If not for its significance as one of the world's first written autobiographies, St. Augustine's Confessions has little to no value as a piece of classical literature. It's depiction of Roman life leaves it a prized historical document, but the current praise given to Augustine's work is incredibly overrated. Augustine's cries for spiritual nourishment come off as pretentious and petulant, and his lamentations for the "horrible sins" of getting laid and stealing from a pear-tree seem more amusing than sympathizing.
Confessions is also largely uninteresting. It does not compare works such the The Iliad or Paradise Lost which could be considered boring for its lengthy narrative and archaic dialogue, but at least there is something happening. In Confessions, nothing is happening. Augustine's tale of conversion isn't motivated by anything tragic like a death in the family or a horrible crime, but by feelings of angst and guilt for going through the motions of a typical human-being.
It's also grating to hear him complain about his studies and credit the Christian god for raising him and not his own parents. The latter in particular is especially condescending when he proclaims in a passage that he did not receive goodness directly from his family, but only for God since all goodness supposedly only comes from God. The climactic conversion process is underwhelming too. All he did was see a group of people, burst into tears, claim to hear children singing take and read, look at a single appealing passage of the bible and declare it sufficient enough to convert to Christianity.
For all we know, perhaps Augustine was a product of his time. Maybe people those days were just so hungry some new kind of spiritual nourishment that they were ashamed of their sexual practices and miniscule crimes. Nevertheless, from a modern perspective, Augustine's complaints and lamentations seem childish, and his constant crediting of the Christian god is zealous and over-bearing. Confessions is quite simply one of the most boring pieces of classical literature out there, not worth your time.
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