Which are your all-time unfavorite classics? Books everyone seems to love, except you? And do you (dis)agree with mine? Let me know down below and we'll talk classic literature some more!
I liked Persuasion more than Pride & Prejudice, never expected that for a second. Crooked house by Agatha Christie was a classic book that left me with nothing.🙈 Great video again! Thank you!
I will have to give this a a thought for my answers. But as to yours-- I don't hate pride and prejudice, but I don't fall over Jane Austen. I just finished "persuasion" , the whole time I kept thinking: "I bet people hate this because it's so slow... but...characters are actually RATIONAL in this and not making overly dramatic drama decisions... I...kind of connect with Anne more than other 'more entertaining' Austen heroines. " As to Romeo and Juliet... I don't hate it but I blame it for being the origin of the miscommunication trope that has forever haunted us. Though I have some fond memories of my class reading it... (having already read it, one classmate volunteering to read pretty much EVERY character set to die at some point I had such a hard time not snickering as he hadn't...I could see it on the teacher's face to... ) I will say while it's over done, I listened to a retelling of it on audible prety much ONLY for the narrator/it was on sale...and ya' know... I didn't mind it. IT didn't knock off my socks and went a little heavy on the Juliet gains autonomy in 'strong YA female' type ways but, it was a pleasant surprise. Dickens I have a hard time with. I've only barely begun to touch his work, really, but I thought Copperfield was going to be the death of me. I like a LOT of what was going on. But I think it was similar to what happened to you with Papers-- if he hadn't been paid by word count and it had been more concise, I think it would have been excellent. Don't get me wrong, I like a good slow burn. But at one point I was just internally screaming : GET ON WITH IT.
I feel about Don Quixote as you do about Pickwick Papers. The funny episodes get a bit tedious and I can’t get committed to 800 pages that lack any plot (at least none that I can find).
I don't know how many times you've read Pride and Prejudice, but once isn't enough. It's not long so a second or third reading might make it clearer. It isn't a conventional romance, although many people think it is, and her writing is soaked in irony, which might not be obvious first time round, or if English isn't your native language. She was always an outsider and her fiction is often slightly subversive although dressed up in the conventions of the day.
Couldn't agree more about the beat generation. Having a copy of On The Road is the equivalent of having a Che Guevara poster on your dorm room wall, or getting a celtic sign tattooed on your lower back.
I'd add William Borroughs to your list. It has always seemed to me he is famous for being a drug-user rather than for the quality of his writing and so we're meant to pore over his dubious meanderings because being a junkie apparently makes him cool.
Dharma Bums is more like what On the Road should be. Its an adventure with a Buddhist visionary instead of a speed freak. Also, his last 3 books are just stupidly perfect prose, but so so dark. You feel like you're getting punched in the gut, but the prose is exquisite. (Big Sur, for instance). I used to think On the Road was pumped up just to distract people from his good books.
I love Charles Dickens, but Pickwick Papers???? Yikes, beautiful and hilarious analysis. This was the first time I ever used Cliff's Notes :)...We had to read it over the Christmas break and I just couldn't. I am also glad you included Pride and Prejudice- Persuasion is my favorite of Miss Austin.
On the one hand, yes, Romeo and Juliet is not a good play and one of Shakespeare's worst, which nobody wants to admit. On the other hand, everybody already knows it's about a toxic relationship, or at least they should. But it's bad because of how heavy-handed it is in exploring that relationship. It's more of a shallow crowd-pleaser than a serious work of drama. Every word you said about Jack Kerouac was true, though. It just shows how much is wrong with the literary world when his dreck is held in such esteem.
"In Search of Lost Time" can suck a fat one - I've never encountered a more overwritten pile of pretentiousness. The protagonist is second to maybe only Holden Caulfield in punchability. I hear it is better in french, but I'm not learning a new language just to read the world's longest novel 🙄😄
These discussions can be fun, and stimulating! I definitely have a few to add: The Catcher in the Rye - Couldn’t stand that kid. Wuthering Heights - Toxic relationship, and Heathcliff is a jerk (G-rated language here) Madame Bovary - the title character was a horrible person Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison) - Incredibly overrated I’m sure I have a few more 😂 Thanks for a great video!
