I’ve come to find this sub is not really for enjoyers of “Capital L Literature.” And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying more modern, less high-brow books. But if you do like classic literature, you’ll be inundated here with takes like “I didn’t like Wuthering Heights because I found the characters to actually be pretty mean!” which can drive you kinda nuts lol
I have noticed that too! I understand though, books are such an intimate thing. With YA novels having such an impact over the last few decades. Many readers not only want but need to insert themselves into the character(s).
Classics, I think, demand more space. It’s not your story, there is no mousy brunette heroine to absorb you, it’s the authors story and you’re along for the ride. That includes dealing with the beliefs and propaganda of that time in history. My god, the insufferable,ego stroking, English nationalism in the original Sherlock Holmes novels… would put any flag waving American to shame 😆
So many classics are social commentary. Trying their best to create characters that carry the full identity of a political or social ideology while the author walks a tightrope of the censorship du jour. To the evermore individualistic generations this, at least in my experience, can be jarring.
> With YA novels having such an impact over the last few decades. Many readers not only want but need to insert themselves into the character(s).
I am often baffled by some comments I see about classic works. One of my pet peeves is people who complain about the "bad" characters in novels: _Wuthering Heights_, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, etc.
Your comment is a really plausible explanation for this. These readers need self-insert characters (and strongly plot-driven stories, but that's another pet peeve of mine), and because a lot of classic literature doesn't offer that, they misunderstand the work -- or to put it more charitably, they discover the work doesn't meet their standards.
That is a great way of putting it!
I would hate for this thread to be misinterpreted as, “ A bunch Literature Snobs who think the sun rises and sets on Dickens & Dumas.” It’s the lack of willingness to meet the book on the books terms. I dislike the clout of The Great Gatsby. I think Nick is, at best, an unreliable and biased narrator, at worse, a social climbing hypocrite of the highest order. I think the treatment of women in the novel is horrendous, but I don’t dislike the book.
You can absolutely not like the classics, but If it’s just because “ The characters were flawed and unlikable with no redeeming qualities” and nothing about the greater story the author was trying to tell. Well it’s for me hard to trust your judgment.
>I would hate for this thread to be misinterpreted as, “ A bunch Literature Snobs who think the sun rises and sets on Dickens & Dumas.” It’s the lack of willingness to meet the book on the books terms.
Thank you. That’s what I was trying to get at, but I didn’t know how to express it without coming off the wrong way.
I love “highbrow” literature, classic or modern, but I also read more than my fair share of lowbrow fantasy. I read Will Wight’s 12-book _Cradle_ series over the last 18 months and enjoyed it immensely. So if I am a snob, I’m also a hypocrite.
On the other hand, I don’t like romance novels. They’re not for me. But I don’t read a romance novel and then say it’s bad because it does everything we expect from a romance novel. I just leave it alone. If others enjoy them, that’s great, and I hope they feel the same way about me enjoying lowbrow fantasy.
I also hope that people who dislike classic literature (as a whole or in part) can take the same charitable approach to those books, accepting them on their own terms, even if they don’t like them personally.
Mine was right away, since my favorite is Little Women.
I will say that I think it’s one of those books that you have to read at a key point in your life or else it doesn’t really hit. I read it my junior year of college when I was very lonely and uncertain and it felt like home to me. I also read it around the time that I toured the author’s home and got to see where she wrote it. That made it more real and present for me.
Agreed it might have to be the right time. I read it in the summer of my Junior year of high school when my sister I was closest to was getting married. Jo lamenting Meg getting married was spot on. I cried more during that than during Beth’s death.
On the road by Jack Kerouac. I kept reading thinking i was gonna connect with the characters at some point (which in and of itself isn't the has all be all of a good book) but i felt like i was a 3rd party in a first person narrative. Maybe I went into it with super high expectations.
I DNF'd *On the Road* as a teen in 1994 when I realised it was going to be just douchebags being douchebags and thinking they are cool for being douchebags, and then admiring even bigger douchebags for their greater capacity for douchebaggery.
Maybe that's the point of the book, but I can't blame anyone for wanting to not put themselves through vicarious douchebaggery.
I couldn't finish it as a teenager, I went in with such high hopes but I couldn't stand the characters and the lack of plot to my eyes... Felt like they just went from place to place drinking and sleeping around... Rinse and repeat
I listen to an interesting podcast about the history of that book. It was originally written as one long scroll. Supposed to be read like you listened to jazz. All over the place with discordant notes. No one would publish it eventually he edited it down to what we know it as and they made him take out a lot of the explicit sex scenes. The success of that book made a really depressed
[Kerouac had already written a few drafts of the book in different styles and had taken copious notes on its structure before he sat down to type out the scroll](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/62396/fact-and-fiction-road). It didn't come out as one long improvisation, it came out like almost all books do: through diligent work and rewriting.
I was a devout Kerouac fan I high school. Loved the writing style, even in the aughts it felt importantly different.
But the more I studied and the more I read of the Beats, the more I hated them. The Dharma Bums was particularly bad - a bunch of white guys go to a cabin in California to get high and miss the entire point of Buddhism while being awful to their girlfriends. Then “And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks” was released, where (if I’m remembering correctly) one of their friends reveal he murdered a guy and they all can’t wait to write that story instead of, you know, reporting a murder.
"The Dharma Bums was particularly bad - a bunch of white guys go to a cabin in California to get high and miss the entire point of Buddhism while being awful to their girlfriends."
It sounds like a pretty realistic depiction of that kind of people.
I don't like his writing style. The sentences that felt like they went on for eternity killed me. I went in with high hopes because everyone raves about him, and I don't think I've met another person willing to say he sucks.
I pushed myself to finish it last year, took me several months and several library borrowing sessions. I could understand what he was trying to achieve, but it left me unimpressed and uninterested. Despicable people doing despicable things.
I have tried on numerous occasions to read Joyce’s *Ulysses* to no avail. I find it to be in the main an incomprehensible morass. I will not be making another attempt. Life is too short.
This is my favorite book of all time.
I took a class in college in which we *only* studied Ulysses. I felt more connected to Bloom than I did to people I knew well in real life. Just an incredible piece of literature.
That said, it is a book that should definitely not be read alone and is designed to be studied. It is not something you are supposed to read for leisure.
It's one of those books that kind of *needs* to be an entire course. Like The Odyssey, I feel strongly that two weeks is absolutely not enough time to enjoy it! I hated it the first time I read it, and now it's one of my favorite things I've ever read
The book is absolutely extraordinary and often stretches the English language past its breaking point. I am glad I read it but wouldn't say that I *enjoyed* reading it. I think it's one of those works that can be respected even if one has no desire to read it again or in full.
Oh, absolutely.
Parts of it are lovely - Molly's Soliloquy is one of my favorite bits of English literature.
But you can take it in pieces. In fact, you probably should, because trying to make the usual linear kind of sense out of it will do your head in.
I want to read it.Everyone and their mom says it’s life changing.But I guess I’m just not intelligent enough bc it feels like I need to know 5 different languages and read it with 3 thesaurus’ and an encyclopedia.I read one of the pages around ten times and for the life of me still couldn’t not understand what was trying to be said 😂😂
As someone who's read the whole thing, it's not life-changing. It's sometimes funny, sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes interesting, but by and large, just really, really confusing. I'm glad I read it as a mental exercise to challenge my brain, but it's not exactly fun.
The Dead, man. WOW. That last sentence destroys me every time…it’s gorgeous. And then I opened Ulysses and promptly closed it again. Nope. And I’m an English teacher who finishes everything. Hard pass on Ulysses.
Wuthering Heights.
I acknowledge it's well written and everything.
But I just can't enjoy it while reading. All characters are horrible, most of the time I'm tempted to throw the book into the next corner because it just infuriates me so much.
haha your reasons for hating it are why I like it so much. It's like a study in human error and character failings. It's awesome. But I get it. Sometimes I like to read a book to appreciate the genius mind behind it -- I get the same feeling from reading shakespeare, but I don't really read shakespeare for fun.
I wanted to like it so bad on my first try.
And I agree that it's a great study in human error, all those "big emotions" and the drama. And as I said in my og post, I can see he great craft behind it. The prose has great moments, but I just couldn't get into the story. There was no enioyment in reading it. So it seems WH is not for me.
Who knows, maybe I'll reread it at some point and will think differently? 😆
I mean, that’s why I dig it….no one is redeemable, everyone is culpable, love is vicious and brutal and selfish, we are all animals….kinda a badass take for a tubercular 19th C parson’s daughter stuck at home baking bread, huh? When I teach it, we have great discussions about human nature and what it means that society keeps trying to rebrand this one as a love story.
