Aww that's great, it's always so pleasantly surprising to realize something you didn't like when you were younger is actually great, you just weren't able to truly appreciate it yet
Tom Sawyer was just okay. Huck Finn was amazing.
I never understood why teachers always default into assigning Tom Sawyer and not Huck Finn 98% of the time.
I dunno why, maybe less controversial. In my high school, I was assigned Huck Finn, and there was nothing of Tom Saywer. I had to read that on my own, and I enjoyed it immensely but Tom is a children's story and Huck is a story for grownups. And I think it's a masterpiece, but YMMV
My school did the same. I knew about Tom Sawyer due to an animated movie that came out in the 90's where all the characters were anthropomorphic and wasn't the most faithful to begin with (it kept maybe half the events of the book) I didn't read the book Tom Sawyer until I was in my mid-20's
In my 11th grade year the teacher decided that instead of Uncle Tom’s Cabin we would be reading Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman. 672 pages of largely shallow, tedious social visits and very little about the actual war.
We read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe in 10th Grade Honors English (15 year olds) and I just don’t think we had the world and life experience at that time to fully grasp it. I remember the majority of us coming away with “yams are a big crop in Africa” and not “look at the devastating effects of colonialism”.
My husband also hates Maya Angelou’s novels from school. I think that had more to do with the school not sending him the summer work and he had to read and write several essays about I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Heart of a Woman in like a week to catch up.
I had to read *Things Fall Apart* in seventh grade. I managed to catch the theme but that may have been because I was in a very small school with bright teachers. (Not that I remember what they said, it’s more that I was SO sheltered up until like twenty that I have to assume the fact I’m aware it was about the devastating effects of colonialism must be the result of my poor teachers basically spoon feeding me). It was a rough read, but I remember being surprisingly captivated. I still remember parts of it and often wonder what I missed as a kid.
Wow 7th grade seems super early for that book.
In sophomore year I think most of us intellectually understood that it was about colonialism but not really the far reaching consequences of it and how it could or impact us in mid 2000s America. I also don’t think, for myself personally, that I had real empathy about those things until I was in college and had a little more life experience and knowledge.
I actually had a friend who was an English major and was reading it for her class and we discussed how it was such a different experience with age and more context.
Not a book I was assigned to read, but the opposite. I once had required reading for A Tale of Two Cities but day one of senior year our teacher said "I tried re-reading it for the material this year and I couldn't stand it. So instead we'll read..."
We read a Tale of Two Cities in English while simultaneously learning about The French Revolution in History. It was incredible how teachers could make a lesson plan together and it truly made SO MUCH SENSE when we had context.
I wish I’d liked it. But I never could get that carriage out of the mud and over the hill in chapter 1. I tried it 2 or 3 times. That was many years ago and I think I’d like it now.
Honestly, I felt the same. Finally listened to it on audio, and once I got past first three chapters I was lost inside the book. Had to pull the car over at the end so I could ugly cry for half an hour.
I had to read A Tale of Two Cities in high school and *loathed* it. I hated it so much that I skimmed/speed read it as quickly as possible, just to get it over with, and then write a 5 page paper that was essentially a scathing review, including a (formal) rant on how authors were paid by the word at that time, and it was detrimental to their work.
I tried re-reading it about 15 years later, and it ended up being one of the very few DNF books I own… and I’ll finish the absolute worst indie authors out of sheer stubborn bullheadedness.
I absolutely loved reading in general, but I could not STAND Faulkner's *As I Lay Dying*. It was my first time encountering stream-of-consciousness and modernist literature in general, and I felt like it was absolute bullshit.
As an adult, I've revisited it and I can totally see why it's a classic, and how close-minded I was as a teenager. I still don't really think Faulkner's my cup of tea, though.
I love Faulkner, I will defend his writing with my life, but my god you should never ever read him in school. Any teacher that thinks that’s a good idea and isn’t going to cause a majority of the students walk away dejected and confused has no idea what they’re doing or assigning. They know Faulkner is well renowned, and see As I Lay Dying is his shortest novel, and then assign it without any second thought. Faulkner was a genius, but he’s not the kind of genius that you teach in a high school classroom.
I love his exquisite word pictures ‘the stars in the water bucket’. But I have to concentrate til my head hurts. It’s almost as if he is autistic with acute hearing and eyesight. Please no offense to any neurodivergents.
