What is the worst “great” book?

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I got through about 50 pages of “Ulysses” and couldn’t force myself to continue. Utterly unreadable. In my time, I’ve done a ton of reading that includes lots and lots of the classic novels, but James Joyce is definitely not my cup of tea.

I still have PTSD from being forced to read The Scarlet Letter in high school.

R2 and R3 - You have helped alleviate my guilt from having no time for James Joyce (senior year) or Nathaniel Hawthorne (junior year).

The Bible is almost unreadable - full of plot holes and coincidence.

How long ago and where was Ulysses an assigned text in high school? Today's high schoolers couldn't get through Portrait.

It was Portrait, yeah. That was 1990 for me.

I ended up teaching 11th-grade English for a spell (ten years later), and The Scarlet Letter was still required!

R6 - Southern California

I taught the American HS canon to the first wave of Chinese billionaire spawn attending a Swiss prep school. Late 1990s. They were clever and very naive and unsophisticated, and they had bad teeth. They liked Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye. I threw in The Talented Mr. Ripley and then we watched the movie and they were scandalised by homo themes. Fun times. Now the young Chinese billionaire youth in Switzerland are tall gleaming seamless and cynical glamazons.

Ha! I love that you presented them with Ripley!

Gatsby, Wuthering Heights, and Ethan Frome were my favorites in high school. I liked The Metamorphosis, The Stranger, TKAM, and some of the Shakespeare comedies.

I barely even tried to read Heart of Darkness, Grapes of Wrath, or any Joyce. I found Catcher and LotFlies to be pretty meh (although we didn't use that term in the 80s).

The bane of my existence was Great Expectations. Our teacher had us do a huge fucking dialectical journal for it and it ruined my winter vacation freshman year.

I was fine with Silas Marner, the Scarlet Letter, anything by Jane Austen, Huckleberry Finn, tale of two cities, Jane Eyre - all good. But Moby Dick - torture of the damned.

"What Makes Sammy Run?" I reread passages over and over, and it didn't hold my interest.

Ulysses has some very poetic writing in spots. I never tried to read it from beginning to end, but that way lay madness, but I would just open it a random. Changing a few sex-specific characteristics, what gay man couldn't relate to the following passage?:

"and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

It doesn't qualify as "great' but I never miss an opportunity to include it in any "bad books" list - "A Little Life" - the most egregious, pornographic, exploitative and horrific book ever written.

I hated it so much that I went to the author's book reading for the specific purpose of heckling her but two people got in ahead of me so all that I got out were a few words before being escorted from the venue.

If anybody offers to share this with you, run away.

While I can appreciate his greatness, I was never able to get into Dostoevsky. For me, Tolstoy is in a league of his own, and in comparison, Dostoevsky is overwrought and tiresome.

r14, I read the synopsis of that novel after reading your post, and it sounds like an utterly horrific book.

R14 - ugh!! I've heard about that book. Two of my friends were reading it a couple summers ago and I steered CLEAR of it!

I was never able to get into On The Road. Also, Tolkien. And I tried and tried and tried.

[quote]The Bible is almost unreadable - full of plot holes and coincidence.

R5, bags I be there when you get your next visit from the Jehovah's Witnesses!

I just finished the modern classic At Swim Two Boys, a book I had been looking forward to for a while. I had a hard time making it through—between all the Irishisms, both individual words and turns of phrase, and the knowledge required of the factions of the Irish Rebellion, I was constantly Googling. It felt like decoding as much as reading and became a real slog. I will certainly remember the book which was impressive but not with a lot of pleasure.

R16 and R17 - it's not my place to warn you off this book but I do wish that somebody had warned me off.

I hated Crime & Punishment. When I had to read it for my AP English class in high school, I gave up after about 50 pages and relied on the Cliff's Notes for the rest.

Speaking of my high school years, I thought Catcher in the Rye was SO good then, and Holden was SO relatable. I picked it up again not long ago, and I wanted to scream at Holden to quit whining.

I had to read Crime & Punishment three times for our version of the GCSE's and because our Slavist teachers in general have a hard-on for grim Russian literature. Hated every moment and it made my depression so much worse as well.

However, I recently listened to a couple of podcast episodes breaking down the themes of the book and I thoroughly enjoyed that analysis. And I suddenly realised I prefer hearing people talk about great literature than reading it myself. Listened to one about Turgenev's Fathers and Sons just yesterday and found it a delight from start to finish. I've always been a short story person anyway. Not sure if that makes me dumb, but there you go.

Go fuck yourselves.

LOLLL @ R24!!

[quote]“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

I figured if Dickens couldn't decide, then it wasn't worth my time.

Anything once or ever called The Great American Novel. And, no, I don’t mean Phillip Roth’s book with that title which satirizes the concept in a very funny way.