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Tuesday 27 September 2011

Am I missing something?

There are certain Great Books out there. Books that people, as a collective, have deemed Great and thrust into the classical limelight and will forever call Great. Some of them are Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice, Midnight's Children, The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby (see how even some of the titles have the word in them?!), and The Lord of the Rings.

Now here's something I don't often admit. I don't like any of them.

Honestly. Pride and Prejudice? Just about okay (though I like the film and TV adaptations). The Catcher in the Rye? Unimpressed. The Lord of the Rings? I could tell you every detail of the movies (the extended DVD versions too!) but I've never been able to read more than a few pages of the actual books.

So I kind of wonder now if I'm missing something. If there's some spark there I haven't gotten. Or maybe I'm just classically defunct.

How about you? Any classical pet peeves? Any Great Book hates you'd confess to?

15 comments:

  1. I never could stand Wuthering Heights, the characters were unappealing for me. I also wasn't into Catcher In The Rye. I'm a fan of Pride and Prejudice, and LOTR, but I can see why they might not be for everyone. The Great Gatsby was a great read, but only once, I don't have a desire to pick it up again. Everyone has different taste and I think that's okay, there's nothing wrong with not liking the 'classics'.

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  2. I have a penchant for some of the classical novels, however books are subjective. They can be thrust into the limelight yet not appeal to everyone. The Twi-drama that occurred around Twilight was a huge thing yet some of us - ahem, me - just could barely stomach reading the book. I don't have any greats that I didn't dig, with the exception of Cather in the Rye.

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  3. James Joyce! Other than Portrait of the Artist . . . I just don't enjoy him. I can't even make it through Finnegan's Wake.

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  4. Oh most of them, but especially Dickens. I do like Jane Austen but I must admit that I prefer Heyer.

    I also don't get on well with the vast majority of current literary fiction. People praise various books to the skies and I read them and just think "Wow. Is that it?" Seems like a lot of self indulgent drivel to me and it bugs me that genre fiction, where people are being really creative and writing some amazing stuff, is still looked down on.

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  5. I'm not much for literary classics either, except Lord of the Rings. (And even then, when I reread them before the movies were released, I skipped many pages of exposition.) Many of the 'great' science fiction writers I find dry and boring, like Asimov.

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  6. Jane Austen bores the pants off me although I did love Catcher In The Rye. x

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  7. I'm one of those english teacher types that actually does like all of those books, but I understand. Everything is not for everyone. I don't think people should feel like they have to struggle through something they don't like just because other people praise it.

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  8. I always had a horrible time getting through Mark Twain's novels. The way he wrote in the dialect of the characters made them very hard to read.

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  9. Something must be wrong with me because I can't make it through LOTR books or movies. Although I love Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice isn't my favorite. Agree with you there!

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  10. can't recall names of books i dislike, that's how much they impressed me...

    long before jfk made ian fleming's 'james bond' books must reading, i was a fan; once everyone jumped on board, i bailed...

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  11. Catcher in the Rye is not my thing either. I just didn't get Holden Caufield. Didn't relate at all.

    I think a lot of the classics have an older writing style with lots more description and slower plots, so I guess I can see why they aren't exactly your favorites. :)

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  12. People who think Wuthering Heights is the epitome of romance confuse me. The Catcher in the Rye made me angry and I quit, but I'm going to try again because someone I respect (John Green) likes it, and I want to 'get it'. It took me three attempts to read LOTRs before I got past page 200, and I rarely feel the need to reread it -- despite buying a nicer copy second-hand -- while I love rewatching the (extended) movies. I'll probably reread it once to compare the movies to the book properly.

    Luckily I found some good classics or it could have been a painful month for reviews.

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  13. I don’t like opera. I mention this quite often in blogs. I am, however, a huge classical music fan and have a large collection that covers everything from Gregorian Chant to stuff written in the last couple of years. But I have no opera. I like choral music, very much, and have several albums but no opera. I’ve tried but with the exception of a few famous arias – it’s hard not to like ‘Nessun dorma’ – I can’t stand the stuff. I feel guilty because I don’t because people pay hundreds of pounds to sit in boxes and cry to the stuff but it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about Puccini or Benjamin Britten I cannot connect with it. I’m the same with wine. All wine tastes the same to me – horrible. My wife has a far more discerning palette and so I buy her nice wines – Pinotages, Carmenères, Merlots – but I don’t see what she sees in it. And yet millions of people drink wine, and enjoy drinking wine – every day. So what? And the same goes for Dickens and Jane Austin. I’m in the minority not having read them and having no interest in reading them but who cares? Once I’ve read all the books written in the twentieth century that I want to read maybe then I’ll have a think about looking back. Are these two great writers? Who am I to say they’re not? But they don’t suit my personal tastes and I think you need more of a reason to read a book than it’s a great book.

    There is also a right time to read a book. I read Catcher in the Rye when I was about thirteen and was blown away by it. I read it twenty years later and was thoroughly underwhelmed. There are other books that I read when I was young that didn’t impress me so much – The Master and Margarita jumps to mind – that now I’m a bit older I’ve come to appreciate. That said I cannot ever see me wanting to read The Lord of the Rings. I made myself watch the films but wasn’t overly impressed with the story; the filmmaking is another thing entirely. That said I did enjoy The Hobbit when I was about fifteen so much so that I sat down and began a sequel. It came as a great disappointment to me to learn there already was one.

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  14. It takes some effort to get into certain styles of writing, particularly in those books from the classical canon. I wouldn't worry that you done enjoy them so much. there is so much to read these days from among contemporary writers that plays on the brilliance of these past masters.

    It's like the difference between Beethoven and pop.

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  15. I quit Jane Eyre after Chapter 35 because I found it so boring, and was also repulsed by how Mr. Rochester is old enough to be Jane's dad. I never liked books trying to depict May-December relationships as so romantic, or even relationships with more than a few years of difference when the younger party is in his or her teens or even early twenties.

    I hated Lord of the Flies, made particularly unenjoyable by an English teacher who brought allegory and symbolism into everything, and who later violated the Establishment Clause by holding an entire class on how Simon was supposed to represent Jesus. Believe me, she went far beyond just explaining the religious symbolism!

    i couldn't finish Uncle Tom's Cabin, the first Foundation book (in spite of loving Asimov's other writing), or The Hobbit either.

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