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Loved it: The book thief and The little prince, much recommended!
Hated it: wuthering heights, didn't make it through it tbh.
Afraid of: great expectations, I tried reading it at a time point in my life where I didn't understand much of the book and gave up 5 pages in. Now I'm scared of going back to it.
Conquered: The tale of two cities, quite dark and gloomy, but I loved it!

Roya, I would definitely go back to Great Expectations, especially since you have experience now with Dickens. It’s a great story.

1. Loved it Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
2. Hated it Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
3. Afraid to read it Moby-Dick or, the Whale by Herman Melville
4. Conquered it The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1 : An Experiment in Literary Investigation and vol 2 and 3 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Jillian - I did the same thing with LOTR about 6 years ago. I'd tried in high school and HATED it so much. I refused to even watch the movies.

One of my best friends LOVES the series and reads it every year. We have similar tastes and I'm a huge geek so I gave it one more try. I'd read the book and then watch the movie. I fell completely in love. I spent one whole day with Return of the King. I read the book in the morning and watched the movie in the afternoon and cried most of the day. Lol!

Now it's one of my all time faves. I've watched the movies a gazillion times and own all kinds of LOTR apparel and doodads. :D

And I'm 100% with you on Atlas Shrugged. I cannot work myself up to that one.

This is hard! So many books! :D

1. Loved It: Catch-22 and The Count of Monte Cristo (My two favorite "classics.")

2. Hated It: Tess of the D'Ubervilles (It did help me write an excellent essay for my AP Lit test, though!)

3. Afraid to Read It: Ulysses (I'm planning a trip to Ireland so James Joyce is back on my radar, but his books have never looked that interesting and I know Ulysses is his most renowned book, but it's so long. I know this is blasphemous but I'm even considering an....abridged!)

4. Conquered It: Les Misérables This book was my white whale. I'm not usually one to keep reading books I hate, but for some reason I couldn't let this book win. It took many attempts, but I finished it. I thought it was terrible, but it's done!

I'll also add The Divine Comedy to the conquered list. I didn't hate it but it was VERY hard to read. I wouldn't have made it through without Shmoop's hilarious summaries.

Ila - I also loved All Quiet on the Western Front. It's not an easy book, but it truly moved me and changed my view of the world.

I'll also agree about Lolita. Terrible.

I conquered and loved two books till now.

The Master and Margarita.
Catch-22

Catch-22 is now my most favourite modern classic. I liked everything the book offers, humour, dark humour, satire, irony, paradox . ( of life as well as war)

This is the only book which made me laugh audibly at every two sentences, so much that my little girl used to come up to me to check whether I am watching a cartoon.

This doesn’t mean that it is a comedy, it has all features above mentioned but not comedy.

I wonder at the author’s sanity to put so much craziness in one direction which may take shape of a book.

Nidhi - I agree with everything you said about Catch-22. I love that book so much. I've read it multiple times and get something new from it each time. It makes me laugh, cry, and think.

One of my best friends also loves it and we frequently send each other quotes that match many situations in life. :)

“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.��
�� Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Loved it- The Stars My Destination by Alfred Besner. Came into it totally blind, was blown away almost from the first chapter, and it kept getting better and better as each chapter escalated in its mad, wonderful, amazing plot. It ended with some of the profound and transcendental writing seen in sci fi, and despite its age, contains none of the hoary old tropes of that period, razor sharp dialouge, tight plot that goes like a horse with nutmeg up its prick, and actually very touching at places.

Hated it- Thus Spoke Zarathrustra by Freudrich Nietzsche. Abominable in every sense. Almost unreadable in places. The intellectual scribblings of a syphilic proto-fascist suspended by the loosest system of philosophical logic imaginable. Misogynistic, elitist, brutal, crude, intellectually untenable and stylistically abhorrent. Fuck Nietzsche. He sucked.

Afraid - as has been mentioned elsewhere, Joyce's Ulysses, which sits there staring at me like the monolith from 2001, and I, a scared primitive ape lumber towards it with trepidation and fear. War on Peace for same reasons, Don Quioxtie, Hegel's Phenemonology of Spirit (I started to read some of it, you've got to read every sentence about three times), Marx's Capital (although I got a fair chunk of the way through, plough through the first three agonising chapters and you'll find it brilliantly written and richly rewarding.

