Classic books that you HATED

Oishii

I am going to use this thread to write a book list, because as so many of the books you've hated, collectively, are books I love, so maybe I'll love the books I haven't read that the collective you has hated too:laugh:

I loved Catcher in The Rye. I must have been in my mid teens and it just felt totally different to anything I had previously read.

1984 and Brave New World: I love a good dystopia. 1984 was also the first sex scene I ever read (explains a lot :winking:)

I saw someone diss Vonnegut. This is just unimaginable to me. I devoured every one of his books I could find in the library.

Now for my hate list:

On first reading, Unamuno's Niebla (Fog), which I found painfully didactic, but on my second reading I got dragged in and loved it.

Anything by Flaubert. Madame Bovary is tedious enough, but the other one I read was worse.

La Tia Julia y el Escribidor (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter) in the last few pages. Having enjoyed the romp so much I just threw it across the room at the unromantic ending, but that doesn't make it a bad book.

Cider with Rosy because I was too young to enjoy reading about kids near my age.

All the other books that were chosen at school for their content rather than their literary merit. I don't remember any titles, but They were all 'worthy' but poorly written in comparison to the classics.

I might also send out some friend requests on the basis of this thread :laugh:

wheresheidi

Dracula by Bram Stoker...great movie... sucky book
Cause I love me some Vampires.

fjrandol

Alas Babylon !!!!

Aww now I loved that book; my dad recommended it to me, and it was the first "grown-up" book that I checked out when I was finally old enough to go into the main section of the library.

I hated the majority of the reading that we did in school, probably due to the fact that we seemed to spend such an inordinant amount of time dissecting them that I simply didn't like them anymore by the end. It doesn't help either when you're finished with the novel before the class hits chapter four...

On my despise list:
The Great Gatsby
Cannery Row

Oishii

Oh, and I love all Shakespeare and Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite books, as is Dracula. I enjoy multiple viewpoints and narrators (though Dangerous Liaisons trumps the previous two).

Oishii

And I failed to read Gormenghast, which I believe counts as a classic...

TrimAnew

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Had to read it for Modern Novels (HS Class)

Hated every second of it

You're turn.

Love that one actually. But I'd just been to Germany the year before so I recognized things in the book.


Hated:

Moby ****,
anything by Charles ****ens,
anything by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Cry the Beloved Country,
The Jungle,
The Heart of Darkness
Various Sherlock Holmes mysteries (ick... give me the modern rip offs please)
and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

I originally hated Things Fall Apart, having been forced to "read" it with the class listening to a taped recording. The voice actor had the most sleep inducing pace of any audio book I've ever listened to in my life. However, as an adult when this book appears on the required reading list for the high school English class I was teaching that year, I was determined to find a better way to manage it for my students. When I reread it as an adult (and without that aweful tape), I enjoyed it and even found it funny and entertaining. Long story short, it was one of my students' favorites. It paired well with the Joy Luck Club. (One focuses on father/son relationships and the other on mother/daughter relationships... or at least that's how I choose to teach it. :P )

Most everything else I liked, including The Crucible, Shakespeare, Wuthering Heights, anything by Alexander Dumas, The Great Gatsby, the Red Badge of Courage, Anthem by Ayn Rand, Of Mice and Men... I loved Tolkien, but it's worth noting that when I read it I was in the middle of nowhere with absolutely nothing else to do. I also really liked the Canterbury Tales in the original middle English. (English major here.)

Edited to add: LOL. Apparently MFP doesn't like some of those works either.

penrbrown

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Had to read it for Modern Novels (HS Class)

Hated every second of it

You're turn.

Love that one actually. But I'd just been to Germany the year before so I recognized things in the book.


Hated:

Moby ****,
anything by Charles ****ens,
anything by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Cry the Beloved Country,
The Jungle,
The Heart of Darkness
Various Sherlock Holmes mysteries (ick... give me the modern rip offs please)
and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

I originally hated Things Fall Apart, having been forced to "read" it with the class listening to a taped recording. The voice actor had the most sleep inducing pace of any audio book I've ever listened to in my life. However, as an adult when this book appears on the required reading list for the high school English class I was teaching that year, I was determined to find a better way to manage it for my students. When I reread it as an adult (and without that aweful tape), I enjoyed it and even found it funny and entertaining. Long story short, it was one of my students' favorites. It paired well with the Joy Luck Club. (One focuses on father/son relationships and the other on mother/daughter relationships... or at least that's how I choose to teach it. :P )

Most everything else I liked, including The Crucible, Shakespeare, Wuthering Heights, anything by Alexander Dumas, The Great Gatsby, the Red Badge of Courage, Anthem by Ayn Rand, Of Mice and Men... I loved Tolkien, but it's worth noting that when I read it I was in the middle of nowhere with absolutely nothing else to do. I also really liked the Canterbury Tales in the original middle English. (English major here.)

Edited to add: LOL. Apparently MFP doesn't like some of those works either.

Alexandre Dumas you mean? As in the fellow who wrote the Three Musketeers? I haven't read any of his other work but the Three Musketeers was definitely fun.

Oishii

Lolita. I could not relate to the protagonist.

I felt the same. Forgave him once I read The Gift.

I wasn't too disturbed by it because I was able to distance myself from it and assume the writer took the same position, but then I read some interviews that suggested he was more sympathetic with the subject matter which made me, in turn, less comfortable.

BaconMD

I am so relieved that I'm not the only one who listed Great Expectations. For a minute there, I thought I was the only sane person here. I keep trying to imagine a book worse than Great Expectations, and I just can't do it.*

I don't remember much about it, but I do recall really enjoying The Chrysalids too.

* - have not read Twilight or any sequels or spinoffs. And will never. And hopefully they are never considered classic.