Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion
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What is your top 5 least favourites from the group shelf?
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Can it also be...those books that you really don't want to read from the Group bookshelf..?
I have some books that I know I am not going to read, at least in this lifetime.
Lewis Carol, except when he's doing poetry. Lady Chatterly's Lover is ok but very overrated.The only Dickens to justify its length in my opinion is Bleak House, if you hate dickens try bleak house anyway :) .
The Island of Dr. Moreau, is the worst Wells book, but The Time Machine and The Invisible Man arn't that much better. Although i do love some of his books.
Wilkie Colins, don't get the appeal of the The Moonstone at all.
Or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Great Gatsby and Dorian Gray.
Edit: Just realized that wasn't 5 :lol, so
The Moonstone
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Great Gatsby
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde :) . I don't like putting authors as i've found the quality of their work can be quite diverse.
Alice's Adventures in WonderlandUlysses
Catch-22
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Name of the Rose
I like the other books by Umberto Eco that I have read, just not The Name of the Rose.
Hardy - 'Jude the Obscure' - pathetic manchildSalinger - 'The Catcher in the Rye' - see above Keyes - 'Flowers for Algernon' - ableist trash
Lampedusa - 'The Leopard' - misogynistic trash
Golden - 'Memoirs of a Geisha' - racist, misogynistic trash (the person Golden violated the confidence of for the sake of making bank successfully sued him for libel)
None of these were well written enough to make up for these deficiencies.
If on a Winter's Night a TravelerCold Comfort Farm
Dune
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
A Farewell to Arms
there are plenty that I have no intention of ever reading, but of the ones I've tried:3xDNF:
Middlemarch - uninvolving
House of the Spirits - annoying
Brothers Karamazov - uninvolving
3x1-Star:
Frankenstein - badly written
Flowers for Algernon - badly written and annoying
Handmaid's Tale - annoying
(I know that's six, but it's always fun putting the boot in!)
I only have four.Two-Star Read: Wuthering Heights - I didn't care for the narrative style.
One-Star DNF: The Handmaid's Tale - I didn't like Atwood's style, I realized at about 33%, that I didn't care for any of the characters.
Not Rated DNF: Moby-Dick or, The Whale - Maybe I'll give it another go later, but for now, it's just not for me.
One-Star Read: The Pearl - I found it to be misogynistic, classist, and heavy-handed.
I also have several that I won't ever read, but of the ones I have:Three 1 star reads:
Beloved - magical realism ghost was not my thing
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - boring
Wuthering Heights - I hated it both times I read it
Two 2 star:
Don Quixote - not very funny, incredibly relieved to actually finish it
Lord of the Flies - cruel, warring boys are not interesting to me
I'm sorry, I couldn't keep it to only five!!If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Weird, confusing.
The Trial - Hated it! Had to force myself to finish it.
Beloved - I just didn't like it & might not have finished it if it wasn't a challenge read. I don't care for magical realism :/
The House of the Spirits - Again, I don't care for magical realism :/
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame - I was really disappointed in this one and didn't like hardly any of it. Although, I'm glad that I finally read it this year!
The Handmaid's Tale - I don't like Atwood's writing style & wasn't crazy about the story.
Catch-22 - I'm glad I read it, but it was really crazy. Just too weird for me.
siriusedward wrote: "Can it also be...those books that you really don't want to read from the Group bookshelf..?"I my opinion you have to have read a part of the book at least. Otherwise it really isn't your own opinion, but the opinion of others.
Interesting how different we are.
Catch-22 should have been on my list too. I forgot about it because I was looking at my catching-up-read shelf. It was a DNF for me.
But Dune?! Hmmm... it is on my very-short list of books I need to re-read because they where so good.
I reread Dune after a decades long gap between readings and was not disappointed. I loved it. But I am not rereading any of the sequels. I read the first two sequels and disliked Dune Messiah and thought Children of Dune was terrible.
Well ..there seems to be many that I did not like (1 or 2 stars)Siddhartha
Memoirs of a geisha
Little women
Journey to the center of the earth
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Gulliver's travels
To name a few..
Mod
Walden, I wish negative numbers were allowed, I hated this book.
Lolita, I wish I had not wasted my time on this!
