# whats the worst "classic " book/author you read or tried to read **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 24, 2019, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440 "2019-03-24T04:37:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2019, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/201 "2019-03-27T18:40:00Z")
[QUOTE=JohnT;21559760 Huckleberry Finn: Don’t need 7 ways to spell words, Mark, just one or two will do, understand? The purpose of language is communication and spelling “going” 7 different ways in the same book is not “communication”, it’s “pretension”.[/QUOTE] Nope, Sam was trying to show several different dialects and in fact people who study those dialects find him very accurate. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2019, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/202 "2019-03-27T18:52:13Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > _The Hobbit_ by Tolkien. Just an overrated, sprawling, dreary 400 pages. It is amazing that there is no book so great, so universally loved and admired- that _someone_ doesnt hate it. The Hobbit? LotR? Huck Finn? Wow. Now yes, _Catcher_- it was actually pretty groundbreaking then, but that angst teen coming of age ground has been over plowed. Like _Don Quixote_, which is a very important novel- being one of the first novels. But it’s still hard to read today. _Catcher_ aged very rapidly, however. I barely remember reading it, but remember I didn’t care for it nor the protagonist. ---
**Author:** ![Haldurson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/51bf81/32.png) [@Haldurson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haldurson)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2019, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/203 "2019-03-27T18:54:09Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Yes, and giving them Fahrenheit 451 as their “Science fiction” selection turns many off SF. Yes, I know, it is a classic, but it’s not really SF. Actually, Ray Bradbury says that Fahrenheit 451 is the ONLY true science fiction that he’s ever written, and thinks it’s ironic that he’s considered a science fiction writer (I saw him when he was guest of honor at the World Science Fiction Convention in Atlanta back in 1986). There are antiquated definitions of science fiction (if you go way way back) that arguably, might have omitted F451 from the genre, but they are long obsolete. I’ve even heard an argument that Moby Dick ought to be considered Techno Thriller, which many people consider to be a loose subgenre of Science Fiction. I’m not sure I agree with that, but the people arguing it were somewhat convincing. ---
**Author:** ![squidfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@squidfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squidfood)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2019, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/204 "2019-03-27T19:31:24Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Best thing about _Citizen Kane_ was [this _Peanuts_ strip](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/405464772686871978) (click on the strip in the upper left): > > Lucy: “What are you watching?” > Linus: “_Citizen Kane_.” > Lucy: “I’ve seen it about ten times.” > Linus: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen it.” > Lucy: “‘Rosebud’ was his sled.” > Linus: “_ **AAUGH!!** _” > > I saw it once, back in college IIRC. It wasn’t bad, IMHO, but I wouldn’t bother seeing it a second time. “Rosebud was his sled” was enough of a repeating _Peanuts_ meme that this spoiler was the first time I heard of the movie as a kid - by the time I got around to watching it years later my only burning question going in was “why is a sled a plot point?” ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2019, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/205 "2019-03-27T19:34:17Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Outside of that one, Dickens could disappear tomorrow and the world would be a far better place. Except for the fact that TV shows everywhere would give us thousands upon thousands of bastardized renditions of It’s a Wonderful Life for their Christmas specials, I presume. ---
**Author:** ![squidfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@squidfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squidfood)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2019, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/206 "2019-03-27T19:35:20Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > I call that the “Maltese Falcon” effect. The first time I saw _The Maltese Falcon_, I thought it was a cardboard mashup of every stilted detective-slash-noir cliche ever. > > Then I realized that of course it was; it _created_ them. This was my response to Ursula Le Guin’s _Earthsea_ series - my thoughts on reading it fairly late in life were “eh, reads like a D&D dungeonmaster’s worldbuilding notes with a few good bits”. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2019, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/207 "2019-03-27T19:47:02Z")
I still have a dead seated loathing for Steinbeck, the Brontes and Cervantes. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2019, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/208 "2019-03-27T19:48:03Z")
> [@squidfood](#): > > This was my response to Ursula Le Guin’s _Earthsea_ series - my thoughts on reading it fairly late in life were “eh, reads like a D&D dungeonmaster’s worldbuilding notes with a few good bits”. First book was pretty good… ---
**Author:** ![squidfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@squidfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squidfood)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2019, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/209 "2019-03-27T20:08:33Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > First book was pretty good… Oh it wasn’t terrible and I didn’t mind reading it (so maybe it doesn’t fit on this list). And some of the sections on the nature of power were quite decent. But it had a lot of “quester sails to an island, the people and culture of the island are described in detail, then nothing actually happens on the island except learning that the quest answer lies elsewhere”. This is like when a dungeon master makes a lot of background notes that no one ever reads, just to show off how good their world building is. Except I have to remember that kind of world building wasn’t trite when the first books were written. I think her short stories were better constrained than the novels. ---
**Author:** ![Airk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de053/32.png) [@Airk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airk)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2019, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/210 "2019-03-27T20:54:08Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > It is amazing that there is no book so great, so universally loved and admired- that _someone_ doesnt hate it. The Hobbit? LotR? Huck Finn? Wow. Apparently they hated the Hobbit so much that it felt 30% longer than it actually was. 😉 The Hobbit is actually a fairly short book. It’s certainly QUITE short by the standards of a lot of books in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2019, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/211 "2019-03-27T21:32:19Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Nope, Sam was trying to show several different dialects and in fact people who study those dialects find him very accurate. Very good. But I shouldn’t have to be a dialects coach in order to read a novel about somebody floating down a river. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/212 "2019-03-28T00:43:31Z")
“A Wrinkle in Time” has long been a staple of childhood reading. I couldn’t get into it as a grade-schooler, and didn’t enjoy it any more when I tried to read it a few years ago. It probably would have taken me just a couple hours to finish it, but I didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/213 "2019-03-28T00:47:06Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Yeah, it was a 9th, 10th grade reading assignment. Just did not care for it - if you’re going to write a book in English, use English! 😉 This was one of my issues with “Watership Down”, glossary notwithstanding. I also couldn’t get into Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart.” It could have been interesting, but wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/214 "2019-03-28T00:57:50Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > It is amazing that there is no book so great, so universally loved and admired- that _someone_ doesnt hate it. The Hobbit? LotR? Huck Finn? Wow. > > Now yes, _Catcher_- it was actually pretty groundbreaking then, but that angst teen coming of age ground has been over plowed. > > Like _Don Quixote_, which is a very important novel- being one of the first novels. But it’s still hard to read today. _Catcher_ aged very rapidly, however. I barely remember reading it, but remember I didn’t care for it nor the protagonist. It may be the translation of _Don Quixote_, DrDeth. I read it a couple of years ago and found it quite engrossing aside from the poetry. Marvelous book, but YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/215 "2019-03-28T01:09:02Z")
> [@squidfood](#): > > Oh it wasn’t terrible and I didn’t mind reading it (so maybe it doesn’t fit on this list). And some of the sections on the nature of power were quite decent. > > But it had a lot of “quester sails to an island, the people and culture of the island are described in detail, then nothing actually happens on the island except learning that the quest answer lies elsewhere”. This is like when a dungeon master makes a lot of background notes that no one ever reads, just to show off how good their world building is. Except I have to remember that kind of world building wasn’t trite when the first books were written. I think her short stories were better constrained than the novels. Le Guin was the daughter of a couple of anthropologists, and that sensibility shows through all her work, for better or worse. Most of the time she is much more interested in culture than in plot, more interested in how people relate to their societies and invest one another with power than she is in how people shoot lasers or pilot giant robots at each other. I have a great and abiding love for laser-shooting-robot literature, but I also worship at the altar of Le Guin: if you’re willing to subordinate plot and action to culture and ideas, she’s second to none. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/216 "2019-03-28T01:11:37Z")
Left Hand of Dorkness, I recently read _The Left Hand of Darkness,_ and I was very impressed by her command of science. It was a tremendous novel. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/217 "2019-03-28T01:11:39Z")
> [@squidfood](#): > > This was my response to Ursula Le Guin’s _Earthsea_ series - my thoughts on reading it fairly late in life were “eh, reads like a D&D dungeonmaster’s worldbuilding notes with a few good bits”. GASP!! Quick, someone guide me to my fainting couch and bring me some smelling salts. 😉 Nah, LeGuin isn’t for everybody, and her style is…hmm dry maybe?..anyway, I’m not a huge fan of most of her work, but the world of Earthsea always fascinated me. I agree that her final installment for the series wasn’t very good, didn’t really fit with the tone and style of the rest at all. Seemed more like a commentary on society today and how that society views and treats the society of yesterday shoehorned into the world of Ged and Tenar. Lord only knows what ot would be like if she were alive and writing it today. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/218 "2019-03-28T01:26:00Z")
> [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](#): > > Left Hand of Dorkness, I recently read _The Left Hand of Darkness,_ and I was very impressed by her command of science. It was a tremendous novel. I don’t know enough about physics to be impressed by her command of physics, to be honest–but her anthropology stuff is (to my undergrad educated brain) really strong. > [@guestchaz](#): > > GASP!! Quick, someone guide me to my fainting couch and bring me some smelling salts. 😉 > Nah, LeGuin isn’t for everybody, and her style is…hmm dry maybe?..anyway, I’m not a huge fan of most of her work, but the world of Earthsea always fascinated me. I agree that her final installment for the series wasn’t very good, didn’t really fit with the tone and style of the rest at all. Seemed more like a commentary on society today and how that society views and treats the society of yesterday shoehorned into the world of Ged and Tenar. Lord only knows what ot would be like if she were alive and writing it today. Which one do you mean? I didn’t much care for Tehanu, but I remember being awestruck at the final bits of The Other Wind. Certainly her own thinking changed over her life, and Earthsea reflects these changes. But this thread is supposed to be about classic novels that people think are terrible, not about my fanboying all over Earthsea, so I’ll bow out :). Closest I can come to participating is my opinion of Moby Dick. I read entirely through the chapter titled > [@](#): > > **In Which I am Aboard A Ship With A Crow’s Nest, So I Will Describe A Crow’s Nest To The Reader In Exhaustive Detail, But Eventually Reveal that The Crow’s Nest I Have Described Is Not The Crow’s Nest On This Ship, At Which Point I Will Contrast The Crow’s Nest Aboard This Ship Against The One I Previously Described, Following Which I Will Explain That People Stand Atop Crow’s Nests, Which Reminds Me, People Can Stand Atop Other Things, I Shall List Them For You, And Did You Know That Other Things Stand Atop Other Things, Statues Atop Pedestals For Instance?** But when I reached the chapter (a famously beautiful chapter, apparently) that gave the same treatment to Things Which Are White, I admitted defeat. It’s not a terrible novel, obviously; far, far from it. But it’s decidedly not for me. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/219 "2019-03-28T01:47:21Z")
> [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](#): > > It may be the translation of _Don Quixote_, DrDeth. I read it a couple of years ago and found it quite engrossing aside from the poetry. Marvelous book, but YMMV. That could be. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/220 "2019-03-28T03:30:24Z")
Henry James’s _The Beast in the Jungle_ was excrutiatingly slow and dull, with no characters in whom I had the slightest interest. I gave up on Willa Cather’s _My Antonia_, which was also tediously event-free, after my customary 50 pages. I figure if the author hasn’t hooked me by then, she or he never will. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440.md?page=12)