Here's my question for today

[Joyce]

I was reading the "Hello Everyone" thread and noticed some talking of Darcy and other characters of Jane Austen and that got me thinking...

What famous classic books have you either read and disliked or NOT read because you just couldn't get through them?

I've tried reading The Hobbit for years and just couldn't get beyond a few chapters.  Tolkien's style of writing makes me feel like I'm wading through mud.  In my opinion (which I think is not the general opinion!) is that he spends too much time describing every stinking detail!  I did end up listening to the audio book but I wished I could just bypass a lot of the songs.  They always had lots and lots of verses!  ERG!

And I'm also going out on a limb here to admit I haven't read Jane Austen.  I tried to get through Sense and Sensibility with an audio book but I just couldn't get into it at all.

Anyone else wanna 'fess up?

[Austin]

I couldn't get through Anna Karenina. I understand the importance of Leo Tolstoy especially with regards to his influence on Ghandi, Dr. King, etc., but that book was just TOO LONG!!!! Eurrrrrgh.

I also really abhor Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was by far the worst author that I had to read in high school.

Not necessarily in the classics genre, but I also could never find a taste for CS Lewis. The Narnia movies are okay, but something about his writing just turns me off quickly.

Otherwise, I'm pretty good to go. I love the Brontes, James Joyce, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, mid-century writers like Daphne du Maurier, and new classic authors like Margaret Atwood.


ETA: Joyce, that's funny that you bring up The Hobbit.  I actually read LotR first, and read every page. Took me forever. (I have a bit of ADHD so asking me to read more than a few pages at a time of anything is a bit like asking a cat to swim across a river.) Then I tried to read The Hobbit and was just BORED! LOL!

[fflurcadwgawn]

Cannot get through either Tolkien, Hawthorn, or Jane Austen, and I try at least once a year for the classics. Ugh.

[cheryl]

I love Faulkner's short stories but Absalom, Absalom almost killed me. I really tried to like 100 Years of Solitude, but I just couldn't do it. And while Milton's Paradise Lost is a great classic, it is certainly the antithesis of a beach read! Oh-- and Blindness by Jose Saramago was a big no.

Not that anyone asked, but...

I do adore most classic authors, though. The Bronte Sisters are wonderful, and I really have fallen in love in recent years with sci fi, as I often feel as if we are living in the very dystopian times about which we were cautioned. In particular, the great Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, and George Orwell hold special significance to me. I also really like poetry as an adult -- all kinds--- though Cummings, Frost, and Dickinson are my favorites. I love Shakespeare's tragedies. Favorite dramatists include Sarte, Ibsen, and Sophocles. But I love reading in general, and contemporary literature has some spectacular reads.

I have to stop now. I could go on and on and on about my favorites. What I dislike is actually harder!

But stop hating on Hawthorne. He's great!

[Rokia]

Hmm... good question.

I loved Tolkein - and C.S. Lewis - and various others like Madeline D'Engle and so forth (Alexander Lloyd!).

I read all of Les Miserables but I never will again - that took me many times to read. I WILL continue to enjoy and love the musical. <grins>

[Shane]

I like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. On the other hand, I find The Silmarillion to be heavy going, although I've read it twice. If you're unfamiliar with this book, it's not a novel along the lines of The Hobbit and TLOTR. It has more in common with a book on, for example, Greek mythology. It tells the story of the First Age of Middle-earth, and is a collection of stories, as opposed to a conventional novel. Tolkien was constantly editing his mythology, and was never able to find a publisher for the book during his lifetime. It was published posthumously, after his son, Christopher, managed to edit these stories into some kind of coherent whole. It was a difficult task, and he had to go back to some of Tolkien's early drafts.

When I was in high school, I read William Golding's Lord of the Flies and really didn't enjoy it. Given that that was nearly 30 years ago, I may give it another go. I don't really want to give Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast stories another go. This is a fantasy series that predates TLOTR but has never achieved its rival's popularity. There are 3 stories, namely Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone. Apparently, there were supposed to be more books, taking the protagonist, Titus Groan, from birth to old age. The series was cut short by Peake's death from Parkinson's Disease. I found the books heavy going. The world of Titus, particularly in the first two books, is claustrophobic compared to the broad canvas of TLOTR.

[Joyce]

Apr 14, 2017 12:01:15 GMT Shane said:

I like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. On the other hand, I find The Silmarillion to be heavy going, although I've read it twice. If you're unfamiliar with this book, it's not a novel along the lines of The Hobbit and TLOTR. It has more in common with a book on, for example, Greek mythology. It tells the story of the First Age of Middle-earth, and is a collection of stories, as opposed to a conventional novel. Tolkien was constantly editing his mythology, and was never able to find a publisher for the book during his lifetime. It was published posthumously, after his son, Christopher, managed to edit these stories into some kind of coherent whole. It was a difficult task, and he had to go back to some of Tolkien's early drafts.

