It’s a question inspired by this post https://www.reddit.com/r/books/s/s2jK2DzFrA by u/oh_sneezeus
Is there any book that is considered a classic or regularly shows up on the “100 books to read before you die” lists and such, you had high expectations before reading and then you ended up absolutey detesting?
For me it’s Blindness by José Saramago, it started off good and then page after page it was becoming more unbearable for me to read, I hated the characters, the things they were doing and the conclusions of the book. I was really disappointed because the plot seemed really good and all I ended up with was frustration.
Is there a book that did the same to you?
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Controversial opinion: Anything by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the narrative is chefs kiss GOLD STAR, but his writing is dryer than desert, and pedantic as a 12 legged horse walking backwards.
I got 25 pages into Fellowship, and just couldn’t do it.
Gravity’s Rainbow. Hard to not putdown.
Literally everything by Ayn Rand
Les miserables. Its like 200 pages before the story even starts. Hard pass
Anything by Kafka. Just can’t get into his writing style.
Ethan f-inf Frome
Catcher in the Rye sucked from the beginning to the end.
The Pearl
The Giver. It’s anti abortion fantasy. A post industrial society that chooses who to kill at birth. That’s where they get their post abortion bullshit from.
Catcher in the rye. Holden is a whiny bitch
Infinite Jest. A thousand long page anthology to a man’s love of his own intellect. There’s a good story in there, nestled somewhere among the endless fucking intellectual posturing.
I don’t usually participate in these threads because I get downvoted, despite my unpopular opinion being the point of the post. I didn’t like Crime & Punishment. In fact, I fucking hated it. I don’t think I’m smart or cool, I actually assume I must be too dumb to understand what’s so great about it. But it doesn’t change that I genuinely think it was the single worst book I’ve ever read.
Tbh Fahrenheit 451… such an amazing premise at first and then it just gets so painfully dull and slow as the book goes on. Beginning is good and then the big middle chunk is so dreadful to read and then the ending would have been exciting and good if the middle wasn’t so bad. I’m not fond of it. Runner up is 1984. I don’t get the hype and I hated the book. Both books have great themes of course but neither were for me.
Catcher in the Rye and Ulysses. I’ve tried both multiple times, gave up every time. Reading Ulysses felt like pure torture. The language was just too much for me. Call me too dumb for it. I don’t care. I tried. I couldn’t.
And Catcher was because I found Holden absolutely unbearable as a character. That’s probably the point and why it’s considered the great book it is, but man I just wanted to slap him. Just an insufferable know it all.
An inspector calls. Whole premise makes no sense and it drove me nuts reading it in school.