Deep Down, You know You're Full of It- Which Famous, Classic Novels You Promise Yourself You'll Read....

Not a novel but — Beowulf.

"Les Miserables". I tried a chapter a night, determined to get through it, and that lasted a week. I also don't want to admit how many unread copies of it I have.

I JUST finished Crime and Punishment and by the end I want to kill myself too ! Many moons ago I took a world literature class and we were assigned that book to read and do a report on and I only made it a quarter of the way through and just couldnt finish it. I took an incomplete on the assignment and vowed one day to slog through it. I hated every second of it.

I sincerely tried to read "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" by Henry Fielding from 1749, one of the earliest novels ever published, and I thought I was going to die from boredom.

Catch-22

The Scarlet Letter

Remembrance of Things Past

It's Jane Austen, OP. Not Austin.

War and Peace

One day, I started "The Catcher in the Rye". I lasted 3 pages. I couldn't stand Holden Caulfield.

Thank You, r6, I stand corrected.

Anything by Faulkner. I’ve tried.

I'm with you, R10.

Glamourama. It got so disgusting I couldn't finish it.

R8, you're not the only one.

Ulysses is on my list. I just need a block of time to get through it without distractions. Perhaps rent a beach cottage for a week or two. (I'd better make it two weeks.)

My ability to concentrate on reading a novel is diminished.

I blame age and that my brain is re-wired from the short-burst conditioning of reading the internet for the past 20 years.

To each his/her own.

While I understand someone struggling with James Joyce or Proust, some of these authors are quite readable. Jane Austen and (to a lesser degree) Edith Wharton remain popular because 1) they write well about love, sex, manners, and money and 2) their styles are accessible to contemporary audiences. I have a terrible time with Henry James, by contrast.

If you don't like "Catcher In The Rye" because of the narrator, Salinger wrote some wonderful short stories you could try instead.

Della, aren't you a librarian?

No, r17, although I'd be very proud to say so.

Austin- ✅

Tolstoy - I’d have to start drinking again... 🍺

I've never read Faulkner or James. I tried. I won't again.

I found James quite readable. Faulkner and Joyce were my stumbling blocks. Who knows? Maybe I'll give [italic]Gravity's Rainbow[/italic] one last try. I remember liking it, then stalling out, twice. [italic]The Crying of Lot 49[/italic] is the only Pynchon book I've finished.

I have tried to read David Copperfield twice and I’ve never made it past the first 100 pages. So boring.

Conversely, I devoured War and Peace, absolutely loved it.

The Quiet American, Graham Greene.

I feel awful admitting this, but I can’t get through anything by Toni Morrison.

All of them as I have stopped reading great literature. Maybe I will again in retirement. I will listen to audio books. I listened to The Brothers Karamazov this summer. I was surprised I can follow French ones better through audio than reading in French.

Edith Wharton is good on audio.

War and Peace is highly readable--and you can skip the battle scenes if you want--there's still a wonderful story with Natasha, Andre and Pierre. I loved it--read it right after college and couldn't put it down. Don't be intimidated by the very beginning, which I remember was sort of..oh no (but it's many years ago that I read it). Just get a few pages in and you'll be hooked. Jane Austen's books are virtually all great reads.

I was completely unable to read past the first chapter of Ulysses. I don't expect I ever will. I also could not get into Crime and Punishment--too much dread once I realized what was coming. However, I read quite a few other Dostoyevsky novels. I think the best one is probably The Brothers Karamazov, but also the Idiot and The Possessed (also called The Demons). The only Pynchons I've read are Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland, which was probably from the 90s and was very funny. Could not and never will read Gravity's Rainbow. Also couldn't stand Beloved (the only T. Morrison I read--for a class years ago). Read As I Lay Dying and Sound and the Fury (both for class) and hated both. Am not a Faulkner fan.

Henry James' short stories are often great and his earliest novels are quite readable--What Maisie Knew, the Princess Cassmassima, the Bostonians, the Americans. Even Portrait of a Lady once you get into it. The late novels (Ambassadors, Golden Bowl, Wings of the Dove) are written as if in another language--James dictated them to a secretary and probably never read them himself I think is the story. Don't torture yourself unless someone is holding a gun to your head. Edith Wharton has some quite good stuff--The Age of Innocence and House of Mirth are both very readable.

Some of Dickens is very good--David Copperfield doesn't stand out in my mind but I don't remember it being difficult. Great Expectations is wonderful. Bleak House, while very long, is mesmerizing.

I did read the first book of In Search of Lost Time, again for a class many years ago--French Lit in translation, but never read further. Of the other French classics--Madame Bovary is quite compelling. I did read The Hunchback of ND when I was a kid. Have never read any Balzac or Zola. Anybody have suggestions. I do read French but it would be a slog so I'd only do it in translation.