When I was in high school, I read William Golding's Lord of the Flies and really didn't enjoy it. Given that that was nearly 30 years ago, I may give it another go. I don't really want to give Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast stories another go. This is a fantasy series that predates TLOTR but has never achieved its rival's popularity. There are 3 stories, namely Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone. Apparently, there were supposed to be more books, taking the protagonist, Titus Groan, from birth to old age. The series was cut short by Peake's death from Parkinson's Disease. I found the books heavy going. The world of Titus, particularly in the first two books, is claustrophobic compared to the broad canvas of TLOTR.

I've heard of The Silmarillion.  A friend of mine at work loves The Hobbit and has read all the Lord of the Rings books, including that one.  I can't say it interests me at all.

[Rokia]

Oh, something I had a hard time slogging through -- MacBeth (unlike Hamlet or Julius Caesar or Romeo and Juliet... MacBeth had me wading fairly early...)

[JD]

I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and like them, but have never tried to slog through The Silmarillion.  I don't NEED to know the history of Middle-Earth!

For someone who really does like to read, I'm not very 'WELL-read' because most of the classics, either old or modern, leave me totally cold.  I hated pretty much everything required in high school/college lit classes -- like Shane, I despised Lord of the Flies, likewise Fahrenheit 451 and all that ilk.  Likewise The Great Gatsby, likewise Grapes of Wrath.  I did find Animal Farm okay, though.  I've read some Jane Austen, some of the Bronte things, some Mark Twain, little bit of Dickens, quite a few of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan books, but not the Princess of Mars series.  Absolutely LOATHED Les Miserables.     Like Rokia, I've read quite a bit of Madeline L'Engle and Alexander Lloyd.

[Shane]

More than one reader has commented that The Silmarillion actually has the effect of making the events of TLOTR seem almost trivial by comparison. The War of the Ring seems like a skirmish compared to the epic events in The Silmarillion. Even Sauron seems a bit of a lightweight once you've read The Silmarillion, as he was just a lieutenant of that book's villain, Morgoth. Morgoth was one of the Valar (very powerful entities) whereas Sauron was one of the Maiar (lesser entities below the Valar). To put him in perspective, Gandalf and Saruman were also Maiar.

The worst bit about reading Lord of the Flies was that it wasn't a school setwork book. It was private reading on my part, but I've got a masochistic streak that means I'll always plough through a book that I'm not enjoying. Or maybe it's just OCD. Who knows?

[PaulinaAnn]

 Hmmmm, feeling a bit out of my league with some of you readers!  Except for what I was forced to read in high school and college, I never really applied myself to classical works although I worked at a library and LOVE to read... I just read things that are not very mind-provoking for the most part.  I also found that in high school/college they usually had the BEST part of the book in my text book and when I went to read the whole book, I found myself slogging and going... "Where's the good parts?"   However...

 After watching A Tale of Two Cities, I did read the book and love it to this day.  SOOOO many great quotes.  I have read Rawlings: The Yearling.  Practically hyperventilated at the end of the story.  I read the complete trilogy of the LOTR and loved it although my tongue is still recovering from all those difficult to pronounce names.  Read quite a bit of CS Lewis although not all of the books.  Loved Milton's Paradise Lost but found I enjoyed the excerpts more than the complete story (which I haven't made it through).  Burnett: The Secret Garden. I've read a number of E.A. Poe's work and liked them although they are a bit dreary. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables.

  I read Steinbeck: The Pearl. Not a big fan. Huxley: Brave New World, ho-hum.

 Now I HAVE read a TON of the illustrated Classic Comic Books.  LOVE them!  Illiad, Odyssey, Robin Hood, the Count of Monte Cristo, the Man in the Iron Mask, the Three Musketeers, A Midsummer's Night Dream... the list goes on. I read and loved those, can't say I've read the real thing but have watched some of the movies.  :-) 

[Cherylann]

Rokia, you are killing me. I LOVE Macbeth!!!! It is second only to Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet in my book. I also forgot to mention that I really enjoyed the Harry Potter series, though I got on board about 15 years after everyone else!

[cheryl]

That was me. I wasn't logged in.

[Rokia]

I was going to say - and I thought i had settings so that guests couldn't post lol... will have to rejig that!
I may have liked MacBeth if I didn't have a harridan as an English Teacher my senior year. (the reason I loved Hamlet and Julius Caesar was that I had an awesome English Teacher that year who let us read the books out loud and discuss as we were reading, which worked better for me)

[Austin]

I've been doing a little more reading of modern classics lately. Some Haruki Murakami has made its way onto my shelf and so I've had a lot of fun with those. Next up on my list is Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada. The premise is really, really interesting -

www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Polar-Bear-Yoko-Tawada/dp/081122578X

[snowprincess]

Oooh, I love classic literature!!  But the books I don't love.....Anna Karenina (Austin you are my soulmate ). If anyone deserved to be thrown under a train.....

