Emmaline Posted February 1, 2010 Share Posted February 1, 2010 We all have our favorites, but what are some of your least favorite classics? I made myself finish The House of the Seven Gables by Hawthorne. He was overly verbose and never got to the point. He took 3 pages to tell us what a dead man looked like. Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carol. Maybe I was just ready to move on to something else after reading Alice in Wonderland, but this just dragged on forever! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BookJumper Posted February 1, 2010 Share Posted February 1, 2010 Torquato Tasso, Gerusalem Delivered - the. most. boring. epic. poem. of. all. time, period. A scene in particular stuck with me through the years: Crusader X had been fighting to the death with Infidel Y aka the Disguised Damsel; when she is wounded and her identity revealed, you'd expect an 'I've always loved you! Here, die in my arms,' tearjerker, but no: her last words to the Christian she's always loved in secret are not 'I love you' or 'Kiss me' but 'Convert me'... what?!?!? D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover - sure, the man can write but could he have been any more disgustingly mysogynistic? And no, it's not the time he wrote in, because otherwise Shakespeare wouldn't (several centuries earlier) have been able to write from a believable female perspective, as he does in Twelfth Night and Two Gentlemen of Verona, for instance. I'll have to think about #3. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pickle Posted February 1, 2010 Share Posted February 1, 2010 Tolstoy: Anna Karenina, just found it awful Henry James: Portrait of a Lady, never even finished it so awful Anne Bronte: Wuthering Heights this will be unpopular but i hated it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emmaline Posted February 1, 2010 Author Share Posted February 1, 2010 Wrong Bronte, but I agree, I wanted so much to enjoy that book. I have started it so many times and finished it twice, but every time I am bored with it. I have seen the 06 movie several times and always enjoy it. I love the story, but I think the writing is what bored me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted February 1, 2010 Share Posted February 1, 2010 The first one is easy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. Boring, boring, incredibly boring, and incredibly depressing. And I don't care that the woman was a victim of her age and I guess couldn't defend herself as she would've been able to do in the modern society? I felt no compassion towards her because she was a miserable wimp who let everything happen to her. I hate that book with a passion and only struggled to finish it because it was on my English lit course. It totally put me off Thomas Hardy, forever. The second one would be Lady Chatterley's Lover. I guess that book was really exciting in it's own days, but if I'd been living that time, I would've felt betrayed because it was supposed to be very courageous and yet I don't think there was that much sex. It was boring. I have to admit I was merely skimming through some of the pages, I couldn't bring myself to read every single boring word. The third one? I have to think about that. I don't think I've read a third yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarlette Posted February 1, 2010 Share Posted February 1, 2010 The first one is easy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. Boring, boring, incredibly boring, and incredibly depressing. And I don't care that the woman was a victim of her age and I guess couldn't defend herself as she would've been able to do in the modern society? I felt no compassion towards her because she was a miserable wimp who let everything happen to her. I hate that book with a passion and only struggled to finish it because it was on my English lit course. It totally put me off Thomas Hardy, forever. Thank you! I couldn't even bring myself to finishing that one. I disliked the way Tess and her situation was described even more than I disliked Tess herself. I hated the way the Hardy kept on nagging about how pretty she was and how it seemed that that was to blame for everything. Another one was The Agony and the Ecstasy (I can't recall the author at this moment). Boring, dull and dragging on and on and on and on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emmaline Posted February 1, 2010 Author Share Posted February 1, 2010 Irving Stone I really enjoyed that book, it did drag on for a while. It took me forever to finish, but I am glad I did. I read Lust for Life about Van Gogh right after that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylie Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 I agree with Giulia and Frankie about Lady Chatterley's Lover. I'll also nominate Black Beauty for being far too repetitive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Echo Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 Aw, I loved Lady Chatterley's Lover! My least favorite classics are: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck...soooooo boring!! The Bostonians by Henry James...the only Henry James book I've read, couldn't finish it, almost made me cry out of boredom. I will never read anything of his again! I'm also not a fan of George Eliot. I've tried to read a few of her books, but haven't been able to finish any