I generally read mostly sci-fi. I've read a little bit of the classics — the parts of the school curriculum I had the patience for. As for other books — whatever I happened to come across, usually all sorts of trash, I don't even want to name names so I don't embarrass myself.
And now, because my shoulder hurts, instead of the pool I've started taking a bath every day like a bourgeois, thank god I don't have water meters. And while I lie in the bath, I read classics on my Sony Reader, or something close to it. That's why I'm going to write pseudo-reviews. Why "pseudo"? Because I'm a lousy critic — I haven't read anything, I have nothing to compare it to. On the other hand, this might bring some fresh perspective — I am, after all, a guy with a semi-technical mindset, and an atheist/materialist on top of that. I'm sure someone will find it interesting to know how people like that perceive the classics, especially the highly literary ones sometimes. What I mean by that, see below.
First of all, I read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez. This book is kind of "cult", but among all sorts of pseudo-indie/wannabe-glamorous plankton, which is why snobs literature lovers often treat it with condescension or contempt. Of course, not to the same degree as the works of Coelho or Murakami, but still.
The book is about a century in the life of a settlement called Macondo and the history of the Buendía family that founded it, and the action takes place in South America, sometime around the 19th century. The book is written in quite an entertaining language, easily recognizable, by the way. In the beginning, it's smooth and fairy-tale-like, but towards the end it gets harsher, and, as it seemed to me, not as elegant. Maybe the author did it on purpose, who knows.
