Worst BOOK you were forced to read in school?

[blondeatlast]

Inspired, of course, byt the "worst movie, etc."

"Celestine Prophecy" for a GRADUATE education class, God help me. Wretched--and it hadn't been reclassified as fiction yet, either. :puke:

[bridgit]

1. jonathan livingston seagull...

took me a 1/2 hr to read it & 15mins for the book report :shrug:

[electron_blue]

25. omg, yes!

[MysticalChicken]

125. Am I...

...the ONLY person on earth who loves Jonathan Livingston Seagull? I fell in love with it when I first read it and I still have my copy. It may be short but I think it's quite well written.

[bridgit]

142. perhaps, but either way that's fine dear; i do consider it a form of curse...

howevere, and it hasn't gotten any extra kudos as a result, but i am a Anna Karenina, Les Misérables, Solaris kind of a gal :hi:

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. I really, really hated "Silas Marner".

[blondeatlast]

3. Oh, yeah. nt

[mitchum]

13. My pick also

[femmocrat]

40. That one would be at the top of my list, too!

Why did they torture us with such awful books? To kill any interest we had in literature?

[graywarrior]

56. Yep. HATED that book.

[jpak]

82. my vote too

:puke:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

95. What, because it had no car chases, sex scenes, or killer robots?

:shrug:

[sasquatch]

170. I loved "Silas Marner"

[blondeatlast]

4. "A Separate Peace" too. I found it annoying as hell for some reason.

[WCGreen]

6. That was horrible....

I just thought that you know, get a grip guys...

Couldn't relate to the "angst" at all....

[Ptah]

20. 'A Seperate Peace' is my choice, too.

:hi:

[democracyindanger]

21. I had to read that twice in three years

As a sixth grader and then as an eighth grader. And when I asked my teacher if I could read something else, she said no, I'd have to read it and write a paper like everyone else.

And that's where I learned to keep everything I write.

[jane_pippin]

24. That was my choice too.

I hated it. Hated. It.

[electron_blue]

26. Wow! I loved that book.

something in it really resonated with me.

[Arugula Latte]

90. Me too.

Jiggling the branch and all ...

[sakabatou]

34. AUGH!

[devilgrrl]

45. ding ding ding - that's my choice too!

Lamest book ever.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

51. I was a thirteen-year-old girl in a lower middle-class suburb, who

couldn't relate to the concerns of a bunch of Eastern prep school guys. I was glad when that one kid died of an embolism.

[MountainLaurel]

91. I hated the teacher who taught that one

Not to mention that only years later did I realize the homosexual overtones in the book.

[Pool Hall Ace]

93. Oh yeah -- dull, dull dull.

Years later, I found a copy in the basement, so I tried to read it again.

Still dull. :boring:

[last_texas_dem]

102. Man, I'm really surprised at all of the hate for that book

I loved it. I actually read it on my own because I wasn't assigned it in any class. And it caused me to seek out more John Knowles books, including Peace Breaks Out, Indian Summer, Morning in Antibes, and The Paragon. I thought they were all great. I think Knowles is unjustifiably seen as a "one book wonder." His others are just as readable as his classic, IMHO. (Though I guess if you aren't a fan of the "classic" you might take that statement with a grain of salt!) Really, though, A Separate Peace spoke to me quite a bit; it was right up there with Catcher in the Rye.

In terms of what book was I assigned that I disliked the most? Probably one of the ones I didn't finish at the time they were assigned, like The Sound and the Fury or The Red Badge of Courage. Of course, I don't think it's fair for me to say I "hate" them since I didn't complete them. I've told myself I will actually finish them someday so I can judge them fairly, but at this point (age 23) I haven't gotten around to it yet!

[LeftyMom]

5. Flowers for Algernon.

What's not to love? It's got animal testing, unlikable charachters and a plot twist so obvious it can be seen from space.

[sakabatou]

35. I actually liked that story

[Mendocino]

7. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

I simply found it boring.

[Nikia]

8. I found The Old Man and the See to be boring

Even more boring was the movie that the teacher had us watch based on it after we read the book.

