Books are my life. I need them like I need air in my lungs. But I don't enjoy every book I read. And while I try to read as many of the classics as possible, and I enjoy many such as Shakespeare's plays, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, and Paradise Lost, some are so dull that I wonder what I'm missing.

Especially since I'm a Creative Writing major, I feel like there's pressure to enjoy every classic just on the merits that it is a classic. I want to push back against that idea. Art is subjective and it's impossible for absolutely everyone to like the same book.

Not liking a book does not make one uneducated or unintelligent. It just means they have different tastes. So here, in no particular order, are five classics that I hate that everyone else seems to love. Please note that while I personally did not enjoy reading them, I do appreciate what the authors accomplished since I have studied most of them in depth, and I am not calling these books objectively bad.

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I had to read this in my sophomore year of high school. Jane Austen was my English teacher's favorite author, so we spent a long time on it, reading the sections out loud, dissecting the finer points of the language and the satire of society at the time. Despite all this, I was quite literally bored to tears whenever I had to read it. It was like trying to bushwhack through a dense jungle of purple prose. That on top of the fact that it's a romance made me despise this book. Romances, to me, are repetitive. I like shipping as much as the next fangirl, but when romance is the main plot of a story it feels like an inside joke I'm not in on. Romance has to be really innovative for me to enjoy it. This is more my problem than an inherent problem with the book.

2. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

I'm currently reading this in class, and much like Pride and Prejudice, the language is hard to digest. On top of that, it's a very dense book. A lot happens in a short span of time and trying to keep up with everything going on makes me dizzy. The rules of reality are warped beyond comprehension. I can never tell whether something is actually happening or whether it's just a dream, a hallucination, a vision, or a metaphor. I prefer simple plots and complex characters, rather than the other way around, and this book has both.

3. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Many people seem to view this one as a thrilling adventure, but there's really no conflict once the titular character finds a way to not die. This might seem like a weird complaint since I absolutely love The Martian, which is heavily based on Robinson Crusoe, but the difference is that Watney constantly faced peril, with things breaking and blowing up. Things rarely went as planned for long. In contrast, Crusoe became king of the island and lived well until he was ready to return home. Oh sure, a few things happened here and there, but mostly he had a really easy time for a castaway.

4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This one wasn't as hard to get through as some of the others on this list, but I just don't understand the enthusiasm about this book. I found it very depressing and I'm not likely to read it again, but many people reread it over and over and seem to genuinely enjoy this story and characters. Could it be the lifestyle of the rich? Is Gatsby just that charming? To me, it was a tragic story about the folly of the American dream, well-written but not something that draws me in as much as it draws in other people.

5. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

This one legitimately horrifies me. As someone with a mental disability, I found myself relating to Lenny. This book was painful not because the language was hard to get through, it was actually a rather easy read, but because of how utterly hopeless it was. I suppose this was the author's intention, but that doesn't make it any easier to sit through. The message of this book is why I dislike it so much. Happy endings are awesome. Poetic justice endings are awesome. Tragic endings where the tragic character kind of brought it on themselves are awesome. But endings where an innocent person dies because of the harsh world around them, they hit me hard. I'm not saying this book shouldn't exist, I'm saying I really wish I wasn't forced to read it.

Okay, that ended on a more depressing note than I intended. Here's a book cat.