Moby-Dick or, The Whale, some greatness, swallowed up in pages of boring.
The House on Mango Street, on no level could I relate to the story.
At the Mountains of Madness, sci-fi or not it was unrealistic.
Of the 45 book unread there are a good many I will likely never read and agree it is unfair to rate them based on my prejudice against even trying them. I also know that my one star can be anothers five star, ratings are personal.
Oh, how interesting. Some of the ones mentioned are favorites of mine!I just have three least favorites.
Moby-Dick or, The Whale--god-awful slog, but I'm still glad I read it.
The Catcher in the Rye
Flowers for Algernon
I read Catcher and Flowers in high school and never want to read them again. They may deserve another chance, but I just don't want to. When they come up in the polls, I have even been known to make little comments to myself as I quickly skip over them. :-)
It's a short list because generally, when it comes to classics, I can almost always find something good in them. (Newer books not so much.) And I try never to read books I don't like anymore. Not gonna do it.
I looked for books on our shelf that I don't want to read, but couldn't find any, so I'm looking forward to trying them!
I will never read Memoirs of a Geisha, especially when there are so many actual classics of Japan available in translation.Additinally, I have no desire to read The Leopard nor The Handmaid's Tale for reasons others have already mentioned.
Books I read this year but was disappointed by:
The Princess Bride — I love the movie and expected to love the book at least as much but was sadly disappointed. I found the author more annoying than funny.
Wide Sargasso Sea — Maybe I had too specific of expectations after reading ‘Jane Eyre’. I was looking forward to getting the other side of the story but didn’t feel like the character motivations were portrayed or made sense. Perhaps in part because the heroine seemed so passive? In any case, I was expecting a very strong personality that went against the expectations of the Victorian Englishman she marries. I do not know why she married him, nor did I see the development of the conflict and rift between them.
I think Wide Sargasso Sea is one of the saddest books I have ever read.Books I will not be reading are The Handmaids Tale, Memoirs of a Geisha and Moby Dick. The last one mainly because of the length.
Mod
The Stand. Boy I wanted my time back after this one.
Mrs. Dalloway. Just not a fan of Woolf.
Love in the Time of Cholera. Uh, hated it as much as Lolita.
At the Mountains of Madness. Again, just not my thing.
Dead Souls and Ulysses. I DNF'd both of these, but after having read far enough to know that I was forming my own opinion.
Interesting that many of you have chosen books that I would put on my all-time favorites list. I often wonder what our reading loves/hates say about us individually. I mean, there must be a why.
Mrs. Dalloway was just boring. So was Awakening and Ethan Fromme, although some would disagree.
Books I will not be reading are : Lolita
D H Lawrence
Wide Sargasso Sea...I am very happy with Jane Eyre (I only wish he dud not have to be made other than what he was for Jane to to return to Rochester) do not want the other side,esp written by someone else.
Lord of the flies, for above said reasons.
Secret History
Shirley Jackson ,Poe's Horror books and Stephen King's book...Horror is not my genre.
In cold blood. True Crime,I do not read either.
Perfume - I have seen the movie.
A clockwork Orange
One flew over the cukoos nest..
May also include.. F.Scott .Fitzgerald books..but I am on the fence about it.
I hated "Lolita"! Yes, it was very well written, but the way it got inside the head of that creep, and made you almostsympathize with him made me hate this book. The scene I remember most vividly was the little girl crying :-(.So surprised to see so many people hate "The Handmaid's Tale". I remember loving this book so much back in the 80s, that I read it twice. I have it listed as TBR on GR because I thought I'd like to read it again. I haven't seen any of the television series. I wonder if I'd still like this book.
Helen wrote: "The Handmaid's Tale which I found to have a story that was paranoid, outlandish and unnecessarily shocking. I felt traumatized over something that would just never happen."Just for purposes of accuracy, all the things Atwood shows happening to women in the book are based on things that actually have happened in the past (or in some cases currently are happening) to women somewhere in the world. So while it may at first seem outlandish, much of it is based on real history.
My least favorite five are:Ulysses - pretentious and far too in love with its own alleged cleverness
The Old Man and the Sea - tedious and disappointing, with no payoff; also I just don't like Hemingway's style, it feels very artificial and forced
Kidnapped - sea stories, bleah
The Return of the Native - sooooo depressing!