I went to Naropa University and studied Poetics at the Master's level. The writing school there was founded by Allen Ginsberg and is called The Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics. (The latter bit is a nod to Gertrude Stein.) And ugh. I never could get into Kerouac. And a lot of the beat stuff is pretentious. But there are exceptions, like Diane diPrima's Rant and Amiri Baraka's An Agony. As Now. The classic I absolutely hated was Siddhartha. It may be partly that I was already familiar with Buddhism, but I just didn't find the writing enjoyable or think that it had anything profound to say. It felt desperately trying to be profound. And I enjoyed the section where he was working as a ferryman. But I put it down twice before I got through it. And am baffled that so many consider it life-changing. I suspect I just dislike Hesse's style, but will give another of his books a try before deciding for sure.
I really hated Wuthering Heights when I read it in High School. Though I LOVED We the Living & Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, I realized she was Pure Poison when I read Atlas Shrugged😒 And as an adult.. I couldn't get thru Joseph Conrad & I couldn't get past 75 pages of 100 years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 😣
It's funny, but it does seem like their is Pride and Prejudice cult out there. Some even have said they wished they lived in that world, enamored with the fashion and romance. I think they forget that hygiene, no toilets, and no air condition among so many other important inventions that would make a night out at the gala actually fun didn't exist. Also, why would they envision they'd belong to the upper class?
I'm a huge Christie fan and I DNFed Passenger To Frankfort. I also couldn't finish Man In The Brown Suit. She has so many great books, but she has a few absolute duds as well.
This was good fun! I agree with you on all counts. I really DO enjoy Persuasion from Austen. Anne is a much more likable (real) character than Elizabeth Bennet. My least favorite classic is certainly A Tale of Two Cities. I love Dickens (particularly David Copperfield), but for me, A Tale of Two Cities is the book that everyone raves over and I think the writing is mid at best.
I love this video; respectful disagreements in good faith! Wait Elizabeth Bennet have no whit or passion?? The idea in Romeo and Juliet is that Romeo was never really in love with Rosalind. And also we have to consider the cultural differences; back then Romeo would not be considered a creep. But still yes you are right about it being a toxic relationship; but its still in my opinion a super captivating relationship where the characters really love each other, despite the toxicity.
Just found your channel. Love your reviews. Jane Austen. I don't think Jane ever intended Elizabeth Bennett to be beloved. She was just another character. I think Jane wrote about what she knew as a woman in the time period in which she lived. All Jane's stories are of flawed individuals who had to make the best of the limitations that were placed on them by society. Elizabeth is not a hero. I probably wouldn't have liked her, but she does give me a glimpse into the life of a woman in that time period. Romeo and Juliet. I have always hated this story about two stupid irrational kids that kill themselves for what! They don't even know each other. They just met.
I am re -reading pride and prejudice, you just roasted it ouch! Maybe i have no romance in my life that's why i adore it so whenever i want to go back to feel some butterflies i read this. And your point of mr Bennet 1:55 i felt the same .
I'm on board with a lot of this. I was forced to read Emma in school and developed a life long aversion to Jane Austin. I agree about the red flags and toxicity of Romeo and Juliet, still liked it though. And thank CHRIST someone has stood up and and said what crap On The Road is. When Agatha Christie was in her later years her stuff is all over the place, I read Halloween Party and she gives me big "hey you kids, get off my lawn" vibes.
