Vanity Fair, and I did actually throw it across the room when I finished it. It was assigned reading for a college class, so I didn't have the option of just not reading it. If I had, I would have just put it down and gotten on with my life.

Why did I hate it? Well, this was a long time ago, but as I recall --

• I was studying 19th century British fiction at the time, and my reading list included Dickens, the Brontes, etc. In my humble opinion, Thackeray is a second-tier writer compared to [at least some of] his contemporaries, and he was just suffering by comparison. You can't read Bleak House one week, Vanity Fair the next, and not notice a difference.
• Becky Sharp sucks. Period, the end.
• I didn't like anyone else, either.