papers.

Not sure about Curious Incident of a Dog. Thought it was quite an entertaining read, but not sure it gives that much of an insight into AS.

I blinking love Catch-22 though.

Oh Botbot, I would have to disagree about Brick Lane. I thought it was sublimely well-written. There was not a word out place.

i hated brick lane,found it clunky badly written drudge.didnt enjoy

Many of those mentioned below (but not Catch 22!)

Amber Spy Glass (but I loved Northern Lights).

Middlemarch

For me it's Catcher in the Rye. Just didn't get why everyone thinks it's so good.

well i got sucked in and bought
Time Travellers Wife
lovely bones
saturday,
atonement
the secret history
any Thomas hardy book

hated them all

Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Have tried it 3 times, the last time after we'd been on holiday to Cephalonia. Nope. Still shite and pretentious.

Also bought the first book by Sandra Howard, (wife of Michael Howard. No idea how she got commissioned).

Do not bother with this woman at all. She can't write. Storyline was interesting, but written as if by a 13 year old girl. "This happened, and then she said this, and then this happened and so she said to him, and then this happened ..."

Enjoyed Labyrinth but hated Sepulchre, by Kate Mosse.

IMHO, The Curious Incident is a grossly sentimental and saccharine view of Asperger's and of autism in general. The writing is airport quality. Basically, it's mis lit. Duh.

I also don't get Wordsworth and his awful poetry about Wordsworth - can I throw in poetry, or throw it out? BOOOrrrring!

Also loathe 1984 (yawn, Stalin is no longer in power) and Brave New World (nothing dates like the future). Ditto The Handmaid's Tale (hysterical rant), and now I think about it, all of Atwood, The Color Purple, and anything at all by Maya Angelou. Ian McEwen is deadly dull and well up himself after the sickmaking but powerful Cement Garden. Amis is a ponce (pere or fils).

NB: Fanny Price isn't wimpy in Mansfield Park. She's the only character who gets EVERYTHING she sets out to get, and is happy with it. That's not wimpy. Fanny is scarily focused and subtle. Those quiet girls have waaaay more power than we think.

Hemingway is God.

Don't get the fuss about Zadie Smith either. 'On Beauty' was just a David Lodge book surely?

Oh I loved The Secret History and Vernon God Little
I didn't like Brick Lane, The Lovely Bones or The Magus.

it does make you feel funnily defensive when books you love get slated.but i feel told you so when honkers i hated get a call

Number 1 would be Time Traveller's Wife

Close runners up:
Captain Corelli
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow
Owen Meany
Tess of the whatsits
Northern Lights
Chocolat

I liked secret history, handmaids tale, shadown of the wind & the time travellers wife.

I couldn't finish...

The Catcher in the Rye, A confederacy of dunces, Pride & prejudice & especially Madam Bovary. I thought they were all really boring!!

I finished talk about kevin and the da vinci code but though the writing was pretty average - definatley did not live up to the hype.

From some time ago, but I'm ashamed to admit I didnt get Beloved - Toni Morrison. Everyone else seemed to think it was wonderful. Didnt she win a Nobel prize for it?

Wuthering Heights for sure. Glad that there are other people on here that also didn't get it. Bleurgh.