Classic books that you HATED

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  • TheDreadPirateRoberts
    TheDreadPirateRoberts Posts: 225 Member
    Moby bloody ****... 20 chapters before they even saw a boat, 100+ before they saw a whale. Scores of chapters about types of ropes and classifications of leviathan. Just a bloody, bloody boring book. Back in its day it was a flop...there was a reason.

    Also... Sons & Lovers.... miserable pile of crap. The sons really needed to grow a pair. Havinf read up on it, I realise its an autobiography and that the author had...issues.

    Oh and Vanity Fair.... how any book can dwell for so long in the tedium of social chit chat for so long and yet avoid any significant coverage of the Napoleonic wars is beyond me. It was like an English "War and Peace". but without the war and with more "attacks of the vapours". I was significantly bored with the whole lot of them by the end and I couldn't give a stuff what happened to any of them.

    Bookes I struggled with and overcame second tim eround and appreciated: War and Peace. Lord of the Rings.

    Easy way to read the classics: Go to Librivox.org and download them for free. I'm starting Don Quixote tomorrow. Heaven help me.
  • tomomatic
    tomomatic Posts: 1,794 Member
    Crime and Punishment.

    Anything by Virginia Wolf - It's like reading brain farts. Lots of them.

    Madam Bovary <--- I hated the main character and only finished to book to make sure she died.

    Moby Dork <---- because the dictionary def for dork is whale dong.
  • PixieGoddess
    PixieGoddess Posts: 1,833 Member
    My least favorite thing I have been forced to read? The Crucible. Now THAT was terrible to read. Especially when you were tested on knowing EACH AND EVERY CHARACTER.

    Aww, I LOVED The Crucible!! Of course, I'm also a theatre geek and thoroughly enjoyed reading Abigail's part in class :devil:
    Haha I did my A Level English Lit coursework on Jane Austen novels. The most irritating was Sense And Sensibility. If the characters in that had come to life I'd have given them a slap!

    Agreed! I liked Pride and Prejudice in high school, so I thought I'd read some more Jane Austen on my own - I HATED Sense and Sensibility! And I gotta say, didn't much care for Emma either - little brat needs to get a life!

    To comment on others from the thread:
    Liked: To Kill A Mockingbird. Most Shakespeare, but not Romeo and Juliet. (Favorite = A Midsummer Night's Dream)
    Okay: Lord of the Flies. The Yellow Wallpaper (I just love that she went thoroughly insane by the end.)
    Hated: The Great Gatsby and Heart of Darkness. I could never remember just what the hell I was reading about, even right after I read them in high school.

    I also hated one that I can't remember the name or most of the book, but it was a dull boring thing about a Victorian woman who ends up committing suicide by just walking into the ocean at the end....exciting as such a scenario might sound, the author still managed to make it as dull as watching grass grow. :yawn:
  • livs_mom
    livs_mom Posts: 37
    to kill a mockingbird, the grapes of wrath (though i only got through the first few chapters so maybe that's why?), the metamorphosis, thousand pieces of gold. and i'm sure there are more that i've blocked from my memory.
  • LauraMacNCheese
    LauraMacNCheese Posts: 7,173 Member
    Catcher in the Rye - I want to punch Holden Caulfied in the face, repeatedly

    Fahrenheit 451 - could not get past the first chapter
  • beckajw
    beckajw Posts: 1,728 Member
    Anna Karinina

    The Metamorphosis

    Lord of the Flies

    The Crucible
  • beckajw
    beckajw Posts: 1,728 Member
    Compliments of an English degree I learned to hate anything by Faulkner.. and came close to burning my copy of Catch 22 (Heller).

    Oh no! I loved Catch 22.
  • AuddAlise
    AuddAlise Posts: 723 Member
    A seperate peace
    Tom Sawyer only because we had to read it out loud as a class. I finished it in a few days and it took us MONTHS in class.
  • LauraMacNCheese
    LauraMacNCheese Posts: 7,173 Member
    Beowulf; but only because we had to memorize a couple of passages in Old English...
  • geonbaeLeilee
    geonbaeLeilee Posts: 606 Member
    1. Great Expectation-- Charles ****ens
    2. Main Street-- Sinclair Lewis
    3. To Kill a Mockingbird-- Harper Lee
    4. Grapes of Wrath-- John Steinbeck
    5. Great Gatsby- - F. Scott Fitzgerald

    Anything by Hemingway, Shakespeare (except A Midsummer Night's Dream), Austen, and Melville are boring to me.

    Edited to say that I have two English Literature degrees. Sad. :(
  • seasonalvoodoo
    seasonalvoodoo Posts: 380 Member
    Compliments of an English degree I learned to hate anything by Faulkner.. and came close to burning my copy of Catch 22 (Heller).