of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylie Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 Aw, and I loved Grapes of Wrath! Admittedly, it took me a little while to get into it, but once I did it will brilliant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AbielleRose Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 The only one that comes to mind that right now is Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I had to read it twice in school and hated it both times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylie Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 Oh, yes, I agree Abby! I forgot about that one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poppy Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 I didn't even make it to the sexy parts of Lady Chatterley's Lover I found it so annoying and patronising, I threw it down in disgust. I loved Grapes of Wrath too Kylie, a very moving story. Lord of the Flies I found very disturbing, so it could go amongst my least favourites. As a child I hated Peter Pan and Wendy, I found Peter an annoying little twerp and wished he would just .....GROW UP! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kell Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 1. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961) It’s seldom that I am quite as disappointed by a book as I was by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I found the characters to be obnoxious (yes, all of them!) and found absolutely nothing to like in any of them. The stereotyping, both of Miss Jean Brodie and “her girls” was grotesquely cartoon-like and the plot entirely predictable – partially because all the major plot points are revealed up-front and the entire story is just one long-winded and stuffy study of the finer details. Even if everything hadn’t been revealed at the start, I still would have found this a tedious story of air-headed, easily-led, gullible young girls, following blindly wherever their teacher leads. As for their teacher – she’s exactly the sort of person I wouldn’t want teaching any child of mine and she is the only person, I think, who is surprised that she is betrayed. If it had been any longer, I wouldn’t have bothered finishing it. 2. Candide by Voltaire(1759) This is quite possibly the most pointless book ever written and it's just dire from start to... well, I assume to finish, because I made it 3/4s of the way through and gave up because it was so awful. The plot is absolutely preposterous. I have no problem with fantasies, but this was badly written and ill-judged on every level. I hated it so much that I've actually blocked most of it out and have difficulty recalling specifics in regard to this book. 3. The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley (1863) Reading The Water Babies is like having a large quantity of morals and saccharine forced down your throat, and the constant digression (in particular, the one about salmon rivers; one of many digressions that seemed to have utterly no point!) makes it even more difficult to swallow. The cloying condescension makes it even more unpalatable, as does the fact that if each meandering incident of digression and every lesson imparted to the reader were removed, we’d be left with a sweet story of about three pages in length. This was very obviously written with an audience of just one in mind (constant personal references such as, “that’s more than you can do!” are certainly aimed at a specific young boy) and the rambling fairytale appears to have been constructed with the sole purpose of having him grow up to be a good, God-fearing man, which is all very well, but didn’t much endear it to me. Overall, it was just far too sickly-sweet and moralistic (although the narrator claims the story has no moral on account of it being a fairytale – as if that ever made a difference to morals within tales!) to be completely enjoyable – I prefer not to be lectured while I’m reading! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pickle Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 I can't believe i managed to get the wrong Bronte thanks for the correction but i can't stand the film either i find heathcliffe just to awful for words and drives me mad, as for Cathy i just wanted to give her a slap and tell her to get over it..sympoathetic i am not..the only good thing to come out of the book has been the song by Kate Bush. to all you Hardy lovers and haters i come firmly down on the side of the haters can't stand him.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 (edited) 1. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961)It’s seldom that I am quite as disappointed by a book as I was by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I found the characters to be obnoxious (yes, all of them!) and found absolutely nothing to like in any of them. The stereotyping, both of Miss Jean Brodie and “her girls” was grotesquely cartoon-like and the plot entirely predictable – partially because all the major plot points are revealed up-front and the entire story is just one long-winded and stuffy study of the finer details. ... If it had been any longer, I wouldn’t have bothered finishing it. utterly no point!) makes it even more difficult to swallow. Yes!! Thank you. I had high hopes for that one, and what does the bloody book do? Reveal all the plot points up front, leave the reader to think there's more to the