Anne Frank is soooo boring

No to me, because I liked her diary (I actually like reading anybody’s diary), but this Salon article about Amazon.com users giving classic books 1-star reviews cracked me up. I will take a gander myself later on and find some other examples.

Books, books, books

I find Top 100 (or 10, 50, etc) of anything lists fascinating to read but generally meaningless. Tastes are so subjective, and even when I’m familiar with the subject being evaulated, I don’t always agree with the items that are chosen for inclusion. Still, I’ve found out about good books, movies, music, and web sites this way, so I’d be crazy to discount Top whatever lists. Today, while reading Newsweek’s Top 100 Books, I thought it might be interesting to work my way through the list and read everything on it, even books that I’d already read before. I used to hate classic literature, but now  I realize that I just hated the way that a lot of it was taught in schools, with all the joy removed and too much focus on minute, boring analyses. Then I read books like Anna Karenina and Pride and Prejudice on my own, and realized that a book doesn’t have to be terrible just because it’s considered classic literature.

At first I was going to give myself a time frame in which to do this, but there are few things in life that I enjoy as much as completely ignoring deadlines, so I’m not even going to bother to assign an end date for this. I’m in the middle of a fun, lighthearted Jennifer Cruisie novel right now, and I have a few other things lined up for the rest of the week, but I’ll get started on this at least by the end of the month. I’ll keep track of my progress.