    Oh man...I adore Faulkner and Catch-22 is one of my favorite books---it's absolutely hilarious (English degree here, too).
  • DesignGrrl
    DesignGrrl Posts: 147 Member
    Lord of the Flies. It's disturbing and they're all turds. Yeah, I know it's supposed to be that way.

    Yes! I had to read this book 3 years in a row for summer reading while switching schools. AWFUL!! I say schools should toss out Lord of the Flies and let kids substitute Hunger Games.
  • melbot24
    melbot24 Posts: 347 Member
    Grapes of Wrath, the most boring book everrrr.
  • innocenceportrayed
    innocenceportrayed Posts: 569 Member
    Little Women
  • seasonalvoodoo
    seasonalvoodoo Posts: 380 Member
    Grapes of Wrath, the most boring book everrrr.

    Aw, one of my favorites!
  • iRebel
    iRebel Posts: 378 Member
    Walden.

    ugh. I have called Emmerson 'Bean Boy' ever since.

    I think Emmerson wrote it... I always just called him Bean Boy, so If I'm wrong, sorry
  • seasonalvoodoo
    seasonalvoodoo Posts: 380 Member
    I loved almost all of the things I had to read in HS...most notably, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, A Separate Peace, Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, etc.

    The only thing I did not enjoy reading was Romeo and Juliet, but I love Hamlet and Macbeth.
  • stacygayle
    stacygayle Posts: 349 Member
    I LOVE LOVE the classics but did not like The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.....too boring for me
  • stacygayle
    stacygayle Posts: 349 Member
    Grapes of Wrath, the most boring book everrrr.

    I second that.
  • IrishHarpy1
    IrishHarpy1 Posts: 399 Member
    Anything by Jane Austen... great cures for insomnia, her books are.

    Other than that, I loved every other book I was "forced" to read -- in fact, I'd already read most of them by the time they were assigned for class. I guess I'm just a literature geek. :smile:
  • Missklara
    Missklara Posts: 282 Member
    The catcher in the rye :grumble:

    i couldn't read more than 5 pages...
  • LuckyLeprechaun
    LuckyLeprechaun Posts: 6,296 Member
    Anna Karenina. Awful.

    War and Peace. Yeah. I wanted a challenge....it's just too long and it sucks.

    Les Miserables. The longest boringest book in history.

    I'm very surprised to see so many name Grapes of Wrath..... I was SO into that book. And I loved East of Eden even more.
  • LuckyLeprechaun
    LuckyLeprechaun Posts: 6,296 Member
    Also, Gatsby. Because it was forced upon me. :mad:
  • BeckaT79
    BeckaT79 Posts: 216
    The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare - which is really a play but it was torturious!! (is that even a word?)

    My favorites were Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck and Night by Elie Wiesel

    Night by Elie Wiesel is haunting.. I love that book...
    I have been sitting here racking my head with every book I have ever read and I can't think of one I hate. I hated reading most of them in school but once I was able to sit down and actually read them I found that Anthem by Ayn Rand , I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and many others are some of my favorite books... It is hard to pick them up and read them more than once but the stories linger....
  • cherrybomb_77
    cherrybomb_77 Posts: 411 Member
    I couldn't get through The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. After 30 pages describing the house I gave up.
  • magj0y
    magj0y Posts: 1,911 Member
    A Tale of Two Cities by Charles D ickens

    Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
    Adding;

    the great gatsby , mobie d!ck. out required reading list wasn't to ridiculous, thank god
  • aamberrr
    aamberrr Posts: 115 Member
    I love reading, and I love some classic lit... That being said, I hated, HATED Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter, and Great Expectations.
  • erikblock
    erikblock Posts: 230 Member
    Walden.

    ugh. I have called Emmerson 'Bean Boy' ever since.

    I think Emmerson wrote it... I always just called him Bean Boy, so If I'm wrong, sorry

    'Walden' was actually Henry David Thoreau. He was a contemporary of Emerson's, though, and they were both considered part of the Transcendentalist movement, so it's an easy mistake to make. (Emerson is best known for 'Nature,' which is often assigned alongside 'Walden.')
  • jnj1013
    jnj1013 Posts: 27
    Grapes of Wrath! All those pages and all I ever remember is that she breast feeds the adult man in the end and it still creeps me out 15 years later!
  • aamberrr
    aamberrr Posts: 115 Member
    Anna Karenina. Awful.

    War and Peace. Yeah. I wanted a challenge....it's just too long and it sucks.

    Les Miserables. The longest boringest book in history.

    I'm very surprised to see so many name Grapes of Wrath..... I was SO into that book. And I loved East of Eden even more.

    I forgot Anna Karenina in my list. I read it one summer, and it was one of those books that I didn't realize that it wasn't going to get any better until about half way through... but I get stubborn and can't stand not finishing books. So it took quite a while to finish.
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