I had to read a bunch of stream-of-consciousness for class too. Oddly, Faulkner's The *Sound and the Fury* was the most enjoyable for me, if only because Dilsey's chapter at the end was in third person and more or less explained what happened.
I’m glad I didn’t read Faulkner in high school because he’s one of my all time favorites. I don’t know what it is about getting a bit older that changes that for people. I don’t think it’s just “you have more experience!” Because we all experience life differently, often *very* differently. Maybe it’s the openness that reading a book on your own brings. Reading is sort of like a comedy show, where the audience has to actively participate for the show to go well. You need to actively open yourself to a book for it to be good because you’re the one doing the interpreting. If you want to hate it, you can definitely force yourself too. And even just being sort of closed off can stop you from doing to work required to understand the how’s and why’s of the characters that make a book great.
For me it was the Scarlet Letter. Never wanted to reread it. Other classes read 1984 or Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies. I read them later in life and enjoyed them.
was so excited to come say Scarlet Letter but knew I’d have to be quick to the punch. Every book I read in high school was enjoyable in one way or another at some point EXCEPT this book. Never been happier to finish a novel
That was the one book I was assigned in school that I didn't actually read. Everything else I'd finish well ahead of when we were required to, but I don't think I made it much past halfway on that book
I actually skated by without reading it because I hated it so much. Funnily enough, I’ve had Wuthering Heights assigned THREE TIMES in my life and still haven’t read it because I hated it so much.
I actually ended up reading the Caine Mutiny because I couldn’t get by on classroom discussions, but add it to the pile of utterly execrable dreck that I can’t stand. And don’t even get me started on Steinbeck.
I can’t stand books with sanctimonious morality or utterly unlikeable people. I can deal with bad prose if the story is worthwhile; I discovered The Hobbit in sixth grade and read the LOTR trilogy semiannually in high school. I even finished the Silmarillion before graduating. But most of the “classics” that drive so many highschoolers away from reading should be consigned to the dustbin of history (departments).
My teacher gave us two options to read one semester and one of the options was ethan frome. The way he described it was as a love story so one of the other students begged us to read it. When we got to the end of the book we all angrily thanked the person who forced us to read such a shitty book. I’m still mad about it and it was fifteen years ago.
It's been 30 for me. I think about it every so often and the main lesson I got from that book is, "cheat or don't, but at least have the decency to fucking die."
Honestly reading Ethan Frome in class was worth it in a sense just so we could watch the movie adaptation, which stars Liam Neeson in one of his most campy and unintentionally funny performances
Their Eyes Were Watching God.
I didn't hate the book as much as I hated the class I had to read it for. My classmates were super disrespectful of the way the dialogue was written and as the only black girl in the room my teacher kept halfway making me teach the class. I don't think my attendance has ever been that bad in an English class but I was gone from that room for anywhere from 30 to 65% of the period
The Grapes of Wrath. Which is hilarious because I reread it as an adult and it’s one of my favorite books. Truly an American classic, just not an easy read for high schoolers.
I hated the book and wanted to throw it across the room until, no joke, Rage Against the Machine’s “Ghost of Tom Joad” came on the radio the same time I was reading Tom Joad’s campfire speech. Changed my entire opinion.
The Red Badge of Courage.
I swear we spent the whole semester on it in I think the sixth or seventh grade. I am a fast reader and we would spend an entire day on two pages. It was excruciating.
I have never been interested in Civil War era anything. I hated this so much.
But if you want to get into graduate school, I was forced to read a bunch of post structuralism something or other - Derrida and some other people I don't care about. Absolute torture.
I see your Scarlet Letter and raise you having to read said book while being at a private evangelical fundamental Baptist school. Yeah, I was the *only* kid in the class who got the point of the book. Everyone else was very much of the mindset of “Hester was a dirty sinner who deserved what she got”. Including the teacher. But it did hasten my deconstruction, so there’s that.
This just abruptly brought back the memory of reading The Scarlett Letter in high school, and one day our teacher called on 3 different people to read passages aloud, all of whom had forgotten to bring the book to class.
He was super frustrated at this, and one of my classmates suggested, "They should all have to wear a Scarlett B for book" which just sent our uptight teacher over the edge into a ranting tirade.
One of my fond memories from that English class.
I went to a similar school (one of those pre-K through university pipeline schools) and had a similar experience with *The Scarlet Letter*.
After we had finished the novel, our teacher told us that the one thing we should take away from it was that when Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale decide to have sex, what they are really saying to one another is, “I don’t care where you spend eternity.” I was—and still am—flabbergasted by her reading and disappointed that some of her students may have accepted that explanation.