Doctor Zhivago - like Narnia, it's always winter and never Christmas. Zzzzzzzzz...
The Great Gatsby - didn't like a single one of the characters, all shallow, boring, and not very nice
Oops, that's six. Well, we'll call the last two a tie.
MK wrote: "I hated "Lolita"! Yes, it was very well written, but the way it got inside the head of that creep, and made you almost sympathize with him made me hate this book."It does do that disturbingly well. Nabokov is great at that.
MK wrote: "So surprised to see so many people hate "The Handmaid's Tale". I remember loving this book so much back in the 80s, that I read it twice. "That book is a favorite of mine and a regular re-read. A cautionary tale indeed. She's currently working on a sequel (not connected with the tv series).
Michele wrote: "MK wrote: "So surprised to see so many people hate "The Handmaid's Tale". I remember loving this book so much back in the 80s, that I read it twice. "That book is a favorite of mine and a regular..."
Absolutely. I will tell people I thought it was relevant 10 years ago and even more so today. I just don't understand people that say it couldn't happen. Atwood wrote it in the 1980s while reflecting on America.
Kirsten wrote: "Michele wrote: "MK wrote: "So surprised to see so many people hate "The Handmaid's Tale". I remember loving this book so much back in the 80s, that I read it twice. "That book is a favorite of mi..."
Well, from what I’ve heard of the book, it seems to me quite far-fetched that it could happen in the U.S. in only one generation. I am not religious but heard plenty of Christian fundamentalism growing up and even the most extreme would condemn such a society as depicted. I am by no means blind to the many evils of this country but still...
More than all of that, I have no desire to read fictional works focused on misogyny, although since the author is clearly against it I should find it less offensive than the thoughtless sexism I have to wade through in other works... But it is not a subject I want to read about but will when it is depicting the circumstances of other cultures because I feel it important to understand, even if the experience is draining...
So there is my rambling explanation... As Sara pointed out, what we love, hate or choose to avoid says more about ourselves and what perspectives we bring to a work than the books themselves in many cases.
Mod
Sara wrote: "I saw this as a discussion as well and found nothing wrong in what anyone said here. We are all entitled to our opinions and that is part of what makes literature so powerful, it can encourage us t..."Agreed! 😊
I must have missed some of the deleted posts but I agree it makes for an interesting conversation. Handmaid's Tale is one of my favorites and is more relevant today than it was when it was written IMHO. I am eagerly awaiting the sequel. I'm new to the group so I haven't read along on any but these are my least favorites of those I've read:
1. Robinson Crusoe - Possible my least favorite book of all time.
2. The House on Mango Street - Not terrible, I just didn't connect with it at all.
3. The Name of the Rose - I enjoyed the story but much of it felt like a slog.
I don't think our dislikes are any more "indicative" than our likes - there's basically no accounting/pattern to our tastescase in point - I agree with Sara that Lolita would top my list here - but she then goes on to mention Mrs Dalloway which is one of my faves!
oh, and the reason I don't like Handmaid's Tale is nothing to do with the content, rather the structure.
Mod
This thread has lots of interesting and thought-provoking posts. Good topic! :)
when I'm thinking about putting a book on my to-read list, I don't read the 5 and 4 star reviews cos there are always lots of people that will like any book, I read the 2 and 1 star reviews, and if I think "well that doesn't sound like the kind of thing that would put me off" then I add it!
This is very true - I've had friends adore series that I wouldn't touch (neither of which are on the group bookshelf, but for the curious, I'm talking about the Twilight and Fifty Shades series).As far as the books mentioned in this topic (great idea, btw), I agree with some of them. Definitely disagree with others. Doesn't make the comments any less valid, but how we each interact with a book, or any other creative work, is as unique as we are. Not even my closest friends or my sister have the exact same taste in books that I do (although there's a fair bit of overlap in some areas). The beauty of this group is getting to see different perspectives that make you think about the work differently, especially when you feel completely different.
Darren wrote: "when I'm thinking about putting a book on my to-read list, I don't read the 5 and 4 star reviews cos there are always lots of people that will like any book, I read the 2 and 1 star reviews, and i..."
