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Classic Novels You Just Didn't Get


An Evening Comment Diversion / Dustin Rowles

Comment Diversions | July 13, 2009 | Comments (216)


Tonight’s evening diversion, which comes from a regular Eloquent, Tracer Bullet, was inspired by the reaction (overreaction?) to the Cannonball Read review of Catch 22 last Friday. Carrie wasn’t a fan of the classic novel, and while some of our readers agreed with her assessment, many others took her dislike personally, for some reason. Never mind that not all classic novels are for everyone; I loved Catch 22 and Catcher in the Rye, but I try not to fly off the handle when others don’t find the same enjoyment in them. I don’t like Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, for instance. Loved the movie, but hell if I could get into the novel. LIkewise: Loved 1984; didn’t care for A Brave New World.

To each their own.

Anyway, this idea was also a subject of a post over at our old friend John Williams’ book review site last week — they looked at some critically acclaimed books and “unrecommended” them (great piece — check it out). For Tracer Bullet, it was one I agree with completely: A Confederacy of Dunces, which he thought “was okay, but it didn’t strike me as any towering work of genius that drove its author to suicide. Ignatious J. Riley was funny at first, then he became Comic Book Guy and the whole thing went sideways.

So, let’s put the question to you all: What classic or critically acclaimed novel did you not get?


Mary-Louise Parker reads a Bedtime Story for Esquire | Thirteen Albatrosses by Donald Harington



Comments

well, this will likely get me stoned, but i'll go ahead: Catcher in the Rye. i spent the entire book wanting to kick fucking Holden Caulfield in his douchebag face.

also, i hate Hemingway.

Posted by: lizzieborden at July 13, 2009 8:36 PM

Catch-22. I tried, oh boy did I try, but I just couldn't get into that book.

Also, Fahrenheit 451...Booooooring.

Posted by: Kiddo at July 13, 2009 8:37 PM

On the Road. I mean, it was ok. but really not that fantastic.

Posted by: buttercup at July 13, 2009 8:37 PM

I never cared for The Grapes of Wrath. I think it just bored me to tears.

Posted by: Cindy at July 13, 2009 8:38 PM

Lizzie stole my post.

Posted by: MB at July 13, 2009 8:38 PM

"Wuthering Heights" My gracious goons did I hate that book. I spent the entire length of it yelling (mostly in my head) at the characters. I hated every petulant moment of it. Blech. I've never understood how anyone could connect to that book.

Also "Slaughterhouse Five" Although I intend to re-read it soon because, in all fairness, I read it in Grade 9 English and I wanted to bash that particular teacher's skull in with the paperback copy she provided me with. So I may have been unfairly biased against it.

Posted by: NoDice at July 13, 2009 8:41 PM

Anything by William Faulkner such as his much-ballyhooed and part of every high school English curriculum "As I Lay Dying", which due to his horrifying use of sentences that go on and on and on and on drove me to nearly punch out the aforementioned English teacher; even though he was a septuagenarian Southern gentleman who loved Tennessee Williams.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: Fredo at July 13, 2009 8:42 PM

Gah. I don't want to do this, but Brave New World is one of my favorite novels. There's no "A" in the title.

I hated "The Old Man and the Sea." Hemingway drones on and on for pages about this gigantic struggle, and then *spoiler alert!* the guy loses the fish?? I don't care about the symbolism; how about some freakin' payoff for reading the damn thing?

Posted by: MelBivDevoe at July 13, 2009 8:44 PM

Sorry, but The Hobbit was required reading in my high school, and I hated every second of it. Fantasy or not, give me a reason to give a shit about your protagonist, or any character in the story for that matter.

Posted by: aidan at July 13, 2009 8:46 PM

I don't know if it's considered "acclaimed" or not, but Sophie's Choice was the most rambling, irritating book I've ever read. Every time it started getting good & had a flow to it, it would veer off on some fucking tangent & I wanted to scream! It took me over a year to finish the thing, because I had to keep putting it away & trying again. Maybe I was too young to read it when I did, but holy crap, that was an annoying-ass book!

Posted by: Lainey at July 13, 2009 8:47 PM

"A Confederacy of Dunces" is the funniest book ever written. So what if the comic book guy from "The Simpson's" is a ripoff of Ignatius Riley. That book is so wildly original and inventive that I pull it off the shelf about every two years and read it again. Anyone who disagrees is lacking in theology and geometry! Oh my God! I think my valve just closed!!!

Posted by: Dano at July 13, 2009 8:47 PM

A fArewell to arms. I ducking wanted to bite my own arm off just to have something to do! It was rather boring

Posted by: The chaplain at July 13, 2009 8:48 PM

Acghfo;ghri g Hemingway. Ugh. I think I had to read "The Sun Also Rises". Or possibly "The Old Man and the Sea". I don't even know, because I refuse to go near any of his work ever again (except that time I had to read a short story of his in a lit class, which was tolerable ONLY because it was short).

I did like "Confederacy of Dunces", though.

Posted by: Anna von Beaverplatz at July 13, 2009 8:50 PM

I finished Catch-22 and wanted to buy myself a beer for a job well done. I completely agreed with Carrie's review. Too many characters with too few personalities.

Posted by: Candace at July 13, 2009 8:52 PM

I don't know if this is a "classic" piece of literature, but Naked Lunch was one of those books I felt compelled to pick up mostly because it had been described as one of those books you "have to read" if you are any kind of bibliophile. But, I just thought it was straight up zzzzzzzzz. Made it through about 50 pages and put it down, and I am the type of reader who will give anything at least the first 100 pages or so. Also, Atlas Shrugged. I made it through the first third, mostly out of guilt because it is my wife's favorite book and she is dying for me to read it and love it as much as she does, but after that, meh...

Posted by: DaddyMac at July 13, 2009 8:53 PM

Great Gatsby.

Fuck. I'm an American Lit teacher, and I have had to teach this novel 8 times, and it doesn't get any better. F. Scott Fitzgerald...go fuck yourself.

Hemmingway's writing is awful. "Hills Like White Elephants" is the only example I need.

Posted by: tncunnin at July 13, 2009 8:54 PM

lizzieborden, I also HATE Hemingway. Seriously...we read The Old Man and the Sea in high school and I just kept thinking...LET THE FUCKING FISH GO AND GO HOME!!

Also, read Ayn Rand's stuff a couple of years ago...WTF??

The Bible????

Posted by: dammitjanet at July 13, 2009 8:54 PM

Is this modern literary classics or classics in general, 'cause I hated me some "Tale of Two Cities". Though I had the reverse of Dustin; I loved "Brave New World" and didn't really care for "1984". And after reading "Beyond Good and Evil" I kinda wanted to dig up Nietzsche and punch him in the head. Does that count?

Also my boyfriend recently finished "On the Road" and considered it the biggest waste of time he has ever spent reading, and that's including high school history textbook assignments.

Posted by: CinnabarriGirl at July 13, 2009 8:55 PM

I mentioned in the "Catch 22" post that it was the only book I have ever given up on. I hated "Catcher In The Rye", but at least I managed to finish it. Holden was a complete shit. I can't enjoy or connect with a book if I despise the main character. The only book I didn't like in school was "The Stone Angel", which, like CITR, features an intolerable protagonist.

Posted by: Lauren at July 13, 2009 8:55 PM

I'm beginning to think that I don't "get" Pajiba. In the past, stuff that sucks gets dragged out into the bright shining daylight to be revealed as the crap that it is. But lately it seems that you guys like to complain about things ( books, movies, music, etc.) that have real quality. I find this perplexing.

Posted by: Dano at July 13, 2009 8:58 PM

I had to read Wuthering Heights for an english paper. 2 Hours well spent and then I passed the exam. Couldn't be happier, but I may have missed stuff like the nuance or details I suppose.

Posted by: will at July 13, 2009 8:59 PM

That's funny, DaddyMac, that you were bored by Naked Lunch. I have a friend who read it and pretty much was tormented by it. He recommended I avoid it at all costs, or else I'd lose my mind like he did.

Posted by: MelBivDevoe at July 13, 2009 8:59 PM

Bret Easton Ellis. With the exception of "American Psycho" - which I loved - I've never managed to make it through any of his other novels.

Also, I enjoy a great deal of Bukowski but "Women" is just over long and repetitive.

Margaret Atwood, never got her.

The Koran.

Posted by: TSF at July 13, 2009 9:03 PM

AAAAAAAAAGH! Oh my God, lizzie, you too? Oh my God, we had to read that for 9t grade English, and all I could think was "God, this guy is such a butthole". That, and it made someone kill John Lennon. DOUCHE!

Also, I kinda totally hated The Master and Margarita. That book took FOREVER to start getting good, and by the time it did, it was WAY too late.

Posted by: Jeremy Feist at July 13, 2009 9:06 PM

dammitjanet, I had to write a five-ish page paper on either For Whom the Bell Tolls or A Farewell to Arms in high school (and I shit you not, I can't for the life of me remember which one, because I swear they're the exact same fucking book), and all I did was go through the stupid goddamn thing and pull out the quotes I needed and just skimmed the rest. God I hate fucking Hemingway.

Managed to get a B on the paper, too.

Posted by: lizzieborden at July 13, 2009 9:06 PM

DON MOTHER EFFING DELILLO. Yeah, I get it. I just don't care. I took a course on him for my Senior Seminar and was subjected to FIVE of his novels, taught by an amazing professor who was passionate about Delillo (rest in peace Dr. Saltzman). My final thesis for the class was pretty much a dissertation on why I hated Delillo so very, very much. I got a B on it (from Saltzman that's pretty high praise) and am totally fine with that. HATE.

Posted by: tinmo at July 13, 2009 9:08 PM

As I Lay Dying, Of Mice and Men, and anything by Dickens.

Posted by: Michelle at July 13, 2009 9:08 PM

Yeah, JerBear, I had to read it in 9th grade English too.

That was about the time I stopped actually reading the assigned reading for classes and started relying on friends and skimming.

Posted by: lizzieborden at July 13, 2009 9:10 PM

Yes, I'll second Confederacy of Dunces. I had someone at the bookstore recommend it to me, and I think I might have made it 20 pages into the book before I just couldn't go on. It's entirely possible that it gets better but with a protagonist that unlikeable, why bother?

I was also bored to tears by nearly everything I was forced to read in school (except Poe, of course, and most Shakespeare). I didn't get it then, and, most of the time, I don't get it now. It would be nice if they'd only let the teachers start with some contemporary fiction and work backwards instead of bashing us over the head with Hawthorne and Dickens and Melville as if the archaic language makes up for the lack of contemporary relevance.

Yes, I understand the novels are meant to be symbolic, and symbols are usually timeless. But since that is the case, why not choose something approachable first then work towards the obscure?

Though I'm still bugged by this nagging feeling that I've missed something deeply important by not finding the deeper significance of the pocket watch in I. M. Fuckwad's "Tempest in a Teacup", assigned reading in 11th grade English with Mrs. Tightwat.

