And Terry Pratchett is boring? Exploring racial tensions through the lens of British humor is not worth reading because it doesn’t make me viscerally scared?

You do you, but if I’m going to read a book for high school, boredom is WAY preferable to revulsion. I’d rather read a physics textbook word for word than be forced to continue reading every time someone dies. Reading books like The Jungle and analyzing them as journalism is important, but I’d like some books that aren’t …that… thrown in for variety. If my parents didn’t thrust their Pratchett stash upon me at an early age I might’ve grown up thinking all Serious Grown-Up Literature was like that.