I don't have the warm fuzzies for Wuthering Heights either. Catherine needs a hard slap and Heathcliff needs to be committed. It's only romantic if you're 14.

Les Miserables....only because I had to read it in French. *shudder*  I'm sure it's a great story, but you know...flashbacks.

And I have to say, Romeo & Juliet drives me a bit bonkers as well. In fact, this guys tells Juliet everything I've ever wanted to say to her. www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwnFE_NpMsE (Tiny language warning for one sentence. Nothing terrible, but if you're very sensitive, I thought I'd throw out a warning.)


Books I love:

All of Austen!!

Jane Eyre

Pretty much all of Dickens, but David Copperfield is a slog. Mainly because it's so darn long. The Pickwick Papers had me laughing out loud. And Tale of Two Cities is my favorite of Dickens.

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Scarlet Letter

North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell (and the BBC mini-series is even better!!)

Wives & Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

Everything but R & J by William Shakespeare

All of Louisa May Alcott (I started with Little Women in third grade and fell in love with her books)

To Kill a Mockingbird (probably my all-time favorite book)

A Room With a View by E M Forster

Middlemarch by George Eliot (long, but worth it)

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (And I've just started My Cousin Rachel by the same author. Love it so far. Oh, and the book Rebbecca is different than the movie, so read the book.)

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Everything by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Ok, I'll stop now, because I could go on forever!!  I have lots of more modern "classics" I love, too, but I'll save that for another post.


Diane

[JD]

Ah, you're helping me think of books I like, SnowPrincess.  

I love the Louisa May Alcott books, all of them.  

I love The Secret Garden, but NOT The Little Princess.  

I read I Capture the Castle very recently because it was recommended, but didn't care for it at all.  

Loved A Tree Grows in Brooklyn -- does that count as a 'classic'?

Didn't care much for Wuthering Heights, but Jane Eyre is okay.  

ALL of the Anne of Green Gables books are superb, in my estimation.  

[Robina]

Thank you SnowPrincess and JD

Books I love:

All of Austen!!
Jane Eyre - I definitely agree with you on Wuthering Heights! Cathy was an idiot and Heathcliff should be committed.
Pretty much all of Dickens except for Great Expectations (we studied it in Grade 10 English) and Tale of Two Cities is my favorite of Dickens.
North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell (and the BBC mini-series is even better!!) - yes it was
Shakespeare - I agree with you about R&J and I prefer to avoid Titus Andronicus
All of Louisa May Alcott
To Kill a Mockingbird
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Everything by Frances Hodgson Burnett
All of the Anne of Green Gables books
Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes
Madeline D'Engle
Susan Cooper
Baroness Orczy was fun although re-reading the books n both Percy and Marguerite both get a bit irritating

[Austin]

Ye gods!!! I believe JD, Robina, Diane and I are all cut from the same cloth! I just got excited simply reading your lists! (And I totally forgot about Brideshead Revisited... SO GOOD!!!!!)

I'd have to add Margaret Atwood to mine, as well - or maybe I did, in my first post? (My brain is mush...). Yes, A Handmaid's Tale is good, but so are The Robber Bride, Alias Grace... I even found her treatise on the nature of debt (Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth) and its examinations of wealth/debt through such diverse lenses to be fascinating.

[JD]

What about books that are merely "old-fashioned" and not classics?  There are old books that either my father picked up at GoodWill or my great-aunt acquired when she was teaching school in the 30s, 40s and 50s, that were around the house when I was a kid.  I still love a couple of them to death, even though they aren't anything great as far as the world is concerned.     

Daddy Long Legs, and its sequel, Dear Enemy -- both of them absolutely delightful, set in the early 1900s.  

The Rose-Garden Husband -- pure 1890s-or-so schmaltz, and SUCH fun to read!  

Books by Bess Streeter Aldrich -- A Lantern in Her Hand, A White Bird Flying, The Rim of the Prairie, and more.  

And back to kids' books that I STILL like to re-read as an adult -- all the Betsy-Tacy books [and the 'companion books'] by Maud Hart Lovelace, especially the "high school and beyond" ones.  

These aren't "classic literature" -- they're books I ENJOY reading much, much more than classic literature!  

[Rokia]

I read and loved all of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books - except the Farmer Boy - which I tried to read five or six times but failed -- the rest I devoured, even the one that was all letters (I only read it once though)

I loved Little Women (I read that when I was in college, I think), I loved the Little Princess and the Secret Garden.

