# 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:** 3
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/41 "2019-03-24T17:49:32Z")
Another has occurred to me, about which I feel on more solid ground than re my aversion to Jane Austen (though I find that **saliqmind** is on a similar page to me, as regards the Divine Jane). I got nowhere with Laurence Sterne’s _Tristram Shandy_ – concerning which, I have heard a fair few other dissenting voices; though there are those who love it, sometimes passionately. _TS_ was the favourite fiction work of a late uncle of mine (not a particularly big intellectual or arts maven) – he read and re-read it. I endured the first few chapters; and feel no hesitation in writing the work off, for me, as a huge assemblage of drivel and babble, with the occasional weak and flogged-to-death joke – extending over many volumes. ---
**Author:** ![eenerms](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/cdc98d/32.png) [@eenerms](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eenerms)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/42 "2019-03-24T17:52:44Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Just in case you haven’t read what Mark Twain had to say: [Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses](http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/HNS/Indians/offense.html) I brought this up with my American Lit. Prof. He was amused but still had to read the damn thing. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/43 "2019-03-24T17:57:58Z")
I’ve read most of the books mentioned in the thread, but I’ve never managed to get more than about 20 pages into Moby Dick. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/44 "2019-03-24T18:16:04Z")
Going over the thread, I have to agree about Hemingway. I read him at the same time I learned to appreciated _Great Expectations_ and found his minimalism boring. It’s OK in theory to write a dull character to imply the character is emotionally repressed, but he’s still a dull character. _We_ by Evgeny Zamyatin. It’s usually thrown into the science fiction curriculum because he didn’t write in English, but it’s really just the same sort of dystopia Orwell and Huxley did better. Why they overlooked the immensely superior Stanislaw Lem mystifies me. Definitely not a fan of Henry James. _Daisy Miller_ is fine (especially with the joke about Schenectady), but his later work is wordy as hell and he was constitutionally incapable of making a point, dancing around it with phrase after phrase that circled without getting to. I did discover the change was because he started dictating all his work, which make you run off at the mouth. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/45 "2019-03-24T18:47:43Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > How does it compare to the movie (which I didn’t particularly care for)? I actually bought the book because I liked the movie version of “Last if the Mohicans”. So if you didn’t like the movie, maybe there’s not much difference. 😉 I just had a hard time parsing Cooper’s prose. Long convoluted sentences that didn’t scan easily, so I’d have to stop and go back and read a sentence two or three times before it made sense. A lot. Plus, everything in that Mark Twain critique is pretty much spot on. ---
**Author:** ![jonesj2205](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecc23a/32.png) [@jonesj2205](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jonesj2205)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/46 "2019-03-24T19:02:57Z")
> [@Superdude](#): > > 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. I read it in my teens and wanted to slap him. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/47 "2019-03-24T19:27:29Z")
I’m always amazed by how many people refer to Twain’s criticism of James Fenimore Cooper without getting the joke. What Twain criticizes in Cooper’s works is exactly the things that Twain himself did in his own works (which are quite justifiably considered classics). ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/48 "2019-03-24T19:34:03Z")
_Atlas Shrugged_, followed closely by _Wuthering Heights_. Ayn Rand should have been aborted, or possibly strangled at birth. I’ve seen a movie adaptation of WH, and it was bearable, as so many of the movie renditions of the classics are. I agree with _Blood Meridian_, as noted above. What a slog that was. To call it ‘dark’ is like calling Satan ‘mischievous’. Forgot honorable mention for Stephen King’s _Tommyknockers._ Oy. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/49 "2019-03-24T19:43:32Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > Faulkner Yep. and Pilgrims Progress. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/50 "2019-03-24T19:45:13Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > 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. I kinda liked it, but not as much as some of my friends who thought is was “fanFUCKINGtastic!” Yeah, got halfway through, thought it was crap and stopped. Bad book. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/51 "2019-03-24T19:45:39Z")
