# Classics you love and classics you hate



## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

I'm thinking century-old books. Stendahl, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Austen and so on.

Here are mine:

Madame Bovary, the most overpraised book I've read. 

War & Peace, lives up to its billing.


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## Thalia the Muse (Jan 20, 2010)

Hate -- The Scarlet Letter. UNREADABLE. 

Love -- David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, Innocents Abroad, Moby Dick (I know, I'm the only one, everyone else in the world hates poor Moby ...)


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## TimHodkinson (Jun 3, 2011)

Love: Frankenstein, Mary W. Shelley
Hate: Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy


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## iPublish (Oct 31, 2011)

For American Lit, you have to start with Twain. Steinbeck is the only one that comes close. Hemingway too.

For Europe, Dickens and Tolstoy.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Don't love Twain.  Dickens.

Austen lives up to her reputation.  Ditto Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Dumas, Emily & Charlotte Bronte.


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## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

Love: Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Hate: None leap to mind, but I never finished a Jane Austen audio.  I got to chapter three and said muh, there are better choices.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

Love Twain, Steinbeck, and the better Hemingways.

Cannot stand Henry James (excluding _Daisy Miller_, which is actually a good and very readable novella).


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Sticking to the OP's time frame, most of the century-old (or more) work that I enjoy reading are works from R. Austin Freeman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, some Dumas*, some Verne, most Twain, most H. Rider Haggard, and most Poe.

Dickens is acceptable.

I don't 'hate' the others, I just don't find them interesting.

Mike

*I got the new translation (1990s) of _The Count of Monte Cristo_ a short while ago, and I'm enjoying it a lot. The previous translations didn't do it justice.


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## Borislava Borissova (Sep 9, 2011)

Mikhail Bulgakov - if I could choose with what a talent to be gifted by Heaven I would love to be able to write a sequel of Master and Margarita because its heroes would keep a unique company of mine during the process of writing. But from the original book I would never allow anyone, any time to change even a single word. 
Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; The Little Prince of A.S.Exupery are other of my favourites etc.
Don't like - some too naive classic romances


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## mscottwriter (Nov 5, 2010)

Loved: Grapes of Wrath, Anna Karenina, Jane Eyre, and Crime and Punishment.

HATED: Lolita


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## Skate (Jan 23, 2011)

I _love_ Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and anything by Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy - great characters that will never be forgotten.

As I university student I had to read Heart of Darkness and a couple of others by Conrad. Hated them all with a passion. I should go back now and see if I still do.


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## Julia444 (Feb 24, 2011)

So much probably depends on the circumstances in which we read them, right?  Because I loved both Madame Bovary and The Scarlet Letter--don't hate me.  

ALL-TIME LOVE: Dostoevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.  I also love GATSBY and THE STRANGER and THE TEMPEST.

I don't think any books elicited hate in me, but I never liked BILLY BUDD by Melville.  I only read parts of MOBY DICK, but that one I liked.  

Julia


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## Darlene Jones (Nov 1, 2011)

Love Anne of Green Gables.

Couldn't finish To Kill a Mocking Bird (but, liked the movie)


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

Skate said:


> As I university student I had to read Heart of Darkness and a couple of others by Conrad. Hated them all with a passion. I should go back now and see if I still do.


I suspect you'll still hate them.

I read Heart of Darkness for fun sometime in junior high. I didn't hate it, but I wasn't calling up friends at 3am telling them they had to read it, either.

I then read it for a class in high school, where we spent _a month_ analyzing the (supposed) symbolism in it, and I now hate it and Conrad with a burning passion. Same thing happened with Lord of the Flies - read it and enjoyed it. Read it in class and analyzed it to death, have never wanted to read it again even once in the subsequent decades.

Among classics, I'm fond of all things Austen, albeit not enough to quote any at length, the way some folks can...


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## SpearsII (Jan 16, 2010)

Loved _Last of the Mohicans_

Hated _Moby Dick_


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

Love Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men.  

Hate - Moby Dick, anything by Jane Austen, most of Dickens work...pretty much anything from the 19th century.


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## Andre Jute (Dec 18, 2010)

Jon Olson said:


> I'm thinking century-old books. Stendahl, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Austen and so on.
> 
> Here are mine:
> 
> ...


Proust. Period. Bad karma.

Turgenev. Boring.

Dickens. Too bloody politically correct. Too twee. Too cutesy. Too aware of what a great writer he is.

Dostoievsky is too grim for words. Gloomy teenagers can have him.

