Awful Classics? #2

The previous thread was way too long but as there is a new posting I have taken the liberty of continuing in a new thread.

I am with #142 - I could have shaken Emma until her teeth fell out. I love Jane Austen's other books but thought that Emma didn't deserve to live happily ever after.

Haven't gotten to the book Emma yet, though I enjoyed a Masterpiece Theatre adaption of it.

For me, the Jane Austen novel that fell horribly flat was Persuasion.
My review of it:

This book makes me feel like Ms. Austen was not happy with Pride and Prejudice and simply wanted to redo it. Either that, or she saw what made it great and just reused a lot of the same ideas.

The plot of both stories:

You have a well-to-do family that has only daughters. Because there are only daughters, the estate is going to go to an estranged cousin. There's talk of marriage between the cousin and the second oldest daughter, but it doesn't happen. Meanwhile, the third oldest daughter is the first to get married and gets a big head about it. The second oldest daughter has a pseudo-relationship with an emotionally distant man whose true feelings and motivations cannot be divined until near the end.

Aside from the obvious recycling of old ideas, I didn't find the dialogue as interesting or the settings as vividly described as in P&P. I was very disappointed with this.

I couldn't get past page 40 of Mansfield Park.

I looked at the previous thread, but it's too long to digest. Glancing down the touchstones, I felt sympathy for those who hated Ivanhoe, Martin Chuzzlewit, and anything by Dostoevsky; but I'm afraid I did like The Great Gatsby, Ender's Game, Lord of the Flies, and (after a couple of false starts) Bleak House.

Not mentioned yet, I think, was William M. Thackeray, whose Vanity Fair I found rather unappealing. It prompted us to put a complete edition of his novels on the Out pile.

I'm with you on Vanity Fair my near-sighted annelid friend, and as for Doestoevsky, he is well, a bit, uhm, preachy. 'Not the most entertaining of writers.

I am new to LT and this group. All I have to say is: Ulysses!

That, and that I'm probably not going to bother trying to read any more books by Dickens.

LOL, Kelly!

I pretend to love Joyce, but as for that serializing, blathering, 19th century rhetorician Dickens, I'm on board with your views.

Although, I still have my heart set on that door-stop Pickwick Papers, thanks to numerous favorable LT comments.

I'm reading Don Quixote right now and, after the first few chapters, I see little-to-no appeal. I was thrilled with the first few chapters; they were entertaining, hilarious, and intriguing. After that, I've felt myself saying over and over get on with it!!!

#7 I like most Dickens, especially Our Mutual Friend or Nicholas Nickleby. If I never read Oliver Twist again, it'll be too soon though.

benuathanasia

I agree with you on the Don Quixote. It was entertaining the first couple of chapters, and then it was repetitive and turned into a slog to finish. Felt like I was tilting at a windmill towards the end

What translation of Don Quixote did/are you two reading? I started with a public domain version, which was a slog, then switched to the Edith Grossman translation, which was lovely.

My least favorite classic is probably Little Women. It's just too sanctimonious for me.

I also hated Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Little Lord Fauntleroy when I read them in elementary school, but now I have no idea why. I feel it's important for children to judge books written for children though.

#11 I totally agree with you about Little Women. I could not stand the March sisters!

The Pollyanna books?? Or have they died a merciful death?

@Anoplophora - It's the John Ormsby translation. I don't think it's a translation issue, though. The word choice and language are fine (and amusing), it's the ideas that bore the bejeezus out of me! Sancho is the only enjoyable character and I kinda want to punch him for putting up with Don Quixote's crap.

>14 benuathanasia: Ah. Well, at least savor your hatred.

I was taught Don Quixote in humanities. A question our teacher kept pressing was, "Is Sancho Don Quixote's friend or his servant?" (And how does that relate to class in Spain). We all decided Sancho was his servant. Don Quixote is pretty horrible to him.

I would not say I hated The Great Gatsby, more like I just don't get what all the fuss is about. I must be not appreciating something key about the writing style or the theme. It was just kind of okay.

Funny when I first read Austin I have to admit she was just too sappy but I read her bio and Oh My she was just the opposite and it really turns out she was poking fun or society at the time. Now I can look at all of her stuff in a different light. But some of the classic I hated was The Cather in the Rye I just can not understand what is the hipe, but of course I didnt read it until my late thirties so I looked at Holden as I would one of my teenagers. And I agree with many others I read The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath in high school and both were okay but just loved them now. This is one I dont know if it is old enough to be a "classic" but so many people rave about this and I couldnt stand this book is The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night Time (touchstone is not working for this one). I just got too frustrated reading this one but everyone else just loved this one.

Oh The Female Quixote I found to be such a twit that after a couple of pages I wanted to chunck the book across the room except I was reading it on my kindle so I couldnt do that. It was so stupid that I couldnt even find any humor at all.

