I assume you mean before college. Either the Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer book. The teacher read it out loud and made sure to say the N word loudly and repeatedly. American literature sucks anyway. I preferred the British literature class.
Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley". Hated it then, hate it now. And pretty much find anything Steinbeck has written insufferable, with "Cannery Row" just a slight exception.
Walkabout. We moved a lot as a kid. I went to 10 different schools. This effing thing was mandatory at 4 different schools. So I had to keep rereading it for 3 years of my life. It sucks as a story.
It's a tie between Ayn Rand's "Anthem," which I had to read for 7th grade AP English, and which made me swear off Ayn Rand forever, and "Giants Of The Earth," a 500+ page novel about Norwegian pioneer immigrants in the American Midwest that is every bit as dry and dull as it seems, that I was forced to read for 10th grade English.
I was going to say Ethan Frome, who cares about a frickin' pickle dish. But AndrewBW nailed it, Great Expectations was incredibly boring, convoluted and the characters were awful.
I did my senior thesis on Charles Dickens, and part of the reason his books can be so long and ponderous is that he wrote them in chspter form and got paid BY THE WORD, so lots of goofy shit in there. I did like Mr Dick tho
In the Dickens vein, my least fave was A Tale of Two Cities. Only made it to page 52. But, unlike a couple folks above, two of my all-time faves are the Odyssey and Island of the Blue Dolphins!
It's the stuff of a Lifetime movie in a historical setting. The French Revolution, lots of spies and beheadings, and a romance involving unrequited love and two men who look so much alike one switches identities to save the life of the man the woman actually loves.
"The little match girl" by Hans Christian Andersen. It's a great book. The problem is, they told us to read it at age of 7, and it's too freaking dark for little kids. IMHO.
I'm an English major, so I have read a LOT of books. The only one I couldn't get into was "Emma" by Jane Austin. Standout authors that I absolutely *loved* were Carson McCullers, any of the Bronte sisters, JD Salinger, and Evelyn Waugh. Man, I miss college. :(
Reread The Scarlett Letter in college and again in grad school. As I got older and had more life experience, I came to realize levels of the universal truth Hawthorne was revealing regarding the ongoing struggle for individual happiness within the framework of a (necessary) and functioning social structure. I also realized that it is criminal to make 17 year old kids read it, not just bc I feel sorry for the kids but it is unfair to Hawthorne's work which is truly magnificent.
"1984" - George Orwell. English cow thought it would be good for our class (of 1984) to read it. I despised it then, and even more so today, some *cough* decades later.
Moby Dick. In fact, there was a class revolt over it. Teacher said one day we would understand why we shd read it. She was right. Taught me how to plug thru long boring books as preparation for college.
"I Am the Cheese" and "The Chocolate War," both by Robert Cormier. I was in two different high school systems, had to read the first one in one, the second one in the other. Both were horribly depressing. One of them left me depressed for days, I think it was "Cheese." We also had to read "Go Ask Alice," when I was in school. I think that's been dropped now because it was proven to be fiction.
But so many downbeat, lousy books we were forced to read in high school: "Lord of the Flies," "Animal Farm," "Beowolf." I did like "Catcher in the Rye" and "To Kill a Mockingbird," though.
High school - A Tale of Two Cities. Still can’t read the damn thing as an adult. My poor kid had to real Great Expectations this year and it nearly killed him, too.
College - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Caused me to roll my eyes at dangerously high frequencies. Haven’t ever tried to read it since.
Great Expectations. At some point over the years I realized the old eccentric Miss Havisham character was basically the template for the Norma Desmond character in Sunset Boulevard (or maybe the Joe Gillis character actually made the comparison in the movie). But no kid on the planet is interested in either character, they are scary and impossible to understand until you're in maybe your 40s or so, and though I love Sunset Boulevard I have zero interest in taking a look again at Great Expectations.
Moby Dick.The longest, most boring book out there. I think I skipped most of the middle of the book. It never seemed to end. On top of reading it we had to give an oral presentation on something in the book. Don't ask me why but I chose harpooning rope.
"Catcher in the Rye". The only book I remember from school I found painfully boring and nonsensical. Ironically my brother committed suicide at 15 when I was 16 in the 70's. Teen mental health just wasn't on anyone's radar and there was no such thing as "teen suicide" -- literally -- the term didn't exist.