[fizzgig]

48. i found it boring as well

couldn't get my teeth into it

[William Bloode]

55. Yeah me to.

I was given it to read in the 10th grade. God it was so laborious!

[tigereye]

57. I really think Old Man and the Sea

is difficult to understand when you are young... it makes a lot more sense as a seasoned adult.

Silas Marner might be the same -

[annonymous]

9. I absolutely hated Wuthering Heights and A Separate Peace

I couldn't understand why others found Heathcliff so appealing. A Separate Peace drove me nuts because it featured whiny prep school kids whose problems were minor for all they agonized over them.

[querelle]

10. Anything Written By Hemingway

How I hated his writing at that time! I now do have an appreciation for his work that I didn't before, but he's still not one of my favourites.

Q

[Magrittes Pipe]

11. Moby Dick

[knitter4democracy]

15. That's on my top ten list.

I just can't stand Melville. God forgive me, I just can't read his work without hurling it across the room.

[Codeblue]

92. Melville

Is a pretty dark and cynical guy. I like Moby Dick, but I'm not fond of any of his other pieces.

Personally, I hated The Scarlet Letter with a passion. Seems like they stopped teaching most of the books people are mentioning, cause I haven't even heard of some of them.

But really, The Scarlet Letter. I like most of Hawthorne's short stories, but I can't stand that book.

[knitter4democracy]

106. I like the Scarlet Letter, but I have to be in the right mood.

If I'm cranky, it just bugs me. Why doesn't she just tell them all to go to Hell and run off to the Bahamas? ;)

[johnnie]

16. That's the first one that came to mind

Moby dick dick dick dick dick dick dick.....

[mduffy31]

12. Crime and Punishment

I burned on the beach on the Senior Social trip to Grenada

[GirlinContempt]

18. Ahhh!

That's an excellent book :(

[tigereye]

58. yes

worth rereading at different stages of one's life. Like most books.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

100. Fortunately, I'd read a biography of Dostoevsky before I read it

Helped immeasurably.

[knitter4democracy]

14. Johnny Tremain

I still hate it.

For college, it would have to be the books we had to read in Senior Colloquium: Lynne Cheney ("Telling the Truth"--ironic, huh?) and Michael Medved's something on movies. Good Lord, those were horrible. Oddly enough, here we were in an evangelical college, and all of the students despised those books and were horrified at how awful they were. I think it changed more than one person to a Dem. ;)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

103. I liked the Disney movie version

when I was eight years old. :shrug:

[knitter4democracy]

107. Maybe I had to watch it too often.

We had a teacher who loved it.

[Gatchaman]

17. Silas Marner

Best argument ever for illiteracy.

[begin_within]

19. Marianela

[YankeyMCC]

22. A book on Columbus

I can't remember the title or author but I remember the hate. It was thick, full of what seemed to be irrelevant details and even in those days (when I was less concerned and educated about the realities of Columbus' encounter with the Americas) seemed grossly apologetic and insipid.

[NNadir]

23. Dicken's Great Expectations in 9th grade.

I remember, after all these years, how I hated that book.

I don't remember the book, but I remember hating it.

[Pacifist Patriot]

63. Cobb County, GA by any chance? I was going to say anything by Dickens.

I had to read a stupid Dickens book in every single English class. I swear they probably made us read one in American Lit. Great Expectations was 9th grade.

[NNadir]

86. No sorry. Long Island, New York. The suffering wasn't regionally limited.

[Recovered Repug]

133. This former Iowa farm boy had to "read" that too.

In reality, my girlfriend read it and told me about it. Looking back, it might have been a mistake to break up with her before tha test, though.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

97. See the PBS version with Ioan Griffud as Pip and Charlotte Rampling

as Miss Havisham.

[Bridget Burke]

156. I read bits of it & used Cliff Notes....

In college, Great Expectations showed up again in--"The English Novel." Cliff Notes again! Did fine in both classes. (Just repeat to the teacher what they told you.)

