Same here. A pale imitation of James Joyce, with the addition of Southern American tropes and scandal.
I really hated Wuthering Heights in high school but when I re-read it in my 30s , I appreciated it for it’s darkness and complete f-you to romance novels every where. Cathy in particular is such a nasty, selfish person- I appreciated it for just making almost everyone completely unlikeable and that was very fun for me (being a person that tends towards cynicism). I have found I can’t read it again though and it compares very badly with *Jane Eyre *,which is one of my favorites.
I loved *Great Expectations *but it wasn’t until the last 3/4 of the novel that it really came together for me. It starts off great but then the middle can drag . I just remember getting to a part towards the end where I realized I was reading a classic that deserved to be.
I also tried and failed to read “Great Expectations” in my younger days (it was an optional school assignment), at a time when I was inhaling just about any book that came my way. Same with “Kidnapped” by Robert Louis Stevenson.
I figured Dickens wasn’t my thing, until we were assigned “A Tale Of Two Cities” and I couldn’t put it down.
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. OK, I understand it is important for the historical and social and political angles. But as Literature: at the end of the semester, when we were pressed for time, we skipped Hemingway and Faulkner to spend weeks studying this hack?
The following year, I had to do a term paper on Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. Hated it.
I’ve read a lot of classic books in the past few years, and the one I had to work hardest to finish was Henry James’s “The Ambassadors”; there were way too many sentences that I had to read three or four times before I could parse them.
I enjoyed most of the books mentioned so far, except for “Jude the Obscure” (which didn’t grab me). I also thought “Catcher in the Rye” was overrated.
Had to read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and something by D. H. Lawrence (Sons and Lovers, I think) for college and got absolutely nothing out of either one.
Had to read Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) in high school. Bleh. Tried listening to the audio version not too long ago, to see if I might appreciate it more now that I’m a lot older, but gave up on it. Words, words, words, droning on without a point.
Oh, Henry James. Does anybody actually like Henry James?
I remember enjoying all of the Dickens books I’ve read, but (aside from A Christmas Carol), I can’t remember anything from any of them. That might just be the years, though.
My nomination is Hemingway. We had to read, I think it was The Sun Also Rises, in high school. Nothing happened in the entire book. There was no plot. There were some characters, but none of them were at all relatable, possibly because they never did anything.
“Worst”, likely not the most applicable word concerning me and my bete-noire author: since I feel virtually certain that the fault lies with me, not the author. However – I just cannot handle Jane Austen; and that after a number of separate attempts.
Comedies of manners/ social oddities and obstacle-courses from times past, are not the kind of fiction to which I most readily gravitate; and I’m male, where JA is reckoned to appeal more, overall, to the female sex – however, the writing is generally reckoned to be brilliant; and it’s well-known that there is a very sizeable minority of male Janeites. Somehow – and I “realise with my head” how ridiculous this is – I just can’t get past the Regency-era language; all the “some body” and “any body” and other, to me, weirdnesses. I’ve tried various Austen novels, certainly half a dozen times; each time I’ve managed perhaps twenty pages max, before getting so irritated with the language, as to have closed the book, and got no further – wanting to throw the damned thing violently against the opposite wall of the room.
This same factor made Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (on which I have heard quite widely varying opinions) a no-no for me: with finding that – it being set up largely as being composed of supposedly documented material from that era – the bulk of it is written in Jane-Austen-speak. An impressively clever feat, no doubt, on the part of the for-sure talented author; but a kiss of death for me.
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.
Cormac McCarthy - I have read several of his books, but it was Blood Meridian that made me finally throw one of his works against a wall. Specifically, it was the part where the Judge threw a bag of puppies into the river…then shot them, or maybe it was the Indian babies and raped grandmothers on spikes. I don’t know, I threw that book against the wall so many times.
He is adored by fans and his books keep coming up in book club list recommendations, but I find his style so over the top childish and unnecessarily graphic in an attempt to hide the truth. The man cannot tell a story. What’s left then is the reader sifting through the chicken entrails of ‘the plot’ to desern the true meaning of violence…or some bullshit.
I no longer care.
Anna Karenina. Stupid story, not one likeable character in the book, and the ending is the best part. Why this is considered a “work of art” is beyond me. I hate the damned thing. My daughter, who’s half Russian and had to read the novel in college, agrees with me 100%.
Anything by James Fennimore Cooper. Poorly written.
I read Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton in high school and since that day I still consider this as the worst book I ever read.
Just in case you haven’t read what Mark Twain had to say: Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses
I’ve told this story many times before, but I had a cashier at Borders actively try to discourage me from buying a copy of “Last of the Mohicans”. I really should have listened to her.
My picks are legion.
I cannot stand to read anything Ernest Hemingway wrote. His style is the exact opposite of the style I DO enjoy reading. I LIKE emotions and descriptions!
I can’t get into Jane Austen, either. I modestly assert I am not without reading comprehension, but I find her tiresome and…convoluted? Too many double negatives, or something.
Is Chuck Palahniuk considered ‘classic’? I know people who think he walks on water, he is that marvelous.
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.
Don Quixote - we had a copy in tiny tiny print on onionskin paper, a thousand pages or more! Gave up after three pages, it might have worked as an audio book.
How does it compare to the movie (which I didn’t particularly care for)?
The Great Gatsby. I know people who love that book. And people love the movie adaptations. I had to read it in highschool and I hated it. The characters were miserable people that I despised and when bad things happened to them I felt like they had it coming.
I read Catcher in the Rye when I was in high school and I still wanted to slap Holden Caulfield. I think we spent an entire semester analyzing every word of every page of the book and by the end I was so thoroughly sick of that book I never wanted to see it again. I think my English teacher expected us to identify with Caulfield. I just thought he was a miserably whiny brat. That being said, some of my classmates were miserably whiny brats… and those were the ones who ate the book up.
Jackmannii mentioned A Tale of Two Cities, which is what I came in here to post. I’ve tried to read it after picking it up cheap for my Kindle. Can’t get past chapter three. Just can’t get into it. I keep thinking I’ll try again but haven’t yet.
Poor Mr. Salinqmind has tried to read it several times, I think he assumed a book always in print, and that had so many movie versions made from it had some merit. Perhaps, but not in his opinion!
I thought of another - ‘Barry Lyndon’ by William Makepeace Thackeray. Right up there in tediousness (to read) with James Fennimore Cooper. Right up there.