All right, folks, time to confess!

I liked Catcher in the Rye, not loved but liked it well enough. Classics I found impossible to get into: Jane Eyre, The Odyssey, Tom Sawyer, Wuthering Heights. Actually others I found MUCH MORE torturous but have subconciously blocked them from my memory. I DO like classics, just not ALL classics.

Acctually when I read this book I thought it was kinda stupid, and it was definatly not my type of book.. I never understood why people tend to like this book.. REally I don't get it what the hell they find in there? For me classics are books like "The Count Of Monte Cristo"..

'Catcher' isn't my favorite by Salinger but I don't hate it. I wasn't very fond of Holden but as a book it was OK. I like Salinger's style. I can't remember a classic I'd really hated. If I see the book doesn't suit me, I don't read it at all. But as for 'great literary triumphs', I can't understand why people are hailing Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling or Paulo Coelho. I read 'Da Vinci code', just to know, what everybody are talking about, and found there nothing special. 'Harry Potter' seemed so dull for me, I couldn't manage more than 25 pages. And Coelho's 'Alchemist"... I read it and couldn't understand what is disturbing me at Coelho's style. After a while I tried to read his 'Pilgrimist', and then I did suddenly understand. The chap is mostly using simple sentences. The 'mystery' was solved, and there were no need to trouble myself with his works anymore.

Yes, that was most definitely not worthy of being heralded as a literary classic. It was vomitted out over the course of a month if I remember correctly. Bridges of Madison County was another book written in a short amount of time with no editing that also stunk to high heaven. Yet, it won critical acclaim both as a book and a movie!

I hated Catcher in the Rye, as well. Couldn't stand the character. Didn't like the story line, or the stream of thought way the book was written. And I had to read it twice in school! Ugh. Huckleberry Finn was difficult for me to get through, as well, although the story was good. I had a difficult time with the accents used in the book, it wasn't easy for me to understand. Catcher in the Rye has to be my most disliked classic, although there were certain ones I found boring, such as Ethan Frome.

The only clasic book I never got through in High school was "Heart of Darkness" I despised it and gave up after about 25 pages. I also have yet to get through a Jane Austin book. I know people love her and I really enjoy her books on film, but when it comes to actually reading her books, I just kinda drift off. I get to the end of a page and I realize that I didn't take any of it in and have to go back and read it again. Then I sually give up because I've decided at that point that it just isn't worth it.

I'm right with you on Cather in the Rye. Holden Caufield was one of the worst characters ever written. He should have been smacked or worse.

I'm right with you on Cather in the Rye. Holden Caufield was one of the worst characters ever written. He should have been smacked or worse.

Two came right to mind as you asked. The Great Gatsby and Jane Eyre. I hated both of them. I struggled through reading them and just wanted to put the book down and burn it; which for me is really bad with a book. The only reason I read through them all was for a class. You know instead of torturing kids with these "classics" why don't they let them pick books to read? That way they can get a joy for reading which is more important in my book :)

Oooh, do I have the book. I even started a discussion on it http://www.mylot.com/w/discussions/755546.aspx?p=0 I HATE "Lord of the Rings." I Hate it with a capital HATE. :P Nearly 40 years later, I still regret reading it. If I could bill Tolkien for the time I wasted reading it, I would, except all the money in the world wouldn't be enough. :P "Catcher in the Rye," on the other hand, is one of my all-time favorites. The fact that Holden is flawed and the book's perspective is from his POV is what makes it a true classic, for me.

I had a difficult time getting through The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. I wanted to enjoy it because so many people say it is a wonderful book, but I couldn't get it. There were pages and pages of dialogue that went nowhere. I ended up just flipping to the end and reading the last 10 pages. But I can't remember how it ends now.

I haven't read the Catcher in the Rye thus I cannot comment on it. The book I didn't like is The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. It is not a classic yet but it received the Booker Prize in 1997 that is why I was initially interested in reading this book. But alas as I read the story I find it depressing and it seems I am transported to that sad and miserable state. I pushed myself to finish the book hoping something good will come out of it in the end. But sadly it didn't. My favorite classic books would be The Count of Monte Cristo (quite a long read) and Wuthering Heights.

You know...the only book that I never finished in High School was Huck Finn. I finished every other assigned reading book, but for some reason I just could not get into Huck Finn. I know it's a classic and Twain is literary American treasure according to many, but I found the book boring, and I don't think I was crazy about the writing style.

i really never found "the sorrow of the old sparrow at gathering" i have nevere read such a boring classic. but i appologise coz without respect to my views the book is a classical work

Hi! I read about the first 100 pages of Catcher in the Rye. I thought about going back to finish it. I wanted to see why it had been banned! Maybe I'll find out someday! LOL I agree with the poster who wrote about the Great Gatsby. I tried to read that and it did nothing for me. I wasn't the least bit interested in the story or the characters. It just didn't make me care. Just a quick note about To Kill a Mockingbird - the movie is fabulous! Maybe those who didn't like the book might appreciate the movie more. :-)

Lol when you said time to confess, I thought it was gonna be emotional. Anyways, Call of the Wild is so friggin stupid. The movie is even stupider ( I believe it was made on a kid's allowance budget).

Well I liked Catcher in the Rye because in the end you see that what you just read had to deal with psychological problems (and I like that kind of stuff). It's ok for anyone to hate it though. People's tastes differ. But the one book I CAN NOT STAND is.... How to kill a mockingbird... Yep, I was forced to read it twice and I actually let myself get below an A since I did not want to read it again. I don't know why but I could not connect with it.

clasik literature is old, with old ideas old concepts, old.... wrriters. very few actualy have modern ideas one of those is juls verne, he was an artist, i admit, but to soon hes ideas were ridiculzied(i think), try new books or dvd movies, i like movies more they show me more than a book could.

Thanks a lot for posting this. I read this book (Catcher in the Rye) and at the end of it I was actually surprised and kept wondering what the author was trying to convey. When I told this to people, they really give me bad looks. But of course I wouldn't like to generalize this for every classic book.

My least favorite book of all time is Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I hate it because it's poorly written, boring, and way too dense for a 80something page book. Took me longer to read Heart of Darkness than the entire LOTR series.