"Classic" Literature that you hated?

[electric_warrior]

MacBeth and The Tempest by Shakespeare

I just thought they sucked

Othello, however, was very good, even if Othello is a credulous boob.

Also, the Great Gatsby. I get how it shows how amoral and vacuous that inter-war generation of the roaring twenties was, but damn is it tedious. it sort of reminds me of a twenties version of The Hills, or Keeping up with the Kardashians: just a bunch of privileged, uninteresting people being privileged and uninteresting.

 

[Valkyrie101]

Pretty much all of it. Strip away the symbolism and the philosophy, neither of which add entertainment value for me, and you're left with extremely dry and pedestrian novels wherein the quantity of the prose belies how little actually happens.

 

[HumpinHop]

The Scarlet Letter.

Holy shit reading this was disgusting. Ever try to read a single sentence with 17 commas in it? It had abominable structure and I had to reread every other sentence trying to retain all the information they'd cram into one.

 

[dangitall]

Just about all of Shakespeare, but only cause of this:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny

So I respect it like Goldeneye.

I see your point in this, by understanding this I might even enjoy the next Shakespearean play they'll teach this year.
And I resisted the urge to open up another TVtropes page when I saw something relevant.

 

[Buffoon]

Crime and Punishment. Many people I like and respect had told me it was a searing work of psychologically insightful genius. Maybe it was, and I'm just too thick to get it. I found it very boring.

 

[Padwolf]

I disliked Jane Eyre, I found it to be rather boring. I was forced to read it for university and I hated every chapter of it.

 

[Gwarr]

All of Alexander Dumas books , (with the exception of "The 3 Musketeers" ). They might sound interesting in french , but were fucking boring in my native language and in english ( I tried both)

 

[awesomebillfromdawsonville]

A Tale of Two Cities can eat my ballsack any day of the week. That was the most brain-scraping read of my life as a child.

 

[Turigamot]

Canterbury Tales.


WHY U NO FINISH, CHAUCER!

He had the unfortunate medical condition known as being dead.

I already knew this. My post was not serious.

 

[Gluzzbung]

Frankenstein was a book that had a single good idea but then its writer decided to smash her head against the typewritter.

 

[janerowdy]

Blade Runner is close to, if not my favorite movie. So I figured I'd read the novel that inspired it - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - I hate that book. I hate it so much. It's just random and stupid. I have no idea such a worthless piece of trash inspired such an awesome movie, but I'm glad it did. I just prefer not to think of the source material when I watch the movie anymore.

Edit - Oh my, I don't know if Phillip K. Dick is considered "classic" - in that case I'd like to say everything by Franz Kafka instead. He had one interesting story (the crazy tattoo torture machine) the rest was utterly pointless.

Also, if Kafka doesn't fit, then I don't know what I would pick next.

 

[AdumbroDeus]

Oliver Twist. It was so depressing, and even the happy ending wasn't very happy. I just really disliked it.

God, why does EVERYTHING have to be happy or have a happy ending? A lot of things work better with a downer or mixed ending.

 

[Linda Bridget]

Okay so the one that I absolutely hated was Animal Farm. (I don't believe it was classical literature but my teacher in high school swore it was) It was supposed to be some great retelling of the events leading to and during Stalin's regime. I found it to be horrible, upsetting, and if I had to read anymore I would set both it and my teacher on fire.

I also hated Romeo and Juliet because it was just a bunch of hormonal teens who did not work out there family issues and killed themselves. This and Macbeth both for a long long time put me off of Shakespeare's work. Then when they made us go looking into this man's history I was like okay that explains why these books suck.

 

[Princess Rose]

"Classic" books stayed alive for longer time than average books because of how "good" they are, but there are bound to be some "classics" that you disliked.
I personally really disliked "Romeo and Juliet". Mostly because our teacher force-fed it to us, but the fact that it was mostly about a depressed teenage couple with suicidal tendencies just seems a bit off to me.

Fun fact about Shakespeare - in his own day, he was basically Joss Whedon, the pop-culture obsessed geek who had a thing for strong female protagonists.

Another fun fact - the reason we still have most of Shakespeare's works and not many of his contemporaries is because King James was a huge Shakespeare fanboy and had people make him copies of Shakespeare's scripts to read.

The Lesson: Today's Pop Culture is next centuries "Classic Literature". People writing pretentious "literature" today aren't the people who will be remembered two hundred years from now. No, the people who will be remembered two centuries from now are the pop-culture obsessed geeks like Joss Whedon. ^^ And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Edit:
OT: Oh, and I hate pretty much anything by Hemingway. Jacqueline Carey (in her novel Santa Olivia) proved that she could do everything Hemingway could do, but better, and include Lucha libre and secret government Super Soldiers.

 

[mrhateful]

anything with HC Andersen, that guy can't write for shit.

 

[Uzbekistan]

Gosh, where to start!!

Lord of the Flies- First few pages, and I couldn't stand it.
The Scarlet Letter- FIRST PAGE I stopped. "TO PUNISH YOU, YOU HAVE TO STAND THERE WITH A HUGE A ON YOUR CHEST AND HOLD YOUR BAAAABYYYYY" "OH NOES!!"
Tale of Two cities- I had to heave through that monstrosity because of school and I still don't get it.
Huckleberry Fin- I never read it, but we were reading it in school, so I kinda understand the premise.
Moby Dick- Thank god for cliff notes.

On the flip side, I do enjoy Shakespeare.

 

[Inkidu]

Pride and Prejudice. What a waste of paper in my honest and learned opinion. I ascribe to the saying of Mark Twain, "A library is a good library if it contains no books by Jane Austin. Even if it contains no other books at all."