Worst classic novel I had to read, is without a doubt Robinson Crusoe.
It’s like Atlas Shrugged written as an engineering manual. Oooh, let’s have page after page of detail on all the little amenities you made for yourself with your boundless ingenuity. Ye gods, do we really need to hear every single little piece of information? My own life isn’t that boring!
And the theme: any man can build himself a comfortable life with a little hard work and ingenuity (and decades’ worth of supplies from a ship, a personal slave, limitless natural resources, etc, etc, etc).
Oh god, The Scarlet Letter. What dreck, what shame Hawthorne must have felt for writing such crap. Was there a coherent plot there? Were there any characters deeper than a puddle?
A Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of books, it was the worst of books. Scratch that. It was just the worst of books.
I’m convinced that no one even thinks that Their Eyes Were Watching God is a good book. Teachers just teach it because it’s habit and it’s what they had to learn when they were in school.
Things Fall Apart. If they’d stop harvesting and eating yams long enough for a story to develop, I’d be interested.
I think the only pre-1800s novel I’ve ever liked was Gulliver’s Travels. All your Hardy and Sterne and co. can go piss up a rope as far as I’m concerned. They clearly hadn’t invented editors back then.
Contemporary classics - I loathed On The Road. Bunch of self-aggrandising wankers.
Must say I think Faulkner was amazing, and have no problem with a great book that also demands (and earns) a second reading.
Oh, man. I remember reading one of James’ novels (don’t recall which one), and being astounded at just how long the guy would carry on a sentence. There were a couple of places where one paragraph would take up three pages (paperback), and a single sentence could take up two-thirds of a page.
Somewhere, I’m sure, a grammar teacher tortured her class by requiring students to diagram a H. James sentence.
I read Great Expectations in HS and really enjoyed it; probably because I was in a great AP English class, and the discussions were always fun.
On the other hand, in another class, I read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I remember spending a Sunday desperately trying to finish, and counting the remaining pages after each chapter.
Lord Of The Rings. I bought a snazzy boxed set after I saw [COLOR=Navy]The Fellowship of the Ring, I’ve made it through Fellowship, and Two Towers, but I gave up on Return of the King. It’s just so bloody boring … (love the films tho’)
I’d forgotten all about that crap Thomas Convenant [/COLOR]
I know that most people don’t agree with me on this one, but I need to mention Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance . Good God, that book was awful. I was to stubborn to just stop reading it, so I did finish, but it was like pulling teeth. I swear, if I ever met such a smug, self-important wanker, spewing such pop-culture mindless psycho-babble, I would kick him square in the nads.
I’ve already posted, too, but I felt the need to defend Things Fall Apart and On the Road. I loved them both, especially the latter.
I also wanted to bring up a more recent work, The Hours. There were points in the book when I just wanted these overly self-absorbed characters to wake the hell up and get over themselves for just five minutes.
Most of the “classics” I hate have been mentioned already, but hey, just for emphasis:
The Scarlet Letter is one of the most repetitive, boring books I’ve ever read. Do we really need to be told that “the letter burned on Hester’s breast” on every page?
I hardly even consider it a book, but The Diary of Anne Frank is shockingly bad. It really is what the title proclaims - the diary of a little girl. Who cares? Read Elie Wiesel’s Night instead.
Frankenstein. Enough said.
And finally (I’m surprised no one has mentioned this before me, unless I missed something), H.G. Wells’ trash. The best I can say in his favor is that The War of the Worlds is readable. Other than that…the mere mention of The Time Machine (had to read it in tenth grade…still haven’t recovered from the trauma) or The Island of Dr. Moreau almost induces vomiting.
Since I seem to be the only one who got it wrong and listed only dramas (although I read those) , I’ll add Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. and Fahrenheit 451.
Oh man, tell me about it. The only good thing about James is that once you’re done quoting him for a paper you’re writing you’ve almost reached your page requirement.
I hated every moment of Billy Budd, Ethan Frome, and The Great Gatsby. I swear to god that 11th grade English was trying to kill me. Every other year, we had great novels to read. (Well, ok, except for A Seperate Peace in 9th.) But not 11th.
I was seriously disappointed in this book. I had read a short story by Edith Wharton (“Roman Holiday”) that I liked somewhat, and I was lulled into thinking this book wouldn’t suck ass.
I hated all the characters and didn’t find any of them sympathetic at all. Ethan is too self-sacrificing; there was nothing in him with which I could identify. Mattie isn’t even a character, she’s just a plot device. I never understood why she liked Ethan; I felt that the author used their relationship to advance the plot without giving it any basis in the characters.
the “pickles and doughnuts” has to be the worst sexual symbolism I’ve ever read.
I hated the sleigh part, too. Anyone dumb enough to try and kill themselves with a sled ought to be crippled.
My most recent “Why in the name of all that’s good is this considered a stunningly original and touching piece of art?” experience came with “Lovely Bones” a truly horrible reading experience.
I pulled up short on the third installment of “The Dark Tower” series, and in fact feel King is one of the most over rated authors of all time (Yes, even more so than Melville).
I can’t think of any Classic literature that I absolutely hated to read apart from “Moby Dick”, but Dickens has made me bless the invention of the editor.
Ulysses. It’s incredibly skillfully written, but it seems written in a way to make what might be a simple, comedic, and slightly disgusting at times story into a ridiculously obtuse, ten chapter long dictionary masturbation by someone who apparently has an odd phrasing fetish.
After slogging through it, I knew what those Spartans at Thermopylae felt like.
FFTMC is nothing compared to Jude the Obscure. OK, so you didn’t get into the college of your choice. It happens to most of us. Is that any reason to subject your family (and the readers) to the misery that follows?