Day 11: A Book I Hated

I'm taking part of the 30 Day Book Challenge.  Click the link to do it too (and add your blog to my meme)! 

I love to read.  When I was a child I would huddle under the blankets with a flashlight reading well past my bedtime.  As a teenager I read on my lunch break at school.  I read at work.  I read at my desk while the teacher was droning on about some math equation I cared nothing for.  Now I'm an adult who keeps a book in her purse.  I read in the grocery line.  I read at the doctor's office.  I read on my porch swing with delicate beads of sweat forming on my brow in the summer heat.  When I'm not reading, I'm usually thinking about what I'd like to be reading.

When people ask me what I like to read I usually joke, "If you give me a book, I'll read it."  Except it's really not a joke.  I really am willing to try just about any book you suggest to me, even if it's a book I'm not sure I'll like.  So you can imagine my chagrin when I stumble across a book that I just do not like.

I will never forget the first time I read a book I not only did not like, but I absolutely loathed.  I was in 8th or 9th grade and up until that point I had never had the misfortune of being forced to read a book I absolutely hated.  Sure, I'd had to read a few books I really didn't like.  I had complained about those books.  But that year I learned what it was to have to read a book that you hate.  The book was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

I hated everything about it.  To this day it is the only book I have ever actually fallen asleep while reading.  This book actually bored me to sleep!  To add insult to injury I had read and greatly enjoyed Dickens' Oliver Twist the summer before being assigned Great Expectations so I had expected to actually like Great Expectations.  I guess you could say I had great expectations for Great Expectations (har har har).  Needless to say, I was let down.  I was so angry at Dickens for writing such a piece of rubbish that I refused to even attempt to read another Dickens work for 10 years when I finally picked up The Old Curiosity Shop which I loved.