If you want to try some Hardy, I remember not exactly enjoying The Mayor of Casterbridge (maybe the only Hardy I read) but not difficult, just strange and unique.

Oh yeah--Moby Dick. Got as far as the "Cetaceans" chapter--halfway though maybe--and just couldn't finish it.

The writer I wish I could get myself to read more of (have only read one) is the great Spanish novelist, Javier Marias. I read "In the Battle Think on Me" which is a murder mystery and also quite droll, but I just can't get myself into reading "literature" any more.

Ulysses for me, too.

Also Middlemarch.

r27 again (I'm such a bore)--I did try "Middlemarch" at least 3 times. Just couldn't hack it. I give up. Life's too short.

Jane 'Austin'

It's 'Austen', you mega spaz.

R30: we know

Gosh I've read almost all of these. I do find some others difficult. And sometimes the subject manner. Why is Anna Karenina so beloved? That fucker knew nothing about women.

How can you not read Jane Austen OP? That’s insane. She’s easily readable.

The Art of the Deal

Another vote for Middlemarch.

You'll love Tolstoy, OP. He was the best-selling author of his time so, despite the size of his novels, they are incredibly engaging, worldly and pleasant to read. His ability to assess human character and paint it in the most interesting way possible is astounding. Also, for a poster above, he was a true feminist and it shows in Karenina and in it's predecessor, the short story The Kreutzer Sonata. He did know a lot about women and was very compassionate. There are also a LOT of surprise gay moments (he was likely bisexual), especially in War and Peace.

My personal novel to conquer is A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. I have started it several times and was never able to go beyond page 89. And the funny thing is that it's because I love it too much. It gives me too much to think about and overwhelms me. It's the same with Plato, whose dialogues I've yet to finish.

There are surprise gay moments in War and Peace?!

r27, I highly recommend two books from Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart series: La Terre (1887) and La Débâcle (1892), which follow the experiences of Jean Macquart, first as a farmer in the Beauce and then as a soldier in the Franco-Prussian War; La Débâcle is of particular interest for its homoerotic subtext.

R37, oh yes, there are! And several of them. And not some of those maybe-maybe-not moments. No, it's all stated quite clearly in plain language. Gotta love Tolstoy!

r39, can you provide examples. I read War & Peace over a decade ago and I don't recall anything gay in it.

R40, without spoiling it for future readers and off the top of my head (I haven't read it in over a decade too): the parade of Tzar Alexander; Pierre Bezukhov's dream (or was it a fantasy?); and when Nikolai Rostov got himself a young adjutant. I'm sure there were more.

For me the hardest get through has always been Celine Voyage au bout de la nuit. It's because I heard he was a fascist sympathizer. It shouldn't affect me, but it does.

Dog-eared bump

LotR (Couldn't get past the first book, but that was years ago. Maybe my having seen & loved the film trilogy will get me through it whenever I give it another shot)

War and Peace (I loved Anna Karenina & Ivan Ilyich in college, so I'm sure I'll enjoy this. It's the length that's off-putting)

Remembrance of Things Past (once again, the length - and the commitment)

Moby Dick

Anna Karenina

A Tale of Two Cities

Remembrance of Things Past

Probably anything by Dickens and Franzen.

"The Great Gatsby" (Fitzgerald) was surprisingly enjoyable and easy to read, though.

Why were you surprised Fitzgerald was a good read? It is one of THE Great American Novels for a reason.

Moby Dick

Don Quixote

Remembrance of Things Past

Pride and Prejudice

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Magic Mountain

The Good Earth

I love Jane Austen. I was surprised to learn that Mark Twain didn't -- he said that he hated spending time with too many of her characters because they were such unpleasant people, which is true. But the funny thing is that he loved cats, who would be highly unpleasant people if they were human -- vain, self-absorbed, selfish, etc. Odd that Mark Twain could appreciate cats but not the characters that Jane Austen drew so well as examples of human frailty. I love them all -- Austen, Twain, especially cats.

Steinbeck was the big gap I noticed in my literature education, and I've never been able to make myself sit down with East of Eden or The Grapes of Wrath for recreational reading. Maybe once my favorite horror writers have all passed away I'll get bored enough to give them a try.

You’re not missing anything, R8.

OP, on the other hand, is. Jane Austen is great.

[quote] Why were you surprised Fitzgerald was a good read? It is one of THE Great American Novels for a reason.

I thought that's what this thread was about: famous, classic novels that you just can't get through.

East of Eden is fabulous. It sticks with you long after reading.

Another vote for War & Peace. So light and witty despite the setting. It transcends time.

Faulkner is my mental roadblock. Is the end result worth slogging through his stream of consciousness prose?

