bradcymru
Favorite Answer
The Great Gatsby...absolutely mind numbing
silver.graph
I think anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald is incredibly overrated. He was a prole with a lyrical prose style and a very strong attachment to other people's money. And...this makes me feel incredibly guilty, because I rever Russian culture...but I find practically every long Russian novel before Nabokov's "King, Queen, Knave" just about unreadable. Narrative pacing is not their strong suit. I sympathize with the non-fans of "Dr. Zhivago" below, as I found it particularly unreadable and have never even seen the whole movie version because it put me to sleep every time.
BlueManticore
I was able to read and did enjoy "Moby Dick", mainly because I do like classic sea stories such "Treasure Island" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", but another classic I just could not get into was "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Faubert.
flamingointhegrave
The "classic" books that have wasted my time most egregiously would have to be:
Remembrance of Things Past
War and Peace
Moby Dick
Siddhartha
The Stranger
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
sgmaluv
Anything by Jane Austen. I cannot get through her books for the life of me, and I've tried several.
I had to do a book report on "Emma" when I was a junior in hs, and couldn't get through the book...so I tried the movie with Gwynneth Paltrow. Fell asleep twice.
You know it's bad when you can't even get through the movie!