Conquered it- Moby Dick. I did it. I rode the white whale and I tamed it. Hard going in places, but I genuinely recommend people try. It's staggeringly written, Melvilles command of language, use of metaphor and imagery is second to none. He's able to deftly weaves ieas relating to the whaling industry (and much of capitalism from it), colonialism, Americas place in the world in that period of time, aspects of ecology and unequal power relationships, and all in a story about some guys on a boat who fail to kill a whale. He pins a massive macro epic onto a micro story of this boat, and is able to survey a vast canvass around it. There is probably one too many dissertations about the inner biology of wales for my liking, but unfortunately one has to understand the work as a totality, every bit if it, including the boring bits, works as a cumulative whole to produce a staggering effect. Give it a try, commit yourself to a certain set of pages a day maybe (say, 50-100, or 30 mins at least) and I think you'll be rewarded.

Pillsonista wrote: "This looks like fun!

1. Loved It: So many... The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch.

The former Austro-Hungarian Empire had so much literary talent that it was literally ..."


I'm coming to this thread really late, but I was impressed by your choice to get an F rather than write on The Color Purple (I hate to think how your parents reacted!) In French class in high school, we read a book called La Symphonie pastorale, which I hated. So I used my paper to trash it, ending with something like "the only thing missing is a violin playing sad music." Since my French writing was excellent, I still got an A or maybe A-. Of course, looking back on it, it may be one of many books that are more appreciated when you are older and have some life experience. I knew little of passion, guilt, faith and suffering, which were themes of the book.

Loved it: Emma, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, David Copperfield, Flowers for Algernon, The Three Musketeers,

Hated it: Wuthering Heights (everyone is dysfunctional and there is nothing appealing to me in any of the characters!)
And for those who disliked Frankenstein, or anyone actually, do NOT read, Mary Shelley's other book, The Last Man. Read it with a group last year because part of it is about a plague. Horribly overdone writing with unbelievable dialogue, paper-flat characters doing things with no motivation. Some sympathy for poor Mary Shelley who by that time had lost her husband, sister and something like 5 children, but still, it's terrible.

Afraid - Nobody believes this but I have always put off reading The Diary of Anne Frank, not wanting to deal with the Holocaust. I understand it's not really about that, so maybe I'll finally get to it. Obviously, it's a short and easy read! I have read the chunksters Les Mis, War & Peace and more but not this little one.

Conquered - Moby Dick which I surprisingly loved (it's perfectly okay to skip the whale anatomy chapters, in my opinion) and Ulysses, which I read with a group and by listening to it at the same time on audio like poetry without trying to understand it all.

Andrew - Lol! Loved your descriptions!

That is definitely how I feel approaching Ulysses! I did enjoy Don Quixote and I'm currently working on War and Peace. It's been my 2021 reading project. So far I'm still on track to finish by the end of the year.

Robin - I totally get it about Wuthering Heights. I still have friends that think Heathcliff is so "romantic." I always say "Sure. If psychopath is your thing." :p

When I was younger I used to read tons of books about the Holocaust. Then I went to the Holocaust Museum in DC and cried for basically three hours as we went through it and I haven't read anymore books about the Holocaust since then. I have read Anne Frank, but I would never read it again.

Me too... I will never read Anne Frank again, as for Ulysses... after Catch22 my next target is Ulysses which I have already abandoned three times, so wish me luck please lol.

Oh boy...I'm wondering if I should splurge on the audiobook for Ulysses as Robin suggested. I feel like I should try it just because I'm going to Ireland next year. They're so proud of him over there and I like reading culturally relevant books before a trip. I really am scared of it though.

Our group read for Dorian Gray fit in nicely for my trip as well!

I admire those who are attempting Ulysses--that is one I'm not sure I'll ever try. Years ago, I decided to read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man instead, and I really enjoyed that. I also loved the Dubliners story collection. If you change your mind, it seems like either of those would be just as good exposure before your trip, Natalie. :-)

For Ulysses, if you are reading on your own, it helps to find online sources like Sparknotes or other sites that discuss it chapter by chapter. Those will tell you what Joyce is referring to, or satirizing, etc. It’s still kind of like reading in a foreign language.

Kathleen - Thats a good suggestion. Both of those are also included with Audible Premium. I think I may start with those and see how I feel about Joyce in general.

Robin - I was reading some things online and someone suggested a Great Course series about the book to listen to in tandem. If I decide to tackle Ulysses I think I might try that. If I’m going to read it I may as well do it right the first time! 😁

Latest iteration of this for me:

Loved It: The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford - Jean Stafford
Hated It: A Bell for Adano - John Hersey
Afraid to Read It: The Mirror & the Light - Hilary Mantel (mostly due to 10+ years of anticipation + been a while since I read the prequel)
Conquered It - The Sea of Fertility - Yukio Mishima

I forgot about this thread! I need to think about this because I believe I answered it when I first joined the group and may have “conquered �� all of them by now!