But I loved "Vanity Fair" in the college course. And enjoyed "The Magus"--although it was hard to explicate on the exam. A few years later, John Fowles came out & said he just made part of it up. That is, everything did NOT have great symbolic significance.

[libnnc]

27. I *hated* Jane Eyre

I mean HATED it. I just couldn't get through the damn thing. I was 16 so wtf did I know?

[knitter4democracy]

30. Were you one of my students?

;)

I had several who hated it, and I had many who liked it and really got into it. I had more girls not like it than guys--go figure.

[EFerrari]

149. Lol! I had a student blame me for John Milton's misogyny once.

She denounced me to the English Department. They took it as a sign that I was maturing after having done the precise same thing in the same class to my prof -- who happened to be my boss at the time of my own subsequent "denunciation."

Karma, baby. :P

[Lydia Leftcoast]

98. Now, me? I loved Jane Eyre.

:shrug:

[MysticalChicken]

126. I love Jane Eyre.

I didn't read it until I was in my mid-20s, though. I think I would probably have disliked it at age 16 as well... try picking it up again sometime in the future. To me, it's one of those books that just gets better and better every time I read it.

[BigMcLargehuge]

28. Hearts by Hilma Wollitzer

senior year in college I had to take "Edith Wharton and her American Sisters: Literature of American Women" to graduate. It was crosslisted as a 400 level Lit course and a 100 level Women's Studies course.

I was the only lit major in it.

Hearts is the "heartwarming" story of a stepmother and daughter who travel cross country after the death of the father. It had all the depth of the cereal box ingredient list and the storytelling quality of a Lifetime movie. I rarely get involved enough with characters to wish them a horible death from bubonic plague, or cancer, or some other fatal and horrible disease, but in Hearts I was rooting for someone, anyone, to swoop in and slaughter every character in the book.

We were "fortunate" enough to have the author visit our class to discuss it too, which made for uneasy silence on my part as the non-lit students lauded her subtle use of tortured metaphor and stunning inattentiveness to detail. While I drew pictures of her being eaten by wolves.

A very close runner up to Hearts on the "Most Hated Books of BigMcLargehuge" is Toni Morrison's "Beloved" a third rate ghost story wrapped in the holiday paper of an indictment of post-slavery south that manages to be both eye-rollingly obvious, saddled with a cast of idiots for characters, and so monumentally boring I had to labor to finish it.

[tigereye]

59. oh Big, you don't like Beloved?

:(

although I have to say that I prefer Alice Walker in that vein.

[BigMcLargehuge]

71. I also prefer Alice Walker

because Alice Walker writes literary fiction, not extremely derivative ghost stories that, by virtue of the setting alone, launch it into the pantheon of literary fiction and by doing so pile on the accolades until they crush any hope that the work had to be entertaining. If it had been marketed as "a ghost story" and not as an "important" book, I'd have probably enjoyed it more. But ten pages in when the plot appeared to be stolen from at least two dozen Twilight Zone episodes, and proved to be, only with much less finesse, I'd given up wanting to read it, and began reading it under duress.

To be fair, I haven't read any of Morrison's other work as Beloved left me so angry, so her other stuff might be just fantastic, though I'll probably never read it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

99. I didn't either

It seemed padded, with a lot more pages than the story could actually bear.

[ruiner4u]

29. Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783-1812

for an undergrad level american history class...

It was just as thrilling as the title implied.

[Evoman]

31. DEATH OF A SALESMAN

I hated that depressing piece of shit book. I was cheering for Willy Loman to just suck on that gas pipe.

[sakabatou]

37. We watched the movie, never read it

[Scooter24]

108. We had to read the book and watch the movie

along with Taming of the Shrew. We had to write a report on the differences between the book and movie for both titles. It was a long week. :)

[PassingFair]

129. My Antonia

Willa Cather SUCKS ASS.


I cannot see a sod house without throwing up
to this day.

[skygazer]

32. Tess of the D'Urbervilles

*Yawn* Horribly boring.