Ah, public school education.

Posted by: Neodiogenes at July 13, 2009 9:11 PM

tinmo, I completely agree. I absolutely hated White Noise.

Another one I never "got" was Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.

Posted by: Tierney at July 13, 2009 9:12 PM

HATE ATLAS SHRUGGED - wow - I "got" it - but absolutely hated it. I'm an english major and trudge through a lot of self congratulatory ego masturbation but holy backwards fuck ayn rand is so annoying and her prose style is just as annoying. every page is just like 'oh and us amazing disconnected brilliant rich people were at x place looking at x people and their petty stupid concerns BLAHBLAH" wow. hate hate hate.

Posted by: eden at July 13, 2009 9:12 PM

Anything Dickens
Anything Jane Austen
All dystopia novels w/ exception of Atlas Shrugged
Hairy Pooter


Underrated- Plath and Lovecraft for serious, Lee Child for fun

Posted by: Be Adequite! at July 13, 2009 9:12 PM

My main objection to Dickens is that muthafucka got paid by the word. And I will never be paid by the word, if i ever am published.

Really, I'm just jealous.

Posted by: lizzieborden at July 13, 2009 9:13 PM

I hated "Wuthering Heights." All the characters are so worthlessly self-serving that I spent half the novel with my right eye twitching.

And "On the Road." I'm a big fan of the literature that the Beats inspired, but their actual work drives me nuts.

Posted by: Zuzu at July 13, 2009 9:15 PM

Catcher In The Rye for me, too. As well as A Confederacy of Dunces. Both protagonists were major league douchebags, and I think it is because of them that I hate 87% of people who post on the internet, because I can see aspects of both in most posters.

Posted by: Shane at July 13, 2009 9:16 PM

A-freakin'-men to A Confederacy of Dunces--it sprang to mind before I even read the intro to this diversion. I think I made it about as far as Neodiogenes did before I got completely disgusted by the protagonist. It wasn't the resemblance to Comic Book Guy that bugged me, but rather the resemblance to a fellow I'd recently worked with who creeped the bejeebus out of me. Now that the coworker's a more distant memory, I'd considered giving it another go...but I couldn't be bothered.

Although now that dammitjanet mentioned it, I do recall being bored to tears by The Old Man and the Sea back in high school. And more recently by The English Patient, much as I wanted to like it (Ondaatje being a Canadian and all).

Posted by: meaux at July 13, 2009 9:28 PM

Well, I'm going to be in the minority here, apparently, because I loved A Confederacy of Dunces, The Catcher in the Rye, and I dig Hemingway. And As I Lay Dying. The book I hated the most? Probably Last of the Mohicans. I wouldn't mind pimp-slapping James Fenimore Cooper.

Posted by: Mattfactor at July 13, 2009 9:31 PM

Let me say this to everyone first: if you read the book a long time ago, and you suspect it might almost be a different book now because you are so different, seriously, give it a try.

Now that being said, Virginia Woolf can smooch up and kiss my ever-lovin' white ass because I hate hate HATE her shit. HATE IT.

Ditto William Fucking Faulkner. He's torturous.

And I read both of these authors in the last year.

MelBigDevoe: The point was the struggle and the sacrifice. He fights sharks in the middle of the night in the middle of the ocean bare-fucking-handed. The marlin is so big he can't even bring it in his boat, he has to lash it to the side! All the other fisherman call him salao, unlucky, and he wanted to prove he could do this, but the damn sharks ate every single bit off the bones by the time he was found (he was out at sea for three days and three nights and nearly died of exposure and dehydration). It didn't get away, it got eaten. But when they hauled him in with that big ass marlin skeleton tied to the side, everyone knew he had done it. He had caught it. He went home and had wounds in his hands and feet (OH!) and had sacrificed himself for the fish, for his pride.

It's classic Hemingway. My students, especially the boys, always hung on to every freaking word and loved it. Also, it's only 103 pages long, LOL.

Oh man, I just read the rest of the comments and see all the other Hemingway hatred. I'm sad. I'll give him this: his shit is short and to the point, unlike a certain southern male author I mentioned above.

He wasn't going to let the fish go because it was his final struggle, his final way of proving he still had it, like he was a young man again. This guy was SUPER fucking old and everyone had written him off. The little boy who used to go with him and help him wasn't even allowed to anymore by his parents because he was seen as such a dead man walking. This would mean a restoration of his place in the community and more than that: it would mean he could eat. He was literally down to his last pennies and had no food when he caught that 14 foot marlin. If he had brought it in intact, he could have made enough money to quit for good and live on the proceeds for a few YEARS.

So it was a really big fucking deal, that fish.

It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953.

Posted by: Snuggiepants the Deathbringer at July 13, 2009 9:32 PM

Hmmm...I hated Melville as a high school student and love him as an adult reader. As a result, I'm much more measured and patient in my assessment of "classics". Sure, there are those that are tiresome intellectual tours de force (I'm looking at you, Ulysses), but there's usually some redeeming feature to be found -- even if it isn't always entertainment value. Also, some "classics" achieve that status from novelty or shock value and don't always age well.

On the other hand, some classics cannot be praised enough. I've had people try to tell me what their various issues with Conrad (, Joseph -- not Skitz's cousin) are, and I simply no longer regard them as sentient beings.

Posted by: Che Grovera at July 13, 2009 9:32 PM

Hm. Pick anything by Vonnegut. I've tried a few, but they drive me nuts.

Posted by: Dave at July 13, 2009 9:33 PM

Oh and I meant to say that the Nobel Prize for fiction Hemingway won in 54 was for his entire body of work, but apparently The Old Man and the Sea clenched it.

Posted by: Snuggiepants the Deathbringer at July 13, 2009 9:33 PM

Che I hated Conrad in high school, but I gave him another try as an adult and LOVED him. I think I just didn't have the background knowledge I needed to get Conrad as a 15 year old.

Posted by: Snuggiepants the Deathbringer at July 13, 2009 9:35 PM

Catcher in the Rye was supposed to be the alienated-teenager classic for boys, and The Bell Jar was supposed to be the same thing for girls. I read both and was extremely annoyed by both.

Everything Charles Dickens ever set to paper except for A Christmas Carol.

Everything Hemingway ever set to paper with no exceptions whatsoever.

I started A Confederacy of Dunces several years ago; put it down and just never picked it up again. I did find it tough going, but I'm not going to condemn it until/unless I read the whole thing. It's around here somewhere...

Ayn Rand should be disqualified from this discussion because she was not a writer--she was purely and simply an evangelist for her invention, Objectivism, and never wrote or spoke to any other purpose. That makes her a pamphleteer--however bloated her pamphlets--not a writer.

In closing, thanks to all who dissed Don Delillo. I thought I was all alone in thinking his stuff is stupid.

Posted by: Jerce at July 13, 2009 9:36 PM

This conversation just happened----

ME: Name a book you hated.
My Girlfriend: The ending of THE GRAPES OF WRATH.
ME: (not knowing shit about the book) Oh, when she has her kid, and then they eat it?
My Girlfriend: (laughing hysterically) No, Rosasharn has her kid, but it's a stillborn--
ME: And then they eat it?
My Girlfriend: No! And then she feeds the old man in the barn with her breast milk. Ugh!
ME: I like my ending better.

Posted by: Jim Doggie at July 13, 2009 9:38 PM

I remember hating Jane Eyre when I read it in high school over a decade ago, but every time I hear about the plot I want to pick it up again to see if it's any better now. I mean, it's got a little girl waking up next to a dead orphan, a cranky/sexy Maxim DeWinteresq love interest, a crazy secret wife... it SOUNDS like something I should like.

Posted by: Cree83 at July 13, 2009 9:39 PM

Maybe not quite "classic" yet, but I couldn't bear Blindness by Jose Saramago. Nor can I stand anything by Cormac McCarthy. Ugh. Give me Austen, Dickens, Hemingway, or even Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy before you make me look at those two again. I also don't care for Toni Morrison. I had to read Beloved four times in college. Never again.

Posted by: ami at July 13, 2009 9:40 PM

Anything by Charles Dickens or Ernest Hemingway.

The Scarlet Letter. Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The Grapes of Wrath. Moby Dick. Vanity Fair. I've started Infinite Jest about 7 times and have never gotten past page 30, but I don't know if that's really a classic.

Old Yeller. Yeah, I'm a heartless bitch.

Posted by: the librarian at July 13, 2009 9:42 PM

The Scarlet Letter and Jane Eyre. Both just bored me to tears and I couldn't even finish the latter one.

Posted by: Kamil at July 13, 2009 9:44 PM

[I]"A Confederacy of Dunces" is the funniest book ever written. So what if the comic book guy from "The Simpson's" is a ripoff of Ignatius Riley. That book is so wildly original and inventive that I pull it off the shelf about every two years and read it again. Anyone who disagrees is lacking in theology and geometry! Oh my God! I think my valve just closed!!![/I]

And yet...that's PRECISELY the book I was going to post about. I'd heard so much about this book I couldn't wait to read it. So, last summer, I finally pick it up and...I hate it. Ignatius Riley was the most annoying prick of a character I've encountered this side of Stephen Daedalus (there's another classic book that I didn't get, though at least Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is technically good enough and short enough that I was motivated to finish the damn thing, unlike C.O.D.).

Going back to "the classics," though, I must admit to just not getting the whole Jane Austen thing. Or Dickens. Or the Bronte sisters. Or pretty much Victorian literature in general. (Can I throw in Madame Bovary while I'm at it?)

I guess self-absorbed characters get to me, huh?

Posted by: Armando at July 13, 2009 9:49 PM

This is Weird. I just installed and was messing around with a books app on facebook.

Lizzie:

"My main objection to Dickens is that muthafucka got paid by the word. And I will never be paid by the word, if i ever am published."

Thats why???? Thats why it took him 25 pages to describe a room??? Fuckin A.

So, yes. Anything Dickens.

Posted by: Kate at July 13, 2009 9:52 PM

Oh I love this. Here's three of mine:

Anna Karenina: couldn't get past the first third. I found it painful to read and just had to throw it aside. It pissed me off because it cost a lot of money (giant fucking book) and I hate not finishing books. But I just couldn't. Largely because of what had happened with:

Les Miserables: BECAUSE THIS IS A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT OF A BOOK. No, really, my hatred for it is visceral and monumental and has no limit. I skipped more pages than I can remember, wondering when SOMETHING was going to happen, and hating every single character. I finished it out of pure anger. Just to say that I had. It was my motherfucking EVEREST. If I were of the book burning persuasion I would've burnt that book. Horrible.

The Grapes of Wrath: I just plain hate Steinbeck. I hated the neverending descriptions and I couldn't get into it.

And Hemingway, but I've never finished a single one of his books. And I never saw what was so great about Catcher in the Rye.

