I’ve always loved Neil Gaiman’s comics. I’m on the fence about his novels, especially the ones that (A) he did with Terry Pratchett or (B) are intended for children. There’s a great literary tradition of English writers talking down to younger readers, and he hasn’t shaken it. I kind of love American Gods, though.
Jack Kerouac’s On The Road is often listed among the great book’s of the 20th Century and I loved it when I read it in my 20s. A couple of years ago I read Scott Alexander’s Slate Star Codex review of the book. It begins:
and then gets really scathing. What is most shocking about it is that, on reflection and attempting to reread the book, it is a perfectly fair precis of the work.
But you’re not supposed to like the characters in The Great Gatsby. They’re horrible people and Fitzgerald knew it.
My list:
**Lord of the Rings. Also The Hobbit and the Silmarillion.
Game of Thrones
Heart of Darkness
Tess of the D’Urbevilles
Everything I have read by P D James
A Thousand Acres
**
I cheated when I read Moby Dick: I read Richard Armour’s retelling/skewing of it in American Lit Relit.
I’ll agree. I recently finally got around to reading On the Road, and it bothered me how these guys were having sex with women who they promised to marry, then didn’t, and all the other irresponsible things they did.
Granted, they did a lot of exploration and even some good stuff, but it was hard for me to empathasize with these lazy liars.
Don’t be silly. Chip was already considered on of the top writers in the genre when the book came out, a multiple Hugo and Nebula winner. Granted, Dhalgen is complex and doesn’t have a conventional plot and I can understand not getting it, but it was genuinely popular with readers and critics.
More votes for Catcher in the Rye and Catch 22. With Rye, I’ve been told I don’t like it because I was in my 30’s when I first read it, and had I read it in high school I would think it’s amazing. I don’t know, I remember what I was like in HS and I think I would have still thought Holden was a whiny bitch.
Also, I don’t care for Harry Potter. It’s alright, but I don’t get the huge phenomenon it has become. I was probably too old to be in it’s target market when it came out.
Well I like Catcher in the Rye. Okay, “like” isn’t the right word - the protagonist is a little shit - but I understand why it’s held in high regard in many circles.
Jane Austen, however, can suck it. Fanny Burney’s Evelina was far better than Austen’s Emma, and was written forty years earlier. Austen’s parade of stupid, simpering Regency twits all need a good slap.
And the title of this thread is…?
Yeah, I guess that’s my problem with a bunch of the ‘classics’: if there’s no character I can relate to, I’m not going to like the book.
My list includes:
Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
The Sun Also Rises
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment (though I like Dostoevsky generally)
Dune
What gets me about Catcher is all the crap I read about it before I read it, not just once but in abundant references over the decades, about how Holden Caulfield sees through the phoniness of blah blah blah. Then I read the book, and all he’s doing is calling shit ‘phony’ just because. I’d like to have words with all those people who thought that Holden saw through anything more challenging than a plate-glass window, and a very clean one at that.
Dune: has any book been stuffed with characters who took themselves (and every last little hand-signal or facial expression) as overseriously as Dune? ‘Terrible purpose,’ my ass. 
Another non-fan of Gatsby and Confederacy.
Also not a fan of Gaiman in general. And the Good Omens collaboration was just … bad.
Tom Sawyer is certainly one of Twain’s lesser works. Tom’s not a bad kid, but you know he’s going to grow up to be one of the Chamber of Commerce types in their town.
And while I love most of Huck Finn, the book really could have done without the part that involves Tom Sawyer. Reading through that part is almost painful. I plan on skipping past it when I re-read Huck Finn in the future.
I liked A Separate Peace and Lord of the Flies when I had to read them in school. I have no idea whether I’d like them now.
Which reminds me of an author that I loved in my late teens, and on reading him later, I had to wonder what had gotten into me and my friends that had us devouring his books. That would be Herman Hesse.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again : Thomas Hardy was reincarnated. He is George R R Martin. Nothing happy ever happens is the motto of both.
I’d read the (very abridged) Junior Library version when I was a kid, and loved it. And the 1970s movie version with Michael York, Oliver Reed, etc. stuck pretty close to that abridgment.
One thing about the abridged version is that, throughout, Cardinal Richelieu is the Bad Guy operating behind the scenes for nefarious purposes who we rarely see directly. When, at the end, he gives D’Artagnan his lieutenant’s commission in the Musketeers, it’s really not clear why; it’s something of an admission that he’s been outplayed by D’Artagnan, but really, just letting him go would suffice.
A few years ago, I read the unabridged version, just for fun. You see a lot more of Richelieu and are much more privy to his thoughts there, and not only does he make a lot more sense there, but his giving D’Artagnan that commission does too. The abridged version feels almost cartoonish by comparison.
I’ll second (third?) Catch-22. Found it tedious and unfunny.
I’ll also second (third?) Dune. When you have to have a glossary and a character schematic just to keep track of the plot, your book is too complicated to relax and enjoy. I worked harder at reading **Dune **than most of my assigned readings and term papers.
I like sci-fi (mostly from the “Golden Age”), and like a lot of Heinlein’s work. Back in the day it seemed that everyone and his brother was either reading or recommending Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough for Love.
TEfL–I couldn’t make it all the way through. One of the few books I’ve put down, promising myself I’d “pick it back up a little later” and never did. And don’t feel compelled to. There’s only so much kiddie-diddling I can handle.
I did manage to finish SiaSL. But it was just a bunch of hippy-dippy New Age crapola. Bleah.
Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol is marginally readable, nothing else is.
I find Terry Pratchett and George R.R. Martin boring.
Yeah, Time Enough For Love was crap from the get-go, and while I enjoyed Stranger back in the day, I’m almost afraid to re-read it: even without opening it, I can tell that it won’t have worn well.
Heinlein hasn’t aged well. Unfortunately neither has Asimov.
I’m just gonna say that Asimov sucked as a fiction writer: having read the Foundation trilogy and the I, Robot trilogy back in the day, he couldn’t create a decent character to save his life, AFAICT.
His nonfiction is quite good, though.
Given that the antagonists in the books are religious cultural conservatives who prioritize beliefs over facts and are wielding their political power, you might be surprised.
Add me to the Heinlein list. I was into science fiction when I was in high school, especially classic science fiction. Heinlein seemed like an author I should enjoy. I liked his writing style and character development well enough. But it seemed like every book I read, 3/4 of the way through the book, he just threw away the plot. I think I read four of his books and permanently gave up after that. In each one, it just seemed like he took a dump on the plot just when he should have been building towards a climax.
Also Arthur C. Clarke, although with him, I just found the novels boring and put them down after a couple of chapters.