Moby Dick is waterboarding, goes on like drowning, forever.

War & Peace is a good historical novel if you like a thumping good thick read on a desert island without cable TV. The rest of Tolstoy can be turned into toilet paper for all I care. Especially Anna Karenina.

Chekhov is a Russian curate's egg, good in parts.

Alexandre Dumas, pere et fils, super.

H Rider Haggard, underrated by the limp failures of academic literature.

The Canterbury Tales are still worth reading. (And stealing from.)

Riddle of the Sands, first modern spy adventure, still exciting.

My number one classic: Jane Austen. No, it isn't that I have common taste. It is that most people have better taste than the elitists believe. Austen's wit is worth a very great deal, and her cool distance from her characters sets the entire tone of our literary age, still. Probably the greatest writer who ever lived.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Sorry to go with the obvious but I HATE _Moby Dick_. Was forced to read it at university or I never would have finished it. Most boring book ever and considering that it's about a sea "adventure" that was quite a trick.

LOVE Dumas. _The Count of Monte Cristo_ is the best adventure novel ever written and, yes, the new translation does it MUCH more justice.

Edit: Rather funny someone brought up that novel. In an online interview that came out yesterday I mentioned that it is the one novel I wished I had written. LOL


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

Dumas is my favorite, The Count of Monte Cristo, followed by a good translation of The Three Musketeers.
I also like Les Miserables, (but didn't like The Hunchback of Notre Dame).
I really liked War and Peace, disliked Anna.
I like The Aeneid a lot.
Don Quixote is on my list of favorites.
Canterbury Tales is a lot of fun.

I have a strong dislike for Henry James and Jane Austin.  Make me yawn.


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## Harry Shannon (Jul 30, 2010)

Loved: Crime and Punishment

Hated: The Scarlet Letter


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## amy_saunders (Aug 8, 2011)

My favorites include Jane Eyre, Treasure Island, Tale of Two Cities, Pride & Prejudice, & Persuasion.

My not-so-favorites include Daniel Deronda & Oliver Twist. (I stick to the movie versions of Dickens' novels nowadays - they cut to the actual story!)


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## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

George Berger said:


> I suspect you'll still hate them.
> 
> I read Heart of Darkness for fun sometime in junior high. I didn't hate it, but I wasn't calling up friends at 3am telling them they had to read it, either.
> 
> ...


Right on about classes. They weren't written to be read by classrooms led by teachers who think too much about them. Many a good book is ruined by professors.


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## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

Andre Jute said:


> Riddle of the Sands, first modern spy adventure, still exciting.


Hey, Andre! Riddle of the Sands. A great read, and too much overlooked.

To stray a little ways from fiction, I'm in love with Boswell and Pepys.


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

If you like The Riddle of the Sands, you'd probably enjoy most of E. Phillip Oppenheim's books from the 1900s/1910s/1920s. Havoc, in particular. Project Gutenberg has copies of the more popular ones, and Google Books has nearly all the rest, I believe...


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## S Jaffe (Jul 3, 2011)

Love -- Dumas, Poe, Tolstoy

Hate -- Thackeray

Passionately hate -- Moby Dick


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## bluejubatus52 (Nov 4, 2011)

I loved _The Scarlet Letter_, but I thought that he was at his best when he was interacting with image and myth. That scene where the family is standing on the scaffold at night and the asteroid ignites the *A* in air, amazing. And the scene in the forest where Hester discards her letter and Pearl acts as though her mother is abandoning her, which symbolically she was, was wonderful. That crap about the rules of the Puritans and all of the _telling_ Hawthorne does, stating what the characters were feeling and when, annoyed the hell out of me. I loved _Jane Eyre_ for the character development and image. I read it when I was eight and was SO mad at her for marrying Rochester. I am STILL mad about that. Absolutely ADORE anything by Yeats. Ditto Robinson Jeffers. Ditto Milton. 
Hated Wuthering Heights. Hated Jude the Obscure. I LOVE Hardy's poetry, most of it anyway, but I found the prose philosophically offensive. Although I liked the bit when whats her face threw the pig's penis at Jude when he was walking through the woods, lost in his 'high' thoughts.


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## Andre Jute (Dec 18, 2010)

Jon Olson said:


> Hey, Andre! Riddle of the Sands. A great read, and too much overlooked.
> 
> To stray a little ways from fiction, I'm in love with Boswell and Pepys.