I admit I haven't delved into a lot of other classics - I cut my teeth on mysteries, pretty much - once I read every Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, The Bobbsey Twins, The Happy Hollisters (yes, I read all of them!) - I moved directly to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books. Yes, I sometimes had to have a dictionary handy to keep up with the vocabulary. Then I delved into fantasy from there, while keeping up with the Hardy Boys, Nero Wolfe and, later, Dick Francis. My first fantasy reads were C.S. Lewis' Narnia series (okay, I didn't like the Silver Chair very much but I read the rest with gusto - and reread them). As I said, I read the Hobbit (okay, devoured, then read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy). I've read every Pern book Anne McCaffrey ever wrote (not so much the ones her son wrote though). I've read most of Mercedes' Lackey Valdemar books. (and others, such as her Serrated Edge novels and so forth). And, of course, I am a huge fan of Harry Potter (though don't get me started on some of things in those books that make me want to yank my hair out, I read those books despite those things). I rather consider some of those classics (in my head at least)

[snowprincess]

I love Margaret Atwood, too, Austin!!

Wendell Berry is one of my favorites for modern day literary fiction. Jayber Crow is fabulous!

I'm now reading The Madwoman in the Attic by Catherine Lowell (about a modern day descendant of the Bronte sisters), and really enjoying it so far.

One of my absolutely favorite sites for getting book recommendations is modernmrsdarcy.com/  She has a wonderful podcast "What Should I Read Next" on Itunes, that everyone should check out.

This is the "card catalog" page from her site, if you just want some quick recommendations in lots of categories. Just click on the books for more info on them. She's never steered me wrong. modernmrsdarcy.com/card-catalog/

[snowprincess]

Apr 19, 2017 18:16:31 GMT Robina said:

Thank you SnowPrincess and JD

Books I love:

All of Austen!!
Jane Eyre - I definitely agree with you on Wuthering Heights! Cathy was an idiot and Heathcliff should be committed.
Pretty much all of Dickens except for Great Expectations (we studied it in Grade 10 English) and Tale of Two Cities is my favorite of Dickens.
North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell (and the BBC mini-series is even better!!) - yes it was
Shakespeare - I agree with you about R&J and I prefer to avoid Titus Andronicus
All of Louisa May Alcott
To Kill a Mockingbird
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Everything by Frances Hodgson Burnett
All of the Anne of Green Gables books
Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes
Madeline D'Engle
Susan Cooper
Baroness Orczy was fun although re-reading the books n both Percy and Marguerite both get a bit irritating



Robina, we are of one mind!!

[snowprincess]

Austin, have you read this one yet??? www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Elegy-Memoir-Family-Culture/dp/0062300547/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492632670&sr=8-1&keywords=hillbilly+elegy 
It's about Appalachia, and the culture and economic crisis facing this area through the story of a family. So good!! My mother descended from immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania, so even though the area of the country isn't the same, I could totally relate to almost all of it.

[Joyce]

A list of books I love? Where to start, where to start? I'll start my list with the ones I pull out and reread every couple of years.

- The Hardy Boys, of course! But my favorites are the old, old ones that were released in the late 1920s. They have a charm that are completely missing from the newer books. I do love reading the blue spines and digests and I like (for the most part) the Casefiles. I admit that when the newer books came out with ATAC, I stopped reading them.

- The Little House books. I named my middle daughter Laura for her.

- Harry Potter books. LOVE THEM!

- The Chronicles of Narnia. All of them. I think Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my favorite and I do NOT want to discuss how the movie makers RUINED that story!!

- Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling. I can't get into any of his other books but I love that one.

- The Riftwar saga books by Raymond Feist. Fantasy books that are very well written. He's actually written dozens of very detailed books about the world he created and I haven't read all of them. The first are my favorites of what I have read.

- Land of Stories books by Chris Colfer (of Glee fame). I'll admit it: I read these books because I adore Chris Colfer. Although his writing is kind of rough in some places, he's very imaginative and Mary and I love them. The sixth book is due out this July.

And Honorable Mentions:

- Anne of Green Gables series. I do enjoy them but I don't LOVE the with the same fervor as others. Great books though.

- Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plumb books. Pure mind candy!

- The Eragon books. I enjoyed them for the most part. Some of what happened was pretty predictable though.

And the guilty pleasures:

- The Twilight books. Yes, I've got them. Not to be pulled off the shelf but once every 10 years or so! I liked the story and concept but I have some big issues with the author's writing style. That woman needed a better editor.

- Star Trek and Star Wars novels. I used to buy each Star Trek as it came out (I worked at a bookstore so....) but I haven't bought a new one in years. I do have a few favorites but I'll be culling my collection soon and giving them to my cousin's daughter.