I loved Persuasion and thought it was hilarious. I rate it just behind Pride and Prejudice as my favorite two Austens. I haven't read Emma in a while, but I really loved it too.

The one I did not like was Wuthering Heights. I know it's beloved but I thought it was a slog.

I am on board with not liking anything by Dickens. I read Hard Times in college and haven't been able to get through any of his books since.

I am thinking of tackling Middlemarch even though I have not liked the other George Eliot I read. I saw the miniseries though and loved the story, and it's touted as one of the greatest books ever written.

I am also not at all a fan of Edith Wharton.

I know I am one of the wierd one that just love Wuthering Heights and I have gotten this obsession with Dickens.

>19 ALWINN: I thought I was the weird one because I *didn't* love Wuthering Heights!

>20 sturlington: I couldn't get more than four or five chapters in before quitting in disgust. So you are by no means the only one.

>18 sturlington:, re. Dickens: I got stuck halfway through Great Expectations when I was a teenager; my expectations had been ... greater, lol. A couple of years ago I read The Pickwick Papers and thought it was great - a lot of unexpected humour, and I'm more patient these days. Now I've continued with reading his novels in the order they were written. Seeing how his talents grew and developed adds a new layer. Reading one a year means I won't face Great Expectations again until near the end, but I think I'm actually looking forward to it.

501 Must-Read Books has 23 classics to recommend. I've read already or am interested in all of them, with one exception: Pilgrim's Progress I just can't see any point to making myself read.

<18

Wharton makes me whimper about my romantic failings...

classic failures for me:
The Sun Also Rises by Heminway, so bad, I have sworn not to read another of his works

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, just hit me up beside the head with a bat, it is that mind-numbingly boring

The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. This story could be told as a short story in 50-70 pages.

BUT I LOVE Wuthering Heights! I read it each summer. It's in my top 5 favorites of all time!

I'm surprised no one has mentioned one of the most godawful books I've ever had the misfortune to read: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Several people have told me how much they loved the book, but after reading it myself I am pretty sure they were either lying, or have never ACTUALLY read it.

It should have been called "The Book of Tedious Scientific Lists", in my opinion. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen, but it just…never…did.

Um, nothing interesting happened?? Maybe it's you who "never ACTUALLY read it." Just because you disagree with people doesn't make your opinion any more valid than theirs or somehow make them liars. Are you kidding me?!

>24 Tess_W:

First of all, this is one of the best threads on LT.

Second of all, I loved each and every one of those titles you'd mentioned!

'Goes to show, one person's trash is another's treasure.

#25, #26....wow....I thought #25 was being cheeky or sarcastic.......#26...a bit harsh, eh? It is difficult to know what the intent or the tone of the poster is online. I always give them the benefit of the doubt!

I just stumbled upon this group and scanned the thread, which, obviously, hasn't been touched for three years. Just chiming in to say that Emma and Don Quixote are both on my list of the funniest books I've ever read. C'est la vie.

On the other hand, my list of "hated classic authors" is short. Henry James and D.H. Lawrence. Both have authored pretty good short stories, but I have hated their novels, James for his wordiness and Lawrence for his pretentiousness. I had to read Lawrence as an undergrad and James in grad school. I even tried reading James' What Maisie Knew a few years ago to see if I might now find something enjoyable or enlightening in his work, but while I finished the book, it was a literary tooth pull for me. C'est la vie.

>29 rocketjk:, I've liked the Henry James I've read so far. Maybe you need to try The Portrait of a Lady, it's his easiest novel (unless you count the short Washington Square). There's a very recent movie version of What Maisie Knew with a contemporary setting that might give you insight into that one.

D.H. Lawrence rubbed me wrong in my school days, but I'll give him another go to confirm. The only classics author I'm more loathe to revisit is the depression that is Thomas Hardy.

>30 Cecrow: I read Portrait of a Lady in grad school. Also several other James novels. That's how I know I dislike his writing. It was a course called Highbrows and Lowbrows. The highbrows were Edith Wharton and Henry James. The lowbrows were Mark Twain and Theodore Dreiser. Twain I was of course already familiar with. I enjoyed Dreiser and Wharton. James, I despised. I understand his importance in the timeline of English/American literature in terms of the ways he handled point of view, etc. I just don't enjoy reading him, or at least his novels. Thanks for the suggestion re: Maisie, but I don't feel I'm lacking insight into the work, particularly. I understood it. I just didn't like the writing or the approach.

I'm reading Henry James's "The Ambassadors" at the moment. I think his prose is the most opaque I have ever come across, and I have given up attempting to parse all of his sentences or decode his obscure idioms, in favour of a sort of impressionistic style of reading.

>32 MyopicBookworm:, I've heard that's a tough one; rates up there with Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl. Still interests me, though.

>32 MyopicBookworm:

http://readingforexams.blogspot.com/2009/06/henry-james-considered-as-hippopotam...