Posted by: figgy at July 13, 2009 9:56 PM

The only Dickens I ever liked was A Tale of Two Cities. And I LOVED it.

Posted by: figgy at July 13, 2009 9:57 PM

Oh, and let me second The Hobbit. If Bilbo Baggins had any sense he would've kicked all those fucking freeloaders out of his house by page 10, gotten on with his life and that would've been that.

But what's with all the DeLillo hate? (Actually, does he even count as classic literature since he's still alive and writing?) I'll give you that some of his books are overrated (Falling Man anyone? PLEASE!) and White Noise, though I've liked it enough to read it twice, is not totally likeable. But the man's reputation is secure, as far as I'm concerned, based solely on Underworld. Damn that was a good book.

Posted by: Armando at July 13, 2009 9:57 PM

Everybody Poops--they do not!

Posted by: Jo 'Mama' Besser at July 13, 2009 10:00 PM

Another one on the "Catcher in the Rye" wagon. I didn't hate it, but it did literally nothing for me. Plus, I think hearing that it was what inspired Mark Ruby to kill John Lennon gave me bizarre expectations. Not like I was expecting to flip the page somewhere in the middle and see "KILL A FAMOUS MUSICIAN" in bold size 48 font in the middle of a paragraph, but I thought there'd be something.

Not sure if the count as "classic novels", but I hate the collected works of J.R.R. Tolkien, while an awful lot of people that I know count them among their favourite books ever. I've tried four times to read "The Lord of the Rings" and never made it past the crazy old tree motherfucker who sings to his river bride. I'd really hope that I didn't even need to explain beyond that...

Posted by: Shay at July 13, 2009 10:01 PM

I loved your explanation-cum-defense of Old Man and the Sea, StD! I agree that it may be more of a "guy thing" to appreciate that story...

Conrad's appeal may not be universal (I think he is to the printed word what Bach is to music), but dissing on the cerebral doesn't get very far with me. I prefer a critique to go beyond, "I was bored".

Posted by: Che Grovera at July 13, 2009 10:03 PM

yA noE wHat I hAte? ThInGs tHat mAke mE tHink two muCh. Like boOks thAt doNt hAve PiktUres (graFic NovEls rUle!) LOL, omg, IMho, Etc.

Posted by: Dan at July 13, 2009 10:04 PM

I hate Faulkner. When I was a high school sophomore, my teacher was taking a Faulker course so that's ALL we read for a semester. If I ever hear anything else about the damn Snopes family, I'll stab myself in the eye.

One book that I was supposed to read in high school was The Chosen by Chaim Potok. Didn't read it until years later and ended up loving it.

Posted by: myysharona (formerly Sharon) at July 13, 2009 10:07 PM

Wow. Insult Movies and Music--fine. But insulting literature sure brings out the trolls, eh?

Posted by: Kate at July 13, 2009 10:07 PM

Now that I'm thinking about it, I ended up regretting taking my Post-Modern lit class even more than I hate Faulkner.
It wasn't just that Kathy Acker sucks, and Pinchon is an elusive motherfucker, (I dug Calvino's Invisible Cities, though) it's that my professor was SUCH a pompous dick!!
He once gave an assignment for everyone to look up facets of postmodernism and try to define it. Then he pretty much gave everyone an F and said "it can't be defined." Well FUCK YOU you little hipster.

Posted by: myysharona (formerly Sharon) at July 13, 2009 10:10 PM

Ok, I might as well jump on the hate bandwagon. I hated "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac.

Posted by: Darrell at July 13, 2009 10:11 PM

Underworld? BAH! Precisely illustrates my point...my most hated of all the works we read. I get that you're smarter than all of us, Don, but tell me a goddamn story for fuck's sake!

My favorite writer is John Irving, who has always said that he knows his story before he tells it. So that might explain my taste a bit. It's probably mostly the difference in Why We Read...I want a story, with rich characterization, and plot, and entertainment, and wit, and humor-that I don't have to dig to find under fifty metaphors and dense commentary about modern culture. I can appreciate it, but I don't want to read it. It's all just a little too high and mighty for me...

Posted by: tinmo at July 13, 2009 10:12 PM

11th grade english sucked! the scarlet letter, the great gatsby, fucking babbit, a farewell to arms, moby dick...i hated them all. how can they do that to kids? all of those depressing books to read in one year! it was child abuse. honestly, to this day i have no idea what babbit is about. i just remember not being able to get into it.

Posted by: kelley at July 13, 2009 10:14 PM

Yes, Dan, that's EXACTLY what people are saying. These people. These lovers of words & dialogue and beautifully written characters & intricate plots. These fans of art. That's EXACTLY what's being said. Thank you for your keen insight!

Posted by: Lainey at July 13, 2009 10:15 PM

oh i forgot, that was also the year i had to read the sound and the fury. ugh.

Posted by: kelley at July 13, 2009 10:16 PM

The Silmarillion, what a buch of ingulgent blather. I couldn't even finish half of it.

Posted by: admin at July 13, 2009 10:17 PM

Aw, the Silmarillion has some great stories. But...they're kind of hidden in the babble. But the story of Beren and Luthien is great, and the Turin story, too.

Yes. I am a Tolkien nerd.

Posted by: figgy at July 13, 2009 10:19 PM

I just realized how few books I actually dislike... Either I have had good English professors or I just have no discretion in what I read.
I actually really liked A Confederacy of Dunces. I thought the main character was terrible but just human enough to be pitied. And I kinda felt like that's how the author thought people saw him as.
And even if Infinite Jest has proven to be too long for me, I still really enjoy reading it when I muster up the courage.

Posted by: Optimus Rhyme at July 13, 2009 10:19 PM

Rhyme, I'm giving you Les Miserables for your birthday.

If you don't get through it, it works marvels as a doorstop. After all the thing is like a damned brick.

Posted by: figgy at July 13, 2009 10:22 PM

The Crying of Lot 49 is the single worst thing I have ever read. That, or, Naked Lunch. Ugh.

Posted by: "Luker" the barbarian at July 13, 2009 10:24 PM

Yes, Dan, that's EXACTLY what people are saying. These people. These lovers of words & dialogue and beautifully written characters & intricate plots. These fans of art. That's EXACTLY what's being said. Thank you for your keen insight!

Posted by: Lainey at July 13, 2009 10:15 PM

tHankz for dA PRops! I sEE yOu fEelin' mE. wOrD uP!

Posted by: Dan at July 13, 2009 10:25 PM

A Confederacy of Dunces died on the page for me because I couldn't figure out why it was supposed to be funny. It reminded me of a very bad SNL skit: "Look at the fat loser! He's such a loser! Isn't that hilarious?" No, not unless he's put to good use. And the O'Toole doesn't.

Unlikeable protagonists are fine by me; but fucking use them well. COD read like a humorous novel written by a man with no sense of humor. Fucking torture. For light-hearted farce, try Wodehouse. For dark-hearted farce, try Tibor Fischer. Those guys could actually write fucking books.

Posted by: Soulless Merchant of Fear at July 13, 2009 10:28 PM

Absalom, Absalom by Faulkner. First of all: the story in it of itself was pretty soapy and seriously messed up (a plus), but then it was presented over and over and over and OVER from a bajillion different viewpoints made me bang my head against the wall. I was like JUST COMBINE THE STORY-LINES AND SWITCH AROUND WHEN NEEDED. God. It was constantly rehashing what was already written.

It didn't help that the English professor's lectures in the class the book was assigned for were more or less just his mental masturbation delivered in the most pompous manner possible. "Faulkner tells the same story over and over again." OH WOW, REALLY?

A Separate Peace too. Holy shit, it is so dull. You'd think a tale of schoolboys during wartime, packed with homo-eroticism and a pretty strong homosexual undercurrent would be interesting, but it's so not. Nothing happens in that book ever. Gene wants Phineas in some sublimated way, laments this a whole bunch and then there's a random and completely unsatisfying ending. UGH. The most uninteresting book I have ever read.

Also: I looooooooooved Brave New World AND Catcher in the Rye. I think Catcher is, as loathe as I am to say, a guy book. Whereas, most girls I know love Separate Peace.

Posted by: Saint Saturn Sunshine at July 13, 2009 10:28 PM

Wuthering Heights. Boring, dreadful, utterly unlikable main characters. I made it through the damned thing, but I think it was akin to torture.

I also dislike Cormac McCarthy. It's more because of his writing style. It causes me physical pain and I'm not a grammar nazi.

Posted by: Melody at July 13, 2009 10:31 PM

I am surprised by all the Hemingway dislike, and Heart of Darkness ain't just for the boys.

Posted by: Cindy at July 13, 2009 10:32 PM

i'm seconding (or thirding, or whatevering) "the great gatsby." ugh, what utter dreck. everybody raved about it and still does to this day, and as an english major and a lover of many a written word, i have to insist that the plot fell out of my copy. there's no other way to explain the complete and total brain-suck of that so-called story. ew, ew, get it off my memory.

oh, and ditto "wuthering heights"-- that just blew. i couldn't give a rat's ass about either of those insufferable characters. get the fuck off my reading radar and go drown in the moors, you asshats. the end.

Posted by: betsy at July 13, 2009 10:33 PM

Oh, I hated Wuthering Heights. That's one.
I have to saw I enjoyed Les Mis the Musical, Fig. Is there a detailed description of the showstopper Master of the House?

Posted by: Optimus Rhyme at July 13, 2009 10:34 PM

"It's entirely possible that it gets better but with a protagonist that unlikeable, why bother?"

Wow - I'm really glad I have the fortitude to pony on with unlikeable protagonists. You know, like Humbert Humbert. I understand the whole idea of pricking a hole in an overhyped, bloated book, but I just don't see "Confederacy" as falling into this category. Dano pointed out earlier that things have gotten a little too-contrarian-for-thou on this site, and I've gotta agree. Fine, most readers love ACOD, Catcher in the Rye, etc. (as do many trained, learned critics) and you don't. At least the original poster specified that there are books one may simply not "get". There are lots of books I'd rather not curl up with, but I recognize that they are objectively great works of literature that I happen to not appreciate. I can accept that I don't like a book but that my not enjoying it doesn't mean it has no canonical merit.

On the topic, an author I've never enjoyed nearly as much as others seem to is Denis Johnson. "Jesus's Son" just didn't stay with me. Ditto "A Hundred Years of Solitude" (I know, I know).

Also, is Ayn Rand really in the same category as Hemingway, et al.?

Posted by: samantha t at July 13, 2009 10:36 PM

I've tried to read The Scarlet Letter about four times. Ditto with Frankenstein and The Count of Monte Cristo. Never got into Dickens much, but I love Jane Austen.

Bronte sisters are mixed; loved loved LOVED Jane Eyre but hated Wuthering Heights.

I managed to finish Atlas Shrugged but I almost killed myself having to read the fifty page speech at the end. I read the first nine hundred pages in a week, and it took me another week to read the last seventy-five, because I kept nodding off.

