in this thread, someone finished a Dickens book after a few attempts and it went off topic to how bad the classics are https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=872850
whats yours?
mine that i read was great expectations … there’s so much wrong in this book I could write a report in it (which I actually did )
The hardest author for me was Thomas Hardy - relentlessly dour and depressing stories, where good people get caught up in events and generally through no fault of theirs get ground down into nothing.
I also had trouble with George Eliot, but they aren’t especially depressing (as far as I can remember) just deficient in plot. I think I read Romola and Adam Bede, but i don’t remember a single thing about them.
One author that I enjoyed, somewhat surprisingly since they are somewhat stuffed with detail, are the parliamentary series by Anthony Trollope, as well as his Barchester Chronicles.
I always find Dickens entertaining, even when a trifle inexplicable. There were a lot of social ills that he exposed to popular view which it might be hard for us to understand or credit today. In any case, Great Expectations is one of my favorites and I would be interested to know what you found so wrong in it. Did you mean factually incorrect, or bad plotting, or something else?
Well, since you put quotes around ‘classic’, I’m going to stretch the interpretation to include “Catch-22”. Ugh, how I loathed that book, it was awful to try and read I had no patience for it. It was assigned for a book report, during high school. I struggled a few days, then approached the teacher and owned up about how I felt. I was clearly miserable. He didn’t miss a beat, opened his case pulled out a book right off the best sellers list, (which I can’t remember now?), and said, ‘Okay, read this instead and write a report.’ Which I did and got a good grade. I was taken aback at how instantly he was swayed and agreed. (Looking back though, I was an avid reader and a pretty good writer already, so why make a fuss, I suppose?)
Fast forward about 20 yrs, (90’s) I’m travelling through South America, English language books are hard to find and three times the cost of at home, grrr. I’ve finished the double helix book hubs brought, ugh, and have been carrying it around hoping to find a swap. We’re riding a train in Peru and a young man, fellow backpacker, comes down the aisle looking for a book swap! I’m all about it, only to be crushingly disappointed that it was, indeed, ‘Catch-22’ ! Ugh. (No, I did not swap, and I turned away so, so bummed!)
(Dickens I could read all day long, I’ve read almost all of it, some of it twice!)
Tolstoy. God. I loved Anna Karinina. But it was a slog. Forget War and Peace. I did carry it around on campus, for a year, pleasantly dog eared and post-it noted. Just to see who noticed.
Faulkner
After we slogged through a couple Steinbeck books in school, I swore I’d never go near his stuff again. A few years ago though, I thought that maybe my teenage self just couldn’t appreciate his works so I reread a few of them. Never again! I can accept that his work are a product of their time but I’ll pass.
Yes. We had to read Tess of the d’Urburvilles in high school and it was one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read.
I love to read, but it seemed like our reading lists in high school were perversely designed to turn us off literature. We also had to read McTeague, a “descent into poverty, violence and finally murder as the result of jealousy and greed” per Wiki, and Great Expectations. Now I actually like Dickens, but while this may be one of his greatest works it’s not really the best one to turn on high school students to him.
For me, the problem with Great Expectations is that it is so filled with lives that are needlessly embittered or wasted (at least for many years), like Miss Havesham, Estella, Magwitch, and even Pip. I preferred David Copperfield and Oliver Twist.
I found *Dracula *surprisingly dull.
I couldn’t get into “Catch-22” either, although maybe I didn’t give it enough of a chance.
(dons flameproof suit) I read “The Handmaid’s Tale” a couple years after it came out, and thought it was awful. I don’t care what that book’s about, it just plain old sucked.
as I said in the other thread “they didn’t have mail from Australia?” a letter would have avoided soo much drama…
not to mention the possible attempted murder of the shrew aunt by the sainted uncle joe so he can romance the other relative …
the girl who was raised to be a female misogynist being sold off like a piece of meat to a series of abusive husbands
and the hero himself decides to be slacker bribes his boss to promote his friend…
I loathe Dickens. Often good stories, but the prose is terrible.
A Christmas Carol is, for some reason, an exception, but I haven’t felt the urge to reread it.
Back in my avid read-everything days, Dickens’ Great Expectations was the one that I just could not finish.
I think I read “Catcher In the Rye” at the wrong time of my life. If I’d read it when I was Holden Caulfield’s age, I might have enjoyed it. Or at least sympathized with him. I was in my 30s, and wanted to slap him instead.
The Scarlet Letter, I was forced to read it in school and I could not get through even a page without my eyes glazing over due to the stilted language.
Moby Dick was similar, in that I kept giving up after the same percentage of the book, since each page was tolerable but then when nothing happens after several pages it also gets discouraging.
I saw the thread title and as it turns out I came here to mention the same book the OP did. I have not read Dickens since having Great Expectations forced on me.
The Hobbit. Tried as a kid, tried in my late teens, tried again around 30ish; never finished it. Just could not be bothered. Forced myself through Lord of the Rings over several months, but getting to the end was something of a pyrrhic victory. I was rather sadder upon completing it. I’d have been happier knowing its fame as a classic than knowing exactly how dull I found it.
I felt that way about Great Expectations in high school. When I had to read it again for grad school I understood why it’s so well regarded. It is a great novel. Nowadays, I read Dickens and am never disappointed.
I didn’t care much for A Separate Peace, though I’d probably understand it better now.
Great Expectations…
I know that I read it in high school…
I know that I read it again at university and wrote an essay on it…
I know that I watched a movie of it…
…but if you were to ask me what it was about I couldn’t tell you. It left no impression on my mind, except that it was unutterably dull.
War and Peace, on the other hand, I absolutely loved. I can remember all the the main characters and talk knowledgeably about the plot 20 years after last reading it.
Wuthering Heights was a real slog for me back in HS, despite being an avid reader. Too damned depressing and frustrating.