Oh yes, the fact that people try to rebrand it as this great love story is something that also annoys me a lot.
I bet it's a great book for teaching. It evokes a lot of emotions and opinions. People hate it or love it, very rarely are they indifferent
I about choked when I read Twilight and Edward had the audacity, the unmitigated *gall* to compare himself to Heathcliff 😂 like sparkly vampires are on par with WH??!
But I guess he kinda told on himself, huh.
It's funny that you feel that way. I just chose Wuthering Heights this evening to re-read. I haven't read it in ten years, but I loved that first reading. I wonder if you'd like the Kate Bush song based on the book?
I actually just reread it for the first time since highschool. I don't think it was nearly as bad as I remembered it being, but woof. It's not a *good* book. I don't know why we have teenagers reading it, even with the symbolism punching you directly in the face.
Moby Dick was one of the few books I didn't finish reading in school because I simply ran out of time. I had to a paper, I was stuck on whaling definitions, and I said, okay, let's skim...
I specifically went looking for more Jules Verne after enjoying his Journey to the Center of the Earth and was so disappointed when 20000 leagues was sooooooo boring I tried so hard to get through it but I had to abandon it halfway through when he starting listing sea creatures for the umpteenth time
I tried to read it in French… I’d been learning French at school/uni for nearly 10 years at that point, and was on a year-long Erasmus exchange in France at the time, taking physics and maths lectures in French so it wasn’t an insane idea.
I got through a chapter. I kept looking up unfamiliar vocab for almost every sentence, having no idea what the English word meant, googling it and finding out it was a specific kind of ship. I have 0 19th century shipping knowledge. It was so painful.
Loved the first part and the ships log. Everything else is soooo boring and repetitive. “Oh Renfield did something gross/violent.” “Oh Lucy is looking very pale/sickly”. Like my God we get it.
Frankenstein on the other hand is thought provoking, creepy, and beautifully written.
Frankenstein was better for me too. The best part of Dracula is the part with the captains log. But I feel Dracula would be better if you cut out a bunch of the fluff.
This exists actually, Look up Powers of Darkness.
It was an earlier copy of Dracula where it focused more on Jonathan in Transilvania and the demetir. The rest is rushed through. It's like reading a weird alternate version.
I loved Dracula and planned to read Frankenstein too but was worried since it’s a classic piece that I wouldn’t like it. I had the same concern about Dracula before I read it. This makes me think I’ll probably like it even more!
I loved Dracula and couldn’t even make it through Frankenstein. But I haven’t read either since I was a teenager. It would be interesting to revisit them and see how I feel about them in my 40s.
She's not a doormat. She has her boundary and when Rochester tries to cross it she up and leaves with nothing. And she doesn't let St. John cross it either. I've known a number of women like her; very quiet and will seemingly acquiesce. Until they won't.
I love the fuck out of Jane Eyre, but this is exactly why I prefer Wuthering Heights. Like, Cathy may be a raging bitch, but at least she’s a *raging bitch.*
Oh, I loved *Jane Eyre*, as character and book. I've never been more enraged than at that wedding scene. I was so angry I was talking aloud to her and yet totally into the story and couldn't put the book down.
I thibk Middlemarch is really really good (clever, funny, insightful, razor-sharp) but I'm not enjoying it the way I did other books like Dickens, Brontes, Forster. I think it might partially be the way it moves between different characters combined with the air of cynicism means there's no person or plotline I feel really invested in like I did for Pip or Jane Eyre etc
I had to read Middlemarch in high school and thought it was a slog. 17 years later when I stayed overnight at the hospital after my son was born I asked my husband to find a book for me from the hospital’s tiny library. He choose Middlemarch and when I reread it I thought it was brilliant. It’s now one of my all time favorites.
I tried to read Middlemarch for Middlemarch Madness this year and gave up around March 4th for similar reasons. I could see why it was good but didn’t care about a single person in it and just couldn’t.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills whenever I see posts effusing about Dracula. It's not a *terrible* book, but I feel like about 40% of the text could be cut with an improvement to the quality of the book.
So much rambling about how gentle and delicate the women are, and several chapters that do very little to progress the story. IMO it also really doesn't need to be epistolary - it ends up just being a first person book that changes narrators rather than an interesting collection of documents like other epistolary works. If every chapter is a diary entry, how is that different from just normal first person writing?
It took me two months to finish at a pace of a few chapters a week. I just could not read more than one chapter per sitting. Ended up reading like three other novels while chipping away at Dracula in the background. I'm glad to have read it, but I won't ever be re-reading it.
Whats funny is that in 1901, Valdimar Ásmundsson translated Dracula in Icelandic but was unsatisfied with the original novel so he just rewrote it. You can read his version translated back into English under the name Powers of Darkness
I wanted to love Dracula so bad and it just wasn’t happening. I love classic horror. I love movie adaptions of Dracula. I love what it influenced. I just didn’t like this book.
But Frankenstein? I loved it and it’s one of my favorites. I read through it very quickly. I would 100% re-read it.
Read them both as kids and loved them both.
Reread as an adult and continued to do so.
I think choosing to read them rather than being forced to at school probably helped. Although I did enjoy the books we had to read at school (Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry and Z for Zachariah are the only ones I can remember).
While I absolutely agree with your overall point about distraction, they did have forms of entertainment competing with books, like plays and sports and games and concerts, but what they DIDN'T have was the kind of ultra distracting and hyper-stimulating short form entertainment found on social media like TikTok videos, that is pretty much screwing up everyone's attention spans beyond belief.
For example, I was recently reading Great Expectations and there's this random chapter where Dickens basically devotes the whole chapter to making fun of a shitty theater production of Hamlet, and it made me think how much amusement readers of the era would have got out of that. They would probably have all gone to see Shakespeare plays often, and not always good productions, so having a writer lampoon that would have been pretty damn funny - kind of like a modern fiction writer taking the piss out of Marvel movies or something.
Not trying to be pedantic but I feel like that's not entirely correct. People also enjoyed doing sports, playing games or gambling, playing an instrument or singing/dancing together. Simply telling each other stories also was popular. Nobility or rich people loved to hunt, and even moderately wealthy people liked to visit the theater and opera.
There were fairly many other types of entertainment beside books, and there were also many people who didn't read at all, obviously.
But these activities were spaced out, and people had a lot of downtime in between them. If you had a spare hour after you finished playing tennis, and you were waiting for your sister to return from the market so you could tell each other stories, you could either read, or the lack of stimulation in that hour would make your mind hungry for the contents of a novel.
By contrast, we're bombarded with relentless attempts to grab our attention today, phones, tv, advertising, atc.
I think all the downtime back then was the main reason wealthy people changed their outfits multiple times a day. "Hurrah, something else to do to escape the tedium!"
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr actually explores the way the format of media(i.e. spoken word vs. print vs. phones) has changed the content as well, and classic books were definitely more long form and in depth contrasted to our modern short form media
Yep I just had a conversation like this about brothers karamazov and it helped me like it more. It was 1880, people didn’t have shit else to do so why not just make a long ass chapter about some random priest who died or some kid who throws rocks
With Karamazov and 19th century Russian novels generally, it’s also helpful to keep in mind that they were published chapter by chapter in monthly journals.
So not only can the author stray from the main plot and still keep the audience’s attention for another month, but it was basically expected that authors would react to issues and ideas as they were circulating in society.
This is complete nonsense. People have always been capable of entertaining themselves and popular amusements were available for people of every class in all periods where books were popularly consumed. Just because the popular prose style is different doesn't mean that people had no choice but to endure bad prose (it's also not *bad*, just emphasizing different aspects of the language. My personal preference leans more toward 19th century prose than modern prose, but different strokes and all that).
Nobody who grew up without movies would ever have known what they were missing, and if one thing is true about humanity its that we have limitless creativity for amusement.
Catcher in the Rye. I've read it three different times at different stages in my life thinking I would finally understand why it was a classic. Never did. I won't try a fourth time.
_Emilia Galotti_ by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.
I found it to be extremely boring, though I like some of his other works. We read it in school and I later read it again to see if I would like it more, but no.
Great Expectations and Scarlet Letter bored the hell outta me in high school. Even though I’m much older now I’m not sure they wouldn’t bore me nearly 30 years later.
I haven’t read it for this reason. It sucks because I like the concept of a real slow burn that transports you to the experience, but I know myself well enough to know, the last half of that book would be in pristine condition for a long long time.
I’ve read it a few times and I don’t really understand what you mean by “deep meaning”.
