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Most hated 'classic' novel you've actually read

For me it's Defoe's Roxana. It's one of the few assigned novels I didn't finish reading. That and The Mill on the Floss. And I won't be giving either a second chance as I usually try to do.
 
AquaBlue said:
Golding uses a lot of symbolism in The Lord of the Flies. The entire book is symbolic of the nature of man and society in general as the island becomes a society metaphorical to society as a whole and the hunt at the end of the book symbolic of the war. A symbol Golding uses throughout the book is the conch. It represents authority and order. The person holding the conch had the power, and it created order and rules since when it was called, everyone had to listen. Another symbol is Piggy’s glasses. It symbolized knowledge and insight. While Piggy had them, he was able to give advice to the group, such as that of the signal fire. It was the glasses that created the fire. However, after the glasses are broken, the group loses what insight they had. The war paint is also a symbol. It symbolized the rejection of society. In a way, when they put on the mask of war paint, they took off the mask of society and revealed their true inner selves which was savage.
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Yea, but the execution was horrible. It was like I was slogging through all the action parts. Thought I was reading Desperation by Stephen King, again, ugh. :mad:
 
"The old man and the sea", by Hemingway... For God sake, man, get the damn fish!! (gave up after a few pages... argh).

Dharma
 
The Grapes of Wrath I couldn't stand either though I did love Of Mice and Men.

I Give up on Dickens Books all the freakin time, I don't know why I still check them out except I feel some compulsion that I should read them and It isn't a school thing I was never forced to read him in school I just think most of his books are over written and slow. Satirically I think he is a genius, as well as having an amazing descriptive capability but his books are so long and drawn that all that eventually falls flat
 
The Catcher in the Rye was horrible,
and then a fair bit down the list War and Peace (but only cause its so long)

Havent read any dickens or austen, and by the sounds of it, it might have been a wise move. I'll stick with my russians i think.
 
I don't know if you consider it a classic, but "Sons and Lovers" was a total nightmare. I also didn't appreciate "The catcher in the rye" that much.

Dharma
 
i'd have to say.... Silas Marner. By the time I was finished I wanted to burn it. And my class almost arranged a book burning
 
Dharma said:
"The old man and the sea", by Hemingway... For God sake, man, get the damn fish!! (gave up after a few pages... argh).

Dharma
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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 . . .
 
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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I have no idea how's Slaughter-House Five, but if you had to read The old man and the sea instead, I would kill someone if I were in your shoes...
(I also thought it would be a fast reading... my mistake)

Dharma
 
undone_33 said:
i'd have to say.... Silas Marner. By the time I was finished I wanted to burn it. And my class almost arranged a book burning
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You know, I have a real problem with this. Don't get me wrong, I'm not having a pop at you simply because you didn't enjoy 'Silas Marner'. I see you are from Tennessee, and I'd hazard a guess that your knowledge of English social history is sketchy (not a criticism, my knowledge of American social history is sketchy!). I think to enjoy a work like 'Silas Marner' you do need to know a bit about the social history of the time, although the novel itself helps you a fair bit.

Why do American schools set works like this if they know that their students are likely to have little or no understanding of the social history that underpins the work? If an English school set a well-known and revered American classic and its pupils all hated it, how would you feel? Annoyed probably, and rightly so. So you can perhaps understand why I find it annoying that your class felt tempted to burn one of my favourite novels.
 
veggiedog said:
...Pride and Prejudice...Elizabeth ...started to fall in love with Darcy because she thought he had a nice house!
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If you think that then you weren't paying attention!

The recent movie was even worse.
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I assume you mean the Keira Knightley movie. It is tripe of the highest magnitude. The best that can be said of it is that it is 'based on the novel by...', i.e. 'it has the same title as...'
 
The only classic novel I have ever hated enough to put it down and never return, was " Portrait of a Lady".
 
Limited James

Oklahoma said:
The only classic novel I have ever hated enough to put it down and never return, was " Portrait of a Lady".
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Portrait of a Lady held my interest, as did Washington Square. I have started several other James novels, only to give up in despair. Would anything ever happen! I took college English courses at a time when James was in high esteem and was told that The Ambassadors was the pinnacle of novelistic achievement. It's not. But I survived to see better days.
 
Ulysses.

I thought I was ready. I bought a guide to it and the cliff notes. As soon as I finished a chapter, I'd read the guide and the cliff notes to make sure I knew what was going on. As it turned out, what I thought was happening wasn't even close to what was happening. I hated every single page of it.
 
I think the book I had to read in school that I hated a lot was The Portrait of Dorian Gray. It seemed interesting and I even managed to be slightly into it for the first fifty pages or so and then after that I just couldn't stand it anymore. I can't remember why now. It's been too many years, but it stands out in my mind as a book I couldn't stand.
 
silverseason said:
Portrait of a Lady held my interest, as did Washington Square. I have started several other James novels, only to give up in despair. Would anything ever happen! I took college English courses at a time when James was in high esteem and was told that The Ambassadors was the pinnacle of novelistic achievement. It's not. But I survived to see better days.
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Glad to see that someone enjoyed it. :) I would hate to see a classic go to waste.

I know two other people that, like myself, absolutely adore and absorb classic novels, and both of them admitted that the only classic author to ever slow them down was James. Wings of a Dove, and The Ambassadors were the books.

However, I love James Joyce.
 
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