[Reverend_Smitty]

36. lol...

if you'll look down at the next response, it appears that we had a bit of a mind meld! :P

[CRK7376]

138. Amen to that!

In fact most of English Lit from the 1700-early 1900s just bored the hell out of me....Prof didn't help any either.

[Reverend_Smitty]

33. Tess of the d’Urbervilles

I had to read it for my AP Lit class my senior year of high school...it was loooooooong and the story just pissed me off for some reason. I don't really have reasons why I love or hate a book, I usually judge them on a visceral reaction to them. They either speak to me or they don't

[fidgeting wildly]

38. Ethan Frome, 11th Grade English.

I've always felt uncultured for hating that book, but after I read it I wanted to drill a hole in my skull and suck out the memory of it.

[Patiod]

114. My SO hated it - I loved it

Theres a great murder mystery called "Heartbreak Hill", which revolves around the plot of Ethan Frome. I recommended it to a friend, and he was not happy with me after reading it - turns out he HATED Ethan Frome, and hated the book~

[MysticalChicken]

123. yeah.

I think I had to read that one for either 10th or 11th grade English. It was not interesting to me in the slightest.

[petronius]

39. 'Pride and Prejudice' - loved the movie but hated the book (nt)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

52. I hated the book when I tried to read it at age twelve, but it

was much better when I tried it again at age 24.

[petronius]

54. I have considered taking another stab at it - especially now that I

can picture Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth in the lead roles ;). Also, I've found that I really like the domestic scenes in Patrick O'Brian novels (sometimes described as a male Jane Austen with ships and cannons), so that suggests that P&P would be more accessible to the grown-up me...

[Momgonepostal]

66. That was what I was going to put

I have never wanted to see the movie because I hated the book so much.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

101. Reading it at 24 instead of at 12, I saw what an astute observer of human

nature Jane Austen was. The customs and manners and some of the situations are old-fashioned, but the emotions and even some of the actual situations are timeless.

[Momgonepostal]

141. Maybe, I read it at 18

I've just never cared for that whole genre, I couldn't get into the Bronte's either.

[Giant Robot]

155. And here I thought I was going to be the only one

to say Pride and Prejudice.

A close second would have been Madame Bovary(sp?).

[RetroLounge]

41. The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner

Funny, I read it senior year of High School and I HATED IT!

I read it again when I was 30 in college working on my Masters Degree and I LOVED IT!

So if you hated a book then, you might like it now. or not.

RL

[ncrainbowgrrl]

119. ANYTHING by Faulkner.

Unfortunately, a teacher I had at the time didn't quite have similar feelings regarding that author.

It was a LONG couple of months...

[crim son]

42. I can't remember a book I didn't like; I love classic literature

HOWEVER I remember having to read "The Odyssey" in ninth grade. Oh. My. Gawd.

[skygazer]

44. One of my favorite books

Also read in 9th grade. I was fortunate to have a teacher who was just amazing - every year he taught that book and every year everyone read it and loved it. He made it into a huge adventure and at the end of the semester he'd throw a big Greek party and everyone would wear togas and bring in Greek food to eat.

Best teacher I ever had.

[crim son]

46. I wonder if it was the teacher. I can't even remember his face

although I do remember it was a man. Anyway, he ruined it for me. I'm glad you had a better experience! :hi:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

96. I don't know, I liked the Odyssey much better than the Iliad

The Iliad seemed to be all about who got stabbed where during battle.

[crim son]

105. I don't remember reading the Iliad.

So I probably didn't! I guess there's still time...

[Mutley]

137. Me too.

:thumbsup:

[Whoa_Nelly]

43. ANYTHING from the Norton Reader during college

Despised that book :grr:

[WolverineDG]

47. "The Bell Jar"

I wanted to find the author & slap her. When I found out she had committed suicide (why couldn't she have done that before writing that stupid book?), I wanted to find her grave, dig her up & beat her with the shovel.

dg

[hedgehog]

75. One of my kids came home laughing this week

They read a poem by Sylvia Plath in class and another student commented" Gawd, that's so depressing. Why doesn't she just go and stick her head in an oven?"