I like the 1 or 2 star reviews because I often learn more from them than I do from the 4 and 5 star ones. A lot of the time I agree with reviews with opposing ratings, bevause very often both viewpoints are true as I see it.
Sara wrote: "We are all entitled to our opinions and that is part of what makes literature so powerful, it can encourage us to look at a viewpoint that is not our own."Well said!
Darren wrote: "when I'm thinking about putting a book on my to-read list, I don't read the 5 and 4 star reviews..."Goodread’s ratings can be so deceiving. For instance if you look at some series, you get the impression that the series get better as they progress. What happens is that only people who liked the start is reading the later books, so they only receive the higher ratings.
My problem with The Handmaid's tale stems from the fact that it is too disorganized and all over the place. Nothing against the message portrayed.
My least favorite classics:
1. Lolita
2. The trial
3. Middlemarch (DNF and I so despise George Eliot's books)
4. Pride and prejudice
5. Frankenstein
My least favorite classics:
1. Lolita
2. The trial
3. Middlemarch (DNF and I so despise George Eliot's books)
4. Pride and prejudice
5. Frankenstein
Richp wrote: "Darren wrote: "when I'm thinking about putting a book on my to-read list, I don't read the 5 and 4 star reviews cos there are always lots of people that will like any book, I read the 2 and 1 star..."
I read 1/2 star reviews as well as 3-5 star reviews...It helps me decide if I will like the book or at least if its a book that I will find worth reading..
Richp wrote: "Darren wrote: "when I'm thinking about putting a book on my to-read list, I don't read the 5 and 4 star reviews cos there are always lots of people that will like any book, I read the 2 and 1 star..."
True
Sara wrote: "I saw this as a discussion as well and found nothing wrong in what anyone said here. We are all entitled to our opinions and that is part of what makes literature so powerful, it can encourage us t..."This is true.And this group definitely helps with that.
case in pointthe top liked review for Darconville's Cat is this beauty of a 1-Star:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I immediately decided that I needed to read it!
Darren wrote: "case in pointthe top liked review for Darconville's Cat is this beauty of a 1-Star:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I immediately decided ..."
I lol'd at this review! Especially this:
"I couldn't throw it in the bin because I tried that the previous week and they refused to take it."
I am intrigued! But not on kindle, not in my local library (or anywhere in my state, for that matter), and $59.21 for a used hardcover, or $91.14 for a used paperback, I will have to remain with my itch unscratched ;-)
That review and the comments made me very curious about the book..
Mod
the top liked review for Darconville's Cat is this beauty of a 1-Star:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I immediately decided ..."
I love his reviews, especially when he does not like the book. I had missed that one, so I got my laugh for the day. It really does make you want to rush out and get the book to see, just see, if you feel the same. And, hey, "This book has too many brains and it frightened me in the way a sufferer from dementia must be frightened when they look at a clock and realise they no longer can tell the time." I felt that way all three times I TRIED to read Ulysses.
Sara wrote: "Darren wrote: "case in pointthe top liked review for Darconville's Cat is this beauty of a 1-Star:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I immed..."
Lol! 😂 “...in English, Jim, but not as we know it...
That’s how I felt trying to tackle The Canterbury Tales — I just could not make sense of the Middle English, either reading or hearing it, and had to read the modern English translation to make any sense of it. I didn’t make it past the introduction — too much work to feel so dumb! 😭 I want to read it at some point though...
Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)
Books mentioned in this topic
The Canterbury Tales (other topics)The Return of the Native (other topics)
Kidnapped (other topics)
Doctor Zhivago (other topics)
Ulysses (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Umberto Eco (other topics)Italo Calvino (other topics)
Jerome K. Jerome (other topics)
Charles Dickens (other topics)
Wilkie Collins (other topics)
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What is your top 5 least favourites from the group shelf?
For me:
Italo Calvino (2 read)
Jerome K. Jerome (read Three Men in a Boat. Did not see that it was funny.)
Charles Dickens ( 2 read)
Wilkie Collins (1 read)
Gaston Leroux (1 read)
Dickens, Collins, and Leroux have a common problem for me: Too many pages that does not add to the story.