Classics: The Ones I've DNF'd (or wished I had)

Classics overrated or still considered must reads?

CLASSICS OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL

When I got back into reading, I’d been out of college for a couple of years and thought I was done with literary fiction. I’d had enough of Schindler’s List, 1984, and The Scarlet Letter. It wasn’t personal. The plots all felt full of doom & gloom, which was exactly the mood I was in every time I had an assignment due. Book reports, essays, and literary analysis simply took the fun out of reading, and I refused to fall into that rut again.

STARTING A JOURNEY

Fast forward a few years. My reading goals were hitting their peak, and my feed started to flood with posts about the top classics I should read. I was in a different head space. School was a distant memory, and I’d realized that I’d only read a fraction of the classics out there. I mean, I hadn’t even read Romeo & Juliet or Hamlet, which are staples in middle school and high school TV shows! Plus, it had been a long time since a pretentious nobody tried to sell me on how reading classics was the only way to go. *major eyerolls* After much deliberation with my husband (who’s pretty much read them all), I decided that I would start a side quest of reading classics hoping to understand what all the hype was about. My kids were psyched too because they kept hearing about classics and had no idea what that meant. Mind you, Nancy Drew is a classic to them.
*more major eyerolls*

To start my side quest, I needed an incentive. Ever heard of Been There Done That? They create posters to document journeys - movies watched, books read, desserts eaten, whiskies or beers or coffees tried. They had a scratch off poster that listed the 100 most epic reads of all-time. I had to have it. It was literally a list of the classics to try. It was a good starting point and visual for the girlies like me who love checking off that box on their to do list. Currently, it hangs framed in a hallway just outside my personal library documenting my slow going journey of read classics through the years.

November 2023

100 Most Epic Reads of a Lifetime

The poster remains a huge feat that I’ll hopefully finish in MY lifetime, but for now, it is a source of inspiration and motivation.

By now, I’ve read perhaps a few dozen classics. Some good, some bad, some I don’t care about enough to remember. When I talked myself into reading classics, I thought I’d attempt a couple, hate them, and move on. Boy, was I wrong. It turns out that I can see the deeper meaning behind classics now that I’m an adult. They aren’t (all) sad stories about poverty, fear, and loss. They have hidden meanings of love, friendship, and power. Sometimes, they’re a mix of all of the above, and those often leave a mark. I’m impressed that I’ve learned to love so many of them because I genuinely thought I wouldn’t. For years, my husband has had to endure my literary analysis and interpretation on classics that he read back in college. Bless his soul.

Amidst the fantastic and moving classics, there have been a few duds. And by duds I mean books that outright drove me mad. No matter the high praise or recommendations, different media types, and multiple attempts to come back to them, I could never finish these books. At first, I felt like a failure because I would never be able to count them as done on my poster. Then, I realized forget the poster, I’d know that I couldn’t finish them and it would forever irk me. Finally, I started to make peace with DNF’ing classics like I do with any other genre. If it was ok to give myself grace when I didn’t enjoy a book in my wheelhouse, it was more than ok to do so with a classic. Plus, I decided if I gave it a good try and DNF’d it anyway I’d still scratch it off my poster. Win win! It took a while, but I’m officially ok to DNF any book that doesn’t bring me joy in some way.

NO READ LIST

The next few titles are classics that were given many chances, but they simply didn’t make the cut.

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Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes

Is he insane? Delusional? Why does this feel like it isn’t happening as he says? Why does it feel like I’m in the same scene from two hours ago? Does he even have a maiden waiting for him? Does he really even have a sword? When first starting this book, I had no previous knowledge of the premise, except that it was a Spanish novel by Cervantes from the 17th century and Sancho Panza comes up on TV. Curiosity about him and Don Quixote is what really drove me in its direction. Started with the paperback and when that failed miserably, I went with the audiobook. It was a 20+ hour book, where I got to about 5 hours in before realizing I kept asking myself the same questions over and over. Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to look up the book, only to find out that I was right. He was delusional. Sancho Panza was his squire that knew he was mentally ill and went along with this schemes anyway. Dulcinea wasn’t even….The point is that when I realized I was right continuing seemed pointless. The writing was tough for me to enjoy.

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Little Woman by Louisa May Alcott

There was so much yarn!!! Need I say more?

It wasn’t a bad book, but it was incredibly dull. I went the audiobook route here too after not being able to get far on the paperback. I made it to chapter 13 before deciding it probably wasn’t going to get any better.

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Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

This book popped up on my radar as a recommendation from one of my favorite TV shows Younger. In that show, the main character Liza is a 40 year old pretending to be 26, so she can work as a publishing assistant in New York City. A lot of authors and books were mentioned, and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart came up as a notable mention on the classics. Other recommendations from the show had gone over well, so this was one more added to the tbr. When I finally got the paperback, I started reading it and felt that it had a lot of potential. The main character, warrior Okonkwo, was so focused on not being like his father that it was becoming an overcorrection. The first couple of chapters were interesting, but it progressively felt like it droned on. I picked up the book at least half a dozen times and each time never made it past page 100. No one thing ever made me stop reading the book other than I could not get through it. Eventually, it became ok to shelf it indefinitely.