True story.

[MattSh]

49. The Scarlet Letter.....

Always annoyed me. Don't know why. It just did.

[FuzzySlippers]

111. Ding. Ding. Ding.

What a snoozefest. :boring:

[fizzgig]

50. there are so many of them

"the good earth" by pearl s. buck, "in cold blood" by truman capote, anything by steinbeck or dickens. but the worst of all, i think, was "walden." oh gods how i hate thoreau

[nytemare]

53. "The Pet Goat"

They made us read it aloud to the Chimperor. It was a really bad day. We got attacked, and the guy just sat there.

[Art_from_Ark]

161. Yeah, the guy just sat there

I hear the plot was so intriguing for him, nothing could have dragged him away from the classroom that morning-- not even airplanes flying into buildings.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

60. Probably THE SCARLET LETTER.

Urrrrgh. Just shoot me right fucking now.

:puke:

[Neoma]

80. I read that without being forced.

So ultimately, I like it.

[LSdemocrat]

117. Hawthorne. Quite possibly the worst "classic" American novelist

[laheina]

162. As much as I love some of the books that people are

listing, I will totally agree with you there.

Cheers!:)

[u4ic]

61. The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood,

in grade 10. Most, if not all, of Atwood's work is beyond most high schoolers. It didn't help we didn't have a lot of discussion about the book, either.

They should have stuck with the other Canadian Margaret...Laurence.

[Lyric]

62. Boy do I ever feel out of place. :/

I loved all the books we read for English. I was in college prep, Honors, and then AP English (respectively) and I absolutely adored the reading material.

Of all the classics I've ever read, I probably hated "Ulysses" the most. I know it's *supposed* to be difficult to read, but I still hate it.

I saw someone mention that they hated Wuthering Heights, which is just stunning to me. How can anyone NOT be intensely moved by the darkness and tragedy of that novel? It has one of THE most romantic lines I've ever read:

spoken by Heathcliff as Catherine is dying

"Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe — I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"

*romantic sigh* I wish someone would talk to ME like that. *glares at my domestic partner, who is currently eating Chee-tos and watching Lost: Season 2*

[hfojvt]

167. I'm not sure if I should hide this thread

or take names. All these great books hated by people without ever giving a reason why.

But I really did not care for Wuthering much. I do not find obsession to be romantic. Nor am I uplifted by tragedy. Giving your heart completely to someone who is dying seems like a cop-out anyway. It keeps you from ever having to love somebody who is living, which is much harder.

[greatauntoftriplets]

64. Don Quixote.

What a bore-o-rama.

[Ramsey]

65. The Red Pony

by John Steinbeck.

LOATHED that book!

[mvd]

67. I remember not liking Lord of the Flies

Message was ok, but doesn't really work as a child's book IMO.

[MysticalChicken]

127. aaah!

One of my absolute favorite books! When we had to read it in school--okay, you know how the teacher would assign like one chapter or a certain number of pages? I read ahead in that book because I couldn't wait to find out what happened. Also, it's the only book that's ever truly scared me.

[datasuspect]

68. "metaphysics and myth" by ernst cassirer

translated from german, so you'd have paragraphs that were like 2 pages long.

[China_cat]

73. Ever tried Finnegan's Wake?

That's about a 300 page sentence.

[NuttyFluffers]

130. the debates on whether it's "readable" are funny.

someone could sleep on a keyboard, wake up, and title the mess "Finnegan's Wake 2" and no one would bat an eye. utter waste of a tree.

[China_cat]

69. I still have not gotten past the first chapter of

House of the Seven Gables. I'd get that far and fall asleep...even in class. How I ever passed the test is beyond me. Thought it would be different as an adult. Got almost to the end of chapter 1 and fell asleep.

[GirlinContempt]

70. This thread makes me sad

[Lydia Leftcoast]

94. It sort of makes me sad, too, but I happen to agree about

A Separate Peace and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. :-)

Most of the other books have stood the test of time for a reason, and the problem is with the maturity of the reader, not with the book itself.

