Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

This week’s topic: Books I Disliked/Hated but Am Really Glad I Read (maybe just for bragging rights)

1.Shakespeare. My AP English class senior year of high school was basically An Ode to Shakespeare: Every Play You Haven’t Read Yet, and I hated it. There were a few decent ones in there (I mean mainly just Julius Caesar), but I’m glad I’ve read so many of them because they’re referenced so often.

2. The Twilight Saga, by Stephenie Meyer. To be fair, I loved these books when I first read them. My cousin gave me a copy of Twilight and told me I had to try it. I did, and they helped me get into the YA genre, which didn’t exist when I was growing up the way it does now. But I can’t read them now. There’s a lot of “I must save you from yourself” going on, a lot of “I know best”, a wedding straight out of high school, and SO MUCH self-pity all around. These books were good to me back in the early 2000’s, but I hate them now.

3. Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell. I fully adore this movie, but despised the real Julia in the book. But I’m glad I read it, because every time I watched the movie I always wondered about the book it was based on, and now I know I hate it.

4. The Wilder Life, by Wendy McClure. Being a superfan of the Little House on the Prairie book series and tv show, I expected to love this book. But it was not all it was cracked up to be. Again I’m only glad that I read it because I would have continued to wonder about it.

5. Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier. I don’t so much hate this book as I was just bored by it. It was also required summer reading in high school and I’m holding a grudge.

6. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. More required summer reading, and at 704 pages, I’m holding a bigger grudge.

7. Second Chance Summer, by Morgan Matson. I adore Morgan so I’m glad I’ve read it, but TOO. SAD.

8. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner. I’m glad I read this in high school for two reasons: 1. The chapter that consists entirely of the sentence “My mother is a fish”. 2. I can say that without a doubt I hate reading Faulkner.

9. The Iliad, by Homer. I’m glad that I read this because I actually really enjoy the story. I hated the experience of reading because for two years in Latin class all we did was translate it from Latin to English.

10. The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffery Chaucer. I read this one yet again for school, in the original old English and the whole experience sums up to HATE. Hated the old English, hated trying to translate it, hated the book as a whole, hated each individual story. Am glad I read solely because I have a frame of reference for so many movie and book descriptions that claim “in the spirit of The Canterbury Tales…”.

So, what say you? 6/10 of my list ended up being books I had to read in high school, which is probably because I tend not to read books I hate as an adult? I DNF SO FAST if I’m not enjoying something.