That book was awesome

[Jessweeee♪]

The Scarlet Letter >:[


It made me think of a bad game with a good story.

[Raistlin]

Shakespeare is good, you just have to go beyond his "major" works. Romeo and Juliet is pretty boring. Taming of the Shrew, on the other hand, is great. King Lear is probably his only tragedy that I cared for.

EDIT: Oh yes, and The Scarlet Letter is another classic that I didn't like.

[Brennan]

I read the first two books in the Chronicles of Prydain series, and I enjoyed them, although I want to read the rest of the series. (And the series isn't too old, 1960s ish)

I also enjoyed the Dragonlance Chronicles, although that isn't too old, either (1984)

[TurkSlayer]

Lots of Shakespeare hate, but that doesn't surprise me much. I love him personally, but I've always felt his work was meant to be seen, not read. Romeo and Juliet is overrated though.

The Scarlet Letter >:[


It made me think of a bad game with a good story.

I could take it or leave it.

[Bunny]

Oh, and I don't like Lord of the Rings that much, even though I enjoyed The Hobbit. Wheel of Time was retarded too.

[Ryth]

I also forgot to mention one particular novel I hate more than any other "significant" work. It isn't necessarily a classic or a part of school, but it has a very important place in history... and its Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What is be Done? I smurfing DESPISE this book. Holy sweet mother of Christ, this book is wretched. I'm not even talking about how I dislike it for its praise of nihilistic, materialist, Utopian socialism and 'utilitarianism'/egalitarianism. The prose itself is like a train wreck.


The only good thing about it is that it (in a way) inspired Dostoevsky to write Notes from Underground. Which was fantastic.

[Rye]

The Scarlet Letter has one of the best stories, but it's a difficult thing to read though.

[Raistlin]

Oh, and I don't like Lord of the Rings that much, even though I enjoyed The Hobbit. Wheel of Time was retarded too.

Oh man YES. The LotR books are, in my opinion, vastly overrated in and of themselves (though their influence on the genre is irrefutably profound). Interesting plot but poorly written that it was just boring in parts. I tried to read it twice and stopped partway through the second book both times (and I'm a big fantasy buff).

I wouldn't really consider Wheel of Time a "classic," but the writing there was disappointing as well, with annoying, poorly developed characters.

[Ryth]

Oh, and I don't like Lord of the Rings that much, even though I enjoyed The Hobbit. Wheel of Time was retarded too.

Oh man YES. The LotR books are, in my opinion, vastly overrated in and of themselves (though their influence on the genre is irrefutably profound). Interesting plot but poorly written that it was just boring in parts. I tried to read it twice and stopped partway through the second book both times (and I'm a big fantasy buff).

I would say LotR really starts living up to the hype after first third of The Two Towers. Return of the King is very satisfying. The Fellowship is pretty much impossible to read without skipping huge amounts of text.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'll jump in on LotR, whole family loves it and I can't bring myself to read them. Only works that Tolkien did that I sorta enjoyed was The Hobbit though I had to skip quite a few chapters, and the Silmarrion which was great until it got into the elven history. In fact, Tolkien is pretty much responsible for my hatred of elves.

I have a love/hate relationship with Mark Twain. His novels are generally long winded and boring. Even Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are just tedious and boring at times. Life on the Mississippi is one of the most boring pieces of work I ever had the displeasure of reading. His short stories on the other hand are awesome, especially The Diary of Adam and Eve which was quite hilarious. Especially Adam's experiments to determine what exactly Cain wasp; or talking about how annoying Eve was and her constant need to name everything.

I do like Shakespeare but he does have a few stories that have been played to death in the mainstream (Romeo and Juliet/Hamlet) but I actually quite enjoy all of his other pieces. Macbeth, Othello, and The Taming of the Shrew are easily some of my favorite classic plays.

[kikimm]

There aren't a lot of classics I do like. :P I think most of it has to do with the language. I try to get passed it, and get enveloped in the story, but...ugh. I hate Shakespeare. And I hate having to annotate his works so thoroughly for classes. I hate Dickens. I hate Hawthorne. Lord of the Rings was boring and took me years to read all three of them. :P And I hate, hate, hate Mr. Franz Kafka. (I do like Sartre and Camus though. ) I hated The Metamorphosis, and when I found out that I have to read it again this semester I just about died. Heart of Darkness was terrible. The Great Gatsby was eh.