Posted by: Major Etiquette at July 13, 2009 10:37 PM

Count me as one who can't stand Hemingway.

It took me three or four or tries to get to the end of The Hobbit because I kept losing interest. As a result, I've never bothered picking up the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I'm currently trying to get through Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. It hurts me.

Posted by: prawntastic at July 13, 2009 10:37 PM

Let's see...

The Grapes of Wrath made me want to kick babies. I'm sorry, but if there's 30 pages describing a turtle crossing the road, count me the fuck out.

J.D. Salinger...pretty much everything he wrote. Whine, whine, whine, whine, whine.

Um, I think that's pretty much it...though Hawthorne and Wharton tend to make my eyes glaze over at times, I don't hate them.

Posted by: Smokin at July 13, 2009 10:40 PM

Samantha t, I don't see this as being contrarian. That would assume that the books being criticized are being criticized only for their popularity. There's obviously some reason that these books are held onto as classics, but for the various and sundry reasons (some angry, some passive), we don't like/get them. We just don't see the appeal.
Yeah, there will be books on this list that people loved(CoD included), but none of these criticisms are meant to say that the people that DO like them are somehow inferior or less hip or something. They just didn't work for us as well as we were told they would.
As for CoD, specifically though, I do think it's been a tad over-hyped amongst, ironically, the contrarian/hipster crowd.

Posted by: Saint Saturn Sunshine at July 13, 2009 10:43 PM

I'm currently trying to get through Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. It hurts me.

Posted by: prawntastic at July 13, 2009 10:37 PM

Gravity's Rainbow is a tough read. I can appreciate Pynchon's prose, but it takes intense concentration to follow. Keep going. It's good for you.

Posted by: Dano at July 13, 2009 10:44 PM

I remember reading Ethan Frome and wishing the town would get hit by an asteroid and all the characters would die horribly.

I also detest Hemingway. His work while technically perfect in its composition, lacks soul and humanity. His works just ring hollow. It surprised me not at all that the man committed suicide. I felt like killing myself after reading A Farwell to Arms. I recall trying to read more of Hemingway's work as an adult, but so many of the characters are empty, morally and emotionally bankrupt, that I find it repugnant.

Posted by: androstarr at July 13, 2009 10:48 PM

Whew...at least nobody has complained about "Dracula" by Bram Stoker yet. "Dude it's just of bunch of letters and shit...WTF!"

Posted by: Dan at July 13, 2009 10:51 PM

>_

'That's a swell log,' Nick said.
'I'd been saving it for the bad weather,' Bill said. 'A log like that will burn all night.'

I mean, c'mon. Obviously Nick and Bill are insinuating that they want to have buttsex, hours and hours of manly buttsex.

Posted by: haideeee at July 13, 2009 10:52 PM

On a more "meh" kind of note: did anyone else feel that for a creepy, classic horror story, Dracula was so muddled and weighed down by dead weight that you felt like a good third of the book should've been ripped out? It sucked all the suspense and fright and urgency right out with the meandering diary entries and articles and such. The story being told through written accounts is very intriguing, but it made what might've been a very thrilling book feel slow and somewhat leaden.

Posted by: Saint Saturn Sunshine at July 13, 2009 10:54 PM

Er, sorry Dan. For what its worth, I enjoyed the story for the most part, it was just kind of underwhelming for me. The letters weren't the problem, it was the execution for me.

Posted by: Saint Saturn Sunshine at July 13, 2009 10:57 PM

Saint Saturn Sunshine

Ha,ha! Look two posts up. I knew this was coming!

Posted by: Dan at July 13, 2009 10:57 PM

John Reed's "Ten days that shook the world"

Posted by: goldend at July 13, 2009 10:59 PM

NoDice (comment #5), you and I are in complete agreement. Wuthering Heights was the most godawful dreck I've ever read. Slaughterhouse Five just left me scratching my head.

Posted by: johnny at July 13, 2009 10:59 PM

Reading these hurt my heart, but I understand, and will try to refrain from flying off the handle.

Alright, let's see. Um, well. I started reading Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and while it didn't seem awful, the prose was so odd (and there was nothing happening at all in the first chapter) that I had to put it down. Maybe I'll finish it someday.

"Hills Like White Elephants" is frustrating, but I'm holding off all judgement on Hemingway until I read more.

I've had to read a few novels of Spanish magical realism, and I find it extremely dull.

Lord of the Flies may be the most pretentious novel ever written.

I can't get through the first book in the Lord of the Rings series.

I really did not like Huckleberry Finn. Not because of the racism. Because Twain's prose in that book is fucking annoying. I get that it fits the speech of the time, but good lord, I don't like the south as it is, but I definitely don't like the south from a hundred-plus years ago.

I feel like a bad person.

Posted by: Christian H. at July 13, 2009 11:01 PM

I'm really glad I have the fortitude to pony on with unlikeable protagonists. You know, like Humbert Humbert.

Damn, girl, did we read the same book? Part of the point of Lolita is that Humbert is quite likeable when introduced, even a tiny bit tragic; and as you experience the story from his perspective and he carries you along in the narrative, you become comfortable with him...and then the story takes a, um, squicky sort of turn. And not too many pages later you want to pull his eyeballs out of his living skull with your fingers.

That breathtaking manipulation of the reader makes Lolita one of the greatest works of art I've ever read.

Posted by: Jerce at July 13, 2009 11:02 PM

Sigh, yeah, Dan, sorry to be That Guy.

Posted by: Saint Saturn Sunshine at July 13, 2009 11:03 PM

Saint Saturn Sunshine

Believe me, I've heard these complaints about Stoker before. I've also heard the same things about Poe. Telling a story through letters or journal entries is definitely a 19th century device, so allowances must be made.

Posted by: Dano at July 13, 2009 11:03 PM

I suppose it's strange then that I LOVE me some Poe?

Posted by: Saint Saturn Sunshine at July 13, 2009 11:06 PM

Dang, I also love John Steinbeck. But I will say The Grapes of Wrath is his hardest work to get through.

But I've read every single word he's ever written and loved it all (again, The Grapes of Wrath was a bit of a slog and the one I almost didn't finish). Cannery Row was amazing. The Pearl was heartbreaking (and incredibly short).

And holy SHIT, East of Eden? An under-read beauty. (I made up that word.)

Y'all are seriously making me want to re-read A Farewell to Arms.

figgy for Anna Karenina, I even got the Cliff Notes and read through them FIRST because I knew it would be difficult (this was just a few years ago). The characters are super-hard to keep straight, especially of the sheer number of them, their names, nicknames, and convoluted relationships.

I tried. I really really tried. I just couldn't do it. Just go watch the 1935 film adaptation, it's wonderful.

Posted by: Snuggiepants the Deathbringer at July 13, 2009 11:07 PM

I suppose it's strange then that I LOVE me some Poe?

Posted by: Saint Saturn Sunshine at July 13, 2009 11:06 PM

I don't know. I find their styles to be similar. I always found the tension of "Dracula" to be that the reader knows terrible things are happening and we are one step ahead of the various narrators.

Posted by: Dan at July 13, 2009 11:18 PM

pudd'nhead wilson by mark twain

Posted by: gp at July 13, 2009 11:23 PM

Ok, I'm going to bed now. I'm just glad nobody has ripped on "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas". Because that's one of the funniest books ever written, and if you don't agree you are a soulless douchebag who's opinion isn't worth the sweat off my nutsack.

Posted by: Dan at July 13, 2009 11:23 PM

In no particular order:
Anna Karenina
Brideshead Revisited
The Great Gatsby
Heart of Darkness

I had to read all of these in high school: Karenina and Darkness were the only two books in all of high school that I just couldn't finish, the other two had characters so goddamn insufferable that I couldn't relate to anyone in the story. Anna Karenina is the single most overlong book I have ever tried to read; and I finished Infinite Jest.

Posted by: Nate at July 13, 2009 11:23 PM

My book club read Catcher in the Rye, but I just could not get into it. I got about 50 pages in and just gave up. We read Faulkner last summer, and that was another I couldn't finish, and I hate not finishing a book.(We read current books, too, and some light reading, but occasionally we will dip into the classics.)

We read Moby Dick in 11th grade English, and I suffered through it. I'm thinking I might try to read it again and see what it says to an adult rather than a 16-year-old. I also read A Separate Peace, and loathed it. I just didn't like the characters, and wished the Nazis would just bomb the whole school.

Posted by: rlr260 at July 13, 2009 11:32 PM

Nothing new here but here goes:

Confederacy of Dunces - I forced myself to finish with a lot of kicking and screaming just to be sure I wasn't missing something. I hate that book more than any other I've ever read.

The Scarlet Letter - Ugh.

The Great Gatsby - Hated it in high school and reread it two years ago to make sure it hadn't gotten better as I aged. Still can't stand it.

I admit that I do love The Old Man & The Sea though. I haven't been able to finish any of the other Hemingway I've started but I read this one every couple of years as I adore it. I think I was the only one in my AP English class who did.

I'm also not a bit fan of Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men is about the only thing of his I can stomach.

Posted by: prairiegirl at July 13, 2009 11:36 PM

Hmn...I wonder now, as an adult, whether I would understand this book better than my 17 year old self did. Nevertheless, I'm not going to force myself to read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man anytime soon. I'm too busy and don't want to torture myself in my spare time.

androstarr, I felt that way about Hemingway's (lacking "soul and humanity) writing while reading The Old Man and the Sea. I wasn't looking for schmaltzy or corny however the book felt sort of empty to me. The story lacked oh, I don't know how to put it precisely, some sort of emotional hue or humanity.

Posted by: Mik at July 13, 2009 11:39 PM

As a total fantasy geek, I feel like I'm committing some cardinal sin when I admit that I couldn't get into The Lord of the Rings. I couldn't make it halfway through Fellowship.

I love reading, and I can fall into a trance when I'm in a good book. I'll forget I'm reading. I'll forget about everything except what's going on in the story. There's something about Tolkien's writing style that doesn't do it for me, although I did enjoy The Hobbit. I read Dracula, which can get pretty thick, and loved it. But damned if I could ever forget I was sitting somewhere reading a book while I tried to get through Fellowship of the Ring.

Posted by: Tyburn Blossom at July 13, 2009 11:41 PM

tinmo,

Hear ya. "Underworld" is one of the very few books I ever had to give up on and just quit. It was fuck-ing bor-ing.

Also quit on "Don Quixote."

"Moby-Dick" was funnier than I expected, and I learned I rather like diversions into the history of whaling.

Posted by: , (the commenter formerly known as bucdaddy) at July 13, 2009 11:53 PM

Wuthering Heights--everyone should just get over themselves

The Sun Also Rises--Hemingway should get over HIMself

Posted by: Rachel at July 13, 2009 11:54 PM

The Anne of Green Gables series. Love the miniseries because they cut out the 5 page descriptions of poplar trees and give me more Gilbert.

