corvids
there's a fundamental difference between a bad book you're glad you read, a bad book you don't care about, and a bad book you regret reading. and there's no easy words to distinguish them from one another
david copperfield, for example, is an incredibly dull read (imo). but it doesn't actively bother me having read it, and sometimes knowing how it goes comes in handy. so overall i don't care about it but i'm situationally glad i read it
the wizard knight, by contrast, combined poor writing quality with stuff i found highly disturbing in a way that means i can't entirely get it out of my head. literally just the knowledge that i read it is stressful. i regret having read this book
this pretty much delineates the three categories:
• bad books i'm glad i read, it's because i learned from them
• bad books i regret reading, it's because something about them is actively stressful—disturbing (or actively triggering) content or exceptionally poor basic writing skill, for me
• bad books i don't care about are mostly just not compelling. nothing especially hateful beyond a lack of especially positive qualities
also absolutely do not ever read the wizard knight please learn from my mistake. there's literally thousands of better-written self-insert fanfics you can read online if you really want to, and most of them don't glorify abusive behaviour
honestly a lot of the so-called classics of literature fit this general pattern—most of them are relatively uninteresting to a modern audience in terms of writing style, and the majority of them are useful tools for developing a contextual perspective on the time & place they were written. the downside, of course, is that it's exceedingly common for them to be really d__n disturbing for a modern audience, especially if one happens to be a minority, since the list tends to be curated by white men
correction: it's exceedingly common for them to be really d__n disturbing for a modern minority audience
from my understanding, most cis white dudes are left unscathed by reading these
i will, however, encourage folx to look into dickens' work if you're not already familiar with it. i wouldn't generally recommend any of his novels, but his short stories tend to be good and it's worth reading commentaries on a christmas carol just for the history—i'm legitimately impressed by the amount of detail he fit into that one story in support of better treatment for the poor, and a lot of it is hard for a modern audience to pick up on. so decent commentary contextualises a Lot of things