Natalie wrote: "Jillian - I did the same thing with LOTR about 6 years ago. I'd tried in high school and HATED it so much. I refused to even watch the movies.

One of my best friends LOVES the series and reads it..."

I was cajoled into reading Atlas Shrugged, and only made it through with the help of a free audiobook I found on youtube. There are a few people who are missionaries for this book. I had little knowledge of what it was about. It just played in the background during my Christmas Break while I was cleaning, grading papers, and getting ready for the holidays. I did get caught up in it and gave it 5 stars, but I am definitely not a missionary for it. Once you read it you will be surprised how influential it is. You hear small references rather often even today, that I had never noticed before. I heard a newscaster just this week describe someone as "having his John Galt moment".

Robin P wrote: "Loved it: Emma, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, David Copperfield, Flowers for Algernon, The Three Musketeers,

Hated it: Wuthering Heights (everyone is dysfunctional and there is nothing a..."

About Anne Frank, honestly I do not find it a short and easy read. I taught the Broadway play version in my 8th grade English class for five years. That means I have read the play 22 times when you count all the sections! Each year I meant to read the full diary and never got through it all. Honestly, once you get to know her and have the idea of the publication, wading through every single entry just seemed unnecessary to me. This is one case where I understand printing an abridged version.

So as an end-of-the-year activity I like to revisit this thread. For the year 2021 my picks from this year would be:

1. Loved It: Little Women, A Simple Heart, Call Me Joe, Inconstant Moon, Moll Flanders, The Jungle Book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

2. Hated It: I would say strongly disliked rather than hated - The Goblin Market and Other Poems So many of you found lovely messages and meaning in this. I just had trouble seeing it.

3. Afraid to Read: Anything over 600 or 700 pages. It is such a big commitment, and I feel so busy all the time. It is happy activity, but just busy.

4. Conquered: Although I loved them I will say Moll Flanders and Little Women, because both Defoe and Alcott really know how to pack a lot of life into a book.

My reading was a disorganized hodge-podge this year. I only read what I wanted to, and my average rating was 4 stars.

Kathleen wrote: "I admire those who are attempting Ulysses--that is one I'm not sure I'll ever try. Years ago, I decided to read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man instead, and I real..."

I feel the same and did the same Kathleen.

The stories in Dubliners in particular are beautifully done! I liked A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well, but I think I liked Dubliners even better.

I do like enriching my experience and getting deeper with outside materials sometimes, especially ones that help me understand the culture and world a writer comes from.

And footnotes and endnotes can be extremely helpful, though I prefer to read a passage first and make sense of it before I hand myself over to notes that interpret for me. I don't mind very difficult books. I quite liked The Wasteland for instance, though I suppose it says something about my reading tastes that I liked The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock better.

I don't feel too moved to read books that I need a Rosetta Stone to read even at the most basic level. If I can't make heads or tails of anything in a book without notes, that might not be a book I will love. I haven't tried Ulysses, but I've seen excerpts, and I fear it will be like that for me. I guess it's in my afraid to read it (and perhaps will never read it) category.

Greg wrote: "Kathleen wrote: "I admire those who are attempting Ulysses--that is one I'm not sure I'll ever try. Years ago, I decided to read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in..."

Greg, I discovered Prufrock this year and agree it's wonderful! I'll be reading The Wasteland this year, and it's good to know I too may not like it as much. We'll see!

And I think what I like best is finding notes/endnotes/references when they aren't at all necessary. I did that with Dubliners--looked up pictures of the place before reading each story (will be even better to GO--yay Natalie!).

Kathleen wrote: "And I think what I like best is finding notes/endnotes/references when they aren't at all necessary. I did that with Dubliners--looked up pictures of the place before..."

Me too!

Kathleen wrote: "Greg, I discovered Prufrock this year and agree it's wonderful! I'll be reading The Wasteland this year, and it's good to know I too may not like it as much. We'll see!"

Well, the structure is very fractured and thus more difficult, and it refers to other works frequently and quite obliquely. Still, it has the gorgeous lyricism of Prufrock, and I was able to understand many parts without notes, even though the notes expanded upon my understanding. Other parts are a bit opaque without knowing all the references intimately. I really did like it though, just not quite as much as Prufrock.

