Each and every chapter of this book has been a monumental struggle for me; technically I've been listening to it with a free audio book app on my iPhone (whether or not listening to audio books counts as reading is not a topic I want to unravel today). Even halfway listening to it while doing my normal work has been difficult. It's hard to motivate yourself to listen to a book that is blatantly racist when you have new episodes of Radiolab in queue. However, if you, like me, are determined to get through it, the audio book is a great option, because if I were actually reading the text I would certainly have given up a long time ago.
I do not necessarily recommend it-- it is flat-out racist, which is hard to stomach. Obviously it's an American anti-slavery novel that is often (probably mistakenly) credited with sparking the Civil War; it was certainly very popular and notorious immediately after its publication, but over time it really fell out of favor, particularly because so many of the slave characters have become emblematic of African American "types" that are disturbing and offensive, with the "Uncle Tom" character as the most obvious example. It may have helped put an end to slavery, but it also propagated a language of damaging stereotypes. And worth mentioning is the fact that Harriet Beecher Stowe is not against slavery because it is disgusting and inhuman; she is more accurately against slavery because so many slaves converted to Christianity and enslaving Christians is somehow worse.
It isn't particularly "good" in any technical sense. All of the characters are flat and poorly developed, and Harriet Beecher Stowe seems to suffer from that Charles Dickens disease, whereby all child characters have to be really angelic and creepy. Too much time is spent expostulating on the evils of slavery (also drinking and laziness), and the whole thing comes across as extremely preachy, and yet still misses the point entirely.
I realize I am not making a compelling case for it; but as much as I am complaining about it, I don't regret listening to it. If anything, it helped me to better understand where so many negative stereotypes came from. Its influence is undeniable, and someone could easily see/hear its repercussions in race relations today without ever knowing where they came from. That said, I'm so happy to have it over and done with, and my next audiobook will be something much lighter.