There was a recent discussion on -273 and Ouranophobe about literature, and I was planning on putting in my two cents but never got around to it. I remember hating most every "serious literature" book I read in high school. A Tale of Two Cities was overlong and had boring characters, Wuthering Heights was so confusing as far as names and flashbacks and such that the teacher had to use Cliff Notes to straighten it out, all of those "female growing up" books like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings had ok stories but I couldn't relate to them at all, Dante's Inferno was probably biting and funny about 800 years ago but we don't really get the jokes today, and A Room With a View was possibly the worst book I have ever read.

The one notable exception was A Prayer for Owen Meany, a book about friendship and destiny that I read as a senior. The difference between this and all the others was that Irving used a great story to get across his themes rather than disguising a weak plot with "descriptive language" and a cavalcade of symbols that may or may not have meant anything. If the story is strong, it will tell itself. There's no need to spend a whole chapter describing the smallest details about landscape (ahem, All the Pretty Horses, I'm looking in your direction), when all it does is serve to slow down the pace to a crawl. In Owen Meany, the book was long but the story was happening the whole time. And if the story is progressing, then the reader is interested, which in the end is the best way to get people actively reading and thinking.

And what the hell was so special about Catcher in the Rye?