The award for Classic novel which I should have really read a long time ago goes to Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
The first two characters are introduced separately and thoroughly. This is very important to me. If a book starts by introducing a dozen different individuals and organisations by name without any explanation of who they are, I will fail to differentiate between them throughout the entire book. This spoils my enjoyment, understandably. In Lord Of The Flies, we get good introductions for the first two (and most important) characters, but then it falls apart a bit, as all the other characters pile in. As a result, most of them ended up being represented in my head as faceless filler material. Given the content of the book, this may be intentional.
There’s a lot that could be said about this book, but it’s been said already. Unfortunately most of it has been said by schoolkids, who often get pushed into reading this by their English teachers. Look elsewhere on the Internet if you are interested in cheap laughs.
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