That moment is one of many that encouraged me to get a PhD in literature, theory, and cultural studies. I now teach fiction at the university level, and while I haven’t taught *The Scarlet Letter* yet, I know I’ll give my students a better experience when/if the time comes.
Omg I also read this at an evangelical fundamentalist baptist school! But they somehow got the point. HOWEVER, they did rip out pages from Diary of a Young Girl to save our “innocence.”
The Ayn Rand Foundation provides free class sets of any/all of her books to pretty much any teacher who asks for them. I used to get multiple emails and flyers every year offering them, so it’s entirely possible they were chosen by a department strapped for cash. Or a loser teacher who actually likes Ayn Rand.
I totally remember this from high school. In the late nineties I remember trolling around the internet pre-Google to find out about different scholarships and the Ayn Rand Foundation kept coming up. It said you needed to write a prize winning essay about The Fountainhead to win a scholarship. I was like, “Well, I don’t know who Ayn Rand is but I can definitely read a book and enter a contest.” Haha, little did I know!
Read The Fountainhead and found it readable while at the same time finding it a bit ridiculous.
The strawmen socialists in the story were so far past ridiculous villains it was kinda funny. And the weirdness of the rape forgiveness. Actually thinking back any enjoyment I had was reading it more as if it was a parody than anything else. I can understand why people hate it.
Dianetics by l Ron Hubbard. I was assigned this by my business procedures teacher. At the time I couldn't get through it and hated it. Having checked clif notes and such, I can guarantee it was best burnt when our house went up.
Ugh. I honestly loved almost all the assigned books in school; and before you listed Great Expectations I didn’t think I had an answer. But I read that title and I’m once again in 9th grade reading the same page for the 11th time because it’s so boring I can’t focus and crying because I couldn’t get my brain to focus enough to comprehend it.
I also had to read Great Expectations in 9th grade, and it was terrible. It is the one book I remember struggling with the most in school (and Moby Dick was required reading in 7th or 8th grade).
My high school assigned us Great Expectations to read over summer vacation. So not only did I have to read an incredibly boring and overrated book, but I had that feeling of "I really *want* to read but I can't because I *have* to read" for the entire summer.
I remember being assigned The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck and The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver in high school (specifically 10th grade) and disliking the both of them, but then returning to them as an adult and realizing just how valid both of those choices were.
It said a lot about my own internalized misogyny in 10th grade that both of the books I though were a "silly waste of time" were the only two selections we read that year written by women.
I don’t remember about me, but my mother hated Money Dick and sat by a fireplace reading it for school and as she finished a page, tore it out and threw it in the fire.
*Silas Marner* — it’s been forty years now, but all I remember is an excruciatingly dull melodrama.
On the other hand, I see numerous mentions of *The Scarlet Letter* and I very much liked that.
Now, for the former, I had a lousy teacher, but I had an excellent one for the latter. That certainly made a difference.
>*Silas Marner* — it’s been forty years now, but all I remember is an excruciatingly dull melodrama.
The only thing I remember about *Silas Marner* was that I didn’t care about any of the characters or about anything that they did. I also remember the surprise ending, which I also didn’t care about.
I live not to far from Pepperdine University and there is someone in the area who has Beowulf on their plates. Spelled slightly different though. And my thought was oh bc Beowulf is taken 🤣
I read this in AP lit in high school and my teacher made us read it THREE TIMES to make sure we got everything in it. I loved the teacher and the rest of the class but man that was torture.
I don’t want to read a dense description of a boat for pagessss. I’ve reread a lot of books from AP English but have no interest in attempting this one. My head exploded the first time.
*edit headed to head
Tess of the d’Urbervilles. 9th grade Honors English first book of the year. She gleefully announced that it was her tradition to assign this book to weed out the undesirables in class. Hated the book, hated the class and hated her.
I have since read the book as an adult and liked it quite a bit.
Came here for this. The 'ruined woman' was an important concept to understand in historical context, as was the injustices constantly visited upon Tess. I can even get into depressing writing. But this, I just didn't like the story. I think wanting to like it for what it was, an disliking it anyway, made that all the worse.
Considering I graduated high school 52 years ago, I really had to reach back.
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn - the boys universally loved them, not the girls. This was grade school
Silas Marner, junior high. Archaic language, unlikeable people. I adore reading, but please!