I used to be a keen hlllwalker (these days my time is so limited, I cycle instead), so I dream of a walking tour in the highlands, retracing the steps of Boswell...


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## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

Andre Jute said:


> I used to be a keen hlllwalker (these days my time is so limited, I cycle instead), so I dream of a walking tour in the highlands, retracing the steps of Boswell...


We should go together to the Hebrides, although who would be Johnson?


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## davidestesbooks (Nov 4, 2011)

I love Lord of the Rings and anything else by Tolkien.

No one get angry, but I really did not like The Chronicles of Narnia growing up.  I tried several times to read them, but never got past the second book!


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## Andre Jute (Dec 18, 2010)

Jon Olson said:


> We should go together to the Hebrides, although who would be Johnson?


We're undoubtedly two very clever chaps, but James Boswell and Dr Johnson were each probably the weight of five very clever chaps!

I'll be the humble one, Boswell. [Just as well I finished my coffee as I'm shaking my study, laughing. Thanks, Jon.]


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## Lyndl (Apr 2, 2010)

Loved:  Jane Eyre,  all Austen's,  Anne of Green Gables,  

Liked:  Twain, Dickens 

Hated:  Scarlet Letter,  Heart of Darkness ( I'd rather be in a coma than read that ever again) Moby Dick


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## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

Andre Jute said:


> We're undoubtedly two very clever chaps, but James Boswell and Dr Johnson were each probably the weight of five very clever chaps!
> 
> I'll be the humble one, Boswell. [Just as well I finished my coffee as I'm shaking my study, laughing. Thanks, Jon.]


Boswell? Humble? I'm not so sure. But you can have him. I'll be phlegmatic Johnson, harumphing at all the mental pygmies that surround me. Ha!


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## Todd Trumpet (Sep 7, 2011)

Jon Olson said:


> I'm thinking century-old books.


Hated: See syllabus.

Loved: Uhhhhhhhhh...

...do I have to wait 26 years before I can say "LORD OF THE RINGS"?

Todd


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## windyrdg (Sep 20, 2010)

Love DIckens...there'll never be any one like him.

Mark Twain...I can take or leave

Have never gotten into Jane Austen. Maybe she goes over better with the women. (?)


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## Nancy Beck (Jul 1, 2011)

Love - Pride and Prejudice

Hate - Rebecca (not sure if this is a century old, but it sure ain't a recent book)

I rarely read anything in Romance, but I completely gobbled up Pride and Prejudice, maybe because I so enjoyed the A&E TV movie version of it.  

As for Rebecca, I really, really tried to get into it, especially as I liked the move version, but I couldn't get past the first couple of pages: Way too wordy for me.


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## Nancy Beck (Jul 1, 2011)

davidestesbooks said:


> I love Lord of the Rings and anything else by Tolkien.
> 
> No one get angry, but I really did not like The Chronicles of Narnia growing up. I tried several times to read them, but never got past the second book!


I couldn't stand the Narnia books, though I read them all - I consider them Tolkien Lite!


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

The Count of Monte Cristo and The Scarlet Pimpernel are my all time favorite books.  The words are delicious... And thank you for the heads up on the new translation!  I will definitely have to check that out!

Faulkner is on my "Please don't ever make me read ever again!" list.  The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying... Both titles accurately represent exactly what I felt about each book.


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## KateEllison (Jul 9, 2011)

I love Jane Austen (her voice is so wry and fresh, especially for the time period in which her books were written ... she's just a delight to read). The characters feel so real.

I really didn't care for _The Scarlet Letter,_ and I had to read that thing twice--once in hs and once in college.


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## caseyf6 (Mar 28, 2010)

I liked the Scarlet Letter, enjoyed Rebecca (the first line sucked me in), could take or leave any of the Austen stuff I tried.

Dickens made me want to poke my eyes out, except for Christmas Carol.

Hated Heart of Darkness with a passion.  That same year, we had to read The Stranger and Metamorphosis.  The teacher also had us watch Apocolypse Now...I am convinced the teacher had PTSD and wanted us to feel it too.  Also hated Moby Dick.


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## Loren DeShon (Jun 15, 2011)

Fun topic.

Love:  Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick, Les Miserables, The Three Musketeers, anything Shakespeare

Hate:  Dickens


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## Bubastes (Nov 14, 2011)

Love: Pride & Prejudice (love Jane Austen generally, but P&P is my favorite), The Great Gatsby

Hate: Wuthering Heights. OMG, someone medicate Heathcliff and Cathy already!


