Admit it - what's the classic book that everyone raves about but you despise?

[EverySingleStar]

I probably have more than one but The Great Gatsby is definitely up there. shudder violently Shall add more later

[CheerfulYank]

Agree with Catcher in the Rye. If I knew Holden Caulfield I would smack him and scream "get some real problems!" Other Salingers better IMO.

Also DH always wants me to read Paradise Lost. Individual passages of it are gorgeous but the whole thing, ugh.

[NicknameTaken]

I like 1984. Benefits from some judicious skimming, though.

[Carmel206]

A Handful of Dust - can't stand it.
Anything by Jean Paul Sartre and the Female Eunach - have never managed to get through the entire book

[Carmel206]

Sorry....Eunuch

[Linnet]

Pride and Prejudice, I keep trying but I get bored of it half way through.

Catch 22, had to read it for higher english,many years ago, didn't finish it and I have no inclination to even pick it up again and look at it.

Tess of the D'urbervilles was another one that I got half way through and just lost interest.

[HerBewitcheditude]

OMG has this thread got this far without anyone mentioning Hemingway and DH Lawrence?

Turgid bollocks from start to finish, any book by either.

And agree with Catcher in the Rye, Ulysses and anything by Charlotte or Emily Bronte (Anne's a bit better, but only marginally).

Oh and FGS, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.

[Miggsie]

All Hemmingway.

Northanger Abbey and everything else Jane Austen wrote.

Nearly all Dickens.

Catcher in the Rye...what WAS the point?

Byron...oh, whoops, that's poetry, but hell, BYRON

[Crackopenthebaileys]

Nicknametaken I totally agree. The Book chapters ruin it entirely!

[CheerfulYank]

Really, you don't like P&P linnet? I think it's hilarious!

To each their own and whatnot though.

[MissGreatBritain]

Virginia Wolf Mrs Dalloway. I tried and tried....

As for those who can't bear "Dickens, Austen or Brontes" -you Philistines!!!! What's wrong with you people????

[jodee]

sorry, can't bear Dickens either.

as for Captain Corelli's Mandolin, drivel.

[PrincessFiorimonde]

Yes to Mrs Dalloway

And to (all mentioned previously, I think):
Ulysses
Moby Dick
Thomas Hardy novels (surely the only valid response to Jude the Obscure is to want to slit your wrists?) (I like his poetry, tho)
Midnight's Children

Also (have we had Proust?):
Swann's Way

[Bumperlicioso]

Hated Wuthering Heights, couldn't get into Vanity Fair, War and Peace (couldn't keep track of who's who), gave up on The Book Thief 2/3 of the way though, kept hoping something would happen.

Remember not being that impressed with Cold Comfort Farm when I read it for a book group. LOTR: didn't get past the first few pages. Hmmm, beginning to wonder if I might be a philistine . Didn't like Great Gatsby either.

On the other hand I really liked Middlemarch which most of you seem to hate.

Make you wonder who actually decides that these books are classics?

[GinSlinger]

Moby Dick.

And Captain Corelli

And any of that Alexander McCall Smith Detective Agency shite. (realise they're not classic but they're best sellers and someone one day may confuse popular with good)

[QuintessentialShadows]

"The God of Small things" - I know it is not a classic, but it is at least a popular book.

And my dislike for this book caused a whole group of American holiday makers to blank me for about a week!

We were in Kerala, staying at a spice plantation, when my husband got talking to this American woman. She told him the entire group had come there especially to experience the area that inspired the book. Basically, a book group on tour. My dh blurted out "oh really? You like this book? My wife absolutely hates it, she says it is soooo badly written, and she studied literature at university so I trust her judgement".

What a nimwit (my dh)

[TsarChasm]

Life of Pi - awful overcomplicated long rambly passages about animals.

Hobbit/Lord of the Rings - I was relieved when they made the films so I could see what all the fuss was about cos I found the books impenetrable. But then the films were just as bad!

At so many disliking Gatsby. I really love F Scott Fitzgerald.

[notamumyetbutoneday]

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh. Supposed to be a comedy, I didn't raise a smile until I'd finished it.

Dorian Gray- I love the premise of the story but found the language so over the top and flowery as to be unreadable.