Vintage Tales discussion

There's been discussion of 'classic blasphemy' when it comes to disliking books in another thread. What classics do you hate but everyone else loves?

I'm coming right out and saying I severely HATE Gatsby. I'm going to read it again in a few years and see if my view changes. I just hate all the characters, the plot line doesn't have a good enough twist in it, and just urgh. Don't get me started on Nick's unreliable narration...

Rant over now!

I don't like Gatsby either, Holly. Will probably never read that book ever again. Cuz they made me read it my junior year of high school and then I made the stupid mistake of doing it for my last book report ever in my senior year too. My mom and sister loathe the book too.

My English Lit teacher is a massive fan of American Literature (Ironic right?) and keeps handing my American books to me to read. I made the mistake of telling her I disliked American Lit. She then just popped up one day in our study area with a copy of The Scarlett Letter. I must admit though, I absolutely adore that book, so I'm glad she did!

That's great holly! My teachers had me read diary of Anne frank, great Gatsby, the hobbit and that was it.

If you were in honors English you had to read Fahrenheit 451 and animal farm and stuff. My sister hated those books and the only Ray Bradbury book I liked is Something wicked this way comes.

I must admit, that line is beautiful, Geoff. I can't fault Fitzgerald's writing. Everything else about the book just frustrates me though!

That's an amazing set of books to study Amber! Apart from Gatsby of course ;) You got to study The Hobbit and Fahrenheit 451? I'm severely jealous!

Over my school years (I'll list from GCSE), I've had to study: Frankenstein, Macbeth, An Inspector Calls, Of Mice and Men, Gatsby, Birdsong, Robert Frost Poetry, Robert Browning Poetry, Twelfth Night and The Importance of Being Earnest.

I'm currently studying: Brideshead Revisited, Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, and Arcadia. We're also planning on doing As You Like It. And for my coursework, where we can pick our books, I've written one piece on The Handmaids Tale and Feminism. I'm currently planning to do a comparison piece on the confusion between sanity and madness in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Crime & Punishment. Very excited about that one!

No. We only did the hobbit and Gatsby with diary of anne frank. I said honors English classes did Fahrenheit 451 and animal farm and you had to write papers to get into those classes and keep a straight A average. LOL. I was only in regular English classes. and we had to recite a Robert frost poem when I was in the eighth grade in middle school.

Frost was tough work, but he did some really beautiful poems.

Browning was hilarious. Our first A-Level English lesson, one of my teachers walks in and goes "Right. English. Basically, it's about sex and death...". The first two Browning poem we did were 'Porphyria's Lover' and 'My Last Duchess', both of which involve a man killing his lover/wife because he's jealous of her...

You should read Fahrenheit 451 and Animal Farm anyway. They're awesome novels! Thinking back to it, I've only really disliked Gatbsy when it comes to books I've studied. I've heard people who have had really horrible experiences when it comes to books they studied at school. I've loved everything (apart from Gatsby), although I really can't make my mind up about Brideshead... I'm teetering between loving it and hating it...

I'll pass on those two books. My sister wanted to burn her copy of that book after she read it anyway of Fahrenheit 451 but my mom told her that we'd sell it one day. She had to buy both books anyway.

I'm a big The Great Gatsby but I loathed Lady Chatterley's Lover

I only rate only 3 Wilkie Collins novels: The Dead Secret; The Woman in White; and The Moonstone. Everything else of his has been poorly written or just plain crap.

I loved Gatsby and have only just recently read it. I think Fitzgeralds writing style is lovely. His characters however were like a whole set of pantomime villans who you loved to hate.
I am wondering if (and I am the least 'ist' person ever) if age on first reading of some books is a factor of enjoyment in some books especially if you are 'made' to read them at school.

I think I don't like Hemingway at all. Can he be considered classic? I think so ...

I hated Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I hated the ending.

I hated Angel Clare. I know I'm supposed to love him and all, but he's a jerk and no amount of crying will fix that. I liked him at first, but then... The rest, I love.

A couple of people commenting on this thread so far have mentioned Hemingway. Despite the fact that the literary-critical establishment considers him a giant of 20th-century world literature (and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature), I have to admit that I'm also part of the minority that really dislikes almost everything I've ever read by him. His The Sun Also Rises was definitely one of the worst books, in my estimation, that I've ever read (if anyone's interested, my one star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ).

Another older "classic" that I greatly dislike is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915), which I also rated with one star, although I've never actually reviewed it. I appreciate the genius of her feminist general fiction classic short story "The Yellow Wallpaper;" but there she incorporates her message into a compelling story. In the novel, any pretext at story is simply a flimsy vehicle for page after page of tract-like sermonizing; she should have simply written a nonfiction tract, and let it go at that.

A book I loathed is Les Enfants terribles, The Holy Terrors by Jean Cocteau.
I rated it one star because it had no redeeming features. I read it in the original French, and in this case it may be better in translation.

I didn't hate Ulysses but can't see what all the fuss is about. (2 stars)
Another 2 star book is The Unbearable Lightness of Being because I couldn't relate to any of the characters, except the dog.