I might like it better now, but Slaughter-house Five was just weird when I read it at 16.

Anything Melville. I always go into a Herman Melville book/novella/story thinking, hey, maybe I'll like it. And then when he hits you over the head for the 23098479 time what his point/metaphor is, that's when I start yelling at the printed page.

Also joining the Tolkien hate. If I was going to read a history book, I would have picked one up about something real.

Posted by: kelsy at July 13, 2009 11:55 PM

Another vote for DeLillo here, although the baseball scene at the beginning of Underworld is one of my favorite pieces of writing. Overall, though, he can't ever seem to curb his tendency to lecture, and he has A Lot To Say. It's as though he doesn't respect his reader enough to make his point in the narrative. That's always been my take, anyway.

My favorite literary criticism of all was leveled at Underworld. I forget who said it, but I'll always remember what she said: "I liked it, except for the whole thing."

Posted by: sansho1 at July 14, 2009 12:01 AM

Plus, I think hearing that it was what inspired Mark Ruby to kill John Lennon gave me bizarre expectations.
---
Nobody jumped on this? OK.

Mark David Chapman killed Lennon.

Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald.

Posted by: , (the commenter formerly known as bucdaddy) at July 14, 2009 12:05 AM

I think I'm the only person in the world who adores, without question, A Separate Peace.

But I fucking HATE anything Thoreau. Get a job, hippie.

Posted by: Kristen at July 14, 2009 12:12 AM

Sigh. I was prepared for the Catcher in the Rye hate, but Wuthering Heights caught me off gaurd. I loved that novel. Of course, I read and loved it at 17, a very "get over myself" phase, I'm sure. I wonder if I would hate it if I cracked it open again.

Posted by: Kate at July 14, 2009 12:13 AM

Catcher in the Rye

fuck Holden, right up his "I'm a douchebag and I don't care" ass. I'm told its supposed to be about Protecting ones self via alienation, the insincerity of the adult world and plain ol "coming of age" bullshit.

All I see is a mediocre story about a little asshole turning into a big one, written by a guy who either A) Has some serious social/mental issues that never got treated or B)Is exactly like the little shithead he created and thus never made friends which resulted in him exiling himself to some cabin in the northern mid-west under the false conception that we give a shit if he ever writes again or not.

Seriously, I hate this book and the status it has somehow achieved in the classic American lit pantheon.

Posted by: Iron_Lung at July 14, 2009 12:15 AM

Bless all you Wuthering Heights haters. I loathed that book, and yet when I tell that to people, I almost NEVER get an "Amen." GOD, that books was so irritating to me. Heathcliff and Cathy both needed to be slapped.

I'm reading East of Eden right now. (Well, not RIGHT now, although that would be impressive multi-tasking, eh?) I'm really enjoying it. I tend to like Steinbeck, although many of his books are slow-starters for me. I usually find them worth the effort in the end.

Anything by Thomas Hardy makes Dickens look like a laugh-a-minute thrillfest. Trust. 25 pages to describe a room? Pshaw. Amateur. Hardy could spend 25 pages describing a BLADE OF GRASS!

Ahhh. I feel so peaceful now. Thanks for letting me get that off of my chest.

Posted by: SeaKat at July 14, 2009 12:21 AM

Yeah, Romeo & Juliet. Maybe I just don't like tragedies. I loathe the protagonists but that doesn't compare to the unbelievable contrivances throughout.

Posted by: Beau at July 14, 2009 12:28 AM

Hated Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby and was so/so on Of Mice and Men.

Loved Huck Finn though, and really hate the retread argument about race with that book. If you cannot read a period piece just move on and leave it alone.

Posted by: richmac at July 14, 2009 12:30 AM

Gah, I love books and reading. This thread hurts. Generally, I finish a book if I pick it up, and once I finish it, I usually like it. Or at least appreciate what the author was trying to do. I guess I'd have to echo Tolkein, if we're calling his works classics. But I've complained about him before on this site, so I'll refrain from repeating myself.

samantha t, I'm also on board with you in terms of separating Ayn Rand from the rest of these authors. Rand is... interesting, and she can weave a provocative story, but no one should take her seriously.

My only beef with the classics is that they get forced down kids' throats at times when kids have no basis for appreciating them. I don't really think The Scarlet Letter is a book that adds value to one's teenage years, for example, but I do think it has value. (I remember reading it as a young teen and thinking to myself "This is such bullshit" when I came to the chapter titled "Hester at her Needle.")

Posted by: The Wandering Parakeet at July 14, 2009 12:33 AM

SeaKat,

I enjoyed East of Eden, too. It's the only Steinbeck I have read recently, except for The Pearl in high school. Oh boy, that one's a tearjerker. Very embarrassing when I burst into tears in the middle of 9th grade English.

Posted by: rlr260 at July 14, 2009 12:37 AM

I couldn't tolerate a single goddamn canto of Dante's Inferno. I will not apologize, Dante can suck it.

Posted by: danae at July 14, 2009 12:40 AM

Perhaps somebody here will sort this out for me. In American Psycho, was the endless listing of every damn thing worn/eaten/seen supposed to be a clever insight into the mind of a serial killer with a status obsession? Or was it just to numb the reader into a state of boredom so deep the killing sprees don't have much emotional impact?

That's the one I don't get. Then again, I have escaped reading most of the ones already listed (and have been ordered to never read Wuthering Heights because, and I quote, 'I know you'll get angry and possibly hurt an innocent bystander').
My high school did, however, force me to read 'Amongst Women'. I apparently won a bunch of awards, so maybe that makes it a classic, but if you're like most people and never heard of it, lucky you.

Posted by: ScienceGeek at July 14, 2009 12:40 AM

I liked the Hell part of Inferno, but I could never get past it. I did buy this amazing book with Dore's illustrations--so at least the pictures are pretty ;)

Posted by: figgy at July 14, 2009 12:48 AM

too lazy to read through all the comments to see if anyone's already said this, but:
jude the motherfckin obscure.

never have i ever wanted to burn a book so badly.

Posted by: clarevoyance at July 14, 2009 12:53 AM

I was struggling to think of a highly regarded book I've read that I just abhorred, and then I remembered Atlas Shrugged.

What's interesting about that book, though, is that I'll strongly warn people away from it, but whenever I meet someone who's already read it, I'm like, "Great! Want to talk about it?"

And I love that fifty page speech, especially for the fact that the narration afterwards informs the reader it went on for three and a half hours, which I believe is how long it took me to read it.

Posted by: Macafee at July 14, 2009 12:53 AM

I've tried to read The Scarlet Letter about four times. Ditto with Frankenstein and The Count of Monte Cristo. Never got into Dickens much, but I love Jane Austen.

Major Etiquette - The Count of Monte Cristo IS TOTALLY WORTH IT. Go out and make sure you have a legit translation (the most recent Penguin version is nice) as SO MANY just leave out huge sections of plot. I swear it is worth the trouble. As long as you have an unabridged version and never watch the movie, it is dense, meticulous levels of awesome.

That said, I picked up an abridged version accidentally and was totally confused. They leave out a lot of shit.

And the Tolkein hate makes me sad. I can't argue with the Silmarillion, but I grew up reading the Hobbit and, actually, I might have to go dig it out right now. So thanks!

Posted by: Anne (in Reno) at July 14, 2009 12:55 AM

Moby Dick
Slaughterhouse 5
Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
Heart of Darkness (but I think I would have if I had been able to get through it...)

I didn't personally relate to Catcher in the Rye but I could see how male misanthropes might.

Posted by: TryScience at July 14, 2009 1:04 AM

I love anything by Dumas. Count of Monte Cristo is pretty long, but it's totally worth it.

Posted by: figgy at July 14, 2009 1:07 AM

I realize this has nothing to do with classic literature, but a couple of years ago my friends and family managed to convince me that the Harry Potter series wasn't just children's literature. Turns out, all my friends and family are just overgrown children. The book I started on (I believe it was the first) was like reading CS Lewis, except without any intelligence or maturity. I hate Harry Potter.

Posted by: measy peasy at July 14, 2009 1:08 AM

I think I'm the only person in the world who adores, without question, A Separate Peace.

No way, I'm right there with ya sister. A Separate Peace is an unbelievable, amazing novel and anyone who says otherwise is a charlatan.

Posted by: TryScience at July 14, 2009 1:09 AM

I had to come back to throw my support behind the dislike of Heart of Darkness (which has to this day kept me from seeing Apocalypse Now despite an actual desire to see it) and The Great Gatsby, which thanks a particularly batty drama teacher, note that I was not enrolled in drama at the time, I also had to perform a section of. I was Daisy. Is it a suicidal or homicidal fantasy if you want to kill the character you're playing? I somehow got a B in drama for the semester though, so bully for me.

A lot of people are talking about books they didn't finish, and in all my years of reading there is only one book that I didn't force myself to slough through. I have this perverse need to read them so I can more full explain to people why I wish I hadn't read them. The one I couldn't finish was Satan Burger. Mellick may as well have spunked across a couple of bound pages for what that book accomplished.

Posted by: NoDice at July 14, 2009 1:27 AM

I have never been able to finish THE HEART OF DARKNESS or UNDERWORLD. . . they just knock me out.

I need to reread A Separate Peace. It's been a long while.

Posted by: adam at July 14, 2009 1:30 AM

Mrs. Motherfucking Dalloway. OH MY GOD. I read it because I loved The Hours (the book & the movie), but Jesus Christ I hated it.

Posted by: AMT at July 14, 2009 1:45 AM

It's already been snapped up, I see, but I hated "A Tale Of Two Cities" with a passion that could not be contained. When I read it in high school I complained about it so incessantly that to this day it is a huge family joke. In retrospect, maybe I should re-read it to check myself, but I just can't do it. I've hated it too long to stop now.

Posted by: shana at July 14, 2009 1:46 AM

God help me if anyone actually considers this bestselling series a "classic" in any true sense, but no one can compare with ROBERT JORDAN's ability to take a great storyline and destroy it.

How can I name the ways?
*vomiting repetitive descriptions of clothing
*systematically removing all nuance and individuality from previously engrossing female characters
*can not move the story forward
*naming volumes of throwaway characters (and describing in excruciating yet repetitive detail their clothing) just for the hell of it. Oh, and apparently despite thousands of people, names are never repeated.
*main character's pseudo-marriage with three women, and the women joyously becoming "sisters" when the culture for 75% of the participants is repulsed by polygamy

It hurts to read the damn books...but I still need to know how the fracking story ends.

Posted by: Koboldin at July 14, 2009 1:49 AM

There's a few on here I agree with (Crying of Lot 49 and Catch 22 among others), but the author that just really doesn't do it for me is Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishmnet irritated me. The protagonist was an erratic idiot.