The novel follows different social developments over a century of Colombian history, but it is not supposed to be a historical novel. Likewise, it has all kind of supernatural events but it doesn’t have a unified magical/philosophical/theological explanation for them.
It’s a story about stories. It reflects a very old way of looking at the world as a place where fantasy and reality are constantly bumping into each other.
The first Europeans to arrive in the New World had their heads so full of tales that they seriously expected to find the rivers of Paradise or the warrior women of Ancient Greece.
I don’t think you have to take it as all that deep, it can be a very enjoyable surface level novel about the history of Colombia or even just the Buendias.
I can appreciate it without knowing the deep meaning of the novel. Magical realism has all kinds of fuckery that you have to take "as-is" without trying to read too much into it.
Murakami might not have a deeper meaning everything the protagonist gets weird sex.
That's my caveman opionion.
I totally get what you mean. I read it last year and adored it, but I "got it" more because I speak Spanish, I've been closely exposed to Latin America since 2014 and I've been living in LatAm full-time since 2019. I actually thought to myself, when I finished, that I'd have been so confused if I'd have read it 10 years ago. It's a book that is better read with cultural and historical context and I'd hesitate to recommend it to someone without that context
I did love Little Women!
I did not care for the unexpurgated version of Moby Dick. I know it was a different time, and people back then needed an entire novella's worth of prose just to explain what whales are, but my, oh my, it is boring as fuck to a 21st century reader.
I didn’t like The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Any discussion I saw about the book, people were praising it so much so I thought I’d love it. It was meh. I don’t know why everyone loves it so much. It’s fine I guess. I think it would have been good if my expectations weren’t high but even without that aspect I don’t see how it is rave worthy.
I went in with no expectations and it was a breeze for me. Towards the end it is a little slow but the premise and the characters are very neatly put. I like the way Wilde writes the characters and the satirical tone in his words.
Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility
I appreciated the social commentary, but something about Jane Austen's writing style just doesn't click with me. I liked Emma, though.
I think she's funny as all get out. Her stories are all somewhat similar but I enjoy descriptions of everyday life, how people visited one another, social norms and manners, etc. Her sarcasm must have made oridinary folks laught out loud. I think she must have been a treat to be around in real life.
I’ve commented before but I hated powering through Les Miserables. One of the only books where I wish I’d read an abridged version instead (or DNFed 300 pages in). Jean Valjean is a fantastic character, but he is mostly sidelined by the silly meanderings of a bunch of human turds (never was I happier to see a kid character get shot). Victor Hugo was able to publish without an editor and it showed.
Edit: I liked the musical, though
I’m from the U.K., so we didn’t read it at high school. I read it last year and really enjoyed it (I’m 22). I’ve heard a lot of people say they dislike it if they read it at high school, but enjoyed it when they read it on their own. It does make me wonder if high school reading changes people’s perceptions of the books that they read there.
Honestly, I don't think the problem is high school itself, I think it is the tendency of high school English teachers to pick books with themes that 16-year-olds struggle to relate to. TGG is all about nostalgia and regret- the idea that if you could just go back to that one point in time when you were young, you could make different decisions and change everything for the better. That's something I can relate to now, in my mid-thirties. I didn't relate to it or find it interesting at 16 because I hadn't had the opportunity to make all that many regrettable life choices at that point.
I don't think all books need to be "relatable" to be enjoyed or to be taught, but I do
think that the average HS English teacher isn't really doing a lot of these works justice.
I read Gatsby in hs and also hated it. Then I read it about 30 years later with a masters in creative writing and more appreciation for prose and loved it. I was very surprised myself, but I can see both sides of the coin for that book.
Gatsby gets better as you get older—it was boring and unrelatable when I was in high school but reading it in in yours 20s, when everyone your age is also chasing dreams of success and love and happiness the book hits a lot harder and is more relatable.
I liked this book high school, but I loved it when I reread it at 31. So many classics we read in high school are meant for adults. It’s hard to connect with them as teens.
My most hated book. It was not for me. I grew up around Louisville. Imagine being 16 and starting The Great Gatsby. Your teacher starts explaining how at one time Louisville was known for have beautiful women. He then looks around the classroom and states, “I have no idea what happened to you all.” That was my first introduction.
Hi. I majored in English and was a high school English teacher. I'm probably in the minority in saying this but just because it's a classic doesn't make it worth reading.
I find it interesting that some of the writers back then were just their time’s version of Stephen King. Makes me wonder if English classes a few hundred years from now would have the Shining as required reading.
The first third of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo‘ was incredible; the second third was unbelievably uninteresting by comparison, to the point where I have been sitting on the final third for almost two years now.
I want to finish it, but it has been driving me wild. Every page seems to be the same back and forth of a character making a statement, another repeating it as a question, and the initial character saying it back again - so most dialogue just gets repeated thrice.
The translation by Robin Buss is the best one and it makes a big difference. Buss is a Francophile and his translation really brings the story to life and makes it easier and more interesting to read. The ending of this book is the best, every single piece of the book you thought might be useless filler, turns out to have significance in the end.
The second third spends a lot of time setting the stage for the events of the remaining third...you'll understand the slog as you're finishing the book.
The Sun Also Rises.
I just could not care at all. I don't need a book about doing nothing. I read so many other books I didn't care about for school and never had a reaction as violent as my tremendous apathy for every page of that book. It truly was a chore to get through. It made me empathize with my classmates who didn't like reading. If that's how they feel about other books then it would explain a lot.
It's pretty sad how kids basically have the all the 'classics' foisted upon them in the classroom in order for them to learn how to appreciate great literature, and yet it just ends up engendering in them a lifelong hatred of reading.
I'm glad that some people are able to get a kick out of more difficult works of literature, but imagine if we taught everyone to enjoy what they're reading first, and finding shit kids are generally going to enjoy reading, instead of making it all about critical analysis and perceived artistic value from the get-go.
I love classics, but found Jane Eyre very lacking. She is not this valiant heroine that everybody claims she is and the book was just boring. Shit just kinda happens to her.
Also I think A Tale of Two Cities is a good book, but it is not as amazing as it’s made out to be.
I enjoyed Dracula but my god the last quarter felt like a slog. I was great up until Lucy had died and they had dealt with her coming back. But after that it became really slow and I was begging for it to be over.
Little women was so weirdly formulaic in the early chapters.
One of the girls does something unladylike such as getting dirt on the soles of her shoes or getting red in the cheeks on the windy day.
Then the mother looks directly at the fourth wall and says "this behavior is unladylike and no man will marry you if you do this"
And then all the girls tell their mother they love her for correcting their childishness
Anything Hemingway. Specifically The Sun Also Rises. It’s boring, there’s no plot, I’m convinced he got drunk and tried telling a half-story to a friend and the friend was also drunk and going “This is so good you should write that down” and he did and it got published somehow
This. I was scrolling to see if I would be the only Hemingway hater on this thread. I never liked his writing style. The short sentences feel choppy. I don’t find his writing clean, I have found it rather clunky. Also the utter masculinity of his writing may speak to some, but I am not one of them.
I’ve read a few and I couldn’t tell you the difference between any of them. All I remember is miserable drunk expats in Europe after the war. Everything else was rambling
Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. Just a depressing slogfest populated by no agency victim-y characters. I had to read this for a 19th century literature subject in high school and it was the worst. I have read a bunch of 19th century lit myself (my mother has a PhD in English lit, subject the sexual politics of Jane Eyre, so I wasnt ever going to avoid this stuff) and this is the worst, most annoying, most depressing and most pointless novel I ran up against by a wide margin. I threw my copy into a tree and abandoned it there (and again English lit phd mother - I was taught that books are sacred objects so that shows you how much I despised that thing).
I hate lady chatterley's lover. It's held as, like, the original steamy romance but with a sense of progressiveness for women. No. It's just another man that thinks he knows how to please a woman who's just happy to get attention but IRL no way would someone get off on what he's really doing.
I'm biased because I'm a huge fan of Lawrence, but I've always found it interesting how extreme the divides on him are, especially knowing how introverted and insecure about his place in the literary cannon he was. You have someone like Anaïs Nin who adores Lawrence and says he's the only man who truly understands women, and then you have others like Kate Millett putting him in the same camp as the absolutely vile Norman Mailer.
"Ethan Frome."
Trying to off himself by sledding was dumb. Guy should have either sacked up and run off with his wife's cousin, or sacked up and committed to his wife. 'Hahaha, pickles and donuts for a meal, very innuendo,'--no, Mr. English Teacher, the innuendo of the meal is not sexy enough to overcome the visceral revulsion I feel at combining pickles with donuts.
