Jeanette Demain rounds up one-star Amazon reviews of widely beloved books.
Amazon reviewers think this masterpiece sucks: “From ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ to ‘1984’ — some amateur critics just can’t stand the classics.”
On To Kill a Mockingbird:
Looking for a sappy, cliched, novel to read? One predictable as most young-adult books and more degrading than harlequin romances? Well, To Kill a Mockingbird is your book.
On Charlotte’s Web:
[H]ow in the world does a pig and a spider become friends? It’s beyond me… this book should be banned from every school, library, and bookstore in the Milky Way.
On A Tree Grows in Brooklyn:
This book is 3 words over and over again: MY LIFE IS BAD.
Demain looked in vain for a single book that had no one-star reviews:
The more of these that I read, the more I became desperate to find at least one book that would be impervious to the one-star brigade.
Then it dawned on me. Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl”! Surely, no one could find fault with the poignant and honest writing of a young girl caught up in the evil of the Holocaust, setting down on paper her hopes, longings and yearnings — a book that has made countless women want to become writers and which has inspired generations of readers to denounce hate and live more compassionate lives. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
But, oh, how wrong I was.
“I didn’t like this book because it was boring. That’s all that needs to be said. It was very very very very very very very very very very very boring. If you have to read this book shoot yourself first.”
Can you imagine being this person?
As an author, I feel perversely relieved to know that no book escapes being loathed. No matter that critics rave, no matter how deeply it affects most readers, somebody will pour public scorn on it. Thanks for providing that insight, one-star reviewers.
lying for a living 
Amazon reviewers are either paid to give good review or critics aka hypocritical hater
As an author, I take great exception to the phrase: ….and more degrading than harlequin romances”. Quel cheek! Chacun a son gout and all that.
I wish everyone a happy and peaceful Easter.
Shazza
As the saying goes, some people see the glass as half-full, others as half-empty.
And there are others who see the glass as stolen and smashed into a thousand pieces.
It’s definitely a different perspective.
(Happy Easter, everyone!)
Speaking as a proud misanthrope, these people give misanthropes a bad name. ;>)
I *GASP* didn’t think Catcher In The Rye was all that exceptional.
Astounding how a person can pan one of the greatest novels ever written AND about 100,000 Harlequin romances (and their readers) AND the majority of young adult books in just a few carefully chosen words.
This book is 3 words over and over again: MY LIFE IS BAD. The doofus that wrote this one-star review can’t count, either.
Someone dissing Charlotte’s Web, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and To Kill a Mockingbird? What would childhood be without those books?
But I must admit — despite being an American Studies major — that I loathe Moby Dick and anything written by James Fenimore Cooper.