Candide: or, Optimism, by Voltaire, trans. and ed. by Theo Cuffe,  3/5

I was expecting a classy, clever satire, not such a crass tale. While entertaining, witty and devastatingly sarcastic in parts, I felt that its overall tone was tasteless and shallow; there is something off-putting and ignoble about a writer putting warped versions of his opponents’ beliefs into the mouths of fools, creating too-easy targets for snide and immature insults.  It seemed more the bawdy tale of a sea captain than that of a writer with any pretensions to philosophic depth.

[Why I read it: can’t remember where I actually got the book from, but I was interested in reading it because a friend had me watch the operetta version starring soprano Kristan Chenoweth.]