story and something big is going to happen, end then just discuss endlessly the finer details. What was Muriel Spark thinking? I never would've finished it had it not been such a short read and had it not been one of my English lit course novels. That was my third. My special mention goes for The Lord of the Flies. Utter rubbish! Scarlette, I think Thomas Hardy must've been madly in love with a beautiful woman who was wise enough to dump him at the get-go, and then the stupid smartypants had his revenge in the best way he knew how: wrote the Tess novel, the beautiful woman representing Tess, and then he made all these terrible things happen to her. And did it poorly at that. I have no idea why the book was published though. The publishing house must've been owned by smartypant's uncle who had a bad case of nepotism. I also liked Grapes of Wrath, I didn't find it boring at all. That was also an English lit novel but I've reread the book on my own just because I liked it so much. Edited February 2, 2010 by frankie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cookie Posted February 2, 2010 Share Posted February 2, 2010 This may not make me popular but I can't stand Little Women. With it's I love you Ma I love you Pa stuff. Puke. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bel-ami Posted December 15, 2010 Share Posted December 15, 2010 (edited) I hate abandoning books and in general I love "classics", but I did give up on The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler and The Grapes of Wrath (life's too short) and I'll add Dante's Divine Comedy as my third vote. Edited December 15, 2010 by Bel-ami Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigWords Posted December 15, 2010 Share Posted December 15, 2010 D.H. Lawrence deserves to be on this page for the sole reason that he ruined the word "crisis" for me. That's just... wrong. It's hard narrowing down just three, but Moby Dick should get mentioned - the pacing and language never appealed to me, and having re-read it a couple of times I dislike it even further. I'll need to think more on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruth Posted December 15, 2010 Share Posted December 15, 2010 Any Shakespeare really. I love watching the plays (or movie adaptations), but I find actually reading him incredibly hard. I also struggled with Brideshead Revisited, but I think it might have just have been that it was not a book I was in the right mood for. I've kept my copy anyway, with the intention of reading it again another time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peacefield Posted December 15, 2010 Share Posted December 15, 2010 Like others, I enjoyed Grapes of Wrath. I also never read Tess of the d'Ubervilles, but I saw the mini-series last year and practically hated it! I probably wouldn't like the book either To be honest, I can't really recall any classics I dislike, but there's still boatloads that I haven't read. I do know that after trying to read Emma and Sense & Sensabilites, that I enjoy seeing Austen's stories portrayed on screen much more than in printed form. That's not to say I won't attempt to read others by her. You never know, maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind at the time. Oops, just thought of one. Is 'Far from the Madding Crowd' considered a classic? If so that would be my #1 dislike. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kidsmum Posted December 15, 2010 Share Posted December 15, 2010 (edited) Villette & Shirley by Charlotte Bronte I couldn't finish either of them & Mill on the Floss by George Eliot mainly because I couldn't stand the Tulliver family, what a luckless bunch Edited December 15, 2010 by Kidsmum Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Books do furnish a room Posted December 15, 2010 Share Posted December 15, 2010 Would have to be "The Old Curiosity Shop" by Dickens,I'm with Oscar Wilde on that one; Don Quixote .... way too long; and Mill on the Floss, too irritated by the main characters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bunce Posted December 16, 2010 Share Posted December 16, 2010 Any Shakespeare really. I love watching the plays (or movie adaptations), but I find actually reading him incredibly hard. With Shakespeare I believe it's just a case of getting in to, and accustoming yourself with, the writing. It's different, and sometimes difficult to read and understand. I've studied two texts written by Shakespeare, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing both of which I really enjoyed. Initially I thought I'd hate Shakespearean texts, but in fact, I rather like them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willoyd Posted December 17, 2010 Share Posted December 17, 2010 (edited) I'd agree with those who disliked Lord of the Flies: possibly my most hated (yes, as strong as that) book to date. Others I have positively disliked: The Great Gatsby: what was the point? Did I care? Did I heck. Moll Flanders: great on TV, wooden, repetitive, overdetailed in the book. Justine (Alexandria Quartet): pompous, overblown and totally pleased with himself (pretty much how his brother seemed to rate him in My Family and other Animals, and easy to see why). I'm sure there are others, but those will do for the moment! Edited December 17, 2010 by willoyd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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