Why would anyone pretend to read Heart of Darkness? At 40k words it's one of the shortest novels ever written. The writing absolutely slaps. Anyone with any interest and experience in literature would find their first encounter with this book to be pleasant (except for the racism and colonialism).

And it's falling out of favor because of the racism and colonialism, so it's perfectly acceptable (in most literature circles) to say that you just didn't want to read that kind of crap and leave it at that.

I'm re-reading Heart of Darkness now and not likely to mention it to anyone because it's so regressive.