"Classic" novels that you just can't get into

And I am glad that someone brought that up: Shakespeare, I'm out on. Just never ever felt a place in the writing. More like I [i]felt[/i] alienated. Grossly.

"A Seperate Peace" made my entire class want to drink drano.

somebody must have read Breakfast of Champions recently

yeah, but we wanted to drink drano way before i read breakfast of champions. now all the sudden you're gonna say 'oh, alex says he was an insomniac in high school. someone must've watched fight club recently...'

blah.

A Separate Peace ... wasn't the protag's name in that novel Phineas ?

ps its been about a year and it was a quick read but i enjoyed it and didnt feel a desire for drano in fact i enjoyed it much took me back to twains storytelling but newer and so my childhood didnt seem to long ago

well, now that ive actually read some decent shit on my own, i *maybe* would possibly read it if it happened to be open on a coffee table in front of me somewhere. however, in high school, of all the dreck we read this is the only thing that jumps into mind when i think of crappy high school lit.

i did like Young Goodman Brown, though. no one else in my class did.

[QUOTE=rsarao]Catch-22 by Heller -- tried it twice. It's just not funny to me, bored me to death...[/QUOTE]

I've tried it twice too, got nowhere. I also tried reading Lord of the Rings, I don't get those people that read every LotR inspired book written by someone else other than Tolkien, or the similiar Star Wars, Star Trek.

These people need to get lives and read something ORIGINAL and DIFFERENT.

Like if someone, other than Chuck, wrote a sequel/spinoff to Fight Club, how f*cking boring and retarded would that be. Sorry to some of the people in this forum, that have done this, but they haven't been published so I'll let it slide.

Also sorry I went off on a tangent.

^^^Where did this preaching shit come from: motherfucker, I loved many of the [I]Star Wars[/I] novels a few years ago when I read about thirty of them. I don't think that you are making accurate comparisons, because a novel spinning off of that epic saga is not quite the same as a novel like [I]Tyler Takes Manhattan[/I]. And [I]LOTR[/I] is a huge fucking universe that I doubt you’ve read.

Don't think you know what you are tangenting about. Judgmental prick.

When we were in tenth grade when were all given this book to read. It was considered to be a classic in literature. Mr Madigan, our teacher in the English studies, told us the book changed his life. Mr. Madigan was short and stocky and grew ugly black hairs from his ears. His breath smelled of strong black coffee and Marlboros. He wore the same style weather beaten shirts and occasionally wore faded wrinkled jeans. [I]Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.[/I] We all trusted Mr Madigan because he liked the rock group Rush and was suspected of smoking weed.

This will be a good book, he told us.
It will challenge your spirit.

So we read this slim volume, with a drawing of an old man in a small boat. A man who struggled and struggled with a great fish, just as we struggled and struggled with the most boring piece of crap to ever come from the great writers pen.

[QUOTE=vandamage]When we were in tenth grade when were all given this book to read. It was considered to be a classic in literature. Mr Madigan, our teacher in the English studies, told us the book changed his life. Mr. Madigan was short and stocky and grew ugly black hairs from his ears. His breath smelled of strong black coffee and Marlboros. He wore the same style weather beaten shirts and occasionally wore faded wrinkled jeans. [I]Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.[/I] We all trusted Mr Madigan because he liked the rock group Rush and was suspected of smoking weed.

This will be a good book, he told us.
It will challenge your spirit.

So we read this slim volume, with a drawing of an old man in a small boat. A man who struggled and struggled with a great fish, just as we struggled and struggled with the most boring piece of crap to ever come from the great writers pen.[/QUOTE]

Hemmingway bores me too. I had to read The Old Man and The Sea in school. It bored me then, it bores me now.

[QUOTE=JKabol]^^^Where did this preaching shit come from: motherfucker, I loved many of the [I]Star Wars[/I] novels a few years ago when I read about thirty of them. I don't think that you are making accurate comparisons, because a novel spinning off of that epic saga is not quite the same as a novel like [I]Tyler Takes Manhattan[/I]. And [I]LOTR[/I] is a huge fucking universe that I doubt you’ve read.

