I run the risk of sounding very sexist or stuck up and preface all my comments with, "I love a good sap story and occasionally read books from airport kiosks!"

I absolutely loathe books like, The Notebook...I hate the "book of the week" factor that personifies the search for true reader identity...I want to hold peoples hands in the library when I see them hovering over the single book they've heard about on the best seller shelf. I want to say, "You think that's good you should read a real love story."

I think I might hate them even more because it's not uncommon for works such as this to not only be the single dose of literature that some people read but it also holds a special place for many people as their favorite works. I wish reading book reviews wasn't so academic and abstract and finding the next book fashion was a little harder.

I'm glad people who don't often read get excited about books like Harry Potter (ok, so I might have read those), The Da Vinci Code, or even Kite Runner but I also despise statements like, "I hate reading but I liked Harry Potter." I really want to hold these peoples hands...the true sign of an english major.

Worst book -- some of the Harry Potter books, while enjoyable to read, are some of the worst written I've seen in a while. it's as if her editor said, hey, she's selling millions, who am I to ever cut anything? As a result, a lot of her books are full of non-useful material. Book 6 was the first one to show that Rowling broke that trend.

Other bad books I am suppose to like: The Good Soldier, To the Lighthouse, The Fellowship of the Ring et al, and pretty much anything by Shakespeare.

Miles, are any of the guys watching the UNC game Saturday night? Email me.

Witch of Cologne... there is nothing to say other than, trust me on this one. You DON'T want to read it.

Why is it that people are so much more enthusiastic about sharing about books that they hate than books that they like?

Why do I get my feelings personally hurt when people say that they hate books that I like?

-Maybe because usually when I really like a book, I like it because of some kind of personal connection to it.
I loved Age of Innocence because while the characters were in circumstances different from my own, there were ways that I really understood and empathized with some of their internal struggles.

-Maybe because I associate reading it with a person who recommended it to me.
So many books that I choose to read are in an effort to get close to the person who recommended it or gave it to me. For instance, I read Dead Souls b/c Miles gave it to me and said he'd read it with me and talk about it with me. I wanted to be close to him so I read every word and did my best to see something good and worth talking about in it. Then when I saw him, he trashed it and said it was one of the worst books of all time and that he wouldn't even finish it...
I began reading Harry Potter because Evan said that I should and I wanted to be close to him and he told me to read them. I didn't care at all if they had great literary merit. In the beginning, I wanted to read something that he wanted me to read. (It did turn out that I was very entertained.)

As Miles says above, we're talking about books that we don't enjoy, independent of their literary merit...
I think the books that I like the least are books that have virtually no sympathetic characters. Eventually I might be able to appreciate the literary merit of those books after rereading or studying them, but I will never have affection for a book unless I can like a character in it. I don't hate these books, but examples include Jude the Obscure, Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations. There is a great deal of depth in these novels and I appreciate them for what they are, but I enjoy this type of book the least.

I will finish Dead Souls if you lend me your copy (including the second half!). Did you like the end?

I really liked The Overcoat (also by Gogol), so I really did believe I would like Dead Souls. Plus the book really has a great premise, which is begging for a modern film adaptation as a teen comedy, a la 10 Things I Hate About You (Taming of the Shrew) and Clueless (Emma).

I also have to say that I was very happy that you read A Hero of Our Time, whose main character, Pechorin, is the literary figure that I most deeply identify with of all time.

Oh, you don't have to finish Dead Souls. Remember what Mom says? "There are too many good books in this world to waste your time making yourself read something that is no good." (Except if you're reading it for school...)

I really liked A Hero for Our Time; it might be in my top ten. But because of the reflection posted earlier, I think I need to evaluate whether I really liked it that much, or if I was prejuduced because I knew you really liked it.

A Hero for our Time is out of copyright, so if you want to refresh your memory, or if anyone else wants to read, you can get free copies from numerous places for free. You can find links at the bottom of its wikipedia entry.