What's your least favorite classic? I would say that mine is probably A Separate Peace. I hate that book...

I'll post the review I wrote of it in a minute, when I find it.

What about you guys?

Aw I loved A Separate Peace!

I'd have to say Great Expectations. D: I guess if I read it now I might like it a bit more but I couldn't stand it when we had to read it in school.

I'm honestly not sure, but, for what ever reason, I tend to shy away from "classics" the only ones I've ever read are Watership Down and the Chronicles of Narnia, if you even consider those classics 0~0 Out of the two I liked Narnia the least, does that count? x3

I was quite disappointed with Animal Farm if that counts as a classic.

My English teacher hyped it up so much and then we read about a few pages every lesson. In the end I think we did one essay about it, so I don't know why we even bothered.

I read Great Expectations for a speaking assessment, and like all Dickens books I just found it needlessly wordy. I wonder if he was getting paid by the word like we are!

My least favorite piece of literature would have to be Romeo and Juliet.
I love all the other works by Shakespeare that I've read, but that one, despite probably being the most well known, I just hate. >.>

What's it about?

I hated To Kill a Mockingbird. I know you are supposed think it is this great masterpiece of a book but I just got annoyed by the accents.

Looking back on books I've had to read, I remember most of them with apathy rather than antipathy, but I do remember that I disliked the experience of having to deal with Hard Times, by Dickens, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

My least favorite book was Beloved. I loved Watership Down though: Talking rabbits!
At first, I disliked Romeo and Juliet, but then my English teacher explained to us that we can learn from their idiotic mistakes, and now I find the story interesting. I also love the parallels with West Side Story, which is a very touching play. Most people can relate more with West Side Story because it is closer to our time, but the plot is basically the same.

When i read a Seperate Piece i really really didn't like it, but i haven't dared to try reading it again to see if i've changed. but i have to say that out of all the classics i've read- the most random one that leaves a bitter after thought in my mind is "My Brother Sam is Dead"- read it in eight grade and besides not being my normal genre of comfort i really really really hated it- i thought it was the stupidest thing ever. and unlike a seperate piece i think i'd rather be forced to memorize all 1000 pages of Moby Dick (i do like this don't get me wrong- it's just reaallly long lol) then ever see it again in my life time.

Maria Chapdelaine by Louis Hémon.

WORST BOOK EVER. It's just about a girl who's stuck in northern Quebec with her crazy parents who name their kids weird stuff (Tit 'Bé and Da 'Bé.. poor kids!) while Maria fantasizes about marrying Mr.Dirtbag Francois Paradis while she bakes bread! WHAT THE HELL.

I honestly do not grasp how this is like a Canadian classic. I asked if it was the first book written in Canada, I mean, at least that makes sense. No. It's just about a bunch of dull people being dull while it snows. DULL.

Emma by Jane Austen was boring, though. To me, anyways. I had a hard time getting through it.

Pretty much anything Shakespeare. I think the fact you get forced to read it in school put me off. And the language. Dx Very tedious.

My least favorite classic? Thats a hard one. I usually avoid all of the not-so-good books whenever I can. If I had to pick one, It would be "Saffy's Angel" even if it is not a classic. I did not like that book at all.

I'm going to get seriously flamed over this, but I hate both Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451. I've tried the latter book twice, and my dislike of it has nothing to do with the burning books thing. It's weird, because I otherwise love both George Orwell and Ray Bradbury.

I also dislike most of Dickens' works, especially A Christmas Carol, and I hate Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I used to read books just because they were labelled as "classics," but not anymore. I know enough of my interests by now to be able to tell fairly quickly whether I'm going to like a book or not. I do enjoy several "classics," though. That list is much longer than my dislike list.

ROMEO AND JULIET! it is horrible! we are currently reading it in class way to gooshy for me it well is just not my type of book.

I dislike anything done by Shakespeare, except Hamlet.

