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I've tried to read several "classics" and I want to like them because they are important and all of that but often I just cannot get through them.
I agree.
As someone who reads a ton and supposedly has an elite education, I find most of the 'classics' to be tedious and often downright boring.
Anything Hemingway or Faulkner wrote comes to mind...
And why does everyone love Jane Austen so much? Bleecccch!
I tried reading The Hobbit but couldn't get through it until after reading Lord of the Rings. I was in Jr. High and everyone said you Had to read The Hobbit first.
I think it's a great book, but it's just so heavy subject-wise I end up reading it slow. I always get like half way through before it's due back at the lib. I should just buy my own copy sometime.
yes, I've tried reading the Illuminatus Trilogy (Robert Anton Wilson etc.) once before and had to put it down. Just picked it up last week and I'm through it already. Sometimes you just have to be 'ready' for something...
I got through it in high school (required reading) but tried to read it again as an adult and thought it lacked something: Great Gatsby. And now it has been made into a movie---and watching the preview, I'm still thinking: meh.
This just happened to me again. I've learned to abandon books if there's no particular reason to keep at them. But sometimes because of the book's reputation, I know I should make an extra effort.
The first time was with Gone With the Wind. I'd tried several times, but kept getting bogged down in a lengthy scenery description. Finally at some point I picked up my own cheap copy at a rummage sale, got past that and was off and running.
But now just had that again. My copy of Mark Helprin's Memoir from Antproof Case has been on my shelf for years, and I've tried at least two or three times, but it just struck my as awfully dull. But I knew it's considered great, and I thought I'd make one last try - and really glad I did.
Snow Falling on Cedars.
I took me like 4 years to finish it. It wasn't too good, but I just had read too much of it to give up. I used to throw it my bag every day and read it on the subway.
By the end, it was ridiculously beat up.
I also have Biographies that I read non-sequentially, like the Biographies of Coltrane and Miles Davis. I've been reading those for over a decade and still haven't 'finished' them. Not sure that counts though.
"Pride and Prejudice." I've tried reading it numerous times since high school and never made it more than halfway through. Maybe I'll try again next time I'm on vacation.
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