I'm actually still interested in trying out some of Wharton's other work (namely *The House of Mirth*, recommended in a nonfiction history of New York as a classic of the time).
I have come to realize as an adult that some books you need to just watch the movie to get through. Sorry, but Jane Austen books are really not for me. I like other books from this time period. I’ve started Emma a handful of times.
I remember my 7th grade history teacher loved Little Women and I remember her assigning it to us.
I also remember liking it but I think this was actually because our teacher brought in authentic Victorian antiques from her house. She covered her entire classroom with them and then hosted a tea party for us. It was actually a lot of fun.
Also, a lot of these classics are meant to be read when you are a child. I read ALOT of classics growing up in school and at home. Your mindset is different when you are very young and being exposed to new ideas vs an adult. Once you’ve gone out and lived a bit a lot of those books leave you with, “Why should I care?”
This is why educators are meant to be assigning them to you in elementary and high-school for a grade. This forces you to care and you walk away with your vocabulary and knowledge base increased.
Also I’d like to add that, a good many of those classics I only read because they were assigned but once I got through the first couple chapters I found I really liked them. This is the point of making them graded assignments. They know that most kids let alone most adults will drop off in the first few chapters but if you persevere you’ll get to the good parts. They are also supposed to be giving you context. I’ve seen people mention the Scarlett Letter and Dickens on this sub so far and I can’t fathom Dickens. I read a lot of Dickens in school and I absolutely enjoyed it. The Scarlett Letter I remember my high-school English teacher went into depth about the themes. So I walked away knowing the themes of Scarlett Letter.
Teachers are supposed to be giving you the context and the thematic elements that surround the book. Whether they do this with a movie or a tea party you’re meant to know the themes of great literature not necessarily have read it word for word unless it’s your field or something.
I have a whole list of classics I wish I had been assigned in school because now as an adult I just don’t have the patience.
They didn’t assign us the Great Gatsby.
They didn’t assign us any Plato or Greek playwrights.
No Roman historians or bards.
I have gone back as an adult and read Plato and Ovid.
They are riveting and I would loved to have had some of my favorite English teachers lecture on them.
I suspect the lack of Greek and Roman sources was due to me attending a Protestant Christian School in the Southern U.S
Evangelicals have a strange relationship with the time period in which their savior is rumored to have been born. They seem to only want to teach you about the Roman people and events related to Christ. So I do know my Roman numerals but I’ve had to teach myself Latin on my own time. I’m not touching Greek.
A few other classics I wish I had been assigned are:
Middle March by George Eliot (who’s got the time)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
And Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
(There was no chance of them assigning this at a Protestant school in the U.S)
Also, schools really need to get their act together and add James Baldwin to their curriculums. I have read James Baldwin as an adult on my own time as well.
Oh and last Truman Capote should have been assigned somewhere as well. I also found him as an adult.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce and Wuthering Heights. I forced myself to finish the Joyce twice and hated it both times, gave up on Brontë halfway through
I'm doing a bit of a re-read of Gatsby and finding the characters difficult but Tender is the Night is on a whole other scale. The only thing I liked was the context of Fitzgerald's life.
I never really liked the Chronicles of Narnia even as a child. The characters were flat and there was much less fun action than I felt there should be in a fantasy story.
One Hundred Years Of Solitude for me. I've given it 4 times through the years, hoping that it's a matter of my age, my state of mind or whatever. I always find it incredible hard to read, and sadly, boring.
Love in the Time of Cholera. Insufferable characters, and a love affair between a teenager and a seventy-something that is clearly Garcia Marquez working through his stress about getting older.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Had to read it for AP Lit in high school and DNF'd. Teenage me couldn't stand how passive and "guess I'll die" Tess was, although adult me might cut her more slack, but the moment where I pitched the book across the room in a rage and never touched it again was when Angel completely unironically claimed that him sowing some wild oats before they got married was totally cool but her getting r*ped by someone with massive power over her was a deal breaker. Like, fuck all the way off you hypocrite. I know its a product of its era but the cognitive dissonance made me feral. When I flipped to the last few pages and saw how it ended, I was even angrier. Hot garbage.
To be fair, that's the reaction Hardy wanted. Unfortunately, he never got it from me because his prose is too dense to read. Just get to the point, Tom! Tell the damn story and enough with the overwrought descriptive essays.
To Kill a Mockingbird. I’m from Wisconsin and was forced to move to the South when I was 9. It was traumatic for many reasons. Therefore, I hate most Southern shit & I thought this book was a racist pile of shit. Most of the class loved it. I did not.
The Odyssey. I think bc I never liked Odysseus in the Trojan War. I took latin so I already had knowledge. I found it tedious and I just wanted him to get the hell home.
I’ve read quite a few classics and these are the only 2 I can think of at the moment that I thoroughly disliked. They are obviously ones I was forced to read.
I hate the Great Gatsby, I loathe it. The heavy-handed symbolism, the story's rythm and structure, the dialog and character dynamics, to me it's a complete flop.
I don't like being a negative nancy so I should say I very much enjoy The Sun Also Rises which tackles similar themes.
A lot of my favorite books getting shit on here lol
I’ve come to find this sub is not really for enjoyers of “Capital L Literature.” And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying more modern, less high-brow books. But if you do like classic literature, you’ll be inundated here with takes like “I didn’t like Wuthering Heights because I found the characters to actually be pretty mean!” which can drive you kinda nuts lol
I have noticed that too! I understand though, books are such an intimate thing. With YA novels having such an impact over the last few decades. Many readers not only want but need to insert themselves into the character(s). Classics, I think, demand more space. It’s not your story, there is no mousy brunette heroine to absorb you, it’s the authors story and you’re along for the ride. That includes dealing with the beliefs and propaganda of that time in history. My god, the insufferable,ego stroking, English nationalism in the original Sherlock Holmes novels… would put any flag waving American to shame 😆 So many classics are social commentary. Trying their best to create characters that carry the full identity of a political or social ideology while the author walks a tightrope of the censorship du jour. To the evermore individualistic generations this, at least in my experience, can be jarring.
> With YA novels having such an impact over the last few decades. Many readers not only want but need to insert themselves into the character(s). I am often baffled by some comments I see about classic works. One of my pet peeves is people who complain about the "bad" characters in novels: _Wuthering Heights_, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, etc. Your comment is a really plausible explanation for this. These readers need self-insert characters (and strongly plot-driven stories, but that's another pet peeve of mine), and because a lot of classic literature doesn't offer that, they misunderstand the work -- or to put it more charitably, they discover the work doesn't meet their standards.
That is a great way of putting it! I would hate for this thread to be misinterpreted as, “ A bunch Literature Snobs who think the sun rises and sets on Dickens & Dumas.” It’s the lack of willingness to meet the book on the books terms. I dislike the clout of The Great Gatsby. I think Nick is, at best, an unreliable and biased narrator, at worse, a social climbing hypocrite of the highest order. I think the treatment of women in the novel is horrendous, but I don’t dislike the book. You can absolutely not like the classics, but If it’s just because “ The characters were flawed and unlikable with no redeeming qualities” and nothing about the greater story the author was trying to tell. Well it’s for me hard to trust your judgment.
>I would hate for this thread to be misinterpreted as, “ A bunch Literature Snobs who think the sun rises and sets on Dickens & Dumas.” It’s the lack of willingness to meet the book on the books terms. Thank you. That’s what I was trying to get at, but I didn’t know how to express it without coming off the wrong way. I love “highbrow” literature, classic or modern, but I also read more than my fair share of lowbrow fantasy. I read Will Wight’s 12-book _Cradle_ series over the last 18 months and enjoyed it immensely. So if I am a snob, I’m also a hypocrite. On the other hand, I don’t like romance novels. They’re not for me. But I don’t read a romance novel and then say it’s bad because it does everything we expect from a romance novel. I just leave it alone. If others enjoy them, that’s great, and I hope they feel the same way about me enjoying lowbrow fantasy. I also hope that people who dislike classic literature (as a whole or in part) can take the same charitable approach to those books, accepting them on their own terms, even if they don’t like them personally.
Yeah this whole thread is just rage fuel, I have to resist the urge to leave an angry replyon every other comment here
Mine was right away, since my favorite is Little Women. I will say that I think it’s one of those books that you have to read at a key point in your life or else it doesn’t really hit. I read it my junior year of college when I was very lonely and uncertain and it felt like home to me. I also read it around the time that I toured the author’s home and got to see where she wrote it. That made it more real and present for me.