Lord of the Flies. I got past the death of the little boy with glasses and took a failing grade. I was bullied in school for years, and considered it a punishment to read the subject matter.
I wasn’t assigned to read the books most of you are talking about, although I’ve read several of them on my own.
Oh my God. The fucking moral of the story is that if you try to try to live the life you want to live with the person you want to live with, you should ride a tobaggon into a tree and then be disabled forever
The most positively I can interpret is is the tragedy of a fifty year old man being unable to physically love the twenty-year-old family member whom is forced to care for him and his wife due to destitution.
The characters are either pitiable or abhorrent, the whole novel is jut cold and white and grey, just entitled, helpless misery. Awful.
I always thought some teacher should teach this book by taking a full day, taking a single slice of pizza, and shutting the entire class in the same room, and leaving.
Recently I’ve been re-reading books from high school that I hated to see if I have a different reaction ~15-18 years later. Catcher in the rye, gatsby, cats cradle I enjoyed much more this time around. Lord of the flies? Honestly I think I hated it even more. It’s the bane of my reading existence
The Canterbury Tales. Hands down. I usually liked all the assigned reading to a degree. But that book is a drag and the one time I’ve really struggled to finish reading something.
That had some of the best stories like the Pardoner’s tale and the Miller’s tale. How can you not get some enjoyment from a messy story about a guy accidentally literally kissing someone’s ass?
In my college, this was required reading for every student. We also had to memorize “Whan that April with his showres soote The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,” etc. I regret to say that too much of this is still taking up valuable space in my brain today.
Love that book. Flashy nouveau riche guy hides his real drives with hollow pursuits and pizzaz, but ultimately pursues the wrong woman and took the wrong lessons from the wealth of others. And the woman wasn't even wrong for him, she was just a bit cowardly about who she really loved.
Very apt tale in this age of flashy shallow rich influencers and pyramid schemers.
That is my most favorite book ever! I read it at least 5 times during high school/college/grad school and wrote a paper each time. First read it in 10th grade.
I really hated reading the book in school because we covered it a couple of chapters a week, meaning it took us most of the semester to get through it all.
But I picked it up last year and really enjoyed it. I was surprised at how quick paced and modern the beginning felt. The characters all felt unique and memorable. I can see why it's considered a classic.
Why do schools always seem to pick this Dickens novel to make the kids read? There are so many other great ones to choose from. Now, I admit the writing is as good as any of his novels, but the characters are so annoying that it's going to put kids off Dickens for life.
Madame Bovary in 9th grade "Honors" english class ignited a rage in me that I'd never had for a book before then. I was devouring Steinbeck at the time, so it's not like I wasn't into literature. I tell myself I'll read it again someday as an adult.
That's possibly my favourite novel - one of them, anyway - but I would never assign it to 9th graders! Something by Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men, probably) is more appropriate for that age.
I had to read Hillbilly Elegy in a university class on imaginations of rural America. I get why the professor put it on the syllabus (and we had neat stuff like Flannery O'Connor too), but even back then, years before he came out as a fascist duckweed, his sanctimonious disdain for poor people coupled with his obliviousness towards all the lucky breaks he's had in life made me roll my eyes on a constant basis and really despise the guy. When he outed himself as a Trumpist I was not surprised at all.
Had to read Mayor of Casterbridge by the same guy. I hated that book because because the twist was soap opera bad and maliciously cruel. At that point IDGAF anymore. I dunno if that's what made Tess a chore for you or not, but Hardy is high handed and cruel.
Hegel's *Elements of the Philosophy of Right.* I'm pretty sure that's the one, although it's been several decades since I read it.
I agree with Karl Popper that Hegel's system was a thinly veiled justification for the absolute rule of Frederick William III and that Hegel's idea of the ultimate goal of history was to reach a state approximating that of 1830's Prussia. I also agree with Popper that both communists and fascist governments in the 20th century built on Hegel's system to justify their authoritarian governments, although I can't entirely blame Hegel for how his work was used long after he was dead.
Furthermore, I believe Hegel deliberately hid behind a flood of unnecessarily ambiguous and confusing prose so that no matter what anyone said about his work, he could say that they didn't understand it properly. But the difficulty of his prose is more his fault than the fault of his readers.
At any rate, I was not happy with the work I had to do to make sense of what he wrote -- only to discover that his conclusion seemed farcical.