Posted by: Jen at July 14, 2009 2:10 AM

No one mentioned Ethan Frome. That is my all-time most hated book. The book makes a stand for pointlessness and futility. If you are going to create, why why create something so miserable?

Scarlett Letter is somewhere on my list too and I even had a great great English teacher for that piece of lit. I remember hating the book but loving the way he taught it.

Posted by: Gigi at July 14, 2009 2:15 AM

I notice that the majority of these books are on highschool reading lists.

I bet these books we hate have more to do with bad teachers or poor suggestions than actual hate of the literary work.

Posted by: Gigi at July 14, 2009 2:20 AM

measy peasy,

considering it's a series written with 10+ years of time put into it I'd say dumping on the entire thing because you dislike 1 book is well bullshit...

Posted by: Alex at July 14, 2009 2:35 AM

Before I rant, I just want to say that there are lot of novels and writers I love or at least respect because you probably won't believe me after this:

Hemingway can suck a big one. Sweet Jebus, I can't believe I made it all the way through A Farewell to Arms alive and relatively sane. While he's at it, he should join that I'm-totally-pretentious-but-I'm-going-to-pretend-I'm-not-by-never-taking-off-my-lame-ass-dirty-headband David Foster Wallace in hell. James Joyce can join them in their circle jerk too. I've tried to read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man on no less than 4 occasions (unsuccessfully, obviously). Dubliners was no more pleasant, and they were short stories.

My hope for Wuthering Heights has been deflated by everyone's hate. It's on my bookshelf now, waiting to be read, and I fear it'll never get read after this discussion.

Posted by: Queen L at July 14, 2009 2:49 AM

I thought and still think that Jane Eyre shouldn't be taught in high school. Give it to English majors who want to understand how literature progressed, but it's not good enough to give it to high school kids who aren't that specialized.

Posted by: Lucas at July 14, 2009 3:27 AM

Man, Heart of Darkness is like my favorite book and Catch 22 was the best thing I was ever forced to read in high school. F. Scott Fitzgerald is on my top 10 authors.

I read 100 Years of Solitude twice just to make sure that I wasn't missing something, but I really didn't get it or why it was special. I don't even know how many time I started A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man without finishing it. You'd think that having read much of Virginia Wolfe's stuff I'd be ok, but I just couldn't handle it.

Posted by: Stacy at July 14, 2009 4:21 AM

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Posted by: satokofan at July 14, 2009 4:28 AM

I think we all know mine. :)

I am glad I can inspire people in some way at least.

I also hated Catcher in the Rye and On The Road.

Posted by: Carrie (aka Teabelly) at July 14, 2009 4:54 AM

Great Gatsby - I just didn't get it, it was so insipid.
But my true, true hate (and I loved studying English at school), was Room with a View. I wanted to beat Lucy to death with her Beadeker (sic). It annoyed me so much I felt like I was suffocating everytime I picked the book up.

Posted by: Cadence at July 14, 2009 5:41 AM

I do NOT understand all of the praise for "the great gatsby". i've heard it called "some of the best prose ever written in the english language" and i tried my hardest to appreciate it, but i just couldn't. i didn't hate it (insipid though it was) but i just didn't think there was anything great about it. oh boo-hoo, life sucks. get over it.

it's on my summer reading list, though. i'm giving it a second chance.

Posted by: Jessica at July 14, 2009 7:03 AM

On the Road is insipid shit.

Your journey of self-discovery is interesting only to you; rarely to anyone else. Sal is a typical 20-something, unsure of what to do with his life. He gets drunk, he takes a lot of naps, he hitchhikes. An apt representative of the beat generation? Yes. A novel that will change your outlook on life? No. No, no, no.

The only thing I hate worse than Jack Kerouac are the people who regard him as an anarchist prophet. Grumble grumble.

Posted by: K at July 14, 2009 7:08 AM

Both of these books I enjoyed outisde of their context but having to do Wuthering Heights in an English Lit class with me and just two other guys while the 30 females and teacher in the class used their time to complain about how bad men are...

Then we started on Sylvia Plath's the bell jar...

Virginity loss suicide and depression, yay.

They even managed to ruin death of a salesman for me by framing it as a failure of the male patriarchal fantasy.

Posted by: jim of the lower case at July 14, 2009 7:10 AM

Hah, as soon as I saw the picture of Ignatius J. Reilly I knew Tracer had sent this one in. Two people at Baconeast noticed the book with me, and two people offered their opinion that it was overrated.

I did not get Gatsby, and I could only read a few pages of On the Road before throwing it down in irritation.

Posted by: SaBrina at July 14, 2009 7:37 AM

Jerce - don't misunderstand me for I love HH and Lolita. It's just that on paper HH is "unlikeable" - the creepy pedophile thing and all. Ditto, in my mind, Ignatius from ACOD. He's a fat, misanthropic, pompous mess who lives with his mother, but I still loved him in a love-to-hate-him kind of way. That's all I meant.

Posted by: samantha t at July 14, 2009 7:39 AM

The Hobbit! Every line means so much! Everyone is so excited in this book! Exclamation points every goddamned where! This book kept me from reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. For shame J.R.R.R.R.R.

Also, I thought The Road by McCarthy was just servicable. I kept expecting it to kick in for me on any level, but it went flat. I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic stories so maybe my expectations were too high.

Oh, and Wuthering Heights was overdramatized hogswollop.

Posted by: Kballs at July 14, 2009 7:50 AM

Neodiogenes, I totally hear you. I think the reason I didn't get into many of the books we had to read in high school was because we HAD to read them. Sucked the fun out.
I've always been an avid reader...my sister and I read whatever we could get our hands on. But the second you tell me I have to read something, I lose all interest and it becomes a job.
I will say that there were a few in high school that were pleasant surprises. I didn't hate Tennessee Williams, and when I actually sat down and made myself re-read Jane Eyre I began to enjoy it. I liked Moby Dick and loved Les Miserables. Wuthering Heights was better when I got older. I really didn't like Catch-22, though, and I probably won't ever go back and try it again.
Shakespeare was tough. I enjoy the plays and movies, but reading it is joyless for me.

Posted by: Whorish Mouth at July 14, 2009 8:02 AM

Portrait of a Lady
Moby Dick

Wouldn't recommend them to my worst enemy.

Posted by: N. Wood at July 14, 2009 8:10 AM

I definitely didn't like Catcher in the Rye and I hated, absolutely hated, Heart of Darkness. I think it was maybe 110 pages, and it took me several days to read because it was so awful. I also agree with figgy: I didn't like Anna Karenina. (spoiler ahead if you haven't read this) It got to the point where I was glad she got hit by the freaking train.

Posted by: Tracy at July 14, 2009 8:12 AM

Oh, Jeebus, how could I forget A Separate Peace? Oh my godtopus...pretentious twats!!

And, hatred for Vonnegut is NOT COOL! I took a course in college where I was introduced to all of Vonnegut's stuff and was hooked. Also, anyone says HST, and they're gonna deal with the bats.

Also hated Romeo and Juliet, but LURVE MacBeth. Sex, violence, witches? It rules. DID hate Our Fucking Town.....just shut up and lay dead in the fucking cemetary already.

AND, when I was a wee lass, I read Dog of Flanders. TORTURE FOR CHILDREN!!!! I sobbed and hated it so much that I literally hid it from myself. Found it a couple of years ago and couldn't even look at it. HATE!

Posted by: dammitjanet at July 14, 2009 8:33 AM

You know, it's one thing to have had a bad reaction to a book (or two) that is considered a classic, but if you have to list entire bodies of work and endless lists of authors that you "don't get", it might be the problem lies with you and not the books.

Posted by: PaddyDog at July 14, 2009 8:40 AM

Guy Mannering - or for that matter pretty well everything Sir Walter Scott ever wrote (slight exceptions made for Ivanhoe, which has moderately interesting moments). His style though is unbearably tedious. No thanks. I shall never go back and try again. Life's too short.

Posted by: Mnemo at July 14, 2009 8:42 AM

An American Dream by Norman Mailer

Posted by: Todd at July 14, 2009 9:04 AM

"The Crying of Lot 49" is worth reading if only for the parody of Jacobean plays.

Posted by: Arkansan at July 14, 2009 9:08 AM

It's not very postmodern of me, but "Infinite Jest" has become practically elevated to the canon over the last few years -- especially now with Wallace's death.

I tried to read it on three different occasions. The first time, I got about 25 pages in and put it down. The second time, I made it about 15 pages further. The third time, after I recovered from the mild concussion I received after the book slipped out of my hands and cracked me on the skull and I hurled the thing across the room -- I was 75 pages in.

I get the sense that if I tried again, I'd be better off reading it backwards. It might make more sense in a Guy Pearcean sort of way.

Posted by: The Naked Vine at July 14, 2009 9:10 AM

I was having trouble thinking of a book I didn't enjoy, since reading anything generally is time well spent in my eyes. Then I remembered Love in the Time of Cholera. I have been "reading" it for no less than five years. By reading I mean it sits on my bathroom sink gathering dust and reminding me that I hate the sight of that book sitting there mocking me. I have never quit a novel before, no matter how boring it has been, but for the love of God, I cannot pick up that book again, i just could not care less about the people. Everyone else seems to like it, why can't I.

Posted by: schmally at July 14, 2009 9:17 AM

Moby Dick. I would rather pluck every hair from body, individually, with a pair of tweezers, than ever have to read that boring tome again.

Posted by: MonkeyBoy at July 14, 2009 9:17 AM

I don't get Twilight, and I know that reading the books won't help.

Posted by: Sofía at July 14, 2009 9:17 AM

Oh yeah, and the Portrait of Fucking Dorian Gray. I cannot even begin to tell you how much I hated that book. I love Oscar Wilde, but honestly, that book was the most boring thing i've ever read. That entire chapter where the book turns him evil could be cut and no one would miss it.

Posted by: buttercup at July 14, 2009 9:22 AM

Ethan Frome. Thought it sucked.

Posted by: Keith at July 14, 2009 9:26 AM

I do love Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises...his other stuff, not so much.

Posted by: Keith at July 14, 2009 9:31 AM

"Unlikeable protagonists are fine by me; but fucking use them well."

This is an excellent point, Soulless Merchant of Fear. I hadn't thought of it that way.

I'm also noticing that most of the hate here is related to books we've been forced to read as part of courses. I wonder how many of those books we'd really hate if we went back to them now. Don Quixote was a book I hated for years because I'd been made to read it in the 10th grade. Then I went back to it. Well, all right: I STILL hate it, but not so much because it's not a good novel (it is, though really it's several novels rolled into one) but because the fucker defeated me with its arcane, old-fashioned Renaissance Spanish and its ungodly length.

ehem...sorry, I lost my composure there for a second...

Posted by: Armando at July 14, 2009 9:36 AM

I was forced to read "Madame Bovary" in high school. I gave up half way through and bought the Cliff-Notes for the first and last time as a student. My GOD did I hate that book.

