Don Quixote: I know this is considered a delightful comedic classic, but I hate this kind of cringe comedy. For me, the "joke" played out quickly and then there were still hundreds of pages to struggle through and emphasis on the struggle.
Crime and Punishment: I thought I hated Russian literature until I read Tolstoy. It turned out I love Tolstoy, so I happily turned to Dostoevsky in the hopes that I would love him too. Nope. Just Tolstoy. I hated this book.
Hunger: I found this book on a list of under-rated classics, but the best thing about it was that it was short.
Gone With the Wind: The movie is an (admittedly problematic) fave, but the book? Scarlett O'Hara is a total grade-A asshole but Vivien Leigh makes it compelling on screen. I just rooted for the Scarlett in the book to get her comeuppance.
Of Mice and Men: This one is less on the braggy side and more on the pop-culture reference understanding side.
The Catcher in the Rye: This one even more on the pop-culture side. Why does popular culture think the world is so invested in the narratives of Sad Alienated Boys?
Heart of Darkness: Being able to drop a pretentious allusion to this Joseph Conrad classic is literally the only reward for reading it.
Into the Wild: I enjoy having read this so I can rant about how much I hate it to anyone who tries to tell me that Christopher McCandless was anything other than a dude who deserved exactly what he got.
The DaVinci Code: This was not a good book, for me, but it was a cultural phenomenon and I'm glad I read it at the same time everyone else was.
Butterfly Boy: This was a book club pick and while I really appreciated getting the perspective of a man who is both gay and Latino, because it's not a kind of voice I experience very often, I didn't actually like reading it.
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