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I loved to read - read everything I could get my hands on - until jr high literature through high school - absolutely sucked the life out of the books - Charlotte's Web, Tess de Urberville, Wuthering Heights, a couple of Jane Austin, Moby Dick - and I'm still traumatized. I didn't take a literature course in college because I simply couldn't fathom having classics inflicted upon me. The only book that I enjoyed in school was Alas Babylon.
I still have difficulty w/ classics - I studied Russian throughout college, so I am trying Crime and Punishment again but I just lose steam. I also have The Brothers Karamazov on my to be read shelf.
I did like Grapes of Wrath - but I read it after becoming a mother - same w/ Pearl S. Buck's, The Good Earth and they connect w/ me through me being a mother now and the suffering. I think I would enjoy Faulkner since I now live in the south and there's a definite culture here - very distinct (even w/ all us northerners moving here). But, I don't know if I can get through Fitzgerald since we had to read The Great Gatsby.
As far as candy books (my brain is worn out raising a bunch of kids and homeschooling), I made the mistake of buying a bunch of Darrell Bain books and found many of them to be preachy and some were just very unpleasant to read - Human by Choice, A Strange Valley, and The Disappearing Girls. I have 13 on my shelf - that taught me not to buy a bunch "site unseen". I don't know what I was thinking about.
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