R52, et al: "The Great Gatsby" is also extremely short, hard to get bogged down before you suddenly find yourself at the end of it.

I've tried to reread Gatsby twice recently and I just can't work up an interest. Mind you, the plot is firmly embedded in my mind even though I read it in high school.

Jane Austen, I reread her novels regularly, except for Northanger Abbey. OP, Pride and Prejudice is her most popular and best? book, it's dense but there are some very funny snarky bits.

To the poster who couldn't get into David Copperfield, it's a soap opera! The plot races from one cliffhanger to the next. Same with Oliver Twist. Great Expectations is epic. It's not until you get to Little Nell that you feel like vomiting.

OTOH, life is too short for Thomas Hardy. I was praying ev ery page that Tess would die.

[quote] East of Eden is fabulous. It sticks with you long after reading.

Agreed. Loved that book. Also loved "Of Mice and Men" (Steinbeck as well).

"So Dark the Waves on Biscayne Bay" by Barbara Thorndyke

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Sense and Sensibility

Women in Love

The Last of the Mohicans

Gormenghast

The Brothers Karamazov

In the original:

La Reine Margot

Мастер и Маргарита (Master and Margarita)

I've read all of Faulkner's canon. I love him. But I couldn't get past 100 pages or so of Infinite Jest. So try-hard.

Grapes of Wrath Vanity Fair Dr. Zhivago In Cold Blood The Magus The Bell Jar

I managed to read The Old Man and the Sea, but I never was able to finish another Hemingway book.

Trollope.

[quote]My ability to concentrate on reading a novel is diminished.

I've found this to be the case with me as well in the 20 years since I first jumped online, and it kind of breaks my heart. I used to read dozens of books a year, and now it's nowhere near that. It's not only the 'rewiring' of the brain from consuming info in internet-sized bites, but also simply that a lot of the leisure time I used to employ to read novels is now eaten up by online activity. By the time I'm finished reading so many articles, posts and other stuff online, often the last thing I want to do is go read some more, no matter how much I love it.

All of them.

[quote] OTOH, life is too short for Thomas Hardy. I was praying ev ery page that Tess would die.

r55, I'm the poster who can't get into David Copperfield and I argue that Hardy is far more of a soap writer than Dickens (at least, the kind of soap operas I like): my first Hardy was The Mayor of Casterbridge and I was absolutely entranced -- one day, I was reading it in the breakroom at work and a major, narrative-altering revelation occurs and I literally gasped out loud and everyone turned! Hardy is magnificent.

Well, I never dared go back after Tess but I'll keep that in mind.

East of Eden, mentioned above. Now I read that one summer vacation from college and I stayed up all night to finish it. That Cathy! The movie only covers a fraction of the book. To me it seemed very different from his other novels, much more sensational.

My novel reading has also declined since I got an ipad. Jes' too much stuff happening in the world. But I reread Grapes of Wrath and Huckleberry Finn during an off shore sailing trip and was amazed at how much I enjoyed them, didn't want the books to end!

I brought Jude the Obscure to read one summer on the beach in Europe for vacation.

I was an odd teenager.

The Iliad. A friend of mine gave me her copy in high school all neatly annotated with perfect handwriting and I have never gotten rid of it. Yet I have no desire to read it at all.

Thomas Mann, Magic Mountain. It was on my mother's bookshelf and every year when I'd come back from college I'd try to read it, would get 100 pages in and give up; tried 2 or 3 times. I read Buddenbrooks for a class as an undergrad and really liked it, and and of course Death in Venice (which is a novella anyway), but MM had no magic for me that's for sure.

I’ll just wait for the movie

I limped thru "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and no more Hemingway for me. I just retuned some sort of Faulkner anthology , unreadable. I just bought paperback of Anna Karenina, so wish me luck

Not a classic novel, but Noam Chomsky. Who the hell actually reads that?

Many of my favourite novels are being cited in this thread. I liked The Magic Mountain so much that when I finished reading it I started re-reading it immediately. I'm also a frequent re-reader of Vanity Fair.

R60, it's been over twenty years since I read The Old Man and the Sea, and I've had never felt the desire to revisit Hemingway.

I won't ever read most of Faulkner, Proust, and James Joyce. I've read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and the Brontes and Jane Austen, and but only the most popular Dickens. I love Edith Wharton and I re-read my Mary Renault novels probably once every two years.

I really enjoyed The Scarlet Letter, to be fair.

[quote] my first Hardy was The Mayor of Casterbridge and I was absolutely entranced -- one day, I was reading it in the breakroom at work and a major, narrative-altering revelation occurs and I literally gasped out loud and everyone turned!

"Mary!" they cried in unison!

I 'don't do homework.