One interesting tidbit: I read somewhere that Eliot's early drafts of The Wasteland were more traditional and less fractured in structure, but his friend Ezra Pound convinced him after reading early drafts to make it more "modern" in structure. If that's really true, I really wish I could see those original drafts! :)

Greg wrote: "One interesting tidbit: I read somewhere that Eliot's early drafts of The Wasteland were more traditional and less fractured in structure, but his friend Ezra Pound convinced him after reading early drafts to make it more "modern" in structure. If that's really true, I really wish I could see those original drafts! :)"

That's fascinating, Greg! And frustrating too. :-)

In 2021 specifically for classics

Loved it: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - surprisingly feminist, also Helen with the High Hand - An Idyllic Diversion, True Grit

Hated it: The Bostonians - surprisingly anti-feminist!

Conquered: The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
I read it with a classics group and found it intermittently amusing but way too long.

In 2021 for classics, I

Loved it - authors discovered more than specific books - Anthony Trollope, Naguib Mahfouz, Elizabeth Taylor, Eileen Chang

I didn't particularly hate anything, but my reading experience of some of Georgette Heyer's mysteries were uneven - enjoyed The Unfinished Clue and tolerated Death in the Stocks and Why Shoot a Butler?.

Conquered it - I am intimidated by Booker Prize winners, but I managed to complete 2 this year: Possession which I loved and Offshore.

I love that thought, Carolien, that you loved the authors you discovered. I have had much the same experience and marked quite a few of them to attempt to read their entire oeuvre.

Andrew wrote: "Loved it- The Stars My Destination by Alfred Besner. Came into it totally blind, was blown away almost from the first chapter, and it kept getting better and better as each chapter escalated in its..."

What do you think it is that makes so many important writers feel a debt to Nietzsche? From reading about him it would seem your impression is true.

For my brief reading 2022 reading challenge:

Loved it: From the Earth to the Moon and Circling the Moon Two parts of the same novel, often published separately. New translations of Verne's works that restore one of Verne's best satires to its original glory.

Hated it: The Da Vinci Code. Hate is really too strong of a word for the way I feel about this mish mash of 1D characters and 6th grade prose. It's just kind of blah, but I couldn't wait for it to end.

Afraid to read it: Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. I read Jerusalem by Alan Moore back in 2016 and chapter 24 was written in the style of FW. That chapter was only 49 pages long, but it took me 2 days to read it. I took it off my TBR list.

Conquered it: Sleeping Beauties by Stephen and Owen King. Since 2017, I've started this book 3 times and never made it thru the first chapter. In 2022, I decided that I would make it thru and I did. I had to take a break at page 274, but I finished it. Both Owen King and Joe Hill have "mommy" issues and I've removed both from my TBR list.

From my reading of classics:

Loved them (my top 5 fave books): Lolita, Moby Dick; or, The Whale, Mother London, Atlas Shrugged, The Count of Monte Cristo

Hated them (hate is NOT too strong a term this time): The Stand (1990), The Catcher in the Rye. King's 1990 vanity project ruined one of his very best books and Holden Caulfield's a whiny bitch who should've just dorked Sally the prostitute and shut up.

Afraid to read it: same as above

Conquered them: War and Peace, Les Misérables, Don Quixote: The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha (Parts 1 & 2), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Tom Sawyer's Companion (it took me 7 tries to get thru it. Never again.)

Squire wrote: " King's 1990 vanity project..."

What was that?

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Squire wrote: " King's 1990 vanity project..."

What was that?"

The Stand was published it 1978. It was King's first masterpiece IMO. In 1990, he rewrote the book to bring it into his Dark Tower mythology. I don't doubt that a lot of the additions to the book were written in the 70s, but not all of them were. But the book went from a masterpiece to being an unfocused, sloppily edited mess that brings it into the DT mythology.

Fine. He's KIng; he's entitled to such a vanity project.

But he took the original work out of print. So, a lot of readers will never know how great the book once was.

Interestingly enough, In Wizard and Glass, Roland's ka-tet travels back to Topeka post-Captain Trips 1986, not 1996. Which means that the original book DOES exist in King's multiverse. But King wants people to remember the 1990 version, not the masterpiece he ruined.

The Stand (1990) is the only King book I hate.

It's kinda like Kubrick's The Shining is a masterpiece of cinema and King's TV movie is meh. At least he can't take that movie out of print.