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Sometimes DNF’ing isn’t about something being inherently bad (which is subjective anyways) but rather a book that never quite hits right. In the end, these books come back as memories of classics I couldn’t finish, but I’m indifferent to them.

WISH I HADN’T

The next few titles though are classics that I wish I had never finished reading because thinking of them still irks me.

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Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Oh dear, I wish I’d never started this book. After finishing Animal Farm, the kids and I were excited about getting into classics. We’d gotten through A Christmas Carol by Dickens though it was a bit of a tough read, but we (I mean me) thought another Dickens novel would be fine. I should have known better.

Oliver Twist is about an orphan who lived a hard criminal life after escaping what passed for an orphanage at the time. He endured non-stop hardships. It was a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. Eventually, the book does have a happy ending, sort of, but getting there was no picnic. The writing was dense, and it felt never-ending. Scenes droned on. The bad guys never seemed to get what they deserved. Poor Oliver. By the end, we were listening to it on 2.0x and hoping for the best. Needless to say that when my kids are asked what was the worst book they’ve ever read, Oliver Twist is 100% the only answer you’ll get.

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Too sad and unnecessarily uncomfortable. And that is saying something considering I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird and The Color Purple, which made me squirm AND moved me to tears. This book had merit with its challenging themes, and Huck Finn was a loveable character despite his flaws. However, you spend the whole first part of the book horrified by his father’s actions but also kind of wondering why he stays, until he doesn’t. Then, enter Jim. And Tom Sawyer. Oh boy, he’s quite the unlovable one. The pace of the book was odd with large chunks feeling like they were lulls and others were full of constant chaos. It may have been a bit of the language barrier that threw the pace off for me. Plus, the ending felt expected but unsatisfying because he essentially rides off into the sunset. I mean, I guess I can follow the whole wild stallion unwilling to be tamed vibe, but it was too on the nose for me.

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Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Do NOT get me started on this book. Since the movie has come out, I’ve given my husband several earfuls about why this movie is flawed, the mainstream pitch on this book is a complete lie, and how this is another man’s delusional fantasy. Ok, since we’re here, let me give you the same earful. First of all, Wuthering Heights is NOT a romance novel. It is not “like Pride and Prejudice” or a star-crossed lovers book like they say of “Romeo & Juliet” (still haven’t read this one). It is about an orphan boy who grows up with the young lady of the family he works for (technically he is an adopted brother but they don’t treat him well in the family). They are good friends growing up, and yes, I admit that you get an inkling that she felt deeply connected to him like he felt for her when she was 12 years old. But one summer at the Linton’s reminded her that she was a young lady in the late 18th/early 19th century. Women then were only as good as the social standing they procured by marrying well. A life of wealth and luxury is hard to pass for anyone, let alone an adolescent child. She spends years still caring for Heathcliff, but she does slowly erode the friendship by treating him poorly and continuing on to marry into the Linton’s. She did want to marry well-off with the intention to gain social standing and wealth for herself, but also for her family, which included Heathcliff. He obviously doesn’t take it well and goes off to better himself and returns a complete monster meddling with the lives of their children as a way to get this so-called “ultimate revenge”. This a dark, psychological thriller. Really this book is about a whiny child who felt like the girl he liked didn’t like him back anymore, so he lost it. Instead of mourning the loss and moving on to someone new like a rational person would, he came back to ruin the lives of the next generation of two families to feel vindicated. But surprise, surprise, he doesn’t feel satisfaction when his revenge is complete. So, great, he ruined everyone’s lives over some scorned teen love and now he decides he can finally let go and dies?? Great! Just freaking great! Like, how is this even a romance? She cared for him, sure, but she was 12!!!!! She treated him like crap for 5 years before finally being married off and having a child AND dying shortly after! I mean….I can’t. The point is that this is barely a romance, definitely not a love to romanticize or even worth remembering. I can appreciate that the dramatics can make for a good screenplay, but the book itself was 300+ pages of a bitter man complaining about the circumstances of life and blaming his adopted sister for 100% of it.

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Classics are classics for a reason. The meaning behind many of these stories are incredibly beautiful and powerful. I lament not reading more classics growing up. However, I am thankful that I do get the opportunity to read them now as an adult that can understand them more thoroughly. Though, it has become apparent that as easy as some are to read and understand, others are weighed down by the language of their time, translations, heavy and redundant prose, and characters and themes that did not age well. Others are simply books that don’t align with my interests, which is perfectly ok. It happens all the time when reading current titles too.

My closing statement for today is give classics a chance, if you haven’t already. These books may surprise you. They aren’t all boring school books. Many will take you on adventures beyond your wildest dreams or treacherous journeys. And while the above mentioned are on my ‘No Read List’, they still may be of interest to you. So give them a try. Any book.