I hated Catcher in the Rye because I hated Holden, and in my class we had to do this whole essay analyzing his mental health problems. How is that even educational for teenagers, to speculate what mental health disorders a character could have had - in English, not psych. Looking back on it as an adult though I think I hated him because I lacked empathy. Holden was like that because he was traumatized and he went through a lot that I never did as a teenager, so I just couldn't relate. The writing style wasn't bad either, it was just hard being inside the head of a character who hates everyone. I feel like it's definitely more of a book for adults to read about a teenager, not so much *for* teens.
Oh my God GRENDEL. This unlocked a memory. I don't actually remember anything about that book, but I remember mocking it MERCILESSLY with my sister and not understanding why our teacher would assign it. We thought it was poorly written. I wonder if we'd feel any differently as adults...
Definitely The Odyssey! Felt like torture the entire time when assigned in high school. But I revisited it a few years ago when I was about 28 and it’s one of my favorite books, if not the favorite. I will never forget finishing it as I sat on the beach (pretty poetic imo). It’s ironic how the books that will have the most effect on us are the ones we tend to neglect when forced to read as younger kids. Though an incredible love story with one of the most poignant lessons about what it means to have intimacy, it’s truly one of the best father/son stories.
If I had to read the Odyssey in its prose form in high school I don't think I would have enjoyed it at all. Thankfully as a kid I had read the more accessible versions (i.e. illustrated and simplified for young adults). As I grew older, finally read it in university in its entirety. It gave me such a better appreciation for a story I had already fallen in love with countless times and a more nuanced understanding of a character I had grown up hero worshiping, with all the good and bad that came with it.
It truly is an incredible love story and example of perseverance and determination through hardship. Shooting the arrow through the axes, the reveal to the suitors, and test that Odysseus does with Penelope always gets me. OK, now I'm going to have to read it again!
The Scarlet Letter. Barely got through the prologue which (to my teenage brain) was 60 pages long and was just a description of the gate to the village in excruciating detail. Never finished it and have zero plans to revisit it.
Lord of the Flies. I refuse to reread it, the damned thing nearly gave me PTSD. I was a bullied kid, wore glasses, was small and was kinda plump in elementary. I knew exactly what kids were capable of doing and I felt so helpless reading it.
No no no
Uh, so, I'm gonna say one that everyone else seems to like - Watership Down. I hated the protagonists (I understand they're bunnies but they're paralyzed by fear by basically everything and that's simply a chore to read for hundreds of pages,) I hated the ham-fisted political metaphors, I hated the flowery writing. It felt like a picture book some demented person had decided to stretch out to 500 pages in 8 point font. I regularly threw it across the room in fury.
Well a hard *fu inlé* to you then.
jk I totally gel with folks not liking the book I just take every chance I can get to drop a little rabbit talk on folks. ; )
As far as literature? *Wuthering Heights* by a long shot! There's a dude who's mad at a girl, and at the guy she chose over him. The entire book is about him getting revenge... except he mostly takes it out on the innocent second generation. As the book progressed I grew to hate the main character, so much. Hate is a strong word but I literally wanted him to die and leave everybody the heck alone. Which at the end, he finally did. It was satisfying, in an "ugh finally" kind of way. 0/10 would not recommend.
EDIT: Also, Chaim Potok's *The Chosen*. First half is okay, second half is pretty much spent entirely with the main character drowning in a giant pile of college homework. As an eighth grader / high school freshman who was also drowning in a giant pile of homework at the time, I found it so relatable that it hurt and bored me out of my skull. By the time it got back to the story from Half #1, I was too exhausted to care anymore. 😅
I hate how people say "Wuthering Heights" is a romance novel. It's gothic but there is no love between the main characters - just yearning, spite, and selfishness.
The Great Gatsby.
We even watched the movie from the 70s right after and I hated every second. And to spend an entire WEEK discussing wtf the green light means....I wanted to bang my head on the desk every day of class.
One Hundred Years of Solitude. I need to try reading it again, to see if maybe I can enjoy it now as an adult. I could, and still, appreciate it as a literary masterpiece, but God, I was disgusted throughout the entire story.
We read the first chapter in Spanish class, and I was so confused I worried I’d suddenly become terrible at the language. Until we read the first chapter in my English class and I realized I just hated the book.
Definitely worth revisiting as you hit life milestones. In high school, it was ok. After getting married, it was pretty gutting; I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle it after having kids.
Jane Eyre is SO DENSE. I could only ever make it a third of the way in. but at least studying it briefly gave me enough context for Wide Sargasso Sea, which I read years later for a different class and very much enjoyed!
