Isn’t that how we got No More Dead Dogs? (Which I haven’t read, but liked the title).
May I include books so bad I refused to finish? Confederacy of Dunces comes to mind. Catch-22. And 3 by Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49, Mason Dixon Line, Vineland. (I will not try any others by him).
My daughters are still students, still have to finish books they hate. All 3 hated Lord of the Flies, and Cather in the Rye. I’d put them in a tie for most overrated ‘literary’ books of the last century. Why can’t students be assigned something by Willa Cather?
Upthread someone mentioned Cormac McCarthy is best living American author. Agreed.
^ That was me… Agree too about Willa Cather. My Antonia is one of my favorite books. Cather in the Rye in your post must have been a Freudian slip 
Back when MegaCorp was helping me earn my million mile frequent flyer status, I used to travel with paperbacks. Confederacy of Dunces got left in a seat back pocket, and I could not think of one reason to replace it.
I agree with Confederacy of Dunces, Lord of the Flies, and Catcher in the Rye. Especially Catcher in the Rye - there are definitely much better books that our kids could be reading.
@MomofJandL I’m going to have to google NMDD’s!
I loathed My Antonia when I had to read it in 9th grade. I also loathed Catcher in the Rye. Lord of the Flies I found kind of mesmerizing and of course creepy - I didn’t read it for school though.
My kid had the year of death in fourth grade. The Cay, The Bridge to Teribithia, Pearl Buck’s The Big Wave, even Poe’s “The Raven” (which he loved). And for good measure Tuck Everlasting.
“The year of death in fourth grade.” LOL
I just remembered The Red Pony. Good grief, that was a depressing and morbid book. Didn’t the kid cut the head off of a bird in the first chapter or so for no reason that I remember?
And there was The Pearl. Yuck.
My daughters (different ages) had a unit on Japan in third grade. The teacher read, “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.” Either at the time or a few years later, my older daughter told me that she had gotten very afraid of getting leukemia because of that story. She probably became very afraid of nuclear weapons also. And one of the fourth-grade teachers (in a team-taught classroom) declined to read out loud the chapter from “Bridge to Terabithia” in which a character dies, because she had witnessed a child dying the same way when she was young. I wish I could have protected my children from the Sadako experience; by fourth grade, they might have been ready for Bridge to Terabithia. I’m not sure.
Girl on A Train. Thought it was terrible & the whole “woe is me, believe me even though I’m drunk throughout the whole book” got really old, really fast.
I don’t like anything by James Patterson (what’s with those 2 paragraph chapters)? and Dean Koontz (tho i do enjoy Stephen King. I just tried Origin by Dan Brown - terrible; and I did like DaVinci Code. Origin is poorly written and very obvious, at least to me.
I recently bought two books (which I haven’t done in years). The Buried Giant (I’d never read his work but I watched Remains of the Day and Never Let me Go – both very haunting). And a book about Dolly Madison for my DAR book club. DH thought I was reading about the ice cream…
I’ll let you know how they are. I don’t have a Kindle so I got “book” books. The first one was only $1.99 (plus $8 shipping and handling haha).
Some of this show how we are all different! I think Dean Koontz is brilliant. One Door Away from Heaven cemented his departure from King and ilk where he could have supernatural/strange plots that were still uplifting, and I love his sense of humor in Odd Thomas, but everyone has their own taste.
^I am much more of a fan of King. I read Koontz’s first few, and then everyone seemed to be some guy taking to the hills with many guns to fight the newest version of evil.
Bad news for you @Classof2015: I would have thrown The Buried Giant across the room after reading it if only I had cared enough to do so.
As the OP, can I just ask that a classics-bashing thread move elsewhere? That was never my intent. So yes to King, Koontz, Patterson, etc.
No to the high school classic you didn’t like.
I realize that threads morph, but this one had a fairly clear intent, and I really really hate the “I couldn’t get through Moby Dick” kind of ethos, rather than–“everyone liked Da Vinci code but me” comment.
I realize also that even though I started this thread, I have no control, but it hurts my soul to be the perpetuator of classics 'bashing.
Thanks for listening.
ok Garland I guess i am on your page. Here’s another i TRIED to like - John Hart’s Redemption Road. Just couldn’t.
I also used to like Nelson DeMille - (e.g. The General’s Daughter, Word of Honor, etc) and tried his latest “The Cuban Affair.” Terrible.
One popular author i (mostly) like for quick reading is John Grisham.
I have given up on so many current authors. It seems the only world they know is the writing world. So when they try to have a character in some other profession they fail to even do minimal research and as a result the character is non believable. This is particularly true on legal issues. Completely unrealistic legal manuevers, legal consequences, things that would never happen in real life. They disrespect their readers; thinking these things won’t be noticed.
Also these writers live in bubble world. Their own bubble. I am sick of books where the harried heroine retreats to her friends beach house on Cape Cod or where all her troubles are solved by something completely unrealistic. Where are books about real women written by someone who knows something about the non-academic, non-writing world?
Sorry Garland, I’m infinitely distractable, even though I believe it was my comment on another thread that triggered this one.
The DaVinci Code is an interesting one, it was so bad, both with the plotting and the writing, I spent most of my time asking myself why I was still reading it, except it was somehow incredibly addictive. I didn’t throw it across the room. I did read Angels and Demons, and it was even stupider, so I vowed never to touch another Dan Brown novel.