Ethan Frome, the albatross, the Illiad- such depressing literature for teenagers in a hormonal revolution! And may i say The Great Gatesby is a bunch of bullshit too, as is Catcher in the Rye!
Thank you for sharing. Just because a book is considered a classic does not mean it is good. Some children's and young adult books are better than some books written for adults. Judy Blume comes to mind. Everyone checked Forever out of the library. You will want to read it, trust me.
Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville has to be the most boring book I've read in my life. On the other hand, read it if you are struggling with insomnia. I can't recommend Billy Budd highly enough for that application.
Beowulf...Loved it the first two times but being in higher end classes I read it 3 times already and when a fourth I protested. The teacher said if I could pass the 10 questions and an essay test and get an A, we were off the hook and could silently read a book we got out of the library,if I got less than an A, I got to read Beowulf out loud to the class. I missed one question,(the color of Beowulf's belt) and we silently read our own book and turned in a synopsis of what we read. To this day, I still refuse to even watch Beowulf on TV or film.
I liked the books I can recall us reading in school other than Of Mice and Men. Sunset Song was a bit unsettling as it seemed to hint at incest, and Romeo and Juliet was a bit cringeworthy because our teacher made us act out the parts, but I liked bits of them and more of the other books we did. MacBeth and 1984 were fantastic. The Merchant Of Venice has great parts too.
The one writer I immediately disliked (first encountered around that age although we didn't do it at school) was Flannery o'Connor. I've never taken such an objection to a writer so many adore.
The 'Catechism' which we had to know off by heart to do our first Holy Communion. We were threatened by the nuns that the devil would get it otherwise.That or 'Peig' about a boring auld one.
I must be emotionally constipated. I haven't given a shyt for days.
ReplyDeleteI hated Catcher in the Rye as a kid (Holden seemed too whiney.) I love it and Salinger’s other works as an adult.
ReplyDeleteMoby's Dick. Reading was kinda flat.
ReplyDeleteLoved Moby Dick.
DeleteWrote a "feminine symbolism perspective" report.
Good times.
😐
A Wrinkle in Time
ReplyDeleteAgree
DeleteI assume you mean before college. Either the Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer book. The teacher read it out loud and made sure to say the N word loudly and repeatedly. American literature sucks anyway. I preferred the British literature class.
ReplyDeleteSteinbeck's "Travels With Charley". Hated it then, hate it now. And pretty much find anything Steinbeck has written insufferable, with "Cannery Row" just a slight exception.
ReplyDeleteIn 6th grade, Where the Red Fern Grows.
ReplyDeleteWalkabout. We moved a lot as a kid. I went to 10 different schools. This effing thing was mandatory at 4 different schools. So I had to keep rereading it for 3 years of my life. It sucks as a story.
ReplyDeleteI liked the movie
Delete"Great Expectations". It took me years to attempt Dickens after that. I've liked a number of his books since then, but have never attempted GE again.
ReplyDeleteAnimal Farm
ReplyDeleteDo you like it now? I enjoyed reading it and I think it is relevant for today.
DeleteNot a book but a short story.... The Lottery.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Silas Marner. Blech.
The Iliad and it's companion The Odyssey by Homer.😣
ReplyDeleteTimeo danaos et dona ferentes!
DeleteThe Bell Jar
ReplyDeleteRoxy - The lottery traumatized me in 7th grade. I LOVE books but I truly hated Lord of the Flies the most.
ReplyDeleteIt's a tie between Ayn Rand's "Anthem," which I had to read for 7th grade AP English, and which made me swear off Ayn Rand forever, and "Giants Of The Earth," a 500+ page novel about Norwegian pioneer immigrants in the American Midwest that is every bit as dry and dull as it seems, that I was forced to read for 10th grade English.
ReplyDeleteThe Old Man And The Sea.
ReplyDeleteIsland of the Blue Dolphins (5th grade)
ReplyDeleteAnd
The Grapes of Wrath (11th)
Uggghhhhhh just NO
I was going to say Ethan Frome, who cares about a frickin' pickle dish. But AndrewBW nailed it, Great Expectations was incredibly boring, convoluted and the characters were awful.
ReplyDeleteI did my senior thesis on Charles Dickens, and part of the reason his books can be so long and ponderous is that he wrote them in chspter form and got paid BY THE WORD, so lots of goofy shit in there. I did like Mr Dick tho
DeleteI don't think it's well known, but we had to read it in 6th grade: A Solitary Blue.