When people complain about people not liking certain classic books I tend to think to myself "Well it's not like even many people back then cared about some of these books either."
i would recommend giving pride and prejudice another go. if you're so inclined, try coming at it in a scholarly way, like watching people teach it on youtube because that way you get into the nitty gritty of a proper analysis of the text. jane austen is brilliant in so many ways, and p&p is a great representative of her talent considering it is one of her earliest works. there's layers to the way that austen writes that have to be pulled back in order to appreciate what she's doing. she's largely a feminist (given the overbearing confines of her time), and her prose drips with irony from the very first sentence. the bennets are a disaster, surely, but their characterization serves a purpose and acts as a dismal backdrop for lizzie to shine through, which may give you a different impression of her in comparison. she's not just "the popular girl," however. in fact, her older sister, jane, is better received all the way around. darcy's dismissal of lizzie in the beginning, mr. collins' grudge toward the middle, and lady catherine's disdain in the end are proof enough that lizzie is something of an outcast, actually. austen seemed to feel this way about herself: a girl perceived as too clever "for her own good," one might say. the fact that lizzie finds someone who grows (with a considerable amount of pain, mind you) to love her for her wit and the other things that proper society deemed undesirable in a woman is a beautiful thing not only for the reader to witness but for a young jane austen to assert. the fact that people love this story so much isn't a mistake! i could go on an on about this, but i'll leave it here lol. i do hope you can give p&p another chance, though. it has more to offer than originally meets the eye, i promise.
Analysis and liking/disliking a book are true different things. Surely, a better understanding of a book can improve your opinion of it, but that goes only so far. Your reaction was a very polite one, and I don’t mind it at all (thank you for that), but I’ve seen people shout in the comments: ‘if you don’t like the book, you clearly don’t understand it!’, which I think is a bridge too far. I could give you an in-depth analysis of, for example, the epic of Gilgamesh: historical context, themes, character analysis, … the whole world. I have studied that book extensively. Doing so hasn’t suddenly made it my favorite book though 😋 In the end, an aesthetic opinion of a work is personal, intimate even. And every opinion is valuable: it is okay to like/dislike a book. All reading is valid in my opinion: if you like it, then by all means, read it. If you don’t, then there are so many other options for you to explore. Hope that makes sense 😋
Could not disagree with you more on the subject of Kerouac. I also think his greatness as an author is best measure in the influence he had. That doesn't make On the Road a great piece of literature, but it does make it the catalyst for a very significant cultural shift. Also, Kerouac through his entire literary career walked a tightrope between his beliefs and ideals (Catholic and Buddhist) and his base nature and the base nature of his cohorts. I think the point was more that under all the brokenness, there is a connection to the divine in all people, even the worst of us.
Philip K. Dick was one of my favorite authors and I read most of his novels. The only one I really didn't like was 'Man in the High Castle'. Maybe I need to give it another chance?
I read Robin Hobbs' Realm of the Elderlings and I hated it, stopped after 6 books. I hate the story, the characters, hate the name of places and characters, I had to drag myself through each book and finally decided to put the series down for good. I should have tapped out when Molly married.. I hope this series never gets an adaptation. I just never see enough criticism about these books. Fitz is such a mediocre character that I can find no qualities that make him worthy to be the main character...
I tried reading P&P and I couldn't pass the second half. The story was familiar to me because I saw the 2005 film adaptation and not by choice, my sister made me watch it a dozen times 🙃. But still couldn't finish the book and it confirmed what I already knew: I don't like Austen 😅.
I could only find my rotten tomato fork but we'll make it work. 1. Completely agree 2. Completely agree 3. Agree but Romeo and Juliette wasn't meant to be seen as romantic. 4. I love Kerouac's poetry but On The Road is unreadable. Kerouac was no hero. Ginsberg was a lot better. 5. This is an Agatha Cristie book I haven't even heard of. Maybe for good reason.
Wow, finally, I find another hater of Passenger to Frankfurt! I'm Agatha Christie's biggest fan ever, but damn that book sucked so much. I feel the same about The Big Four -- any thoughts on that one? I can see how she might have wanted to stretch her writing chops a bit, but no, this is the wrong direction! She's still my favorite writer, of course.