[fishwax]

109. not liking a classic/great book doesn't make one defective

(and that coming from a lit scholar--one who enjoyed reading a separate peace, no less :))

[aePrime]

72. And Then There Were None -- Agatha Christie

Formerly Ten Little Indians. I can't remember if I hated the whole book, but I was pissed when I got to the ending. It was a detective novel, and the ending was so out of the blue that there was no way the reader could have any clue as to what really happened. I thought detective novels ought to leave enough clues and subtle hints that the observant reader could take a guess at the ending (and hopefully still be wrong).

[deadparrot]

74. Walden.

:cry:

[Zomby Woof]

76. No one forced me to read anything

I willingly read. In school, I liked some books better than others - some I own now and have re-read. I noticed that when I re-read a book from high school years later, I gained a new apporeciation of it as I acquired life experience and insight.

Youth is wasted on the young, perhaps. :-)

[Xipe Totec]

77. That's Easy - World Defeat

by Salvador Borrego; Text book for a Civics class in High School.

The guy was absolutely out-to-lunch.

Says Hitler wasn't such a bad guy, once you get to know him. Blames WWII on a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy.

I flunked the course, and had to go to "extraordinary exams" to graduate from High School.

I've never been prouder of flunking a course than this one.

[Blue-Jay]

78. "Return of the Native" A horribly boring POS.

[NuttyFluffers]

131. oh my gawd! same here!

the 'love trapezoid' wasn't even engaging. you could probably slough off 200+ pages and only improve the story. that and i'll never really appreciate the great outdoors anymore because all i can think about it now is "the Heath." i wanted to burn the damn thing down or set up a paper mill, just to get rid of the damn thing.

[Neoma]

79. None!

I like reading, if anything, I forced myself.

[aspencer]

81. I personally hated Dick and Jane

But I hear others enjoyed their antics

[GalleryGod]

83. You want some cheese with all this whine ?

J.A.F.O.:rofl:

This place is hopeless:puke:

[bigwillq]

84. Catcher in the Rye

Flame away.

What a whiny little bitch.

:mad:

[freethought]

118. I read "Catcher" recently

I wanted to find out what the "mystique" about this book was, if you can call it that. I read that the book caused quite a stir when in was released in the early 1950s or so. When I finished it I was left sort of scratching my head
trying to figure out what the fuss was about. It was definitely a different scene in the 50s. This book still shows up on most controversial book lists. Go figure!

You're 100% correct. The main character was definitely a whiny little bitch and moocher to boot.

[MysticalChicken]

128. Sorry, but...

... I was never made to read Catcher in school, but I picked it up at around age 23 or so in a bookstore and started to read it and fell in love with it. Seems like it's one of those books you either love or hate.

Even if you don't like that one, Franny and Zooey by the same author, JD Salinger, is excellent, and my favorite book.

[philosophie_en_rose]

85. Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead

I had a misguided teacher force us to write essay for some objectivist Ayn Rand high school essay contest.

[NNadir]

87. Ugh. That must have been terrible. n/t.

[swag]

140. Oh, I see I got off easy with "Anthem".

[eyepaddle]

159. I was looking through here for Atlas Shrugged.

Ooooff, that sucked. I'd never heard of Ayn Rand before I read that (2nd year of college.)

Obviously there are abundant reasons to dislike that book, but just on a literary level alone it was wretched.

I never fell for reading any other Ayn Rand after Atlas Shrugged.

[Arugula Latte]

88. Last of the Mohicans.

:boring:

Damn, that was soooooo boring. I remember moving my eyes over the words and not making sense of them because it was such a snoozefest.

[jus_the_facts]

89. I hated Animal Farm...yet tripped on 1984.....

....go figure! :D

[6000eliot]

122. All books are equal

Some are just more equal than others.

[yellowdogintexas]

104. CAtcher in the Rye, Red Badge of Courage,

anything by Melville

[sweetheart]

110. the bible

Its really a very crap written book, boring as sin, dreadful to
read in a classroom like brainwashed repetition of claptrap to
satisfy the believers, yep.