I loath almost everything written by Shakespeare. In my opinion, his plays have one great line each. In Romeo and Juliet it is "Then young man's love then truly lies/not in their heart, but in their eyes." That made me laugh the first time I read it. It was full of win.

A hate A Catcher in the Rye with a passion. It's about a messed up dropout, who walks around being a bum. What an awesome book! Not. Funny, there was a singular passage from that book I liked too. I didn't even like The Great Gatsby that much. The only person in the whole book I liked was Nick. :/

...to this day, I am the only person around my age I've ever met that loves To Kill a Mockingbird. I find this very funny. X3

@BlackCat: I can't believe you don't know anyone else your age who likes To Kill a Mockingbird! I have a hard time finding people who don't like it.

Haha, I agree with you, thread creator. I hated Separate Peace. It was so... blank. It didn't even get exciting till the end.

Separate Peace is my least favorite so far.
xD

A Separate Peace just sort of was...I didn't really hate it, but I didn't particularly like it, either.

You know, there's this book out now, and the tag line on all the ads is "The best novel set in a boarding school since A Separate Peace." Every time I see that I think, "Well, it can't have had much competition." Not at the adult reading level, anyway.

I disliked 'A Separate Peace' immensely. Unfortunately, that's all we read novel-wise in American Literature class. :(. Which is a shame, as there was so much good American lit out there for us to read over this book.
The only other classic I loathe is The Yearling. I only managed to get ten pages into that book before I gave up. It was so bad that I couldn't even read book written in third person for several years afterwards. :(.(Except for Harry Potter- and even that took me forever to read.)

It seems to me like a lot of people don't like things because they can't understand them. I think that's too bad, because a lot of books that are hard to understand are actually very good.

I can't honestly say that I've ever read a classic that I've actually hated. I don't like Macbeth, because I think it's got a flimsy premise and a lot of it relies on bad metaphor.

I'm also not too fond of Lord of the Flies. I understand what is going on and I understand the depth of symbolism he's using. But it still leaves me with this sick, depressed feeling in my stomach when I read it. I think I don't like it mostly because it's a bad situation that gets worse and worse and worse and NEVER gets any better. Even the end wasn't a solution-- it was just another problem. Still, I can't honestly say I hate it. Because I can recognize the sheer talent it takes to write something like that.

Not everyone really has a reason for disliking a book. I don't think I failed to understand any of the books I listed above, although I know some people do have this reaction (I can still remember being told that a certain someone I knew couldn't like Watership Down because it was about talking bunnies). I couldn't necessarily tell you why I didn't like them. I think everything I listed in this particular thread is well written, but no one has to LIKE a book just because it is well written. We all have different tastes.

It's possible, too, to enjoy a book that you don't understand, as I've discovered from some conversations.

Originally Posted by JoieD

Not everyone really has a reason for disliking a book. I don't think I failed to understand any of the books I listed above, although I know some people do have this reaction (I can still remember being told that a certain someone I knew couldn't like Watership Down because it was about talking bunnies). I couldn't necessarily tell you why I didn't like them. I think everything I listed in this particular thread is well written, but no one has to LIKE a book just because it is well written. We all have different tastes.

It's possible, too, to enjoy a book that you don't understand, as I've discovered from some conversations.

Oh sorry!! I made that sound all wrong. I didn't mean to imply that everyone here didn't like books because they didn't understand them... I meant that there are a lot of people I've met whose justification for not liking something is that it's confusing. Or that they didn't like it because they couldn't understand it.

Yes, that's true, too. Good point. I barely understood Charterhouse of Parma and yet liked it.... lol...

Anyway, sorry... sometimes I have a hard time expressing what I really mean to say.

Oh yes, I know how you feel. That's why I try to re-read books I didn't like later in life. I didn't like The Subtle Knife the first time I read it because I was about 12 years old and it really confused me. I KNEW I didn't understand it, so how was I supposed to like it?