Great Books that Aren't

Here's a fun Slate piece, collecting anecdotes from well-known writers about the classics they can't take. 

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner on one of mine, Don Quixote:

In the margins I'll write, "He's the world's first great food writer," underlining a passage on Page One in which he goes on about pigeon, tripe, and salted beef and mutton. Genius! Here's the man who popularized the phrase "the proof's in the pudding"! The momentum slowly fades; the blood drains from my face; was that a news alert on my iPhone? I'm asleep on the couch, deeply ashamed but contentedly drooling, by Page 37.