Crime and Punishment was all right I suppose, if I hadn't had to annotate it like I did. Chaucer, blegh. Tess of the D'Urbervilles blegh.

I guess I just have really bad taste in literature. I dunno, I just...greatly, greatly prefer more contemporary fiction. *shrug*

[Giggles]

There are a few classics that I really didn't enjoy at all and some that I loved. With a few of them that I didn't like, I KNOW that the only reason I don't like it is because I'm not really getting the message due to language or the style or whatever.

Least favorites:

Dickens (so wordy and borrring)
Shakespeare (I only like a couple of pieces and to be honest, I know that I don't enjoy them only because I can't get past the language)
Grapes of Wrath
Thoreau (oh god. boring boring boring)

Favorites:

The Scarlet Letter
Wuthering Heights
Frankenstein
The Awakening
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
The Story of an Hour

I think I'm just a big fan of the Romantic Period for plot, style, meaning. I haven't read a "classic" for a while and I'd like to get back to them!

[TurkSlayer]

Favorites:

The Scarlet Letter
Wuthering Heights
Frankenstein
The Awakening
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
The Story of an Hour

Yay yay and yay.

[Nice]

I actually quite enjoyed Macbeth, though I agree comedy is where his best talents lie. Hamlet was pretty great as well, it had some very beautiful and practical lines. Neither a borrower nor a lender be... this above all: to thine own self be true.

Romeo and Juliet is so-so. I think it's mostly pushed out above the rest because it's supposed to be easy to teach because teens can relate or something of that sort.

I had to read Richard III, or Henry VI, one of those, for AP English and I refused to read anymore after a while. I despised it. Thank god for Sparknotes?

But overall, I do enjoy Shakespeare, though I can't say I'm amazing at analyzing it. I prefer my literature to be a painting, not a puzzle.

What I find so great about Shakespeare is that adapting his work can lead to some pretty interesting things. I dunno, I hated Shakespeare for a very long time, then I read Much Ado About Nothing and it was like 'ah, so that's why he's good'. I love Antony & Cleopatra, and The Tempest.

Aside from Shakespeare, I find that most classical literature can be a bore because most people can't relate to the work. When you've read something like Harry Potter which is direct, cunning, straightforward and contemporary and THEN you read something like The Lord of The Rings - you might fall asleep. Studying a piece of literature can also hinder one's opinion of it as well, I mean reading something over and over for class can kill it.

[Heath]

How has Steinbeck not been mentioned yet? I've read four of his books (The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden), and only of Mice and Men did I like at all, and the width (107 pages) added to its merit.

I've only read Of Mice and Men and The Pearl, with Grapes of Wrath sitting on my bookcase desperately needing my attention. However, I've been told that The Pearl isn't his best work and I didn't enjoy it myself. Of Mice and Men is fantastic though.

Heart of Darkness I found a tad disappointing, but I really enjoyed The Secret Agent by Conrad. I read The Catcher in the Rye when I was 16 and even then I thought it was grossly overrated.

There seems to be an awful lot of Dickens hate a-goin' on here but - and please don't lynch me for saying this - I rather liked Great Expectations.

I rather enjoyed The Metamorphosis by Kafka and thought it was a really clever piece. I have it in a collection of other stories by him but have never really gotten around to dipping into any others. I did the Metamorphosis in conjunction with Camus' The Outsider, which I preferred. Camus I did pursue a bit further, reading The Plague.

I'm going to reserve judgement about the Lord of the Rings at the moment. I read The Hobbit when I was about 13 and loved it. I worked my way through Fellowship of the Ring and ended up not finishing The Two Towers. It's always been something that I've promised myself I'd go back to though. I think I might enjoy it now that I'm a bit older. As for Wheel of Time, good God I ploughed through with that series up until The Path of Daggers before I gave up. I really enjoyed the first five books, to be honest, but I appear to have ran out of stamina when I reached book eight. I ended up just finding the Forsaken to be the more interesting characters and just wanted more screentime for them. Again, I was about 15/16 when I stopped with WoT. Unlike LotR, however, I don't really feel I'll ever go back to it.

I never really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice. I don't think it was really my kind of book which is why I didn't like it. I appreciated that it was well-written and the plot was good, but it wasn't exactly to my tastes. Though I like to think that Austen included Mr Bennett purely so I'd get something out of it.