ReplyDeleteAnthem by Ayn Rand (blessedly short, thank goodness).
ReplyDeleteIn the Dickens vein, my least fave was A Tale of Two Cities. Only made it to page 52. But, unlike a couple folks above, two of my all-time faves are the Odyssey and Island of the Blue Dolphins!
ReplyDeleteI made it to page 1
DeleteIt's the stuff of a Lifetime movie in a historical setting. The French Revolution, lots of spies and beheadings, and a romance involving unrequited love and two men who look so much alike one switches identities to save the life of the man the woman actually loves.
DeleteFucking Frankenstein. It was so horribly written.
ReplyDeleteCamus’ the stranger. I thought it was pretentious
ReplyDeleteshuddering at even the name; Obasan.
ReplyDelete"The little match girl" by Hans Christian Andersen. It's a great book. The problem is, they told us to read it at age of 7, and it's too freaking dark for little kids. IMHO.
ReplyDeletereally hated "The Lord of the Flies"
ReplyDeleteI failed 2 semesters of english in hogh scho be ause i refused to read Great Expectations. Paid by tge word dickens can rot in hwll
ReplyDeleteThe Good Earth
ReplyDeleteEthan Fromme.
ReplyDeleteThe Good Earth (honorable mention: Silas Marner)
ReplyDeleteAnimal Farm & The Hobbit
ReplyDeleteI did very much enjoy The Great Gatsby & Arms and the Man. Oh and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings!
ReplyDeleteSunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock.
ReplyDeleteUghhhhhhhh.
I'm an English major, so I have read a LOT of books. The only one I couldn't get into was "Emma" by Jane Austin. Standout authors that I absolutely *loved* were Carson McCullers, any of the Bronte sisters, JD Salinger, and Evelyn Waugh.
ReplyDeleteMan, I miss college. :(
Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure with any other Hardy coming in a close second.
ReplyDeleteKes.
ReplyDeleteRequired reading in the UK school system. Thankfully it didnt deter me from reading, but damn was it a struggle reading that.
The Scarlet Letter
ReplyDeleteArrrrrrgh
Reread The Scarlett Letter in college and again in grad school. As I got older and had more life experience, I came to realize levels of the universal truth Hawthorne was revealing regarding the ongoing struggle for individual happiness within the framework of a (necessary) and functioning social structure. I also realized that it is criminal to make 17 year old kids read it, not just bc I feel sorry for the kids but it is unfair to Hawthorne's work which is truly magnificent.
DeleteGrapes of Wrath. Couldn't read the book, the Cliff Notes were just as boring, and even the album rented from the library was unbearably horrible.
ReplyDeleteMovie is outstanding, though.
DeleteCatcher in the Rye. I was pissed I had to read that pile of crap.
ReplyDelete"1984" - George Orwell. English cow thought it would be good for our class (of 1984) to read it. I despised it then, and even more so today, some *cough* decades later.
ReplyDeleteMoby Dick. In fact, there was a class revolt over it. Teacher said one day we would understand why we shd read it. She was right. Taught me how to plug thru long boring books as preparation for college.
ReplyDelete"I Am the Cheese" and "The Chocolate War," both by Robert Cormier. I was in two different high school systems, had to read the first one in one, the second one in the other. Both were horribly depressing. One of them left me depressed for days, I think it was "Cheese." We also had to read "Go Ask Alice," when I was in school. I think that's been dropped now because it was proven to be fiction.
ReplyDeleteBut so many downbeat, lousy books we were forced to read in high school: "Lord of the Flies," "Animal Farm," "Beowolf." I did like "Catcher in the Rye" and "To Kill a Mockingbird," though.
High school - A Tale of Two Cities. Still can’t read the damn thing as an adult. My poor kid had to real Great Expectations this year and it nearly killed him, too.
ReplyDeleteCollege - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Caused me to roll my eyes at dangerously high frequencies. Haven’t ever tried to read it since.
Great Expectations. At some point over the years I realized the old eccentric Miss Havisham character was basically the template for the Norma Desmond character in Sunset Boulevard (or maybe the Joe Gillis character actually made the comparison in the movie). But no kid on the planet is interested in either character, they are scary and impossible to understand until you're in maybe your 40s or so, and though I love Sunset Boulevard I have zero interest in taking a look again at Great Expectations.
