Loathe It or Love It
Library staff are passionate about books, but that doesn’t mean every title on the shelf is a personal favorite. In fact, some books spark more eye rolls than excitement among those of us at the Chester Fritz Library. Whether it’s due to melodramatic characters, a plot that makes us too angry, or simply something we were required to read for school, certain books will always bring up debate in the staff break room. Here are 9 books our library staff loathe (complete with anonymous staff reviews) and as a bonus, 3 books that we love. Read these titles and let us know! Did you loathe it or love it?
Loathe It
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Physical Book
Fiction, Novel
“There are times when characters make bad decisions and you laugh at them – and times when characters make bad decisions and you get annoyed. This was the latter for me.” – CFL Staff
With their estate entangled in an interminable legal case, the young wards of the court Richard Carstone and Ada Clare are taken into the benevolent care of the kindly John Jarndyce. Ada’s companion, the gentle and good-hearted Esther Summerson, is devoted to the old man and, although she loves another, becomes betrothed to him. But behind Esther’s supposed orphan past lies a dark secret that leads tragically to deceit, blackmail and murder.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Physical Book and eBook
Fiction, Literature
“I distinctly remember hating To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. On the other hand, I read it at age 17, and it’s very possible that I was not really ready for it.” – CFL Staff
The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflict between men and women.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Physical Book
Fiction, Literature
“Reading this felt like I was tied to a chair and had to listen to [Holden Caulfield’s] rambling story for 200+ pages.” – CFL Staff
The Catcher in the Rye details two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school for failing most of his classes. Confused and disillusioned, Holden searches for truth and rails against the “phoniness” of the adult world.
Physical Book, Audio Book, and eBook
Science Fiction
“Yes, put a 50-page speech laying out your insane world view near the end of this giant terrible book. Go off queen!” -CFL Staff
The book’s female protagonist, Dagny Taggart, struggles to manage a transcontinental railroad amid the pressures and restrictions of massive bureaucracy. Her antagonistic reaction to a libertarian group seeking an end to government regulation is later echoed and modified in her encounter with a utopian community, Galt’s Gulch, whose members regard self-determination rather than collective responsibility as the highest ideal.
Physical Book and eBook
Fiction, Suspense, Thriller
“I loved loved [The Stand] and read through the whole thing until the last two chapters. Then, it made me so mad I threw it across the room.” -CFL Staff
This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides or are chosen.
Physical Book
Fiction, Horror, Thriller, Suspense
“King says he does not remember writing Cujo, I wish I could forget ever reading it.” – CFL Staff
Left to fend for herself by her workaholic husband, Donna Trenton takes her ailing Pinto to Joe Cambers’s garage for repairs-only to be trapped with her son, Tad, in the sweltering car by the Cambers’s once-friendly Saint Bernard, Cujo, now a monstrous and rabid killer.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood
Physical Book and Audiobook
Fiction, Dystopian
“I read The Handmaid’s Tale which got me heated up and I hated it.” -CFL Staff
Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order.
Physical Book
Fiction, Thriller, Romance
“Oooooof.” -CFL Staff
Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity’s recollection of the night her family was forever altered.
Physical Book, Audio Book, and eBook
Fantasy, Fiction
“Some people really like it and I like describing the experience to other people.” -CFL Staff
As war grows more deadly, Violet Sorrengail joins the elite Navarre: the dragon riders. But she’ll need to keep her wits because once you enter the Basgiath War College, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.
Bonus: Love It
Less: a novel by Andrew Sean Greer
Physical Book
Fiction, Humor
“Read this one and don’t read the sequel.” -CFL Staff
Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend’s wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.
Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed
Physical Book
Graphic Novel
“I will literally hand-sell this book to every person that comes in the door!” – CFL Staff
(It was then pointed out to this staff member we don’t sell anything, since we are in fact, a library. The response was, “You know what I mean, it’s the best book!“)
Shubeik Lubeik — a fairy-tale rhyme that means “your wish is my command” in Arabic — is the story of three people who are navigating a world where wishes are literally for sale. Mired as they are in bureaucracy and the familiar prejudices of our world, the wishes that are more expensive are more likely to work as intended. Three wishes sold at an unassuming kiosk in Cairo link Aziza, Nour, and Shokry, changing their perspectives as well as their lives.
The Great Alone by Hannah Kristen
Physical Book, Audio Book, and eBook
Fiction, Historical
“If you want to go to Alaska and cry, this is the best book.” – CFL Staff
Lenora Allbright is 13 when her father convinces her mother, Cora, to forgo their inauspicious existence in Seattle and move to Kaneq, Alaksa. It’s 1974, and the former Vietnam POW sees a better future away from the noise and nightmares that plague him. Having been left a homestead by a buddy who died in the war, Ernt is secure in his beliefs, but never was a family less prepared for the reality of Alaska, the long, cold winters and isolation.
