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Most hated 'classic' novel you've actually read

Women in Love by D.H Lawrence

I don't know if I hate the book or not because i never managed to finish it. Infact I left it after only 50 pages or so.
 
I must agree with the majority that The Great Gatsby was really The Great Waste of Time. I also did not enjoy Silas Marner, but it interfered with an outing that I was supposed to go to, so I kind of attribute my dislike of the book to that. I really, really HATED assigned reading in school. Actually, it wasn't the reading I hated, but the report I was supposed to write after reading any of those books. Oral reports were great because I only needed to write a basic outline, but I found book reports to be a tremendous waste of my time. After all, if you want to know what the book was about, read it yourself!

I was fortunate to some extent that the private school I went to allowed us to choose from a list of books to read instead of the entire class having to read the same book. We did have class readings of Hamlet, MacBeth, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Telltale Heart, etc. I truly enjoyed those, but will admit to some frustration when a classmate was chosen to read aloud and they read slower than a 3-year-old.

Shakespeare is one of my all-time favorite authors and I was very happy to have to re-read and memorize many of his works for drama class. I still always go back to good 'ole Willie and Poe whenever I transition from one book to another.
 
I've tried so hard to read Emma by Jane Austen but it was awful! So stuffy and it revolved around nothing basically. Not even an interesting "nothing" a la Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, it was just a bore.
I'm too fearful to try another Austen novel...:(
 
Anamnesis said:
I also gave up at a certain point (page 41, to be precise). I was expecting to finish the book in a day since it was only 100-something pages. Obviously that didn't happen. I think that's the only time I didn't complete a book required for school.

The sad thing? Originally we were supposed to read Slaughter-House Five. Stupid English department . . .
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Slaughterhouse Five is off the wall, but I loved it!
 
I'm surprised there's so much Great Gatsby dislike in this thread. I think the story is very good, and beautifully written. I didn't have the book as a set text in any school classes, though, and instead read it voluntarily a few years after I had finished school - that could be why I enjoyed it more; it wasn't one that was 'forced' reading for me. Though, after reading it, I tried some other Fitzgerald novels, and found that only the superb The Last Tycoon matched up to Gatsby. This Side of Paradise and Tender is the Night were nowhere near as engaging, and I gave up on them.

A classic I dislike is Pride & Prejudice. I made it only a few chapters into the book before the affected style and annoying characters gave me a strong urge to throw the book across the room. A friend of mine loves Austen's novels and the adaptations of them, and has tried to explain to me what supposedly makes the books 'great', but I just don't see it.
 
domani said:
A classic I dislike is Pride & Prejudice. I made it only a few chapters into the book before the affected style and annoying characters gave me a strong urge to throw the book across the room. A friend of mine loves Austen's novels and the adaptations of them, and has tried to explain to me what supposedly makes the books 'great', but I just don't see it.
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It may be that Austen has a tone of voice that is very clearly hers and is not for everybody. Even though what she says is amusing - to some people - you can't enjoy it.

I have that problem with Proust. Literary people worship at his shrine and marvel at his exploration of memory. I find him self involved and self important, but that is probably because I just don't like the way he talks to me.
 
silverseason said:
I have that problem with Proust. Literary people worship at his shrine and marvel at his exploration of memory. I find him self involved and self important, but that is probably because I just don't like the way he talks to me.
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Funny, I feel the same way about Henry David Thoreau's Walden.
 
catcher in the rye. i get the point, just hated it. and i dunno if this is a 'classic' but kestrel for a knave was horrible. all this talk of school reading reminded me of it. i don't think i've ever read a book i hated as much as this one.
 
The one that sticks out in my mind is The Awakening - I understand why it was written and the point, I guess what bothered me was the lack of depth in the characters (though this helped make the book short, so I guess I can't complain too much). The main character never earned my sympathy or even my interest.
 
Crime and Punishment, uhh, I just hated it.
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How can you hate crime and punishment? and any of Dostoyovsky's work for that fact (although Brothers Karamazof can be irritating at times). what didnt you like about it?

i have never read another novel with such amazing insight into the mind ...
 
The Count of Monte Cristo really bored me despite a great start it just drags on and on. But, I really hate Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas - incoherant ramblings of a drunk, the beginning with all the waffle about how black, dark black, dark, dark black the night is made me want to punch him.
 
LoeMa said:
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding.
I hate this style of writing. And the story was also very boring to me.
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I could not agree more with you. I remember having to fake a book report on this one. Of course I had already suffered through about 500 pages of this doorstop so I figured I could answer any questions somebody who hadn't read it at all might ask.
 
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