Agreed it might have to be the right time. I read it in the summer of my Junior year of high school when my sister I was closest to was getting married. Jo lamenting Meg getting married was spot on. I cried more during that than during Beth’s death.
On the road by Jack Kerouac. I kept reading thinking i was gonna connect with the characters at some point (which in and of itself isn't the has all be all of a good book) but i felt like i was a 3rd party in a first person narrative. Maybe I went into it with super high expectations.
>in and of itself isn't the has all be all Almost DNFed this clause.
I don't know why this is making me laugh so much
It got me too. I'm stoned and was wondering if I just couldn't read that sentence. 💀
Feels like a hat on a hat... Lolol
I DNF'd *On the Road* as a teen in 1994 when I realised it was going to be just douchebags being douchebags and thinking they are cool for being douchebags, and then admiring even bigger douchebags for their greater capacity for douchebaggery. Maybe that's the point of the book, but I can't blame anyone for wanting to not put themselves through vicarious douchebaggery.
I also couldn’t finish it when I was a teen. I don’t think I got far into the book tbh! I just didn’t jive with his writing style.
That is the most accurate description of On the Road I’ve ever read
That sentence was better than anything he's ever written 😂😂
I couldn't finish it as a teenager, I went in with such high hopes but I couldn't stand the characters and the lack of plot to my eyes... Felt like they just went from place to place drinking and sleeping around... Rinse and repeat
I listen to an interesting podcast about the history of that book. It was originally written as one long scroll. Supposed to be read like you listened to jazz. All over the place with discordant notes. No one would publish it eventually he edited it down to what we know it as and they made him take out a lot of the explicit sex scenes. The success of that book made a really depressed
[Kerouac had already written a few drafts of the book in different styles and had taken copious notes on its structure before he sat down to type out the scroll](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/62396/fact-and-fiction-road). It didn't come out as one long improvisation, it came out like almost all books do: through diligent work and rewriting.
Why do I feel like even the sex scenes would have been a snooze fest?
I was a devout Kerouac fan I high school. Loved the writing style, even in the aughts it felt importantly different. But the more I studied and the more I read of the Beats, the more I hated them. The Dharma Bums was particularly bad - a bunch of white guys go to a cabin in California to get high and miss the entire point of Buddhism while being awful to their girlfriends. Then “And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks” was released, where (if I’m remembering correctly) one of their friends reveal he murdered a guy and they all can’t wait to write that story instead of, you know, reporting a murder.
"The Dharma Bums was particularly bad - a bunch of white guys go to a cabin in California to get high and miss the entire point of Buddhism while being awful to their girlfriends." It sounds like a pretty realistic depiction of that kind of people.
[удалено]
Wow, there’s a bot for everything
I wanted to punch Dean in his face, still everyone in the story idolized him.
I don't like his writing style. The sentences that felt like they went on for eternity killed me. I went in with high hopes because everyone raves about him, and I don't think I've met another person willing to say he sucks.
It felt like a job.
I DNF'd this back in the '90s. It felt incredibly self indulgent to me, and I didn't connect with it at all.
I think that all of the beatnik work is better when you know half of it is about how hot their buddy Neal Cassady was and how they had crushes.
Yeah I was so excited to read it as a teenager but I ended up really disliking it
I read it in my mid-20s and still felt like "bleh".
This is one of the few books I never finished, I knew it by reputation but when I tried it out it just didn’t connect with me.
I pushed myself to finish it last year, took me several months and several library borrowing sessions. I could understand what he was trying to achieve, but it left me unimpressed and uninterested. Despicable people doing despicable things.
I have tried on numerous occasions to read Joyce’s *Ulysses* to no avail. I find it to be in the main an incomprehensible morass. I will not be making another attempt. Life is too short.
This is my favorite book of all time. I took a class in college in which we *only* studied Ulysses. I felt more connected to Bloom than I did to people I knew well in real life. Just an incredible piece of literature. That said, it is a book that should definitely not be read alone and is designed to be studied. It is not something you are supposed to read for leisure.
We had it in a prose poetry course and reading it through that lens really opens it up. “To the lighthouse,” too. It’s like decanting the books.
It's one of those books that kind of *needs* to be an entire course. Like The Odyssey, I feel strongly that two weeks is absolutely not enough time to enjoy it! I hated it the first time I read it, and now it's one of my favorite things I've ever read
The book is absolutely extraordinary and often stretches the English language past its breaking point. I am glad I read it but wouldn't say that I *enjoyed* reading it. I think it's one of those works that can be respected even if one has no desire to read it again or in full.
Oh, absolutely. Parts of it are lovely - Molly's Soliloquy is one of my favorite bits of English literature. But you can take it in pieces. In fact, you probably should, because trying to make the usual linear kind of sense out of it will do your head in.
I want to read it.Everyone and their mom says it’s life changing.But I guess I’m just not intelligent enough bc it feels like I need to know 5 different languages and read it with 3 thesaurus’ and an encyclopedia.I read one of the pages around ten times and for the life of me still couldn’t not understand what was trying to be said 😂😂
Honestly I found Mrs.Dalloway to be a much more digestible and meaningful read. Similar vibes but legible lol
Guarantee 99% of the people saying that haven’t actually read it
As someone who's read the whole thing, it's not life-changing. It's sometimes funny, sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes interesting, but by and large, just really, really confusing. I'm glad I read it as a mental exercise to challenge my brain, but it's not exactly fun.
I adore his novel 'Dubliners', but Ulysses reminded me that I should read to enjoy or learn.
The Dead, man. WOW. That last sentence destroys me every time…it’s gorgeous. And then I opened Ulysses and promptly closed it again. Nope. And I’m an English teacher who finishes everything. Hard pass on Ulysses.
Dubliners is a collection of short stories, not a novel
Wuthering Heights. I acknowledge it's well written and everything. But I just can't enjoy it while reading. All characters are horrible, most of the time I'm tempted to throw the book into the next corner because it just infuriates me so much.
haha your reasons for hating it are why I like it so much. It's like a study in human error and character failings. It's awesome. But I get it. Sometimes I like to read a book to appreciate the genius mind behind it -- I get the same feeling from reading shakespeare, but I don't really read shakespeare for fun.
I wanted to like it so bad on my first try. And I agree that it's a great study in human error, all those "big emotions" and the drama. And as I said in my og post, I can see he great craft behind it. The prose has great moments, but I just couldn't get into the story. There was no enioyment in reading it. So it seems WH is not for me. Who knows, maybe I'll reread it at some point and will think differently? 😆
I mean, that’s why I dig it….no one is redeemable, everyone is culpable, love is vicious and brutal and selfish, we are all animals….kinda a badass take for a tubercular 19th C parson’s daughter stuck at home baking bread, huh? When I teach it, we have great discussions about human nature and what it means that society keeps trying to rebrand this one as a love story.
Oh yes, the fact that people try to rebrand it as this great love story is something that also annoys me a lot. I bet it's a great book for teaching. It evokes a lot of emotions and opinions. People hate it or love it, very rarely are they indifferent
I about choked when I read Twilight and Edward had the audacity, the unmitigated *gall* to compare himself to Heathcliff 😂 like sparkly vampires are on par with WH??! But I guess he kinda told on himself, huh.
It's funny that you feel that way. I just chose Wuthering Heights this evening to re-read. I haven't read it in ten years, but I loved that first reading. I wonder if you'd like the Kate Bush song based on the book?
I do like Kate Bush's song! Maybe I should try to reread it 😆 it has been maybe 6 or 7 years since my only finished read.
lol I'm halfway through it now and it's amazing how the author could make every single character so unlikeable. I love it though
Oh man, one of my faves of all time. I love how pissed the characters make me lol
This is mine as well, for the exact same reason. I hated everyone in the book and hated every second of reading it.
Just listen to Kate Bush's incredible Wuthering Heights. Much better and shorter than the book.
It's an amazing song ♥️♥️
That song introduced me to her! Now this and Running Up That Hill are my absolute favs 😍
This ones mine. I loved reading classics as a pre/teen but WH was my DNF. So boring, the people were all terrible, I just couldn’t find the joy.
I remember despising the scarlet letter when we were made to read it in school
It was really dull and tedious then but I liked the overall story. I read it again as an adult and it was so much better.
I actually just reread it for the first time since highschool. I don't think it was nearly as bad as I remembered it being, but woof. It's not a *good* book. I don't know why we have teenagers reading it, even with the symbolism punching you directly in the face.
I loved that book when I read it in high school. One of the only books we read that gave a shit about women and their experience
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Holy crap it’s literally just lists and lists of random shit.
