Hot on the tails of admitting that I read Twilight and liked it, I thought I'd make a topic announcing that I didn't like Shakespeare all that much and he's still not my absolute favorite playwright of all time ever.

In high school I wondered if we weren't just forced to read his stuff because it's old.

I did like his sonnets, though. And, I just happened to get into a life situation where I simultaneously read King Lear to see if there was any nudge-winks to a mythological figure by a similar name, and Cordelia's "can't heave my heart into my throat" just hit me. But I wish I liked Shakespeare more, because all the smart people who just "get it" do recognize that he's the greatest writer in the history of written language and everybody should worship and honor his works.

Haha, you are just being a crazy rebel up in here!  I'm not the biggest fan of Shakespeare- I can recognize his talent and his contribution to the written word, but he's not my favorite choice of classic author. Although we ready Macbeth my senior year and I surprised myself by loving it. Really looking forward to the new adaptation with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.

I wish I liked George R Martin more. I feel like I need to duck when I mention this on the internet. I really wanted to like A Song of Ice and Fire (or is it the other way around?) but I just couldn't get into it. I want to be in on the fun club of fans! Maybe fantasy epics just aren't my jam.

And while I'm hating on authors, I'll just go ahead and say that I don't get the fuss about Fitzgerald or the Great Gatsby.

I really wish I liked Dickens more. I read Great Expectations at school to a backdrop of my mum moaning about how much she disliked him, and actually quite enjoyed it. So I made a point of going to the library and getting out more Dickens... and I couldn't get on with any of them. I still haven't managed to put my finger on the difference between them, but I couldn't even finish any of the others.

I also wanted to like Thackerey and Vanity Fayre, having enjoyed the TV adaptation (not the Reece Witherspoon film, an older version) and a lot of other novels of the same period, but couldn't stand the writing style. The way he kept talking directly to the reader just threw me out of the story every few pages. Especially when he started saying that I had to bear with him for the next few chapters because they were a bit dull...

I also wish I like Shakespeare more. For writers, he is someone whose works should be read. Unfortunately, I don't like him or his works. All those plays based on his works have really good reviews, too! I just don't want to watch them.

I think that I have not actually read most of the books by people who are considered great authors. I read one by Hemingway, and didn't care for that, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, and pretty much struggled my way through that one, too.
Shakespeare is just too much work to enjoy reading with the old English wordage, and having to decipher things as I go along to even understand what he is writing about.
One writer that I did really like was Edna Ferber. I read Giant, Cimmaron, and something else by her, and enjoyed all of them. 

Another vote for Shakespeare and Dickens here. Actually, lots of "old" writers would make my list. It's not that I hate them, by any means, but I don't tend to read them for pleasure purposes. It's usually for school or because I feel like I SHOULD read them, but not necessarily because I simply enjoy the works and want more on my own.