The one in which I fall off my literary perch

A couple of months ago I asked you all for some book recommendations (you can read my post here but I highly recommend you read the comments if you haven't because you all had great suggestions). I have managed to read a couple of the ones you suggested and plan to work my way through the rest. Summer just got the best of me. I think I read more in the cold months while I am also busy putting on more fat and generally getting very Jabba the Huttish.I do love to read. And I know you do too. But today, I thought it would be nice to have a different sort of confessional. Because you see, there are some books I have tried to read but can't. Well, maybe can't isn't exactly the right word. I'm certain I could read them. But, as a middle aged woman, I know life doesn't last forever. And it is way too short to read some books.
Even books that others consider classics. Which is what makes this sort of confession hard. While a large segment of the population might be offended if I said I wasn't going to read Twilight (which I did - although I don't think it is the bee's knees), people tend to look at you with that PBS documentary host down-the-nose-glance when you tell them you didn't care for a particular classic.I have a theory. I think almost all of us have grabbed that prize-winner off the shelf, started it, and then thought, "Who decided this was the cream of literature?" It is interesting to google "100 best books" and see the multitude of lists that pop up. Of course, lists like this are by their nature completely subjective. Some books make every list while others only show up on one. I'm always happy when I've read several on each list and agree that they were good books. So, I'm going to let you in on my dark literary secrets.I didn't like One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez. Oh, how I wanted to like this book. I plodded. I worked. I plowed. About half way through I decided I just didn't want to go any further. Unless I could go smack some of the characters in the book. Since I couldn't do that, I packed it up and gleefully drove back to the library.
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Nafisi. I wanted to like this one too. It was all the rage in book clubs for so long. And, my typical favorite genre is anything set in a different culture. But I couldn't do it.
And, embarrassingly enough, I don't like The Lord of the Rings trilogy. We own a resource book to help people keep up with the world Tolkien created for the books. My boys love them. My husband loves them. Not me. I didn't even like the movies and they at least had Orlando Bloom in them.
Isn't literature fascinating by its very subjectiveness? If we all loved the same books, we would lose so much variety and diversity in life. I'm always thrilled that our schools seem to do such an outstanding job exposing our children to a wide variety of genres and authors. I've watched each of my children develop an appreciation for types of literature they didn't realize they would enjoy at all.

I've also been the one to comfort the son when he came home and confessed that he had done poorly on a Shakespeare test that he had tried his best to prepare for. I told him that was fine. I always thought Shakespeare was overrated anyway.