Top Ten Tuesday - Books I Disliked/Hated but Am Really Glad I Read

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish in June 2010.  It has since moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

Books I Disliked/Hated but Am Really Glad I Read

I will say that all of these books are classics.  As other English Lit majors can attest, we have to read A LOT of books; not all of them are the things we'd choose to read.

I, myself, have never been a big classics girl; I like my literature contemporary for the most part.  Of course, there are contemporary "classics" and some "classics" that I love, so it's all subjective.  But below are definitely 5 books I disliked when reading, but am glad I did.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - Focusing on a pair of downtrodden ranch hands during the Great Depression, there is a lot of themes going on in this book, talking about the American Dream, loneliness, and how people ostracize themselves from one another with hatred.  I felt the book was boring and the end, what happened to poor Lennie, the whole circumstances around Lennie in fact, just made me hate the book.

Moby-Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville -  Beautiful imagery and symbolism showing the struggle of man against nature and the destructive drive of their own ego.

But wooh boy was this tedious to read.  TEDIOUS.  Too long, much too long.  I get it, Ahab is searching for The White Whale and it is his life's mission, but I don't need to go on the whole journey.

Paradise Lost by John Milton - I read this in my Catholicism and Literature class, and wooh boy was it intense.  I have never read the Bible in it's entirety from cover to cover, but it felt like I almost was when reading through this epic poem (it's a POEM guys). 

But the importance of this piece, especially utilizing the events/characters of the Bible to critique the monarchy of England at the time, is undeniable.  But it is intense for sure.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - I understand the importance of examining Pip's moral maturity, but I really didn't care.  I felt this book was boring, and a waste of my time. I guess I feel like I couldn't connect with this book.

I've read other "rags to riches" stories that I've liked much more, so this one just isn't for me.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - I am sticking to the film from 2012 for this one.  I have never read a longer book, nor a book that spends so much time describing a building or a park.  It's beautiful and speaks to the greed of men, etc., etc. But it is too long.

It rambles all over the place, with Hugo sometimes interrupting the narrative by inserting himself, and there is just too many "lucky" breaks and too many "unhappy" coincidences for me to really have enjoyed this 1,500 page (YES that many pages) book.

So there you have it, 5 books I disliked/hated, but still happy I read.  For me, the reason I'm happy to have read these is that they are literary classics and I have learned a lot from studying them.  But man did I hate reading them.

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