A student holds a stack of books in the library.
(Picture: Getty Images)It was the best of reviews, it was the worst of reviews. Or, in these cases in particular, they were the shortest, strangest, and/or simply most blunt of them.
We rounded up the funniest and strangest reviews of classic books we could find on GoodReads - the home of some of the most cutting, brutal and succinct views around.
Now, we’re reconsidering all of our favorite high school reads. (Mainly Catcher in the Rye.)
Enjoy!
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Guess Tolstoy never got the memo?
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
In a way they’re not...wrong?
1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four), George Orwell
Big Brother is not pleased by either of these.
Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Okay, ouch.
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Hey, whatever works.
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Oh, okay. That tracks.
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Something’s rotten in the state of the review section.
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Whatever floats your boat, Cristin.
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
We can get on board with any classic chick lit Taylor Swift crossover.
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
This isn’t even a bad synopsis.
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Well. It’s factually correct.
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
She’s trying to buy them for herself, Nate!
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
Evergreen review. Relatable. Five stars.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Moocoow is literally the 14th word in the book, and then the 22nd. Surely Nathan must have been pleased.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Duly noted.
Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
Extremely fair analysis.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
Another solid analysis. Kids these days! (Or...a century ago.)
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
Yeah, and tell Moby Dick’s Ishmael to just get over the whale? Not happening, Matt!
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Hey, you don’t know that.
The Stranger, Albert Camus
Definitely going to use this to get out of conversations. “You know who you remind me of? Have you read The Stranger?”
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
Ah, a bittersweet conclusion: Contemporary and classics colliding.
And scene.
