Difference of Opinion

We've all been there. We love a book that everyone else hates. Or hate a book that everyone else loves. So I thought I'd list some.

Books I LOVE-- even if I'm in the minority:

1. A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Required reading. I really liked it.


2. Harry Potter 3 and 5. Everyone else's least favorites are my absolute FAVORITES!


3. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. Maybe not everyone hated it, but I know I liked it more than most people in my 11th grade English class.


4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. See comment on #3.


5. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn. Again, required. I thought it was really good.

Books I HATE-- minority again:

1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Or anything else I've ever read by Ray Bradbury. Ugh.


2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Yeah, blasphemy, I know. At least I got through it finally. Once.


3. Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. Okay, I know, maybe not hugely in the minority here, but my BEST friend in high school LOVED (probably still does) Hardy. I was really disappointed by the lack of dead bodies at the end of this one.


4. Romeo and Juliet. Would it have been that hard to check for a pulse? Really? Gag.


5. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. Okay, so I'm not sure anyone else assigned it liked it either, but the teacher doing to assigning (whom I love and respect and still keep in touch with) thought I'd really like it... yeah, not so much.

Books I should really pick up again:

1. Lust For Life by Irving Stone. Started this in high school Humanities and have just never managed to finish it! It was good.


2. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Honestly, I don't think I even finished it. I should probably give it another chance.


3. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. Another one from Humanities. Didn't really like it, but I think it probably deserves another chance now that I'm older.


4. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Another from Humanities. We did a lot of excerpt reading that year.


5. The Aeneid by Virgil. I'm ashamed to say I haven't read the whole thing. When it was assigned in college I was so overwhelmed already the I read the sparknotes online.

What about you?? Favorites that no one else likes? Vice versa? Isn't it funny that so many of these were school assignments?