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## MGalloway (Jun 21, 2011)

George Berger said:


> Read it in class and analyzed it to death, have never wanted to read it again even once in the subsequent decades.


I can't count the number of times this has happened...with both books and movies.

As far as books, I haven't made too many attempts to read anything over a century old (other than Shakespeare). More recently, I have made multiple attempts to read Faulkner (short stories, novels) and have failed to finish any of his novels.


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## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

KateEllison said:


> I love Jane Austen (her voice is so wry and fresh, especially for the time period in which her books were written ... she's just a delight to read). The characters feel so real.
> 
> I really didn't care for _The Scarlet Letter,_ and I had to read that thing twice--once in hs and once in college.


I like Jane Austen. Like you say, so modern, really -- short sentences, economy of story, even a vernacular. Like a model of how to write a novel. And Scarlet Letter -- so dreary.


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## Coral Moore (Nov 29, 2009)

Love: Jules Verne - something about his writing defies the problem of seeming outdated that plagues a lot of older science fiction

Hate: Herman Melville - his writing is just impenetrable for me


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## mscottwriter (Nov 5, 2010)

> Hate: Herman Melville - his writing is just impenetrable for me


I agree! I've been reading Moby Dick for about three years now, lol.


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## James Conway (Jul 7, 2011)

It's interesting to see that everyone has different tastes. I have to disagree with you John. I liked Madame Bovary and, while War and Peace is a masterpiece, the last 50 pages when it devolves into a philosophical treatise confused and disappointed me. I think that my least favorite classic would be Thomas Mann's Death In Venice. There was nothing there for me and I'm actually surprised it is supposed to be a classic. Did I miss something?


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## Selina Fenech (Jul 20, 2011)

Can my love and hate be the same book? Tale of Two Cities, I simply adore the ending, but think 3/4's of the start of the book are redundant. But then, I haven't read it since I was a teenager so....


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## hs (Feb 15, 2011)

I can't say I LOVE any of the classics, but maybe I was traumatized from English class.  

LIKE: Shakespeare's plays, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment

HATE: Anything by Dickens or Hemingway


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## wouldbejane (Mar 13, 2011)

tkkenyon said:


> LOVE: Everything by Jane Austen, especially _Mansfield Park_ and _Persuasion_. I have not read _Emma _yet, because I'm saving it. I've read everything else, even the juvenilia, and once I read Emma, that's the end. There is no new Austen in the world for me, and I will be sad. I may read it soon, though. I would hate to have something happen, and to not have read it.


_Mansfield Park_ and _Persuasion_ are my favorites too. The first half of _Emma_ made me want to through the book across the room, but she was redeemed in the end. Though she's no Anne Elliot or Fanny Price.

I'll probably get flamed for saying it, but I hated _The Stranger_.


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## Stephen T. Harper (Dec 20, 2010)

Jon Olson said:


> Right on about classes. They weren't written to be read by classrooms led by teachers who think too much about them. Many a good book is ruined by professors.


True, but the opposite can also be true. Depends on the professor and the class.

One book I never finished that I might have "hated" if I had. "Finnegan's Wake." James Joyce is one of my favorite writers, and is a hero to one of my heroes, Joseph Campbell, but that book was either a work of such genius as to be over the heads of nearly everyone in the world, or it was pure masturbation on the author's part. Maybe it was both. Few will ever know the answer because it is also very close to literally unreadable. Campbell loved it so much that he wrote a book about how to understand it, called "The Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake." I gave it a hard look expecting to love it.... ugh. Just not worth it.


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## Steverino (Jan 5, 2011)

Digging the hate on Moby Dick... which I read TWICE, both times by choice.  I can still quote it from memory.  "Can't you be sensible?  It's easy to be sensible, you timber-head!"  ... and another goodie: "It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment!  It is an argument for the pit!"

The left wing of the day of judgment?  Come on, that's awesome.


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## flipside (Dec 7, 2011)

I personally disliked Alice in Wonderland. But loved The Portrait of Dorian Gray.

Also not sure if this classifies as "classic", but wasn't really a fan of Lovecraft's style.


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## journeymama (May 30, 2011)

Well as for the Bronte Sisters:

Loved: Jane Eyre 
Didn't Hate but Wouldn't Read Again Was Shocked By: Wuthering Heights

Predictable, much?


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

> Classics you love and classics you hate.


1984. It's not that old but I hate it so much I just had to mention it.


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