Classic books that you HATED

I find it interesting that so many of the books people disliked are more somber, even depressing books. I know that many of those mentioned left a bad taste in my mouth (Animal Farm, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, The Awakening, etc.), but I chalk that up to the fact that we've all been seasoned to expect and even demand happy endings. When we read books that lack that ending we desire, we tend to write them off as unappealing. Reading through this thread has actually made me interested in revisiting a lot of the books mentioned, since it's been years since I've read most of them. Hope it gives a few other people ideas too! :flowerforyou:

Thank you. This thread is a superb list of great books I've very much enjoyed. Faulkner's short stories are perfection, Canterbury Tales are funny, so many of the titles here just bring to mind scenes and images and complex feelings - such richness!

Perhaps an education in the classics is wasted on many; the absence of leverage to understand context, style, poetics or historical relevance just isn't enough and one must find a "happy" or "punchy" story. For me, my failure is James Joyce - I do not have the cultural references to read Ulysses from cover to cover despite having lived in the house of the first publication (and translation into French) in Paris. Or these books are thrown at students at the wrong age.
Enjoy your readings!

Wow, that's judgmental. Just because someone doesn't like a book you like doesn't mean the person was the wrong age or that the person doesn't understand what he read.

I find it interesting that so many of the books people disliked are more somber, even depressing books. I know that many of those mentioned left a bad taste in my mouth (Animal Farm, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, The Awakening, etc.), but I chalk that up to the fact that we've all been seasoned to expect and even demand happy endings. When we read books that lack that ending we desire, we tend to write them off as unappealing. Reading through this thread has actually made me interested in revisiting a lot of the books mentioned, since it's been years since I've read most of them. Hope it gives a few other people ideas too! :flowerforyou:

Thank you. This thread is a superb list of great books I've very much enjoyed. Faulkner's short stories are perfection, Canterbury Tales are funny, so many of the titles here just bring to mind scenes and images and complex feelings - such richness!

Perhaps an education in the classics is wasted on many; the absence of leverage to understand context, style, poetics or historical relevance just isn't enough and one must find a "happy" or "punchy" story. For me, my failure is James Joyce - I do not have the cultural references to read Ulysses from cover to cover despite having lived in the house of the first publication (and translation into French) in Paris. Or these books are thrown at students at the wrong age.
Enjoy your readings!

Wow, that's judgmental. Just because someone doesn't like a book you like doesn't mean the person was the wrong age or that the person doesn't understand what he read.

Wow, that's judgmental. Just because someone doesn't like a book you like doesn't mean the person was the wrong age or that the person doesn't understand what he read.

If an education of a book is seen as being forced and the end result is that the reader hates the book then how is this not a waste of time? I would suggest you read the thread and see that often people mention the age or being forced to read such and such book. Again, it's an observation of the waste.
It does not mean that a person was necessarily at the wrong age or that they didn't necessarily understand, or place culturally or historically, or yada yada yada other reasons that I mentioned. It would have been judgmental if my intent was to either single out and criticize a specific person about this or that book or even to consider that this can only be the single reason for disliking a classic book. It is pretty obvious that personal taste has a lot to do with it and taste, in literature like in food, is partially acquired. There are a thousand reasons for taste and no accounting for it.
Yet what I wrote holds "for many" from their own admission - too early and forced reading. What you like or do not, as an individual, in a thread full of anonymous comments is not being judged; mine is an observation of a sum of comments for some of the "many".

Lolita. I could not relate to the protagonist.

Faulkner. Sound and the Fury.

I seriously thought I'd had a stroke and lost the ability to read in English. It's utterly nonsensical.

Oscar Wilde can do no wrong.... I'm shaking my head in disbelief at some of the books people 'hate'.

Pretty much anything we had to read in high school. I can't think of any offhand - The Great Gatsby, I think?

I think there's some truth to not appreciating things you are forced to read, but most of the books I listed as hated had nothing to do with them being somber or depressing. Anna Karenina just dragged. If you cut out the pages and pages about mowing and other such topics and just focused on the plot driven story I probably would have liked it. And many people have said they don't like Jane Austen. I don't associate her with somber or depressing. I just find her writing style overbearing.

I agree that writing style and overly descriptive language can turn people off an otherwise wonderful book. I have to admit, the first time I picked up Pride and Prejudice (8th grade), I barely got through the first chapter. A couple years later, I picked it up again, and Austen is now one of my favorite authors. I try to give any book a second chance before completely writing it off. Sometimes I'm just too distracted to immerse myself in a book that requires more attention than just cursory attention to plot development. I have a whole stack of books that I hope to revisit and finish--Anna Karenina is one of them. Maybe when I get to the pages about mowing I'll skip ahead. :laugh:

Tess of the durbervilles, hate it!

The Sirens of Titan. Firstly, because the ending sucked donkey *kitten*. Secondly, because my English teacher wanted us to be impressed that she made a sci-fi book required reading. She underestimated our tastes. An awesome book would have impressed us even more.