Posted by: TylerDFC at July 14, 2009 9:39 AM

Brave New World is only passably good if it was intended for a young adult audience. It is so simplistic yet clearly thinks it's so clever. I spent that entire book rolling my eyes and wishing I had just reread 1984 instead.

I tried to read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce in high school for a "book report". I don't remember much about it, but I stopped about 30 pages in because how much I hated it was making me feel violent. I ended up finding a summary on the internet and cobbling together a paper from that. I got an A-, if I remember correctly.

Posted by: jess at July 14, 2009 9:40 AM

Wow, Pajiba used to be an insightful expose on crap movies with an occasional nod towards something really good.
Now it's just a bunch of fucking punks on facebook who can't read.

Posted by: mothy at July 14, 2009 9:52 AM

Also going to throw my support (lack of) for Catcher in the Rye. My dad was so excited to have me read it so we could bond over it, it was his favorite book. He even had a first edition. He gave it to me and waited for the father/daughter bonding. Unfortunately like many of you, I wanted to kick Holden. Did like it when his sister told him off though.

Posted by: Nimue at July 14, 2009 9:59 AM

I wasn't a fan of The Great Gatsby. Daisy was a terribly written character. I couldn't make sense of her. She once said something brilliant about how she hoped her daughter grew up to be stupid - stupid and pretty so that she wouldn't know the trials of being a woman in this society. I thought that was a great way to set up her character. But then there was this one scene where she goes to Gatsby's house and he takes out all of his beautiful silk shirts and she bows her head into them and starts bawling about how lovely the shirts were. And I'm sitting there like, "What the what, is this bitch crazy or something?" I just didn't know what to make of Daisy. She made NO sense to me. And the ending would have been powerful if it weren't so damn contrived. Did they really have to switch cars? It was like Fitzgerald knew he wanted to end it with some terribly unfortunate misunderstanding and got too lazy trying to think of how it should all come about. Lame. At times the book was beautifully written, but it didn't add up to much.

Huckleberry Finn. I loved certain bits of it. Like the wars between the families and the way Twain brought the south to life. I felt like I could smell it and hear it. But I thought it was really rambly. He spent way too much time on that dangerous drunk guy they were dragging around with them. I was so hoping Huck or the black guy would blow his brains out, BUT THEY WOULDN'T. I just wanted him gone. It became way too tedious for me.

Harry Potter (if this is a classic). I hate these books so goddamn much. Ugh. They're so damn DUMB. It's just watered down versions of Greek mythology. There's nothing unique or interesting about Harry and his little adventures. Nothing. Make up your own stories, Rowling!

Btw, I love Dracula (even though the last quarter of the book was terrible) and Catcher in the Rye (I'm still surprised so many people dislike this book.)

Posted by: kayla at July 14, 2009 10:00 AM

Oh, thank God. I HATED Confederacy of Dunces... whew, it feels good to say that out loud. The man at the bookestore just went on and on when I picked it up - I couldn't get past page 50. It's been my secret shame for years.

Posted by: mb at July 14, 2009 10:06 AM

Unlike most people who post here, I am not very well read in literature/fiction (I usually go for non-fiction, history etc...).

I'm kind of a barbarian, preferring books with lots of pictures & such.

Anyway: Loved Eco's "Name of the Rose" & "Foucault's Pendulum", but hated "The Island of the Day Before"... couldn't even finish "Baudolino". Also hated "the English Patient", which I read (almost didn't finish) at the recommendation of my brother who actually *is* an English major.

Posted by: oskar667 at July 14, 2009 10:16 AM

"It surprised me not at all that the man committed suicide."

androstarr,
I believe Hemingway was severely mentally ill at the time. He was Catholic and was allowed burial in, uh, consecrated(?) ground even though he committed suicide. The only way for that to happen is for the Church to decide that he wasn't responsible for his actions. Of course, maybe it was because he was famous.

Also, dude put the shotgun on his fucking forehead!

Posted by: pissant at July 14, 2009 10:32 AM

Figgy - Dore's illustrations are all you need. The other two books, Paradiso and Purgatorio, are almost impossible to get through without a doctorate in classic literature and everything else they wrote about a billion years ago that will never get you a job. It's heavy with the most obscure references - the verse is beautiful, this much I can innately understand, but I still don't know what the fuck he's saying.

TryScience - Charlatan indeed!


Posted by: Kristen at July 14, 2009 10:46 AM

@kayla -- The Harry Potter novels are hardly "classics", so you can relax. They're children's fiction, fairly well-written for the genre, with interesting plot lines and characters, as well as a unique hook in the whole "wizards living alongside normal people in secret" thing which totally buys into the wish-fantasy world of young kids to be different from all the other kids.

But they're the literary equivalent of Cheetos -- they're a tasty, light snack, hard to resist, easy to consume, and they stain your fingers orange.

A lot of novels mentioned in this thread fall into this category, and saying you don't get them is like saying you don't get "General Hospital".

Tolkien, for example, is only worth reading if you're an über-geek (especially The Silmarillion); otherwise LOTR was always a book waiting for the technology to do it right as a movie. Jackson's version gets most of it right (the extended versions, anyway) with some glaring, typically Hollywood weaknesses.

Posted by: Neodiogenes at July 14, 2009 10:56 AM

The Old Man and the Sea is especially terrible and unrepresentative of Hemingway's other stuff, so to anyone who read it and stopped there (I ALMOST DID), I'd suggest at least picking up For Whom the Bell Tolls, which is his best. Give it a shot.

Posted by: Caroline at July 14, 2009 11:34 AM

Also, mothy, I'm with you. This is pretty much an orgy of negativity, which gives the site kind of a Jerry Springer air sometimes.

Posted by: Caroline at July 14, 2009 11:38 AM

Definitely "Old Man and the Sea." I was supposed to read it in High School and I don't think I ever did.

"All the King's Men" still sits on my shelf, unread. I can't do it.

Posted by: annoyingmouse at July 14, 2009 11:46 AM

I tried very very hard to like Henry Miller but I can't. I like his writing style, I think I just don't like the bits of HIM that shine through in his stories.
I don't like anything by Dickens either. I know he was paid by the word and that's why he ran on the way he does, but it's maudlin crap that never seems to end.
After reading The Garden of Eden I haven't been able to read anything else by Hemingway. It's not that I didn't like it, it's that it hit me really really hard.

Posted by: king at July 14, 2009 11:46 AM

I finished Confederacy Of Dunces, but I didn't enjoy it. Sorry - I found Ignatius neither relatable nor funny.

I have started Catch-22 several times, and I don't think I've ever gotten past page 100. I get the satire; it just feels like it has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and is consequently not funny to me either.

I tried On The Road recently for the first time, and my momentum completely ran out sometime between page 100 and 200 on that one. I aspire to finish it someday, but it feels like a slog.

Brave New World remains one of my favorite books.

Posted by: DarthCorleone at July 14, 2009 11:47 AM

I also really liked Brave New World, but understand if someone wouldn't. It's a bit...new wave? I don't know, but I thought it was very interesting.

I read BNW and another really good book, Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, for a philosophy class in college.

I really loved Siddhartha but when I later picked up Daemon by Hesse I could not get into it. I don't even remember why, but the story wasn't interesting to me at the time.

Posted by: annoyingmouse at July 14, 2009 11:58 AM

Last week I picked up a copy of Catch-22 that had (mistakenly? purposefully?) been left in the hotel room I was staying in.
It's been a few years since I read it and this time around I couldn't get three chapters in before I had to put it down.
Apart from the vaguely arousing description of a prostitute beating a GI with a shoe, it was waaaaaay too much like hard work. Too many characters and a little bit too existential for my liking.

Posted by: Mr Belvedere at July 14, 2009 12:03 PM

Confederacy of Dunces has suffered, I think, from the years of gushing by all those that surround us. It took me two years to get through, because I would always get sidetracked by something else. I never get sidetracked when I am reading a book, but there just wasn't enough to grab hold of me.

Here's the secret to reading The Grapes of Wrath: skip the fucking turtle chapters. If you see anything about a turtle, just move on. It turns into a much shorter, much better book when you do that!

Posted by: Munkymack at July 14, 2009 12:13 PM

Loving the Catcher in the Rye hate in these comments.

Every time I meet anyone who says that Catcher in the Rye is their favorite book, well, it doesn't necessarily signal that I'm going to hate them, but it at least lets me know that there's going to be a whole lot of drama in dealing with him/her.

To whoever it was that hated Count of Monte Cristo, um, why do you hate things that are awesome?

(Funny tangent, when they made that god awful movie version of Count of Monte Cristo, the studio sent mini-posters to Blockbusters around the country announcing the DVD release date calling it the 'The Count of Monte Crisco', I shit you not. I have one.)

Posted by: Groovekiller at July 14, 2009 12:13 PM

Huckleberry Finn. I don't give a shit if Twain is the master of Americana, that book put me to sleep. Literally. The vernacular was so difficult to understand that I had to read each paragraph 3 times, and the book went fucking nowhere. I almost failed American Lit because of that piece of garbage.

Anything by Hemingway. Also fell asleep reading A Farewell to Arms.

Count me in the "Catcher in the Rye is overrated camp."
Wanted to love it, but I just don't see the big deal.

Posted by: Brie at July 14, 2009 12:50 PM

I'm surprised by all the Hemingway and Faulkner hate. It makes me a little sad, but everyone hates what they hate. That being said, I could not get into Portrait of Dorian Grey. I tried, a couple times, friends love that book, but I just cannot get into it. One that I hated very very much was The Alchemist, by Coelho. Everyone lauded that detritus and I read it and thought, really? You've got to be shitting me.

Posted by: osmate77 at July 14, 2009 1:09 PM

And y'all know you're supposed to dislike Holden Caufield, correct?

Posted by: samantha t at July 14, 2009 1:10 PM

@Samantha t: Yes, and methinks Salinger did his job a little too well.

Posted by: osmate77 at July 14, 2009 1:35 PM

I might agree that “On The Road” has not held up well over time since it owes so much to place and time, chronicling an America that no longer exists and the “Beat” subculture that spawned the hippy era some years later. It was ground-breaking enough at the time to require a heavily toned-down edition for publication. Read the earlier draft referred to as “The Scroll” for a more raw experience.

It may be true that Hemingway and others lapse into over-wrought passages from time to time. “Old Man” stands shakily as a poor-man’s Moby Dick at times. But I don’t agree that authors like Hemingway should be judged on their weaker moments. The entire body of work needs to be weighed.

As with other forms of art, our likes and dislikes for authors/books is a subjective matter. I would rather view each volume as a distinct plate of food where the totality ingested forms a Feast of sorts, broadening you along the way. Or as Hemingway might say, a moveable feast.

Posted by: Mickey at July 14, 2009 2:05 PM

Yeah, I know Harry Potter isn't classic, but someone else mentioned it earlier in the thread and I decided to pile on.

