what is your 'emperor in new clothes' book?

[MuchLessTiredNow]

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

Wuthering Heights is one of the best novels ever!!!

The memory keeper's daughter. boring. And anything by anita shreve. hate her constant use of present tense.

Raggydoll _ Pride And Prejudice? Boring? Are we talking about the same book?!

Prayer for Owen Meany - couldn't finish it and am currently struggling with 'talk about Kevin. Did like curious incident tho - probably 'cos it was a bit unusual. I don't have enough hours it the day to persevere with boring books regardless of how 'classic' they are meant to be!

the twist at the end of we need to talk about kevin is worth the whole book, I think - although I remember ploughing through it cursing....

mmm - margaret atwood - loved 'Cat's Eye and 'Robber bride' but could not stomach anything else - ESP the handmaid's tale and edible woman

I'll keep going with it then! ta

Janeite- you're going to lurve visiting my house- bookshelf opposite front door has 'Jonathan Strange...' and Ian McEwan all over it! In my defence I haven't even started jonathan strange yet

For me- Captain Corellis- don't think I even got beyond first 3 pages, and I loved all his other books (crazy South American ones)
Dune- Yawn more like
Alchemist- pile of toss.
Paul Auster annoys the hell out of me
MArtin AMis.... Oh- losing the will to live- I'm so special, I'm in everyone of my books!

Midnight's Children. Thought that was like ploughing through treacle.
Uylesses by James Joyce. Gave up on that one.

Sad to see: Catch 22, Cather in the Rye (read that solid in a few hours without a break) Love in the Time of Cholera, Secret History, Time Travellers Wife, Perfume on people's lists here. I loved all of those.

Da Vimci Code is sooooo not a classic, whoever mentioned that. It is utter shite! I HATED that book with a passion.

It became a bestseller because it was peddled as though it were some modern-day classic.

Lol EachPeach. Well when you see mine, it's all Jane Austen, Bill Bryson and poetry. I hide all the Stephen King books in the pantry on the orders of dp!

Strange how I completely agree and disagree with so many people at the same time!

I could diveide whatamess's list into those I love and hat!

A room with a view
Jodi Picoult
the divinci code
Anything by Martin Amis
Emma, (zzz)
The catcher in the rye
Chocolat
The Thorn Birds
Bridget Jones diary
The ALchemist

I adored miss Similas feeling

Northern Lights is for 12year olds (or less)

Da Vinci Code is trash

Wordsworth - well at A level my essay said "Wordsworth has taken 18 lines to say a lantern was hanging outside a cottage door; this strikes me as self indulgent." (I also accused several philosophers of intellectual masturbation in my 1st yr phil exam at Uni - obviously a habit.)

Bonfire of the Vanities was nothing special.

If anyone's interested about a good novel about autism, try Elizabeth Moon's The Speed of Dark.

Miss Smilla was quite good.

That author's new book "The Quiet Girl" is the biggest pile of poop I have ever seen wrapped in paper.

Miss Smilla was good but I did feel that he couldn't pull off writing as a woman. JMO.

Anything by Martin Amis, esp anything with a photo of him on the back sitting in a cafe with his large, oh so cerebral forehead, looking pensive and writerly.

Pretentious prick.

Possesion by A.S Byatt It the type of book I should love literary, Victorians, big heavy novel, library but for some reason I just cant get into it and didn't particularly like the characters., I've tried sooo many times that I've given up.

I've never gotten Isabel Allende either.

Wuthering Heights I always found to be a book about madness. I never understood the classification as a romantic novel.

Harry Potter, especially (but not exclusively) the ridiculously fat and poorly edited middle books.

I've never been a fan of the Brontes or Jane Austin, and I find Dickens both long winded and with a tendency to saccharin. It is quite possible that I dislike them because of being forced to read them at school though.

Owen Meany is one of my all time favourites, I have read it several times and it feels more powerful each time.

LOTRs is, I think boring. I remember enjoying it the first time (when I was about 12ish) but the character development is too shallow for me. I do quite like the films though - Viggo ticks quite a few of my buttons , and I am a bit sci-fi fantasy fan in general.

Really enjoyed Lovely Bones, and the Curious Incident (I do have a nephew with Aspie type behaviour though, which might make it more poignant). Catch 22 was good, but I can't remember much about it, and I really like distopias/utopias, so enjoyed 1984 ands Brave New World, these books tell you more about thinking at the time than the future, so dating isn't a problem IMO.

I think Salman Rushdie tries to hard - I read and critiqued The Satanic Verse at university, and found it pretentious, but I have heard his children's literature is better.

Oh, and my parents had On Chesil Beach, when I last saw them, and I thought it very lightweight and one sided.

cote ! Someone who has read 'the quiet girl'!....
I kept reading, hoping, wanting to know what the big secret was.... but it was so disappointing. I love all his other books- have them all, and I so wanted to love this, but just couldn't
Some of the ideas were great- like the way everyone has a tone or a tune that they sound like- but the execution- pah. I was just so let down by the ending- the whole book was so odd- seemed like he was trying to write a James Bond story, and a travelogue, and an eerie mystery at the same time, but decided to put them all in one book

Most of the books mentioned here aren't really classics though. They're book group books which tend to be heavily hyped and obvious.

On The Road
Lord Of The Rings
The Great Gatsby

have to agree with "on the road" and never could read "lord of the rings" past the first few pages.

all the joyce novels that i tried and failed to read weren't because they were the emperor's new clothes, just that they were too difficult for me!

really disagree that the handmaid's tale is hysterical. in fact i think it very nearly prophesied the treatment of women under the taliban. when i first saw the documentary "afghanistan unveiled", lots of elements of "the handmaid's tale" sprang to mind.