Lolita

Written by: Vladimir Nabakov

First line: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.

Why you should read this book: Chief among its assets are its most luscious prose, a symphony of the English language hand-crafted by an artisan whose adoration of the tongue puts native speakers to shame. With marked intensity, this oft-maligned novel charts the progress of a seemingly genteel man's obsession with a child, until his maniacal vulgarity, expressed in the most charming and proper form,  eclipses all sense of morality and carries him through his own tragedy like a mountain cascade in a monsoon deluge. You can't look away as the disaster unfolds, you can't save any of the afflicted characters, and you can't help but, here and there, uncover seeds of your own shame in the story's atrocities.

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's seriously a narrative about a pedophile repeatedly and lovingly molesting a prepubescent girl.