You're missing out.
There is some toss out there, but Austen is great, and the Brontes and Dickens can be great a fair amount of the time, too.

I've never really understood the "relevance" complaint. What does "relevance" entail, and would count as relevant? Why is it a virtue? Isn't there at least as much virtue in being presented with, and getting your head around, something unfamiliar and non-relevant?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 15:15, 2 replies)

Interesting point
I suppose what I mean by irrelevant is that I had no sense of connection to the characters or the settings. I really didn't care about the characters, to my (then) fourteen-year-old self they were irrelevant to my life.
Is there virtue in getting my head around something unfamiliar and non-relevant? Yes, there is! However, I found it difficult probably because of the tedious nature of the writing and that I couldn't identify (and therefore empathise) with the characters.
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 15:53, closed)

My hunch is that your school experience poisoned the well;
which is not to say that with a different teacher, you'd have loved everything. But if your first experience is not so good, it can really bugger up anything subsequent.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 17:49, closed)

*Stands on desk*...

"Oh Captain, My Captain!"
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Thu 5 Jan 2012, 18:21, closed)

Ooh!
Like the sig - should also read 'Yeah, but it made top post'!
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 19:36, closed)

I have tried many times to enjoy Dickens.
He was far too long-winded for me to ever enjoy any of it. Same with Nathaniel Hawthorne and "The Scarlet Letter"- a worse pile of old wank I have never encountered.

That said, Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" are very readable, and they were written on 1897 and 1818, respectively. So it's not just because that was the style of the period- it was because Dickens and Hawthorne were shit.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:00, closed)

I have to admit that I'm not such a huge Dickens fan as all that.
There're times when he plainly was just being a hack. Yet I'm not sure I buy the readability objection. Granted his reputation - and not only in English (Dostoyevsky was influenced by him, for example) it's hard to sustain the idea that his writing is poor.

Hawthorne is someone with whom I'm not at all familiar. I love Melville, though, and I believe they were neighbours - so that's close...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 17:52, closed)