Huck Finn's vernacular was really easy for me to understand, but I'm the sole yank in a Mississippian family so I'm used to it.

I just remembered I really dislike Metamorphoses by Ovid. I like the books/plays/movies/songs it's inspired more than it.

Posted by: kayla at July 14, 2009 2:25 PM

I'm not interested in when you DIDN'T get Catch-22. I'm interested in when you DID get Catch-22 (and anyone who did get it knows what to say next).

Posted by: Irving Washington at July 14, 2009 2:32 PM

Funny - I thought the turtle chapters were the best parts in The Grapes Of Wrath.

Posted by: DarthCorleone at July 14, 2009 2:35 PM

It seems silly to have to point this out to the nose-in-the-air few who are piping up from time to time, but everyone here doesn't hate everything being mentioned. Each of us hates what we each mention. Do you understand the difference?

Posted by: sansho1 at July 14, 2009 2:40 PM

I wouldn't say I didn't 'get' it, but The Sound and the Furry I really had to force my way through.

Posted by: mini_mel at July 14, 2009 3:04 PM

i wouldn't call it a classic, but a critically acclaimed book that all of my friends raved about was "the corrections" which I couldn't get into to save my life. Oh wow, a dysfunctional family, never read about that before *yawn!* Got to almost a hundred pages and still didn't care about anyone or anything happening and it just made me mad that I wasted my time. But I like Bret Easton Ellis and AM Homes so you have to go really dark to impress me.
Also, never read the book(and I know you'll all turn on me for this) but the major classic I have never been able to get into was the Godfather movie. Bored me to tears.

Posted by: snarla at July 14, 2009 3:11 PM

But I don’t agree that authors like Hemingway should be judged on their weaker moments. The entire body of work needs to be weighed.

While I agree with you in principle, Mickey, in practice, when you read a work by an acclaimed author and really loathe it, it doesn't tend to make you want to read more of their work to see if maybe one is worth it (i.e. Hemingway -all the bits I've read from various of his works, I've hated, so I don't have the desire to try any of his others on the off chance that I might like one, you know?). If you found one you loved, would it make the time spent worthwhile? If you had to read, say, 10 books you hated and felt like that time could have been better spent reading something - anything - else?

Authors, much as filmmakers or other artists, tend to have a distinct POV and style. I think if you hate that about one of their books (or films or paintings), it seems unlikely that you would find another one that you loved.

Posted by: Anna von Beaverplatz at July 14, 2009 3:28 PM

Thank you samantha.... I am surprised by how many people either hold holden caulfield as their golden god... or hate his guts and think salinger did a terrible job... He's supposed to be a little jerk.

Personally... I love Pynchon.. The Crying of Lot 49 was one of my defining books. I love the confusion and the whole "i have no flipping idea which way is up or down or what is real" business that is going on in it. I think it is, honestly, masterfully written... But Pynchon does take a lot of concentration...

I'll reiterate a lot of what has been mentioned before. The Bronte girls.. Dickens... by and large and I haven't come to appreciate them at this point in my life...

Posted by: cass at July 14, 2009 3:30 PM

Am I the only one who truly hated The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao? I love books, I enjoy reading them, and quite frankly, I do not hate many novels. This book was the kind of pretentious crap that had I trudged any further I would have thrown it against a wall and rip out its pages. It was confusing, it did not appeal to me, and apparently because I did not see the appeal of this book, I am a lesser being without any taste or brain cells.
My good friend is pressing for me to reread this book, a feat I may do...in a year or so. I'm still seething.

Posted by: Kamikaze Feminist at July 14, 2009 4:01 PM

While not surprised to see Grapes of Wrath on here, I will have to say I actually liked it. Thought Catch-22 was hilarious and I can see how it inspired the tv show MASH. That said, I still haven't finished it. Right now I am working my way through Catcher in the Rye, and am not really a fan, but I wouldn't nominate it for this list. Yes, Holden is a pretentious ass that I really want to kick in the teeth, but he is not the worst I have read.
The worst I have read I would have to say is Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment. I decided at Borders one day to pick up the Idiot because the name amused me, and I liked Notes from Underground (get the name wrong half to time). Big mistake, it was a long and very boring read. Took me years of returning to it, but I finally finished, and then a friend got me Crime and Punishment because she knew I had been reading works by the author. Decided to give it a shot, and about 3 years later I still haven't finished. It is punishment for me every time I sit down to read it!

That may be the only book that I will not ever read to the end. Wuthering Heights used to occupy that spot, but I bought a version with translations for Joseph, and ended up loving it, despite hating Heathcliff and Cathy. Whenever I see these romanticized versions of them I wonder if we read the same book.

Posted by: Jenny at July 14, 2009 4:23 PM

"Loved 1984; didn’t care for A Brave New World."

Same. I also could never get into Catcher in the Rye, and while I finished Lord of the Flies, and I can kind of understand why people like it, I thought it was pretty bad.

Posted by: Moose at July 14, 2009 4:34 PM

V-anything by Pynchon, really. Has this man ever actually talked to a woman BEFORE he fucked her?

Posted by: helevent at July 14, 2009 4:38 PM

The Old Man and the Sea. He likes baseball. He fishes for a living. He might not have been intended to be a Christ-figure but he clearly is. I get it. This could have been a 4 page short story which was stretched to almost a novel. Atrocious. I refuse to pick up another Hemingway novel because of this one.

Posted by: Robert at July 14, 2009 4:53 PM

Fahrenheit 451. Hated it because it had absolutely nothing to do with censorship. It was over-commercialization of our society, like a forerunner to Wall-E. It's the greatest mind fuck of a lie that it's about anything else.

On that note, "Ask not what your country can do for you ..." JFK's talking about communism and ratting out your neighbors. Egad.

Posted by: Duane at July 14, 2009 5:23 PM

I really didn't get Ulysees. I don't hate it, I just didn't understand. Maybe 15 was a little young to be attempting it in retrospect. Serves me right for being a precocious teenage twat...


Ps. there is a difference between hating a book and not getting it, right? All this book hatin' is making me sad.

Posted by: orangina at July 14, 2009 5:34 PM

im really late to the party and i am unsure if anyone else has made this point or if it really makes a difference but...

i didn't like a confederacy of dunces the first time i read it. i can't exactly say why i didn't, just that the spark didn't grab me.

and then i moved to new orleans, lived there for several years, and read it again. and really truly got it. it's a love and hate letter to this silly strange city that is filled with silly and strange people. and new orleans itself is enough to drive anyone with half a mind to kill themselves once you start thinking on why you're here and what you're doing and what you're surrounded with.

Posted by: bree at July 14, 2009 6:04 PM

My hope for Wuthering Heights has been deflated by everyone's hate. It's on my bookshelf now, waiting to be read, and I fear it'll never get read after this discussion.

Even though I am one of the WH haters, I still think you should read it. In fact, if you still read Wuthering Heights, I will re-try Heart of Darkness.

There you go, sad literature pandas. A diversion, to be completed exactly one year from today: everyone must re-read one of the books they listed and post their second go-round impressions on the 'jeeb. Interesting, tolerant, AND intellectual! Aren't well just special little snowflakes.

Posted by: TryScience at July 14, 2009 6:50 PM

well = we all

Posted by: TryScience at July 14, 2009 6:51 PM

This thread reminds me of my eleventh grade English class. For some reason, everything we read that year I devoured and loved to the point of obsession. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Fahrenheit 451, Slaughterhouse-5, Huckleberry Finn, and especially The Great Gatsby. I love love LOVED them. And everybody else wanted to kill themselves.

I got shunned a lot. Books became my only friends. I ate lunch every day in the library. Alone.

...I think I need a hug.

Posted by: Kristen at July 14, 2009 7:29 PM

Ohh, yeah, Kristen you reminded me. I hated Their Eyes Were Watching God. It reminds me of Gatsby in that it was really well written in parts, but take a step back and the whole story is just utterly lame to me. The only parts I liked were the mule and the talky balcony scenes. Anything having to do with the main characters was too delicate and measured for me.

One of the books that I spent a summer reading for an IB summer assignment and absolutely LOVED was Great Expectations. One of my favorite books. I read it in two days. I was so attached to it that I actually read it during marching band camp... while marching (I have amazing peripheral vision). When school started everyone was asked what they thought of the book and they all moaned about how awful and boring it was. I couldn't believe it. How can you not love Great Expectations?!

I ate lunch in the library too.

Posted by: kayla at July 14, 2009 11:55 PM

TryScience
You're on!

Posted by: Queen L at July 15, 2009 1:56 AM

Only one other person notes Shakespeare? The stories themselves are fine, but I can't stand having to translate every other sentence. Maybe I need to try again as 20 years have passed. I love the Russian classics and they can be very similar but I find them satisfyingly worth the plodding.

The only book I haven't finished was my favorite as a youngun. It was a miniature version of Robinson Crusoe and it was freakin awesome. So I recently picked up the real version and I'm wondering, does he ever actually get on a freakin boat? I got bored and never found out.

Posted by: Rudy at July 15, 2009 5:02 AM

Kamikaze: I loved Brief Wondrous, as did most of the people in my book club (we're not an irritating book club, actually - a rarity, I know). That being said, I always liked Diaz, so I went in with an eye toward liking the book. Maybe you should try his short stories and see what you think. He just strikes me as a all-around good guy, too, so I'm biased.

Posted by: samantha t at July 15, 2009 7:22 AM

WUTHERING HEIGHTS IS AWESOME

That being said I have no love for Catch 22. Fucking boring as hell. Yes. Irony. I get it.

The big one for me though is Flaubert. I've read Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education and...nothing.

Posted by: Alayna at July 15, 2009 10:49 AM

LOVED: Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Grapes of Wrath

FELT "MEH" ABOUT: Scarlet Letter, Old Man and the Sea, Brave New World, Great Expectations, Great Gatsby, and Wuthering Heights

COULD NOT FINISH: Confederacy of Dunces, On the Road, Jane Eyre, or any of JRR Tolkein's books

Posted by: lucy at July 15, 2009 6:23 PM

Funny tangent, when they made that god awful movie version of Count of Monte Cristo, the studio sent mini-posters to Blockbusters around the country announcing the DVD release date calling it the 'The Count of Monte Crisco', I shit you not. I have one.


Groovekiller, that explains so much to me about that movie. I have never seen a movie that shat on the original to the extent that that one did. What a revolting waste of some pretty, pretty actors.

Posted by: Anne (in Reno) at July 15, 2009 6:53 PM

The last ten chapters of Huckleberry Finn. Up until those chapters the book was brilliant. Then, for no particular reason, it turned into Tom Sawyer.

Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. OK, I actually found these reasonably entertaining, but you could drive a train through the holes in Ayn Rand's logic.

Posted by: cinderkeys at July 20, 2009 1:11 PM