[Broken_Hero]

112. hmm, tough one...

A tie...

Black Like Me

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Like-John-Howard-Griffin/dp/0451192036/sr=1-1/qid=1163309722/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-2435656-1617549?ie=UTF8&s=books


Things Fall Apart

http://www.amazon.com/Things-Fall-Apart-Chinua-Achebe/dp/0385474547

[Lautremont]

113. Boner in the Fly

(aka "Banner in the Sky")

[kiahzero]

115. Doctor Zhivago. (n/t)

[PassingFair]

144. I second the Dr. Zhivago nomination

One more "'ovich" and I would have BLOWN CHUNKS.

I could NOT keep all those names straight.

It was worse than reading the bible.

[Drum]

116. I liked reading.

:) I didn't mind any of those classes.

[TheBaldyMan]

120. all of them, although I did read & enjoy a lot of books that I wasn't forced to

[barb162]

121. Some Nathaniel Hawthorne piece of crap

"The Scarlet Letter" as I recall. The guy wrote sentences a half page long. Second rate.

[MysticalChicken]

124. Do books you hated THEN but love now count?

When we had to read To Kill a Mockingbird in I think tenth grade, I couldn't stand it. But ten years later (about a year ago), I happened to be in a store where it was being sold and I picked it up and started reading, and I found myself drawn into the story. I bought it and am currently re-reading it for the fourth time, and I absolutely love it now. One of my favorite things to do when reading any book is to make up voices for the characters in my head, and I can do that really easily with Scout Finch.

[wickerwoman]

132. Henry James

mostly because of the way he was taught + being too young to understand it.

I like him a lot more now.

[Yavin4]

134. My Pet Goat

The President wouldn't stop reading it to us.

[T_i_B]

135. The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Absolute tripe I tell ya.

I'd have been happier if it had been written about World Championship snooker venues myself.

[Mutley]

136. I'll be called a heretic for this, but

Pride and Prejudice. I just don't really like Jane Austen. :hide:

[blondeatlast]

143. Join the club. I took a Brit Lit class and to this day wondered how I

got through it with beating my head against a brick wall--or going comatose from boredom!

[Mutley]

146. I really like a lot of other British Literature

but not Jane Austen. She just bores the crap outta me.

I like a lot of the British Romantic stuff.

[swag]

139. "Anthem" by Ayn Rand.

As a high school freshman.

[Jean Louise Finch]

145. Snow Falling on Cedars

for my senior year AP English class. I was completely outraged by the blatant plagiarism of Atticus's speech in TKAM, added to the fact the whole book was just terribly written. I still can't believe anyone ever thought Snow Falling on Cedars was worth reading.

[ScreamingMeemie]

147. "Babbitt" ...Sinclair Lewis...

I mean, really... a day in the life of a businessman??? YAWN... Thank you Cliff Notes.

[last_texas_dem]

175. I think you might like that one more than you think

I'm not trying to be presumptuous so I apologize in advance if I sound that way. But I think you might actually like that book if you gave it a shot today. I read it a couple years ago for fun (along with several other Lewis books like Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and It Can't Happen Here) and it helped to make Sinclair Lewis one of my favorite authors. It's a pretty harsh satire of a businessman who does whatever it takes to get ahead and is essentially an empty suit. It's not at all glorifying his lifestyle and the things he does; it's more pointing out the many hypocrisies and the overall emptiness of the life he leads. Plus, Lewis is just a very interesting storyteller, though it may take a few pages before he really gets going. He is "of his time" in many ways, but parts of some of his books are very, very fitting to our current political and social climate. Anyway, that's just my recommedation. I'm not sure how far you got into it the first time, so you may just know it's not your kind of book, but I figured I'd give my take on it just in case you'd consider giving it another try.

[RedStateShame]

148. Gone with the Wind

Historical novel, my ass. This is the template for every Fabio-cover grocery store trash novel marketed toward the morbidly obese, cat collectors, and other varieties of spinsters and shut-ins. The Civil War itself is simply used as a convenient way to kill of husbands when they lose interest--which, as the rest of the writing, happens a lot sooner than Margaret Mitchell would believe--and, of course, I remember it being over 1000 pages long, proving that publishers paid by the page at some point.