ReplyDeleteJane Eyre. It was the first book I ever read for school that I couldn’t wait to finish. Jane is such a ninny!
ReplyDeleteFahrenheit 451.
ReplyDeleteMoby Dick. Hated that book, hated the author, and hated the class.
ReplyDeleteThe Pearl by John Steinbeck. I've always been an incredibly avid reader. For some reason, this book just didn't click with me.
ReplyDeleteThe Kenzie Face - Jane is indeed an incredible ninny.
Moby Dick, It was assigned reading in two of my college classes and I couldn't read it.
ReplyDeleteNjal's Saga
ReplyDeleteParadise Lost, Paradise Found by Milton and anything by John Donne. Blech.
ReplyDelete"Red Badge of Courage"
ReplyDeleteI forfeited a lot of 5th grade recesses to finish it. Only I never finished. I finally wrote the book report on the movie. Nobody ever knew.
Little women
ReplyDeleteI never liked any Hemingway but what stands out is Silas Marner. UGH.
ReplyDeleteMoby Dick.The longest, most boring book out there. I think I skipped most of the middle of the book. It never seemed to end. On top of reading it we had to give an oral presentation on something in the book. Don't ask me why but I chose harpooning rope.
ReplyDelete"Catcher in the Rye". The only book I remember from school I found painfully boring and nonsensical. Ironically my brother committed suicide at 15 when I was 16 in the 70's. Teen mental health just wasn't on anyone's radar and there was no such thing as "teen suicide" -- literally -- the term didn't exist.
ReplyDeleteLord of the Flies
ReplyDeletePrince and the Pooper. ugh. Worst ever followed at a close second by Moby Dick. So Borring!!!
ReplyDeleteEthan Frome, the albatross, the Illiad- such depressing literature for teenagers in a hormonal revolution! And may i say The Great Gatesby is a bunch of bullshit too, as is Catcher in the Rye!
ReplyDeleteHeart of Darkness. It’s the only book I ever relied on Cliff Notes to pass the class. I hated Apocalypse Now as well, so that did me no good.
ReplyDeleteWe had to read that one along with The Secret Share. The entire class was confused.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteRead Dear Mr. Henshaw in middle school.
ReplyDeleteHated it.
I think I would've enjoyed English class in an American/British high school... 🗽👩🏻🚕🍂💛
ReplyDeleteESL in Asia is boring AF.
Thank you for sharing. Just because a book is considered a classic does not mean it is good. Some children's and young adult books are better than some books written for adults. Judy Blume comes to mind. Everyone checked Forever out of the library. You will want to read it, trust me.
DeleteBilly Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville has to be the most boring book I've read in my life. On the other hand, read it if you are struggling with insomnia. I can't recommend Billy Budd highly enough for that application.
ReplyDeleteLandmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War
ReplyDeleteMadame Bovary. Hate that book!!
ReplyDeleteBeowulf...Loved it the first two times but being in higher end classes I read it 3 times already and when a fourth I protested. The teacher said if I could pass the 10 questions and an essay test and get an A, we were off the hook and could silently read a book we got out of the library,if I got less than an A, I got to read Beowulf out loud to the class. I missed one question,(the color of Beowulf's belt) and we silently read our own book and turned in a synopsis of what we read. To this day, I still refuse to even watch Beowulf on TV or film.
ReplyDeleteI liked the books I can recall us reading in school other than Of Mice and Men. Sunset Song was a bit unsettling as it seemed to hint at incest, and Romeo and Juliet was a bit cringeworthy because our teacher made us act out the parts, but I liked bits of them and more of the other books we did. MacBeth and 1984 were fantastic. The Merchant Of Venice has great parts too.
ReplyDeleteThe one writer I immediately disliked (first encountered around that age although we didn't do it at school) was Flannery o'Connor. I've never taken such an objection to a writer so many adore.
The 'Catechism' which we had to know off by heart to do our first Holy Communion. We were threatened by the nuns that the devil would get it otherwise.That or 'Peig' about a boring auld one.
ReplyDeleteDickens would send a chapter of his books by ship to NYC and there would be crowds on the pier waiting for it to arrive.
ReplyDeleteTwelfth night,I don't understand all the fuss over Shakespeare,one of the best we read was Hobson's choice.
ReplyDeleteI love literature so I would have to say my math book...Still dont know my times tables.
ReplyDeleteAnything by Hemingway
ReplyDelete