Nah, I’ll just make you read Hardy.
Walden:
Guy builds a shack by a pond, moves in and writes a blog filled with cliches.
(Of course, they weren’t such cliches at the time, but…)
Meta-moral: If your King is interested in witches, it’s a good idea to give him a story with witches. Making his ancestor in the story look good is always good, too.
The Fountainhead:
This guy designs buildings that nobody wants, so he gets a minimum-wage job and he meets a chick and rapes her (but she really wants him to). Then he meets this other guy who owns, like, *The Enquirer, *(and who I think is gay for the first guy) who marries the chick who was raped. Then the first guy blows up his buildings, and the *Enquirer *guy shoots himself. Then the chick marries the first guy.
Wuthering Heights: Because Necrophilia and pseudo-Incest is Great Literature, mmkay.
Forest Gump: Developmentally challenged boy grows into developmentally challenged man who lucks into being part of most of the major politcosocial events of the 1960’s but still thinks life is like a box of chocolates.
The Little Prince: A heroic pilot is forced down in the desert and must repair his aircraft to save his life. He is hampered in this effort by heat and dehydration, which create a persistent hallucination about being visited by an alien with the typical bullshit hippie message about peace and love. Fortunately the pilot is able to escape in time.
I still think it’s a good play, but that was nicely done.
Yup.
there’s more reasons why it’s horseshit, but that’s a good start.
Asimov’s The Gods Themselves: Heinlein puts weird sex into his books? OK, I’ll put weird aliens having weird sex in mine!
Or as I like to call it, Tuesday.
“The Chosen”, by Chaim Potok.
Y’know, Chaim, you could have just dropped the gold-leaf-thin pretense at narrative and written essentially the same book, called it I know a big honking fuckton about Jewish laws and practices, and here it is, now read it already!, and been done with the whole thing. Of course, if you’d done that, non-Jewish teenagers (and most of the Jewish ones, frankly) who couldn’t give less of a flying rat’s ass about any of this wouldn’t be forced to study your manifesto in high schools around the world, so well played to you, I suppose.
Still hated it, though.
Most David Lynch movies:
Lynch: Here’s some random crap, here’s some more random crap, now let’s have some dude hallucinate random crap, and, what the hell, let’s add a twist ending made out of random crap any stoner could come up with while high.
Audience: My word! I couldn’t understand a thing! This man is probably a genius beyond my intellectual capailities! Let’s worship him! Durrrrr…
No one figured out the The Truman Show was just a cover for The Christof Show. There was even a bigger dome outside of Truman’s dome, containing the unwitting crew and director, who thought they were filming Truman, but in fact were being filmed.
And then outside of THAT dome…
A young Indian man grows disheartened with the particular brand of pantheistic horseshit into which he was born. He wanders around the country sampling other types, deciding finally that he should just worship the river. Brought to you by the the son of German Protestant Missionaries.
You got a problem with people worshiping rivers?
Huh? Do ya?
Wanna make something of it?
:D:D:D:D:D:D I was thinking Saturday night, but Tuesday works!
Nah, do it all you want. But I better not catch you writing a book about it…
There’s a nice collection of them in ShrinkLits.
I remember the one about Beowulf that began:
“Monster Grendel’s tastes are plain-ish.
Breakfast? Just a couple Danish.”
I once described Gone with the Wind as an un-watchable movie about an unpleasant, egotistical, heartless, social-climbing bitch who stepped on everyone to get her way. Then my sister-in-law hit me. So I guess I’m in a slim minority about that particular flick. 
One more: Woody Allen’s “Hannah and her Sisters”. Don’t get me wrong, I like Woody’s movies - and not just the early, funny ones. But this one had no characters that were likable or even interesting, and no plot to speak of. It was one of two or three times I walked out of a theater. It was boring, and after 30 minutes that felt like 300, Mama Zappa and I just gave up. At the time practically everyone else we knew loved this movie. 
It was like being surrounded by pod people. I felt much better when my grandmother said she didn’t like it. She loved “Annie Hall”, so she was not opposed to Woody, just bad movies.
I had to read that in HS. I’d forgotten about it. I don’t know if I should thank you or curse you for reminding me of that book.
Re: The Little Prince… well, he was killed by a snake (hallucination?), so it’s not like the pilot consciously escaped.
My contribution: Old Man and the Sea
This guy catches a certain fish… that attracts other bigger fish. Instead of trying to get some of the bigger fish for himself, or lure them, he fights off the bigger fish. That eventually get his catch. He returns home with the remains. Everyone is impressed by his accomplisment, but doesn’t seem that the old man will get anything out of it.
And White Elephant Hills (or a similar title)…
The abortion debate is never out of style and is neverending.