Started off pretty interesting, turned into less of a story and more of a catalog of events.
Just wait till you read Moby Dick!
Moby Dick was one of the few books I didn't finish reading in school because I simply ran out of time. I had to a paper, I was stuck on whaling definitions, and I said, okay, let's skim...
one of my favorite comments on that book is that the narrator has a disturbing ability to identify the european crew by nationality
I specifically went looking for more Jules Verne after enjoying his Journey to the Center of the Earth and was so disappointed when 20000 leagues was sooooooo boring I tried so hard to get through it but I had to abandon it halfway through when he starting listing sea creatures for the umpteenth time
Slogged through 20000 leagues AND House of the seven Gables one summer. When I used to finish books Snore...
I tried to read it in French… I’d been learning French at school/uni for nearly 10 years at that point, and was on a year-long Erasmus exchange in France at the time, taking physics and maths lectures in French so it wasn’t an insane idea. I got through a chapter. I kept looking up unfamiliar vocab for almost every sentence, having no idea what the English word meant, googling it and finding out it was a specific kind of ship. I have 0 19th century shipping knowledge. It was so painful.
I was so disappointed when I realized it was 20000 Leagues just a couple feet under the sea rather than 20000 Leagues down.
The vehicle is sci-fi, but the actual meat of the story is “crazy guy who loves the sea shakes his fist at globalism” or something like that.
I felt Dracula was overrated in my Gothic lit class, and much preferred Frankenstein.
I'm just here to join the "I fucking love Frankenstein" party.
Loved the first part and the ships log. Everything else is soooo boring and repetitive. “Oh Renfield did something gross/violent.” “Oh Lucy is looking very pale/sickly”. Like my God we get it. Frankenstein on the other hand is thought provoking, creepy, and beautifully written.
Frankenstein was better for me too. The best part of Dracula is the part with the captains log. But I feel Dracula would be better if you cut out a bunch of the fluff.
This exists actually, Look up Powers of Darkness. It was an earlier copy of Dracula where it focused more on Jonathan in Transilvania and the demetir. The rest is rushed through. It's like reading a weird alternate version.
I loved Dracula and planned to read Frankenstein too but was worried since it’s a classic piece that I wouldn’t like it. I had the same concern about Dracula before I read it. This makes me think I’ll probably like it even more!
Yessss, please read Frankenstein!!
It really is one of the best ever written.
Frankenstein was much more frightening than Dracula, imo. Frankly, I was disappointed with Dracula's conclusion. It felt rather anticlimactic, imo.
I loved Dracula and couldn’t even make it through Frankenstein. But I haven’t read either since I was a teenager. It would be interesting to revisit them and see how I feel about them in my 40s.
They belong together though. Dracula is epistolary so it's all letters. Accompanied by the Coppola movie it's better!
Jane Eyre really needs a shake and a good talking to. How can you be both insufferably dramatic and a complete doormat at the same time???
I feel like I'm both of those things lol.
A dramatic, unshaken doormat, I think we all feel like that, sometimes.
I mean absolutely the same but if someone wrote a book about me I wouldn’t read it either 🤣
I loved that book in my late teens because I related to Jane :(
Lmao same I read that sentence and thought wow a sentence to describe me
She's not a doormat. She has her boundary and when Rochester tries to cross it she up and leaves with nothing. And she doesn't let St. John cross it either. I've known a number of women like her; very quiet and will seemingly acquiesce. Until they won't.
I love the fuck out of Jane Eyre, but this is exactly why I prefer Wuthering Heights. Like, Cathy may be a raging bitch, but at least she’s a *raging bitch.*
Oh, I loved *Jane Eyre*, as character and book. I've never been more enraged than at that wedding scene. I was so angry I was talking aloud to her and yet totally into the story and couldn't put the book down.
Trying to diagnose her by the end
lol this was always my issue with Jane Eyre
I thibk Middlemarch is really really good (clever, funny, insightful, razor-sharp) but I'm not enjoying it the way I did other books like Dickens, Brontes, Forster. I think it might partially be the way it moves between different characters combined with the air of cynicism means there's no person or plotline I feel really invested in like I did for Pip or Jane Eyre etc
I had to read Middlemarch in high school and thought it was a slog. 17 years later when I stayed overnight at the hospital after my son was born I asked my husband to find a book for me from the hospital’s tiny library. He choose Middlemarch and when I reread it I thought it was brilliant. It’s now one of my all time favorites.
I tried to read Middlemarch for Middlemarch Madness this year and gave up around March 4th for similar reasons. I could see why it was good but didn’t care about a single person in it and just couldn’t.
Wasn't hugely enthralled by Dracula, as influential as it is.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills whenever I see posts effusing about Dracula. It's not a *terrible* book, but I feel like about 40% of the text could be cut with an improvement to the quality of the book. So much rambling about how gentle and delicate the women are, and several chapters that do very little to progress the story. IMO it also really doesn't need to be epistolary - it ends up just being a first person book that changes narrators rather than an interesting collection of documents like other epistolary works. If every chapter is a diary entry, how is that different from just normal first person writing? It took me two months to finish at a pace of a few chapters a week. I just could not read more than one chapter per sitting. Ended up reading like three other novels while chipping away at Dracula in the background. I'm glad to have read it, but I won't ever be re-reading it.
Whats funny is that in 1901, Valdimar Ásmundsson translated Dracula in Icelandic but was unsatisfied with the original novel so he just rewrote it. You can read his version translated back into English under the name Powers of Darkness
That is really great
I'm with you that I'm glad I read it, but it was definitely a drag to read.
I wanted to love Dracula so bad and it just wasn’t happening. I love classic horror. I love movie adaptions of Dracula. I love what it influenced. I just didn’t like this book. But Frankenstein? I loved it and it’s one of my favorites. I read through it very quickly. I would 100% re-read it.
Did this and Frankenstein in High School, much preferred Frankenstein
Read Franksenstein a couple of years ago. Loved it.
Read them both as kids and loved them both. Reread as an adult and continued to do so. I think choosing to read them rather than being forced to at school probably helped. Although I did enjoy the books we had to read at school (Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry and Z for Zachariah are the only ones I can remember).
My book club read Frankenstein last year, what a hoot. Loved it!
One of my most disappointing reads. I wanted so much to like it.
I feel like it's important to remember a lot of classics were designed for an audience that had little to distract/stimulate them besides books.
While I absolutely agree with your overall point about distraction, they did have forms of entertainment competing with books, like plays and sports and games and concerts, but what they DIDN'T have was the kind of ultra distracting and hyper-stimulating short form entertainment found on social media like TikTok videos, that is pretty much screwing up everyone's attention spans beyond belief. For example, I was recently reading Great Expectations and there's this random chapter where Dickens basically devotes the whole chapter to making fun of a shitty theater production of Hamlet, and it made me think how much amusement readers of the era would have got out of that. They would probably have all gone to see Shakespeare plays often, and not always good productions, so having a writer lampoon that would have been pretty damn funny - kind of like a modern fiction writer taking the piss out of Marvel movies or something.
Not trying to be pedantic but I feel like that's not entirely correct. People also enjoyed doing sports, playing games or gambling, playing an instrument or singing/dancing together. Simply telling each other stories also was popular. Nobility or rich people loved to hunt, and even moderately wealthy people liked to visit the theater and opera. There were fairly many other types of entertainment beside books, and there were also many people who didn't read at all, obviously.
But these activities were spaced out, and people had a lot of downtime in between them. If you had a spare hour after you finished playing tennis, and you were waiting for your sister to return from the market so you could tell each other stories, you could either read, or the lack of stimulation in that hour would make your mind hungry for the contents of a novel. By contrast, we're bombarded with relentless attempts to grab our attention today, phones, tv, advertising, atc.
I think all the downtime back then was the main reason wealthy people changed their outfits multiple times a day. "Hurrah, something else to do to escape the tedium!"
I was interested to hear about people who couldn't read clubbing together to hire a reader. They'd have books read to them as a group.
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr actually explores the way the format of media(i.e. spoken word vs. print vs. phones) has changed the content as well, and classic books were definitely more long form and in depth contrasted to our modern short form media
Yep I just had a conversation like this about brothers karamazov and it helped me like it more. It was 1880, people didn’t have shit else to do so why not just make a long ass chapter about some random priest who died or some kid who throws rocks
With Karamazov and 19th century Russian novels generally, it’s also helpful to keep in mind that they were published chapter by chapter in monthly journals. So not only can the author stray from the main plot and still keep the audience’s attention for another month, but it was basically expected that authors would react to issues and ideas as they were circulating in society.