[ncrainbowgrrl]

151. Right there with you. Also hated the movie.

To make it worse, we had to do a comparison btw the book and movie. So, I checked movie out of library, and proceeded to lose it. I had to pay $30 to buy a new copy of the darn thing. (uggh!)

[noonwitch]

150. "Wuthering Heights"- boring as hell

The story ends a third of the way into the book, and the rest is just boring.

I was forced to read "A Tale Of Two Cities", but I liked it.

[bikebloke]

152. The Red Badge of Courage

The only book that caused me to doze the only time in school. I quickly woke before anyone in class noticed. And I was a reader then - still am.

[LibertyLover]

153. Jude the Obscure

I was in the honors English class in high school. In 10th grade we did British literature for the whole year. I really liked the early British stuff, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, et al. But we also had to read a classic British novel. Everybody else got to read The Hobbit. Honors English got to read Jude. It was so bad that I broke down and got the Cliff Notes for it. I'm glad I did. It turns out that I missed most of the significant things. I never again read any Hardy. On the other hand, a good friend of mine fell in love with British novelists and minored in them in college.

[El Fuego]

154. "V" by Thomas Pynchon

It was EXCRUCIATING.

[Ms_Dem_Meanor]

157. The Animal Farm

You had to be on some serious drugs to write that book!!!

[underpants]

165. I have no idea how much money I have made off that book

I used to write book reports and essays based on it for people in college often in the same class. $20 guaranteed at least a B. I don't think any of them got less than an A.

[pink-o]

174. You're the second person to say that!! How could you both??

.."Animal Farm" is so totally brilliant and biting, I'm stunned that anyone progressive could find it boring. It's a sociological statement on Absolute Power told as a children's story on an English Farm--and some of the best use of Dramatic Irony I've ever read.

I read it in 10th grade, and again in my 20s. Loved it both times.

[MissMillie]

158. all of them

:shrug:

[Rosie1223]

160. It's not the book, it's the english class , IMHO

I mean, Dickens wrote some great stories. But when you are bogged down by assignments discussing the themes, the symbolism, etc., it ruins the enjoyment of reading a good book. I thing Dickens is rolling in his grave screaming, "They're just stories, people! I wrote because I needed the money to get out of debtors prison. Mme Defarges' knitting needles were just freaking knitting needles!"

[Haole Girl]

163. Heart of Darkness

I found it disturbing. Yes, it is exquisitely well-written...but it is twisted and sick..and I didn't like it. And, I absolutely detested the professor, who seemed to almost get high, while he read passages from it in class. Sick book..and sick professor. It was my most difficult course in college...only 11 of us, out of 60, survived it!

[LeftishBrit]

164. I liked most of them, BUT disliked D.H. Lawrence's poetry

I also disliked John Buchan's "Prester John", which we were given to read at the age of 12, but as I've never read it since, I've no idea what I'd think of it now.

[underpants]

166. "The Count of Monte Cristo" 8th grade

I didn't pick up another book for several years.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

168. Moby Dick.

[sasquatch]

169. Really hated "The Pearl"

[billyskank]

171. Far From The Madding Crowd

Most. Boring. Book. Ever.

[adamuu]

172. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Sensibility
senior year of high school
that was painful :banghead:
i think i eventually refused to read it and took an "F"
then they made us watch the movie in class for a week. ... 136 minutes long.
and the teacher wouldn't shut up about it won an academy award.
i was reprimanded in front of my peers in class, for trying to read a different book during the movie.:dunce:
it was just awful all around.

Edit:
or was it Pride and Prejudice? the character names sound slightly more familiar. i'm pretty sure that's the one. not that it matters.

Edit:
Mark Twain's reaction was revulsion:

"Jane Austen? Why, I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book."

[Orsino]

173. The Iliad

The Odyssey, however, I loved.