Don't think you know what you are tangenting about. Judgmental prick.[/QUOTE]

I'm sorry, like I said I couldn't read LotR because it bored the hell out of me.
But seriously fine you like them, I can't hold that against you. If it entertains you, that's great. I just think it's boring, sold out, unoriginal. These same type of people that write Star Wars: The Lost Universe, are the same type of people that write Lora Croft: The Mayan Prophecy (These are/may not be real books, but you get the point). These people can't think of something new and original so they leech off of something successful and make money off of it. Same reason I [B]HATE[/B] pop punk music, and pop music.

BTW I'm starting a different threadf or this, so this conversation does not need to be continued here. [URL=http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/community/showthread.php?t=17572]New Thread[/URL]

[QUOTE=alex cassun]"A Seperate Peace" made my entire class want to drink drano.[/QUOTE]
Practically every book that I've ever had to read for high school (except Animal Farm, A View from the Bridge and probably Lord of the Flies) made me want to kill myself, so you're not alone. As for A Separate Piece, for me it wasn't too bad... the one book that really made me want to slip into a coma was The Great Gatsby. It isn't too bad now that I've made some sense of it, but in all seriousness, Victor Mancini's suffering at the end of Choke provoked a much greater emotional response in me than Gatsby's death at the hands of that auto mechanic.

I think this list would be shorter if I told you the classics that I actually liked and could get through. Anything Steinbeck is super by me, I dig Heart of Darkness, and a majority of Moby Dick is pretty bitchin. I'm not exactly sure what the definition of "Classic" is, but those are pretty much the books I've read that were written before 1950 or so.

I couldn't get into Great Expectations... I guess it just wasn't what I expected... Ha ha ha!

Moby Dick. It was just like "blah blah blah blah..." I wanted to like it, but it seemed to take several pages to go nowhere.

Bram Stoker's Dracula. I have a hard time cutting through all the romantic landscaping and slow action in the begining. Maybe someday I'll be able to take the time and just plow through it. But there's too much other stuff I'd rather read first...without the headache.

I have to second the nomination of 'Catcher in the Rye,' but I was 30 or so when I read it, had two kids, a job as a supervisor, and was on the brink of bankruptcy. So a teenager in danger of nothing more than privilage was irritating company. I took that book, and nothing else, on a bus ride (work related) from KC to Dallas, ten hours each way. The only alternative entertainment came in the form of an employee I should have fired long before for different reasons, who brought a copy of 'Speed' to play on the bus VCR. I'd already seen the flick, and I got the joke, but it didn't make me want to watch the stupid movie any more for it.

Holden Caufield has a special place in my heart, of characters who I wouldn't be bothered with if it wasn't for book-burning cunts who made Salinger famous despite a conspicuous lack of merit. But that's just my opinion, maybe it's a fucking masterpiece.

My other 'classics I hate' list would include 'Moby Dick,' which, coupled with the first 20 pages or so of 'War & Peace' put me on a classics-avoidance track for more than a decade starting at age 14.

And of the ones I've returned to as an adult, my biggest disappointment is Hawthorne. The Scarlett Letter could be cut by 1/3 just by lopping off what amounts to an insanely boring prologue.

Other than that, the 'recommended reading' syllabus lists I avoided thorugh high school (while acing 'Honors English') generally leaves me finishing the book and thinking, '[I]Everyone[/I] should read this!!!'

I just read Catcher in the Rye and spent the last day defending it in my English class to every stupid bastard who uses sparknotes and doesn't open, let alone look at a decent book. I think that it was a masterpiece. But I do agree that they shouldn't have it in schools because most of the aholes don't f'n understand it.

Back on subject, I've never been able to read any of the Lord of the Rings books. I own all three but can never get into them. I read the Hobbit and all, but I just can't get into the damn triology. I own all the movies and thought they were great, but I always fall asleep if I try to read the real thing.

Any and all Shakespear.

I swear there's a thread somewhere around here in which I vomit all over Hawthorne and his filthy Scarlet Letter. Catcher in the Rye did nothing but piss me off. Hemingway and Dostoevsky I can surprisingly enjoy. Shakespeare I can respect but I can't say that I like him. Just thought I'd update you on my classics shit list.

