Everyone's a critic. Take the people behind these Amazon.com reader reviews. Exhibiting stringent standards and innovative literary theories, they slap down such legendary books as "The Great Gatsby," "1984," and "To Kill a Mockingbird" with just one star each. Ouch. Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic "Beloved" is dismissed with this trenchant commentary: "People do things with farm animals they shouldn't." Regarding Joseph Heller's "Catch-22," "...a lot of people were smoking a lot of weed...to think this thing is worth reading." Cult favorite "Catcher in the Rye" is taken out with "J.D. Salinger went into hiding because he was embarrassed." "Lord of the Flies"? "I am obsessed with 'Survivor,' so I thought it would be fun. WRONG!!!" Someone even had the audacity to low-ball the usually sacrosanct "The Lord of the Rings": "The book is not readable because of the overuse of adverbs." Indeed.
