The best way to read it is Richard Armour’s retelling in The Classics Reclassified.
A lot of it has to do with why people read. I mean, I can appreciate good writing and know it when I see it, whether it’s in the technical word choice and sentence structure, or if it’s in the evocative world building. But I don’t get any enjoyment out of it. It’s like being able to appreciate the craftsmanship in uncomfortable but good looking clothing. It looks good, and is obviously well done, but it just sucks otherwise.
Meanwhile, I absolutely LOVE books with good stories and characters, even if the writing is not technically all that fantastic. It’s like wearing cheap and ugly, but functional clothing.
The problem with “great books” is that the people who are deciding are English professors and other circle-jerking insiders, just like the same cinema dorks who choose a lot of unenjoyable movies as “great films” and shit all over good and enjoyable movies. In both cases, they have a snooty opinion of what makes a “good” book or film, and it doesn’t matter how enjoyable the book or film is.
lol what?
People who watch a lot of films, or read a lot of books, develop an enjoyment of different things – and get sick of hearing the same top-40 pop songs on every station, every day. (I’m looking at you Seasons in the sun).
I decided to read Catcher in the Rye when I was in my 50’s because we were junkers and happened to come across it.
I thought I was in for a treat.
Dear God, the only thing good about it is that it was short.
I have tried many many times to read “Infinite Jest” and I don’t think I’ve ever even made it to page 100.
I guess there are two categories of books that I am glad I have read.
- those that I enjoyed reading
- those that I didn’t enjoy reading but which imparted something that I felt was useful in terms of understanding the world, and/or which can be admired for their craftsperson-ship.
The Grapes of Wrath and Heart of Darkness and The Great Gatsby and On the Road all fall into the latter category for me.
But I enjoyed it in HS, so much I then went on to read the sequels. I re-read them recently. Faaark me that man does melancholy so well. They are so sad I can barely stand them but can’t turn away.
The one that really puzzles me is “Portnoy’s Complaint”. I’ve written about it on the Dope before but it regularly rates in the top few of “Funniest Books of All Time” lists, but I not only didn’t find it funny, I couldn’t even see what about it was supposed to be funny. In other words, it wasn’t that I didn’t find the bits that were supposed to be funny to be funny, I actually couldn’t detect any attempt at humor in it.
Analytically and based on what I’ve been told subsequently, I understand that what is funny to many is the abusive, sexually repressive, manipulative, passive-aggressive, guilt-tripping behavior of the Jewish mother to her son (the first person protagonist). Hardy har. A total knee slapper.
That’s an important point. I have a vivid visual imagination, and I always wonder why people complain about descriptions. 
Some writers can go overboard with long descriptions, and some put in pretentious ‘purple passages’, but in general a paragraph of clear description is helpful to me. It brings the scene to life in my mind.
Probably the authors who have good visual imaginations themselves write the best descriptions. I like Tolkien’s descriptions, and I don’t find them boring.
I’ve never read it, but it probably makes a big difference if you’ve actually grown up with that kind of Jewish mother, and in that kind of environment.
But perhaps some people find artistic merit entertaining, and lack of it boring?
So I’m told.
Have you ever read Look Homeward, Angel?
Nothing really happens to the protagonist and his family between the Civil War and WWI, other than they live, sometimes grow old, and die.
Why I enjoyed this book so much while I generally find Hemingway’s stuff boring is beyond me. It was one I was given to read while I was working on my graduate degree in Moscow and spending a lot of time in my dorm room. FWIW, I was also given East of Eden to read at the same time, and enjoyed it very much as well.
They were both a nice change of pace from the Travis McGee novels I had picked up along the way. 
I more or less agree with all of this. Reading Henry James’s prose is like wading through treacle - progress is possible but you can only go as fast as the medium allows you.
I’m currently struggling with a modern classic, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. I’m finding it simultaneously interesting but boring, which appears to be a not unusual reaction to the book. I think one problem might be that there is absolutely no poetry, nothing to interest the mind’s eye. It’s also very fast paced, just a bunch of stuff that happens.
Arthur Hailey was a master of that. He wouldn’t fit with the other authors mentioned in this thread, as he wrote mostly drugstore paperbacks, but oh-my-God, did that man describe. I believe that Airport and Hotel would be half their length if he didn’t put as much as he did into descriptions. Let’s just say that we did not need three pages on the backstory of the insurance agent who sold D.O. Guerrero the insurance policy in Airport.
My contribution to the thread: Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak. I was assigned this as an undergrad, and no matter how I tried, I simply could not get into it. It was … well, a joke I heard once describes it well:
– In an English novel, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy re-meets girl, boy marries girl, and they live happily ever after.
– In a French novel, boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy takes a mistress, and they all live happily ever after.
– In a Russian novel, boy meets girl, and they agonize about it for 900 pages.
I should probably say I haven’t read The Satanic Verses either, because, if pressed, I could tell you that I think there were a couple of angels in it.
That is 100% of what I recall from the work.
mmm
This discussion reminds me of a saying about chefs: They begin by learning to make stocks and sauces, then they continue on and learn to blend stocks and sauces."
So sometimes enjoyment depends upon the reader having a foundation of other works. The reader can then recognize what the author is trying to do - and especially enjoy when the author takes a theme to a new level. Or the reader can recognize that the author has created something new that others will pick up on.
Or, as mentioned about Shakespeare, at some point language moves on, and trying to read the work is like deciphering a foreign language. Here’s one right on the edge: “Summer is icumen in. Loude sing Cuckou! Groweth seed and bloweth meed. And springth the wode now. Sing Cuckou! Ewe bleteth after lamb. Loweth after calve cow. Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth. Merye sing cuckou!”
Forcing schoolkids into studying Shakespeare-as-text-only should be made some kind of war crime. They’re plays, they should be seen (or better yet, acted) before anything else. But the number of adults I know who’ve had to study a few of his plays as text in school, never saw stage versions, and grew up hating Shakespeare, way outnumber the ones who love him.
For me, it is the same as for @Gyrate - Thomas Hardy. Unlikeable characters just being shits to each other, mainly.
Oh, and D.H.Lawrence. We get it, you wanted to bang your mom, but do you have to go on so?
It’s a lot easier for modern people when it leaves out the defunct letters and spellings. “and springþ þe wde nu” is not as easy to get as “And springth the wode now” for most people, I warrant.
And you could guess the “surprise ending” by about page 20.
[offtopic]Given your avatar, I would’ve taken you for a Hemingway fan. So you’re a Yousef Karsh fan, then? Or just like the general “look” of the portrait? Just curious.[/ot]