Here's another update of mine that I just realised I should add after getting in a long rant about it in the book stores yesturday. I can't stand Kafka and it seems so cool to like him. I want to be cool, but I think that is why everybody says they like him. I don't get it and probably never will. I've read a bunch of his stuff and I thought it was all shite, IMO.

[QUOTE=Rents]I swear there's a thread somewhere around here in which I vomit all over Hawthorne and his filthy Scarlet Letter. Catcher in the Rye did nothing but piss me off. Hemingway and Dostoevsky I can surprisingly enjoy. Shakespeare I can respect but I can't say that I like him. Just thought I'd update you on my classics shit list.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I can't do Hawthorne. Love Hemingway, though.

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]Here's another update of mine that I just realised I should add after getting in a long rant about it in the book stores yesturday. I can't stand Kafka and it seems so cool to like him. I want to be cool, but I think that is why everybody says they like him. I don't get it and probably never will. I've read a bunch of his stuff and I thought it was all shite, IMO.[/QUOTE]

Are you dissatisfied with his shorter fictions? Those, to me, are the elvation of a mordant wit, while the novels are merely interesting.

[QUOTE=the audacity!]Are you dissatisfied with his shorter fictions? Those, to me, are the elvation of a mordant wit, while the novels are merely interesting.[/QUOTE]
I have the short story collection with The Metamorphosis in it.

I read it a long time ago and I just didn't get it. To me it seemed like he used way too many words to go nowhere. The stories just didn't have a point in my eyes. I mean, what's he trying to say with the title story? I'm sure I missed something because so many people like him. I just don't see why though.

[QUOTE=walkingcontradiction]Any and all Shakespear.[/QUOTE]

BOO

*throws a rock at WC*

[QUOTE=MockyMockins]BOO

*throws a rock at WC*[/QUOTE]
Ouch!

It says i can't get into. I can't. I'm not saying anything about the quality.

[QUOTE=walkingcontradiction]Ouch!

It says i can't get into. I can't. I'm not saying anything about the quality.[/QUOTE]

heh.

Alright dont worry about it. I just always hear alot of people harping on shakespeare. If you cant get into, thats fine. people shouldnt be forced to read something that would only make them hate it more.

Shakespare is fun because you have to interpet it. he made up a ton of words, and created alot of things within the English language we still see today. As well, I love Othello, probably because I acted in it, as Iago.

That was fun.!!

[QUOTE=MockyMockins]heh.

Alright dont worry about it. I just always hear alot of people harping on shakespeare. If you cant get into, thats fine. people shouldnt be forced to read something that would only make them hate it more.

Shakespare is fun because you have to interpet it. he made up a ton of words, and created alot of things within the English language we still see today. As well, I love Othello, probably because I acted in it, as Iago.

That was fun.!![/QUOTE]
Yes, i love the fact that he made up so many words. Actually i was just talking about that today....

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]I have the short story collection with The Metamorphosis in it.

I read it a long time ago and I just didn't get it. To me it seemed like he used way too many words to go nowhere. The stories just didn't have a point in my eyes. I mean, what's he trying to say with the title story? I'm sure I missed something because so many people like him. I just don't see why though.[/QUOTE]

Maybe you will think differently of Kafka for this:
While reading The Metamorphosis aloud to friends, he could not stop laughing.

[QUOTE=monfreid]Moby Dick. It was just like "blah blah blah blah..." I wanted to like it, but it seemed to take several pages to go nowhere.[/QUOTE]
I think Futurama summed it up best when Fry was transported in the book and told to "be trapped in this dense, symboless tome for all eternity".

[QUOTE=the audacity!]Maybe you will think differently of Kafka for this:
While reading The Metamorphosis aloud to friends, he could not stop laughing.[/QUOTE]
I'll give it another go with that in mind.

Another one of his that really sticks in my mind - yet I forget the title - is the one about the death penalty device. That was a little long winded and boring.

But, like I said, I am not beyond giving things another go. So any other advice or tid bits of knowledge, go ahead and let me have 'em. Maybe there is more that I am missing...