I happen to not like certain classical books, or ones seemingly so. Most around me think that the books are either ok or they are great. Some instances are The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, and The Giver (Not a classic, but i had to read it amonst other classics for some unknown reason) The reasons i didn’t like them are because they tended to be quite depressing and, in TGG’s case, excessively boring. Mice and Men was ok, but i hated the ending. Another dislike is The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, mainly because all the characters do is drink and complain about their love lives, all while going to this rodeo. And yes, i know WHY some people like it, i just don’t understand.
What are some ‘classic’ dislikes and why?
Catcher In The Rye sucks, Holden Caulfield is a moron. Dickens is long-winded, overly pedantic, and generally boring.
Anything by Thomas Hardy. Depressing stuff.
Silas Marner. Christ on a pogostick, that was an awful book.
Charles Dickens. Everything but A Christmas Carol. I loved that one.
And what sturmehauke said.
Would Pynchon count? I keep trying to read his books, but too many of my brain cells die and I have to stop.
Just about anything written before 1920. Page long sentences that you can’t remember the start of when they end. God Moby Dick has a chapter about “white”.
Preach it. Although I do like A Christmas Carol.
I would also add that I found All’s Quiet on the Western Front too depressing, hated Grapes of Wrath, and was bored silly by Tolstoy and would rather do any number of unpleasant things than read Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre ever, ever again.
I didn’t like Catcher in the Rye either.
And I HATED The Scarlett Letter. I could barely read two sentences at a time before falling asleep. Of course, a single Nathaniel Hawthorne sentence could span two pages.
Johnny Got His Gun, I despise.
I didn’t like The Great Gatsby or Catcher In The Rye either. I think I felt more let down by Catcher, though. I’m not sure what I expected to get out of it, but I expected something.
Beating those two out easily though IMHO, is The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. There were points when I became so utterly frustrated with Hugo’s description of architecture, I actually became physically overheated (and not in a good way). Sort of a “No, not again! please just tell the damn story, fer cryin’ out loud!” I don’t have a problem with interesting architecture, just not pages and pages of descriptives about a freakin’ wall and arch and then the wall on the other side of the arch. It was awful. I kept thinking maybe I should have just rented the Disney version. I can’t even say it was worth the read, since there was pretty much only one small part of the book I enjoyed, and apparently this is included in the Disney version. Aieee!
I just read this on preview, and feel I haven’t thoroughly conveyed the amount of pages of architectural descriptions. It felt like roughly half of the book. I personally love Dickens and if you find his descriptiveness tedious, I tell you it pales in comparison.
*The Red *freakin’Badge of Courage. I hated the main character (what a pansy), and the pace just draaaaggged…
Ditto on Catcher
Is there an amount of pedantic that you find fascinating? (Sorry, couldn’t resist)
And I’m sorry, but has anyone actually managed to really * read * “On the Road”? Cuz I sure can’t slog through it.
MiddlefuckingMarch
And anything by Charles Dickens
Yep. Really disliked it the first them I had to read it (HS jr. year), actually enjoyed it the next time I had to read it (college jr. year).
But I continue to hate Catcher in the Rye, The Red Badge of Courage and I hated Tom Sawyer as well as Huckleberry Finn…there was no real reason for me to hate the last two, but I sure despised them.
So many people told me Catcher in the Rye was a great American Classic. Like many of you, I found it incredibly boring and pointless.
I have to echo: I loathe Charles Dickens, particularly Great Expectations.
Pride and Pejudice – I had to force my way through it.
A Separate Peace – this one has come up in a couple of threads, so I know there are plenty of like-minded folks out there. I had to read this one twice in school.
The Beast in the Jungle – I really hate all the Henry James I’ve had to read, but this on is the worst. It’s book where nothing happens, and the whole point of it is that nothing happens. But it takes so damned long not to happen. James’ pages-long sentences don’t make this any more readable.
I’ll agree that Dickens can be dreadful. I love A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities, but the title of Hard Times is only too appropriate, I hated all his other “Christmas books” (He wrote four more after “A Christmas Carol”. There’s a reason you probably haven’t heard of them). And I cannot understand how a book as tedious as The Pickwick Papers “made” his reputation.
And for something a little more modern, after the noise about Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, I bought a copy and found it unreadable.
Most of the “comic relief” sections of all of Shakespeare’s plays. The comedy is absolutely incomprehensible. Painfully unfunny. I guess a lot of it is due to context - we just don’t know the “in-jokes” that Elizabethans would find funny.
I can’t believe the vitriol here aimed at Dickens. He’s one of my favorites, especially Tale of Two Cities.
I hated:
Catcher in the Rye. I didn’t read this until I was an adult, which may be why all I wanted to do was slap Holden around.
Lord of the Flies Just depressing.
Anything by Nathaniel Hawthorne. And I couldn’t get through Moby Dick either.