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Although I did read the abriged children's book version- did anyone ever read those Illustrated book classics with the picture on every other page?
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<p>YES! I loved those! Reading those as a kid (along with Wishbone) was how I knew the plot to every classic book we've read in high school before actually reading them.</p>
<p>Their Eyes Were Watching God... I finished that one, but oh man, it's probably my least favorite book that I've read for an English class.</p>
<p>I loved a Tale of Two Cities. You guys are crazy.</p>
<p>unless there's someone on cc who reads as much philosophy as i do (which would be quite obscene), this one beats all of you wrt difficulty by a million miles:</p>
<p>a thousand plateaus by gilles deleuze and felix guattari.</p>
<p>i've plowed through 600 page tomes by zizek and derrida and many other crazy dense authors, but even that was too much for me.</p>
<p>Ah, I hate dialect, too. We just finished TEWWG in class, and I can confidently say that it was one of my least favorite books. </p>
<p>My issue with A Tale of Two Cities was mostly that I hated Lucy with a passion. What a card-board cut-out of a character! She was completely faultless--and completely spineless as well. No depth, nothing interesting about her.</p>
<p>Brave New World and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The first few pages of Brave New World were SO BORING so I couldn't get through it, and I picked up the book anticipating good stuff too. Perks of being a wallflower is just plain emo and overrated.</p>
<p>The Fountainhead, I had to force myself to finish it..it was painful.
Great Expectations...It was horrible..just horrible..
Little Women :(
Anything by the Bronte sister or Jane Austin...is it because I'm a dude?</p>
<p>You dislike Jane Austen? It must be a guy thing. I can kind of understand the Bronte sisters thing though. </p>
<p>Normally I'm pretty good at getting through books, even when they're not all that great, but A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul pretty much killed me. I tried, but once I got about a 1/4 of the way in I just couldn't bring myself to continue.</p>
<p>oh gosh, I seem to have this peculiar habit of only finishing books that I really really like. So it's more a question of...what books have I finished? ;) I read quite a lot though, and once I start a book I really like I find it hard to do anything else, so I'd finish it in a couple sittings. </p>
<p>Never got into Little Women, though. Started it in 7th grade... But I LOVED Jane Eyre and have read that multiple times.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Great Expectations. Charles Dickens got paid by the word and this book is evidence of why doing this is NOT a good idea.</p></li>
<li><p>We. George Orwell definitely made an improvement upon Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel when he wrote 1984.</p></li>
<li><p>Lord of the Flies. Gross, unpleasant, slow-moving, Please, dear God, don't do it to Piggy.</p></li>
<li><p>The Count of Monte Cristo. Very good, but in small doses. Methinks the book could have been equally good had it been about 400 pages shorter.</p></li>
<li><p>Crime and Punishment. Once again, the book is good, but it could have been much shorter.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Haha I liked Great Expectations...I often feel like I'm one of the only people who do. Dickens is a verbose writer but Great Expectations was written as a serial novel, so every chapter at least had some action in it. Plus I'm a sucker for cliches. I later read Oliver Twist and I found that more painful because of its completely uninteresting protagonist.</p>
<p>I couldn't finish EMMA. Judging from that book, Jane Austen could've been my sleep therapist. I hated the main character and the book didn't seem to have enough plot for its long length. I did finish Pride & Prejudice though - maybe Mr. Darcy kept me interested.</p>
<p>Another one I never finished was Harry Potter 5 - I've been meaning to for a while. I honestly didn't like it very much. I liked 6 though, oddly enough.</p>
<p>Oh man. I always feel bad when I can't get through or really dislike books... here are mine:</p>
<p>Ivanhoe
Wicked (It's so SLOOOOWWWW!)
A Tale of Two Cities (did this freshman year and read it, but disliked it)
A Series of Unfortunate Events (Yeah, I know. Someone told me to read them, and even though they're written for twelve-year-olds, I still couldn't be bothered to finish one)
Siddhartha (interesting, but DENSE)
Le Mur (Sartre. I've read Les Jeux Sont Faits twice, but Le Mur evades me.)</p>
<p>Books I like that a lot of people don't:</p>
<p>Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Sound and the Fury
The Sun Also Rises
Things Fall Apart
Lord of the Rings series</p>
<p>oooh, wicked is slow. I've heard time and time again that it's a great novel and a great play (in fact, my friend who is obsessed was the one to give me the book) but I could hardly get past the first few pages of background. I don't know why, but books with many pages and larger print are easier to read than those with few pages and small print. I guess it creates the illusion that I'm reading faster.</p>
<p>For some reason I could never finish the first Lord of the Rings book in the trilogy (the one after the Hobbit).</p>
<p>Another book is Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens and It by Stephen King. For both of those I managed to make it to the fifth or sixth page before shoving them aside :p.</p>
<p>The Grapes of Wrath was actually part of my class' 11th grade curriculum, but we were so strapped for time before the AP exam we just never finished it. I have a pretty good feeling I can successfully live my life without ever reading it.</p>
<p>Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse: I started during second semester but it's really just one of those books you have to devote some time to.</p>