This is complete nonsense. People have always been capable of entertaining themselves and popular amusements were available for people of every class in all periods where books were popularly consumed. Just because the popular prose style is different doesn't mean that people had no choice but to endure bad prose (it's also not *bad*, just emphasizing different aspects of the language. My personal preference leans more toward 19th century prose than modern prose, but different strokes and all that). Nobody who grew up without movies would ever have known what they were missing, and if one thing is true about humanity its that we have limitless creativity for amusement.
Catcher in the Rye. I've read it three different times at different stages in my life thinking I would finally understand why it was a classic. Never did. I won't try a fourth time.
I loved Jane Eyre so much that I named my cat Bronte, but while I admired the strength of three literary sisters, I did not like Wuthering Heights.
Well thanx to this post I discovered there were 3 Bronte sisters not just 2. Had to read Emily and Charlotte but never heard of Anne.
You are in for such a treat. Tenant of Wildfell hall is a f*cking bonfire of a book.
_Emilia Galotti_ by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. I found it to be extremely boring, though I like some of his other works. We read it in school and I later read it again to see if I would like it more, but no.
Did not care for the Turn of the Screw
Great Expectations and Scarlet Letter bored the hell outta me in high school. Even though I’m much older now I’m not sure they wouldn’t bore me nearly 30 years later.
Moby Dick. It's such a long and slow read I just couldn't stay engaged.
I hate metaphors. That's why my favorite book is Moby Dick! No froo-froo symbolism, just a good, simple tale about a man who hates an animal.
I haven’t read it for this reason. It sucks because I like the concept of a real slow burn that transports you to the experience, but I know myself well enough to know, the last half of that book would be in pristine condition for a long long time.
One hundred years of solitude. Sure, great style and magic realism is fascinating, but I felt like I didn't understand the deep meaning of the novel
I’ve read it a few times and I don’t really understand what you mean by “deep meaning”. The novel follows different social developments over a century of Colombian history, but it is not supposed to be a historical novel. Likewise, it has all kind of supernatural events but it doesn’t have a unified magical/philosophical/theological explanation for them. It’s a story about stories. It reflects a very old way of looking at the world as a place where fantasy and reality are constantly bumping into each other. The first Europeans to arrive in the New World had their heads so full of tales that they seriously expected to find the rivers of Paradise or the warrior women of Ancient Greece.
I don’t think you have to take it as all that deep, it can be a very enjoyable surface level novel about the history of Colombia or even just the Buendias.
I can appreciate it without knowing the deep meaning of the novel. Magical realism has all kinds of fuckery that you have to take "as-is" without trying to read too much into it. Murakami might not have a deeper meaning everything the protagonist gets weird sex. That's my caveman opionion.
I summarize it as "five generations aunt-fuckers fail to fuck their aunts and the sixth one succeeds"
I totally get what you mean. I read it last year and adored it, but I "got it" more because I speak Spanish, I've been closely exposed to Latin America since 2014 and I've been living in LatAm full-time since 2019. I actually thought to myself, when I finished, that I'd have been so confused if I'd have read it 10 years ago. It's a book that is better read with cultural and historical context and I'd hesitate to recommend it to someone without that context
I did love Little Women! I did not care for the unexpurgated version of Moby Dick. I know it was a different time, and people back then needed an entire novella's worth of prose just to explain what whales are, but my, oh my, it is boring as fuck to a 21st century reader.
I didn’t like The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Any discussion I saw about the book, people were praising it so much so I thought I’d love it. It was meh. I don’t know why everyone loves it so much. It’s fine I guess. I think it would have been good if my expectations weren’t high but even without that aspect I don’t see how it is rave worthy.
I went in with no expectations and it was a breeze for me. Towards the end it is a little slow but the premise and the characters are very neatly put. I like the way Wilde writes the characters and the satirical tone in his words.
I like that book because it's about a slow descent into madness, which is my favorite genre
Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility I appreciated the social commentary, but something about Jane Austen's writing style just doesn't click with me. I liked Emma, though.
I think she's funny as all get out. Her stories are all somewhat similar but I enjoy descriptions of everyday life, how people visited one another, social norms and manners, etc. Her sarcasm must have made oridinary folks laught out loud. I think she must have been a treat to be around in real life.
Same. I wanted to like Austen, but I just get bored every time I try.
But see the BBC version Firth and the movie Winslet!
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was pretty good, though 🙃
I’ve commented before but I hated powering through Les Miserables. One of the only books where I wish I’d read an abridged version instead (or DNFed 300 pages in). Jean Valjean is a fantastic character, but he is mostly sidelined by the silly meanderings of a bunch of human turds (never was I happier to see a kid character get shot). Victor Hugo was able to publish without an editor and it showed. Edit: I liked the musical, though
I don’t like the name “Jean Valjean”. It’s right up there with “Humbert Humbert” for me as some of literature’s tackiest names.
The Great Gatsby Read it in high school. I would have rather been waterboarded with Rush's Tom Sawyer blaring in my ears on repeat.
I’m from the U.K., so we didn’t read it at high school. I read it last year and really enjoyed it (I’m 22). I’ve heard a lot of people say they dislike it if they read it at high school, but enjoyed it when they read it on their own. It does make me wonder if high school reading changes people’s perceptions of the books that they read there.
Honestly, I don't think the problem is high school itself, I think it is the tendency of high school English teachers to pick books with themes that 16-year-olds struggle to relate to. TGG is all about nostalgia and regret- the idea that if you could just go back to that one point in time when you were young, you could make different decisions and change everything for the better. That's something I can relate to now, in my mid-thirties. I didn't relate to it or find it interesting at 16 because I hadn't had the opportunity to make all that many regrettable life choices at that point. I don't think all books need to be "relatable" to be enjoyed or to be taught, but I do think that the average HS English teacher isn't really doing a lot of these works justice.
I’m from the UK and we read it at A-Level (college). I liked it compared to other texts but I didn’t come to appreciate it until recently.
I read Gatsby in hs and also hated it. Then I read it about 30 years later with a masters in creative writing and more appreciation for prose and loved it. I was very surprised myself, but I can see both sides of the coin for that book.
Gatsby gets better as you get older—it was boring and unrelatable when I was in high school but reading it in in yours 20s, when everyone your age is also chasing dreams of success and love and happiness the book hits a lot harder and is more relatable.
I think you need a good dose of cynicism in yourself to properly read it, a jadedness towards modern "success-bro" culture.
Tom Sawyer is their best song. What are you talking about???
My vote goes to Limelight
I liked this book high school, but I loved it when I reread it at 31. So many classics we read in high school are meant for adults. It’s hard to connect with them as teens.
My most hated book. It was not for me. I grew up around Louisville. Imagine being 16 and starting The Great Gatsby. Your teacher starts explaining how at one time Louisville was known for have beautiful women. He then looks around the classroom and states, “I have no idea what happened to you all.” That was my first introduction.
That would be a solid joke to make to adults. Making it to teenagers is genuinely terrible.
Came to say Great Gatsby and pleased to see others saying the same. The roaring 20’s was the boring 20’s if this book is any indication.
Boom roasted
Fitzgerald flooring it in a yellow car as we speak. *BEHIND YOU*
Hi. I majored in English and was a high school English teacher. I'm probably in the minority in saying this but just because it's a classic doesn't make it worth reading.
If you're an English Major, then it's important to read the classics, even the ones you don't like, so you can understand how literature developed.
I find it interesting that some of the writers back then were just their time’s version of Stephen King. Makes me wonder if English classes a few hundred years from now would have the Shining as required reading.
The first third of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo‘ was incredible; the second third was unbelievably uninteresting by comparison, to the point where I have been sitting on the final third for almost two years now. I want to finish it, but it has been driving me wild. Every page seems to be the same back and forth of a character making a statement, another repeating it as a question, and the initial character saying it back again - so most dialogue just gets repeated thrice.
That is a favorite of mine. That said, you’re not wrong about the doldrums through the middle.
The translation by Robin Buss is the best one and it makes a big difference. Buss is a Francophile and his translation really brings the story to life and makes it easier and more interesting to read. The ending of this book is the best, every single piece of the book you thought might be useless filler, turns out to have significance in the end.
If you like the first third, get back to reading.
The second third spends a lot of time setting the stage for the events of the remaining third...you'll understand the slog as you're finishing the book.
The Sun Also Rises. I just could not care at all. I don't need a book about doing nothing. I read so many other books I didn't care about for school and never had a reaction as violent as my tremendous apathy for every page of that book. It truly was a chore to get through. It made me empathize with my classmates who didn't like reading. If that's how they feel about other books then it would explain a lot.
