The Fountainhead, Wuthering Heights, and
Anna Karenina are all books that, for me, fall into the "uh, what?" category of disinterest. No hate, no love, just ... what was that all about? For some reason
The Fountainhead must have been very popular in most high schools right before I got to college, because all the college freshmen put that down as their favorite book ever. (Mine was Jurassic Park
) I finally read it a few years after college and did not get it.
Just like I did not get the
Lord of the Rings books. Movies? Fine. Books? No thank you. I think I missed the window on that, but I was never into fantasy style books as a kid - either straight fiction or straight sci-fi. I kind of get the popularity of
Twilight but mostly I felt too old to find the plot that engaging and wow the fourth book took quite a turn. Definitely something I read just to know what people were talking about.
Hate I reserve for things like
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and
She's Come Undone. Painful and pointlessly depressing or obtuse.
OTOH, I may not like the direction that
Clan of the Cave Bear series took with Ayla as Savior of All the Peoples, but I will absolutely be reading the next one (and thanks to the PP who mentioned it's been released, I hadn't heard!
). And I like the
Shopaholic series and
Bridget Jones' Diary (but not the sequel) and others of that style. For me it's about the style of writing - if it makes me laugh, it's good brain candy. There are definitely books out there in a similar vein that are just ... tedious.