Well, I disagree with two, I love Pride and Prejudice and Romeo and Juliet. People love Lizzie because she is fun, she has a great wit, a great sense of humor and big heart. She is also well read, (which I love, that is why I love Belle and she is now my favorite Disney Princess, it used to be Cinderella when I was a little girl.) She is also very funny. Darcy is shy really, not proud, and really has no idea at all how to communicate with a woman. Which is charming to me. I don't think either of them are average. Pride and Prejudice has moved to second place, my favorite is not Persuasion. I am fine with you not liking Passport to Frankfurt, it is not one I like either. If you want one of her thrillers my favorite is N or M. But another Queen of Crime has a book I really I don't like at all. I adore Lord Peter and Dorothy Sayers mysteries but I despise Whose Body, it is full of antisemitism, there is hardly a paragraph that is not filled with it. And what really broke my heart was that it was coming very beloved characters saying all this horrible stuff. So that is a book of hers I DNF'd about 50% through, I just couldn't stand it, and I will never read it again.
I do love Pride and Prejudice, and it's the one I always recommend. I don't know if I could really rank the Austen novels, but I have a group I adore (Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, Lady Susan, in roughly that order, but it changes) and a group I don't like nearly as much (Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion). To be honest, it's not so much the books themselves that I dislike (at least for Emma and Persuasion), it's more that I've known very annoying people who over-identify with Emma and Anne. They didn’t ruin the books for me, but they did prevent me from liking them as much as I wanted to. I do like both Mr Bennet and Mr Darcy, but I dislike the fandom versions of them. So much of the story loses its point when you say that Darcy was just shy/awkward and didn't have any pride or prejudice on his own. There seems to be two popular fandom interpretations of the Bennet parents: the one where Mr Bennet is the cool dad and Mrs Bennet is stupid, and the one where Mr Bennet is wasteful and unattentive and Mrs Bennet is justified in literally everything she does. And I think both of those miss the point that both parents had their flaws. Basically, it's important to see the flaws in all 3 of these characters for the story to work. About Lizzy, what makes you think she has no wit? I think she displays plenty, to the point of occasionally being mean. I will accept that she's pretty, but we're told that she's plainer than some of her sisters, especially Jane and Lydia (although prettier than Mary), and I think it's an interesting dynamic that Austen explores with a girl who is considered pretty to people outside the family, but not so much inside it. As for Romeo and Juliet, I interpreted Romeo to be of a similar age to Juliet (her being 13, almost 14, and him being 15ish), so not so creepy and more immature and unaware of boundaries. I did hate this book the first time around, when it was presented to me as a tragic love story. The second time, I saw it more as a family tragedy, with the love story being more of a childish infatuation that would have passed on its own if their parents had been more chill and not pushed Juliet into an engagement with Paris. Basically, a cautionary tale for parents about not being overbearing.
I read Anna Karenera (sorry about the spelling). Everyone, ok mostly women hold the book to their heat and say it is the greatest book ever written. Do I finally checked it out…to me it was ok., but not the greatest book ever written!
@@cafeaulivre I agree with you there. I have heard that in the end Tolstoy did not like her either. Now if were a story featuring Levin and Kitty…that would have hooked me immediately!
It is funny, people should read it, I just don’t like the (lack of) format. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t say the books in this video are ‘bad books’, because they are not, they certainly have their merit. I just don’t like to read them.
I agree with all of these except the first. Lol I love P&P because of the dialogue, the well-drawn flawed characters, the social criticism and her writing, which is clever, sharp and insightful while feeling light as a feather. I'll be even more controversial about Christie and say I find Murder on the Orient Express boring! I recently reread all her mysteries, and I barely made it through that one. I also deeply dislike The Great Gatsby. There's some masterful writing there, but the characters and story leave me cold. The biggest great classic that I don't like is probably Middlemarch. The MCs are boring, the writing bland, it has no interesting description... It didn't work for me on any level. Then I got to the end and thought "That's it?" I read over 800 pages and that's your great moral lesson? It was the most disappointing book of the decade for me. This is a great idea for a video! I hope you get lots of views and responses.
Middlemarch I agree on, I am a big fan of The Great Gatsby however 😋 I somewhat understand what you’re saying about Murder on the Orient Express, but the revelation of the killer(s), the totally unlikable murder victim and the attention to detail about the actual train were redeeming qualities for me.
First up novel you dont't love and it's Pride And Prejudice. You, Sir, are my man! Let's face it, Jane Austen basically invented chick-lit two hundred years early, but because the sisterhood have canonised her you must never say that out loud.
