Not-so-Classic Classics

[CCL]

Inspired by Nausicaa, and by Grandma Next in the Thursday Next series who has to read the 10 most boring works of fiction before she can die, I'm setting up this thread.
The question is, which "classic" work of fiction do you fail to see the appeal of? What is your "Not-so-classic" Classic?

I'll start off with The Count of Monte Cristo. Utter dreck. I kept reading hoping at least he would exact some revenge at the end (thus making my toil somewhat worthwhile) but no. Very boring.

Anyone else?

[hepcat]

Thomas Hardy could carry on about the moors for pages. And Great Expectations really read like a man being paid by the word. Dickens had some crazy plots, but with all his sentences being paragraph long, I found him aggravating to read.

(OT: I love the Thursday Next series. )

[Lucy]

Hep, I never could get into Thomas Hardy, in part because he was depressing. I love a lot of classics -- I Jane Austen -- but not Hardy.
I loathed "Paradise Lost." A pox on Milton, it just bored me to tears.

[erin_dye]

And I love Thomas Hardy because he is depressing. I have yet to make it through a book by Jane Austen.

[CCL]

I read Hardy's Jude the Obscure while I was on vacation years ago. I don't know what I was thinking! But, generally, I love Hardy - particulary Tess and Far from the Madding Crowd.
Another "non-favourite" that comes to mind is Middlemarch - George Eliot could have used a good editor on that one. Parts were really good but it dragged quite a bit. Her book Mill on the Floss, on the other hand, is shorter and heart-breakingly good.

[nausicaa]

I kept reading hoping at least he would exact some revenge at the end (thus making my toil somewhat worthwhile) but no.

But he did! And it was good. (Did we read the same book..or were you just so impatient with his Ten Year Plan that you stopped partway? )

(Great thread, btw. )

ETA: Adventures of Tom Sawyer, anyone?

loathed "Paradise Lost." A pox on Milton, it just bored me to tears

ETA2: Noooo!! :cry You wound me. Milton's poetry is divine. (Hey look, Ma - I made a punny! )

[CCL]

But he did! And it was good. (Did we read the same book..or were you just so impatient with his Ten Year Plan that you stopped partway? )

(Great thread, btw. )

Huh. It's been a long time since I've read the book. Perhaps I just found the revenge unsatisfying? Regardless, the book as a whole is crap.

[pikachu]

We had to read Lord of the Flies in high school and I totally wasn't feeling the love for that book. I thought it was stupid and boring.

I liked some of the other classics we had to read, like A Tale of Two Cities, Romeo and Juliet and Alas, Babylon.

[Lucy]

By the by -- I knew we'd had a thread on literary classics before, although it was a bit different from this one.
But here it is: Lit 101

[Broadway]

One book that I'm surprised I never had to read in my 12+ years of English Lit schooling was "The Great Gatsby." I remember being so puzzled by the apparent misstep in my professors' syllabi ( ) that I picked it up to read it on my own. Blech. Hated it. Perhaps I should pick it up again and give it another try?

Another classic that I really didn't care for was Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" (or any Hemingway, for that matter.) Just far too droning and boring for my tastes, I guess.