For fun: Your Dread "Classic"

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The Red Badge of Courage was another book I could not get into. In fact, it was so bad that I don't even remember what it was about. I was immediately bored upon reading the first chapter and tried to pick it up, but I purposely erased the story from my mind, so if you want analytical points, I have none.

Crane's Red Badge of Courage encouraged me to quit high school :D
 

Ol' 61

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Hated The Sound and the Fury. Enjoyed A Rose For Emily--especially the Ew factor!

Loved Huck Finn.

I can't say I've read everything by Steinbeck, but I loved Of Mice and Men. I was just thinking I should pick up The Grapes of Wrath, as I've never read it. And it's just occurred to me--I've never read any Hemingway! Seriously! How did I get a degree in Literature and not read Hemingway?

<digs out library card>
 

Soccer Mom

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Hmmm, I absolutely hated Red Badge of Courage. Hated. Hate. It was assigned reading in 8th grade and I suffered through. Then we moved school districts. In my new district? RBC was assigned reading in 9th grade. Joy. I got to do it again. When I went to college, I almost cried when I found it on the reading list.

I detest Thomas Hardy and Umberto Eco as well.

Can. not. read. them.
 

Inkdaub

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LOL @ Mary Sue...his name is Robert Jordan...do you think that spurred Jordan to his writing career?

Never read Bell Tolls but I have wondered where Jordan got such a bland sounding pen name...now I know or at least suspect.

The classic I usually use as my example of hated school reading is Of Mice and Men. A co-worker claims I hated it only out of rebellion and that I would love it if I were to read it by choice today. He may be right...but I'll never know.
 

Samantha's_Song

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I started to read Jane Eyre once, I did around ten pages and gave up, it was boring and the writing was just awful.
I'm not sure how many would class this as a classic? But LOTR went straight into the bin from me too. I don't normally do fantasy anyway, and after trying to read that, I realised why.
 

Alpha Echo

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Wuthering Heights for me. The neurosis of the writer is written into every line. I hate it.

And don't even get me started on Gone with the Wind.....

I'm with you on Wuthering Heights. I could not get into it at all.

But Gone with the Wind? That's a classic I love...
 

gypsyscarlett

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Hmmm, I absolutely hated Red Badge of Courage. Hated. Hate. It was assigned reading in 8th grade and I suffered through. Then we moved school districts. In my new district? RBC was assigned reading in 9th grade. Joy. I got to do it again. When I went to college, I almost cried when I found it on the reading list.

Not to make fun of your suffering...but that is pretty darn funny. :tongue
 

Travis J. Smith

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Hmm . . . Jane Eyre was the bright spot of my summer reading for AP English . . . :Shrug:I mean, Tess of the D'Urbervilles I couldn't finish . . . A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was confounding . . . and Jane Eyre was refreshing in comparison, to say the least.


And Lisey's Story is more or less tied with Duma Key for my favorite Stephen King novel. Lisey and Scott were wonderfully developed and they're love seemed real rather than contrived.
 

childeroland

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Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Abysmal sentimentality masquerading as romanticism, persistent snores.

Lord of the Rings. Many good spots, but little narrative drive for extremely long stretches and a clumsy handling of the story in others, and a pseudo-biblical style too often merely quaint and monotonous.
 

Chasing the Horizon

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Lord of the Rings. I write fantasy, so obviously I like the genre, but I quit LOTR after 50 pages of non-stop info-dumping.

I should point out that I've never tried to read any of the other books talked about here. I was home-schooled and my mother had no interest in classic literature either. She gave me books by people like Anne McCaffrey and Anne Rice because she wanted me to learn to love reading. It worked.
 

CaroGirl

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Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. What the hell was that obscure tripe about, anyway?

Almost all Victorian literature, except Dickens, whom I loathe slightly less than his contemporaries. The pomposity and verboseness of the era were astounding.
 

October

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I hate a lot of classics. My compy died, so I'll have to relist them

*Nicholas Nickleby by Dickens is boring enough to make you poke your eyes out to end the pain.
*Return of the Native by Hardy is a no. Just no.
*Narnia chronicles by Lewis. I hate it when Christian symbolics get shoved in my face.
*Animal Farm by Orwell was so horrible after an awesome 1984.
*Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Crane. Crane, sometimes I hate you.
*Farewell to Arms by Hemingway was so dry, when my book got ruined and soaking wet, I did a little happy dance in my brain.
*Dracula by Stoker was a major disapointment.
*Utopia by Moore I had to read for an AP class and it was so. . . thick I wanted to diiieeeee
*Nemsis, Foundation series, etc. by Asimov. I don't know why I don't like him.
*Lord of the Rings series by Tolkein just rambles too much.

Heh. I had to read a lot of classics when I was younger. There's some good ones, but not a lot.
 

childeroland

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Heck, I love most of those books (and like Victorian literature precisely for its verbosity), though I never got the enthusiasm for Hemingway's long fiction. Sorry, but except in spots Sun Also Rises and Farewell to Arms are unreadable.

Yeah, Moore can be pretty hard to take.

Is the Eco book really just classed-up Dan Brown or is it at least somewhat better?
 

CaroGirl

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Is the Eco book really just classed-up Dan Brown or is it at least somewhat better?
Foucault's Pendulum has been called the "thinking person's Da Vinci Code."
Asked whether he'd read the Brown novel, Eco replied:

I was obliged to read it because everybody was asking me about it. My answer is that Dan Brown is one of the characters in my novel Foucault’s Pendulum, which is about people who start believing in occult stuff.

- But you yourself seem interested in the kabbalah, alchemy and other occult practices explored in the novel.
No. In Foucault’s Pendulum I wrote the grotesque representation of these kind of people. So Dan Brown is one of my creatures.

I haven't read Brown, and I read this novel many, many years ago. So I can't personally compare the two.
 

Priene

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Is the Eco book really just classed-up Dan Brown or is it at least somewhat better?

Dan Brown is Umberto Eco hyperdiluted and fed through a word-mangler. Eco is a great writer.
 

Blondchen

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Tess of the d'Urbervilles was like death for me. Every chapter felt like oral surgery without novacaine.

Anything by Anthony Trollope. I equate him to the operas of Richard Wagner - one theme stretched to three hours makes me want to kill myself.

Last but not least, the dreaded Awakening by Kate Chopin. I hated it SO much. Flames. Flames, from the side of my head, heaving, breathless, heaving breaths...
 

Travis J. Smith

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I'LL FIGHT YOU
And I'll be your tag partner, Terza Rima, though I have yet to read Wuthering Heights. Jane Eyre on the other hand was a godsend last summer.
Blondchen said:
Tess of the d'Urbervilles was like death for me. Every chapter felt like oral surgery without novacaine.
Glad to see I'm not alone in my unbridled hatred for it.