I gave to agree with Great Expectations. I had to read it in High School and I was an all-A student in HS. I finished the book and I couldn’t re-read it to study it for the test, it was just so horrible. I wanted all the main characters to die and I got a D on the test rather than pick that shitty book up again. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/52 "2019-03-24T19:52:48Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > That’s another depressing entry in the list of “books designed to turn high school students off reading.” > > I know _Moby Dick_ is hated by many, but I loved even the chapters about whaling minutiae. At least our teacher effectively abridged it by only assigning key chapters to read, so those who wanted to skip all the other stuff. 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. I enjoyed Moby Dick, but it can be a slog. It is based upon a real incident, the wreck of the whaler Essex. In The Heart of the Sea, by Philbrick. They made a film too. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/53 "2019-03-24T20:00:50Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’m always amazed by how many people refer to Twain’s criticism of James Fenimore Cooper without getting the joke. What Twain criticizes in Cooper’s works is exactly the things that Twain himself did in his own works (which are quite justifiably considered classics). Well, yes, some but not all:\* 7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven- dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the “Deerslayer” tale.\* Twain was true to his dialects and was justifiably proud of it. ---
**Author:** ![pendgwen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3da27b/32.png) [@pendgwen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pendgwen)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/54 "2019-03-24T20:17:32Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > Heart of Darkness - we were supposed to read it in high school, they just passed the books out and said, read it, there will be a test in \_\_\_\_weeks. The overwhelming majority not only didn’t read it, everyone save 2 brainy types failed the test. We were then all assigned another book to read instead, and that went better. And this. We spent a huge amount of time in my senior year English class on it. OK it probably wasn’t that long but it sure felt like it. We analyzed it. We wrote papers on it. We spent a class period watching Apocalype Now. I hate that book. I keep books. Never throw them away and seldom donate them. The Great Gatsby it still in my bookcase despite how much I hate it. (Not sure why now that I think about it.) I gave away my copy of Heart of Darkness. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/55 "2019-03-24T20:37:10Z")
another book i read is “the secret agent” by conrad because it was supposed to be the first spy book But it was too true to life … bunch of pseudointellectuals sitting around in dive bars making plots and spouting empty social and political philosophy BS not doing much and the main character was just a hateable thug of bum that didn’t want to do any real work until he had to and when he did he messed it up so badly … and was rightly killed in the end by his wife whom he merely married as a cover … ---
**Author:** ![Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/59ef9b/32.png) [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorkshire_Pudding)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/56 "2019-03-24T21:01:02Z")
This is potentially quite a highbrow critique - and for that I apologise - but George Eliot can fuck off. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/57 "2019-03-24T21:03:34Z")
I also love Moby-Dick and most of Charles Dickens. I’ve made my way through nearly every novel, and am saving Our Mutual Friend for laters. I admit to not finishing Nicolas Nickelby, his second novel. I started it long after reading Martin Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, Little Dorritt, and his other top-level novels, and Nick just seemed too basic in plot, the characters too flat and dull. I’m in with you other Hemingway haters. Read The Old Man and the Sea as a teen and disliked it. Read The Sun Also Rises at 20 and loved it. Had no luck getting through A Farewell to Arms of For Whom the Bell Tolls. If I want minimalism to that degree, I’ll stick with Dashiell Hammet, Hem’s contemporary, who was also using that style but provided great characters and fascinating plots. He also wrote better women. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/58 "2019-03-24T21:04:48Z")
I also loved McTeague…nasty, nasty book about lovely nasty people…but could not get into Norris’s next novel, The Octopus. ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/59 "2019-03-24T21:05:07Z")
It’s not an original thought, but **Journal to Eliza** is every bit as bad as its reputation. Never intended to be published, and never should have been. Someone mentioned **DH Lawrence** ; agreed. **Catcher in the Rye** - dear Jesus, another vote for that and another slap for that little shit Caulfield. No hate for Thomas Mann? Then please allow me. Read **Death in Venice** because I adored the film. A word of advide: don’t. j ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440/60 "2019-03-24T21:09:31Z")
**Jane Austen**. I simply cannot read her, and can’t understand all the Austen love. I had to read _Pride and Prejudice_ for a college class, and it was a real struggle. I loved _A Christmas Carol_ and _A Tale of Two Cities_ by Dickens, but I couldn’t stand _Hard Times_ or _The Pickwick Papers_ or the other Christmas novels that Dickens wrote after A Christmas Carol. I intend to try some others, someday, like _Oliver Twist_ and _Great Expectations_, but I’m afraid that they may turn out to be like Hard Times. I tried reading James Fenimore Cooper’s **The Pioneers** , but simply couldn’t do it. Mind you, I’ve read many and exotic works from mall cultures and time periods. I’ve read numerous translations of Gilgamesh and Beowulf and just finished up a thick book of translations from ancient Egyptian. But Jane Austen and Cooper are just not for me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-worst-classic-book-author-you-read-or-tried-to-read/831440.md?page=4)