Which books or authors do you know you *ought* to like, but just can't?

[Cosmosis]

I find both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights almost unreadable, and yet I know many people who love them both. It's not a Bronte thing I don't think, as I loved Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Also, other than Hard Times and Great Expectations, I really can't read Dickens.

One Hundred Years of Solitude. I find Magical Realism mildly irritatingl

I have tried very very hard to read Wuthering Heights, but can't.

Ulysses, James Joyce.
Makes me realise what it must be like to be 10 years old with the wrong book during a silent reading session.

McMummy I finished it, but only out of duty!

infin, I've never attempted Ulysses!

I can't remember if I finished OHYS or not, I know I did't finish Love in the time of Cholera and I get them muddled.

I hate not finishing a book, it upsets me.

I couldn't get along with Catch 22.

I finally finished Jane Eyre this year

I have tried to read midnights children on several occasions (Salman Rushdie), and it seems that the story could be great and worth the effort, but I just don't enjoy his writing style.

Catch 22 - urgh. Had tried to read it sooo many times, finally got through it during the two last overdue weeks of pregnancy. Wish I hadn't bothered. Ditto Midnight's Children by Rushdie.

Anything with a bonnet overload.

Cold Comfort Farm. Meh.

Don't much like Magic Realism either. It's just Harry Potter pretending to be Lit-rich-er.

Wuthering Heights here too (love novels by Anne and Charlotte Bronte though)
Catcher in the Rye
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow
Captain Corelli
Brave New World
Suitable Boy

Loved Jane Eyre but couldn't get on with Wuthering Heights at all,

Got to about page 50 of Ulysses.

Read and liked Crime and Punishment but couldn't finish Notes From Underground.

Anything by Hemingway, too. I don't know what it is. I just don't like his style, too masculine and curt?

Message withdrawn

Hate Martin Amis
Hate Trollope
Hated Hundred Years of Solitude
Hated The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I'm sure there's lots more but I am not a fast reader so have stopped ploughing through books I just don't like.

The English Patient. Bleargh.

Third for midnight's children. And portait of the artisit as a young man.

Toni Morrison, Beloved and The Bluest Eye. I can't find a reason not to like them, just can't get into her style.

I took Ulysses on a three week interrailing holiday aged 19. Nothing else to read - I ended up virtually learning the Thomas Cook international railway timetable by heart I was so bored.

Since then it has been Jilly Cooper all the way for me

Anything on the Booker Prize list is virtually guaranteed to fall into this category - books you are being forced to like. Hate them all.

CANNOT understand Cormac McCarthy although for some reason terrifying "The Road" is easy perhaps because it is futuristic? Hate Ondaatje too.
Love all the things the rest of you hate though!!!Suitable Boy I thought just dull but pleasant.

kathy i am with you on the toni morrison thing, i tried v. hard as an earnest youth but now i realise i just don't like her books.

Also completely stumped by Brothers Karamazov and the Idiot - the Russian names were enough to defeat me, though remember reading C & P happily enough at 20 whilst interailing.

Loved TM but then suddenly got fed up with her after no 4. Often re-read Beloved.

Pride And Prejudice. I can't get past the first few chapters.

I loved The English Patient, though ''penis like a sleeping seahorse'' did make me think WTH?

With you on Jane Austen thunderduck.

Just can't be bothered with all that husband-huntin'. It's just the same story over and over.

Though must disagree on:
Catch-22
Dickens
Toni Morrison
100 Years of Solitude (though struggled big time with No One Writes To The Colonel - all those interminable sentences make for v poor bedtime reading)

Lord of th Rings. I just can't do it to myself. Catch 22 as well, and I have tried about 10 times with that one.
Love Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights though.