And the other author on my list would be Virginia Woolf. People are eternally too willing to overlook her faults, such as her rampant snobbery. You maybe think, but that's a minor thing, but it was not minor when ordinary people were starving during and before the General Strike and the 'upper classes' stood back and looked away while they starved. The truth is snobbery takes lives. I had to read Mrs Dalloway once. Fucking thing actually gave me a real-life headache. She wasn't even the inventor of 'stream-of-consciousness' fiction. That was James Joyce who got Ulysses out before her first one. In fact there are any progenitors regarded as the originator of stream-of-conscious. All of them before Virginia Woolf.
I don’t think you understand On The Road at all. If you think the book is a cover for bigotry I would say you need to learn more about Kerouc. The book is his eyes his very religious, Catholic, and is far from an endorsement for pure freedom or carelessness. On The Road shows that these men cannot find joy no matter how many miles they go, at it’s core it’s about men lost in a world that seemingly leaves them behind. There may be elements that are abrasive in it, but if you can’t get over of how people were back then I would stop reading literature made before 2010. Calling Kerouc spoiled is a insult to a man that struggled his whole life, from the early death of his brother to suffering from depression and schizophrenia, it shows a lack of empathy or willingness to see beyond the words on the page. Just because there’s sexism or racism doesn’t mean the author has some evil intent, it shows they are broken people that continue to make poor decisions. On The Road is a about a serious of failures with wild energy yet Kerouc perseveres, a theme explored in every one of his works. I would expect a video like this to look beyond the status or reputation of the book and find something more. Also the point about Romeo and Juliet being a toxic relationship, yeah they’re children and key theme of the work is that their naïve love contrast with a complicated and cruel conflict, led by the adults in the story, who should have more sense and the children who simply love. For Kerouc in particular I would not paint him as an obnoxious sexist but to look at his life as a whole and see how weird, complex, and inspiring he is. Someone from Lowell Massachusetts doesn’t really scream being a brat. I think reading On The Road as a ode to freedom is a overly simple and reductionist reading. To write off the beats is ignorant, these people lived difficult and troubled lives on and off the page, from Kerocus drinking or William Burroughs heroin addiction. I’d recommend reading Kerouc’s other works such as Visions of Gerald or Desolation Angels or to know more about his life to give more context to this work.
@@Nina_DP I would tend to agree if someone would call Emma that, not sure about P&P though...but that's literary analysis for you: we will never really know what went on in an author's head (unless we have extensive diaries, letters, .... of course)
I think those who really like On The Road are those of the same generation, who for one reason or another could not go on the road. They lived vicariously through the book.
I don’t mind the freedom and travel without knowing where you go idea, but you don’t have to act like an obnoxious brat wherever you come. But you’re right, perhaps that too was the closest many came to a rebellious behavior they secretly envied?
I don't dislike any of the English-language classics enough to say I hate them, but I do have a bone to pick with a lot of the Swedish ones. (I'm Swedish.) For example, I LOVED "Doctor Glas" by Hjalmar Söderberg, so I tried to read "The Serious Game", which has been called "the greatest love story of Swedish literature". But it was incredibly boring and the love story we're supposed to root for is an affair, where they don't even seem to like each other for most of it. Besides that, most of the book is from the perspective of the guy, and he complains about being single, then marries a random woman he doesn't like, then complains about how marriage sucks and she tricked him into it (she did not). He's insufferable. Another one would be "The Colonel's Family" by Fredrika Bremer, which was just boring and horribly paced the whole way through. I was also let down by "It Is Acceptable"/"Sara" by Carl Jonas Love Almqvist/Almquist. The way it was introduced to me, I was told it would be passionate and that the author had to flee the country for his depiction of pre-marital relationships. Meanwhile they only go to a restaurant and travel in a horse-drawn carriage for like 150 pages. People in the 1830s really were a pearl-clutching crowd because it's very boring to a modern eye.
Oh, don’t get me started on the Dutch ones. Books I had to read because they were required reading, books like ‘Eline Vere’. They still cause an eye roll each time they are mentioned 🤣