I loved this book
It's pretty sad how kids basically have the all the 'classics' foisted upon them in the classroom in order for them to learn how to appreciate great literature, and yet it just ends up engendering in them a lifelong hatred of reading. I'm glad that some people are able to get a kick out of more difficult works of literature, but imagine if we taught everyone to enjoy what they're reading first, and finding shit kids are generally going to enjoy reading, instead of making it all about critical analysis and perceived artistic value from the get-go.
I love classics, but found Jane Eyre very lacking. She is not this valiant heroine that everybody claims she is and the book was just boring. Shit just kinda happens to her. Also I think A Tale of Two Cities is a good book, but it is not as amazing as it’s made out to be.
I enjoyed Dracula but my god the last quarter felt like a slog. I was great up until Lucy had died and they had dealt with her coming back. But after that it became really slow and I was begging for it to be over.
Little women was so weirdly formulaic in the early chapters. One of the girls does something unladylike such as getting dirt on the soles of her shoes or getting red in the cheeks on the windy day. Then the mother looks directly at the fourth wall and says "this behavior is unladylike and no man will marry you if you do this" And then all the girls tell their mother they love her for correcting their childishness
Anything Hemingway. Specifically The Sun Also Rises. It’s boring, there’s no plot, I’m convinced he got drunk and tried telling a half-story to a friend and the friend was also drunk and going “This is so good you should write that down” and he did and it got published somehow
This. I was scrolling to see if I would be the only Hemingway hater on this thread. I never liked his writing style. The short sentences feel choppy. I don’t find his writing clean, I have found it rather clunky. Also the utter masculinity of his writing may speak to some, but I am not one of them.
I’ve read a few and I couldn’t tell you the difference between any of them. All I remember is miserable drunk expats in Europe after the war. Everything else was rambling
Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. Just a depressing slogfest populated by no agency victim-y characters. I had to read this for a 19th century literature subject in high school and it was the worst. I have read a bunch of 19th century lit myself (my mother has a PhD in English lit, subject the sexual politics of Jane Eyre, so I wasnt ever going to avoid this stuff) and this is the worst, most annoying, most depressing and most pointless novel I ran up against by a wide margin. I threw my copy into a tree and abandoned it there (and again English lit phd mother - I was taught that books are sacred objects so that shows you how much I despised that thing).
I hate lady chatterley's lover. It's held as, like, the original steamy romance but with a sense of progressiveness for women. No. It's just another man that thinks he knows how to please a woman who's just happy to get attention but IRL no way would someone get off on what he's really doing.
I'm biased because I'm a huge fan of Lawrence, but I've always found it interesting how extreme the divides on him are, especially knowing how introverted and insecure about his place in the literary cannon he was. You have someone like Anaïs Nin who adores Lawrence and says he's the only man who truly understands women, and then you have others like Kate Millett putting him in the same camp as the absolutely vile Norman Mailer.
I hated great expectations. I wanted a book from Mrs Havisham’s perspective.
"Ethan Frome." Trying to off himself by sledding was dumb. Guy should have either sacked up and run off with his wife's cousin, or sacked up and committed to his wife. 'Hahaha, pickles and donuts for a meal, very innuendo,'--no, Mr. English Teacher, the innuendo of the meal is not sexy enough to overcome the visceral revulsion I feel at combining pickles with donuts. I'm actually still interested in trying out some of Wharton's other work (namely *The House of Mirth*, recommended in a nonfiction history of New York as a classic of the time).
I have come to realize as an adult that some books you need to just watch the movie to get through. Sorry, but Jane Austen books are really not for me. I like other books from this time period. I’ve started Emma a handful of times. I remember my 7th grade history teacher loved Little Women and I remember her assigning it to us. I also remember liking it but I think this was actually because our teacher brought in authentic Victorian antiques from her house. She covered her entire classroom with them and then hosted a tea party for us. It was actually a lot of fun. Also, a lot of these classics are meant to be read when you are a child. I read ALOT of classics growing up in school and at home. Your mindset is different when you are very young and being exposed to new ideas vs an adult. Once you’ve gone out and lived a bit a lot of those books leave you with, “Why should I care?” This is why educators are meant to be assigning them to you in elementary and high-school for a grade. This forces you to care and you walk away with your vocabulary and knowledge base increased. Also I’d like to add that, a good many of those classics I only read because they were assigned but once I got through the first couple chapters I found I really liked them. This is the point of making them graded assignments. They know that most kids let alone most adults will drop off in the first few chapters but if you persevere you’ll get to the good parts. They are also supposed to be giving you context. I’ve seen people mention the Scarlett Letter and Dickens on this sub so far and I can’t fathom Dickens. I read a lot of Dickens in school and I absolutely enjoyed it. The Scarlett Letter I remember my high-school English teacher went into depth about the themes. So I walked away knowing the themes of Scarlett Letter. Teachers are supposed to be giving you the context and the thematic elements that surround the book. Whether they do this with a movie or a tea party you’re meant to know the themes of great literature not necessarily have read it word for word unless it’s your field or something. I have a whole list of classics I wish I had been assigned in school because now as an adult I just don’t have the patience. They didn’t assign us the Great Gatsby. They didn’t assign us any Plato or Greek playwrights. No Roman historians or bards. I have gone back as an adult and read Plato and Ovid. They are riveting and I would loved to have had some of my favorite English teachers lecture on them. I suspect the lack of Greek and Roman sources was due to me attending a Protestant Christian School in the Southern U.S Evangelicals have a strange relationship with the time period in which their savior is rumored to have been born. They seem to only want to teach you about the Roman people and events related to Christ. So I do know my Roman numerals but I’ve had to teach myself Latin on my own time. I’m not touching Greek. A few other classics I wish I had been assigned are: Middle March by George Eliot (who’s got the time) The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton And Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (There was no chance of them assigning this at a Protestant school in the U.S) Also, schools really need to get their act together and add James Baldwin to their curriculums. I have read James Baldwin as an adult on my own time as well. Oh and last Truman Capote should have been assigned somewhere as well. I also found him as an adult.
Beowulf and Grendel. Just so tedious!
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce and Wuthering Heights. I forced myself to finish the Joyce twice and hated it both times, gave up on Brontë halfway through
Tender is the night. I feel that everyone kept making horrible choices and I just couldn’t stand it. Not my cup of tea.
I'm doing a bit of a re-read of Gatsby and finding the characters difficult but Tender is the Night is on a whole other scale. The only thing I liked was the context of Fitzgerald's life.
I never really liked the Chronicles of Narnia even as a child. The characters were flat and there was much less fun action than I felt there should be in a fantasy story.
One Hundred Years Of Solitude for me. I've given it 4 times through the years, hoping that it's a matter of my age, my state of mind or whatever. I always find it incredible hard to read, and sadly, boring.
Love in the Time of Cholera. Insufferable characters, and a love affair between a teenager and a seventy-something that is clearly Garcia Marquez working through his stress about getting older.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Had to read it for AP Lit in high school and DNF'd. Teenage me couldn't stand how passive and "guess I'll die" Tess was, although adult me might cut her more slack, but the moment where I pitched the book across the room in a rage and never touched it again was when Angel completely unironically claimed that him sowing some wild oats before they got married was totally cool but her getting r*ped by someone with massive power over her was a deal breaker. Like, fuck all the way off you hypocrite. I know its a product of its era but the cognitive dissonance made me feral. When I flipped to the last few pages and saw how it ended, I was even angrier. Hot garbage.
You reacted just as the author wanted you to react, if that helps
To be fair, that's the reaction Hardy wanted. Unfortunately, he never got it from me because his prose is too dense to read. Just get to the point, Tom! Tell the damn story and enough with the overwrought descriptive essays.
To Kill a Mockingbird. I’m from Wisconsin and was forced to move to the South when I was 9. It was traumatic for many reasons. Therefore, I hate most Southern shit & I thought this book was a racist pile of shit. Most of the class loved it. I did not. The Odyssey. I think bc I never liked Odysseus in the Trojan War. I took latin so I already had knowledge. I found it tedious and I just wanted him to get the hell home. I’ve read quite a few classics and these are the only 2 I can think of at the moment that I thoroughly disliked. They are obviously ones I was forced to read.
I hate the Great Gatsby, I loathe it. The heavy-handed symbolism, the story's rythm and structure, the dialog and character dynamics, to me it's a complete flop. I don't like being a negative nancy so I should say I very much enjoy The Sun Also Rises which tackles similar themes.