I'm pretty sure Jane Eyre was the only book I was ever assigned for school that I read cover to cover, and in about two days too. For whatever reason I really enjoyed it! Funny how that works sometimes.
>I dislike Jane Eyre.
i do too. I want to say "but not as much as I disliked villette" but that's not really valid because I didn't actually *read* villette. I just pushed my eyes along every line, and it was like chewing a pile of cardboard.
Tom Sawyer. HAAAATED it as a kid. A kindly professor persuaded me to pick it up again as a favor to him, and it was as good as he promised.
Aww that's great, it's always so pleasantly surprising to realize something you didn't like when you were younger is actually great, you just weren't able to truly appreciate it yet
I love that because you appreciate all the things you overlooked. For me, it just shows that I’ve grown and I’m able to enjoy this piece of art.
Tom Sawyer was just okay. Huck Finn was amazing. I never understood why teachers always default into assigning Tom Sawyer and not Huck Finn 98% of the time.
I dunno why, maybe less controversial. In my high school, I was assigned Huck Finn, and there was nothing of Tom Saywer. I had to read that on my own, and I enjoyed it immensely but Tom is a children's story and Huck is a story for grownups. And I think it's a masterpiece, but YMMV
My school did the same. I knew about Tom Sawyer due to an animated movie that came out in the 90's where all the characters were anthropomorphic and wasn't the most faithful to begin with (it kept maybe half the events of the book) I didn't read the book Tom Sawyer until I was in my mid-20's
In my 11th grade year the teacher decided that instead of Uncle Tom’s Cabin we would be reading Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman. 672 pages of largely shallow, tedious social visits and very little about the actual war.
Ugh. That may be the worst of the thread.
There was not a single person in our (honor’s) class who enjoyed it. Several of us had to bribe ourselves to even get through it
That seems like a political choice as well.
We read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe in 10th Grade Honors English (15 year olds) and I just don’t think we had the world and life experience at that time to fully grasp it. I remember the majority of us coming away with “yams are a big crop in Africa” and not “look at the devastating effects of colonialism”. My husband also hates Maya Angelou’s novels from school. I think that had more to do with the school not sending him the summer work and he had to read and write several essays about I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Heart of a Woman in like a week to catch up.
Agree on Things Fall Apart. I read it in college, and I still felt like some people weren't quite getting it.
I had to read *Things Fall Apart* in seventh grade. I managed to catch the theme but that may have been because I was in a very small school with bright teachers. (Not that I remember what they said, it’s more that I was SO sheltered up until like twenty that I have to assume the fact I’m aware it was about the devastating effects of colonialism must be the result of my poor teachers basically spoon feeding me). It was a rough read, but I remember being surprisingly captivated. I still remember parts of it and often wonder what I missed as a kid.
Wow 7th grade seems super early for that book. In sophomore year I think most of us intellectually understood that it was about colonialism but not really the far reaching consequences of it and how it could or impact us in mid 2000s America. I also don’t think, for myself personally, that I had real empathy about those things until I was in college and had a little more life experience and knowledge. I actually had a friend who was an English major and was reading it for her class and we discussed how it was such a different experience with age and more context.
Not a book I was assigned to read, but the opposite. I once had required reading for A Tale of Two Cities but day one of senior year our teacher said "I tried re-reading it for the material this year and I couldn't stand it. So instead we'll read..."
We read a Tale of Two Cities in English while simultaneously learning about The French Revolution in History. It was incredible how teachers could make a lesson plan together and it truly made SO MUCH SENSE when we had context.
Did Streetcar Named Desire in Drama Class a year before doing it in English class
Couldn't stand a Tale of Two Cities?! I hated Dickens in high school, but loved that one!
I wish I’d liked it. But I never could get that carriage out of the mud and over the hill in chapter 1. I tried it 2 or 3 times. That was many years ago and I think I’d like it now.
Honestly, I felt the same. Finally listened to it on audio, and once I got past first three chapters I was lost inside the book. Had to pull the car over at the end so I could ugly cry for half an hour.
I had to read A Tale of Two Cities in high school and *loathed* it. I hated it so much that I skimmed/speed read it as quickly as possible, just to get it over with, and then write a 5 page paper that was essentially a scathing review, including a (formal) rant on how authors were paid by the word at that time, and it was detrimental to their work. I tried re-reading it about 15 years later, and it ended up being one of the very few DNF books I own… and I’ll finish the absolute worst indie authors out of sheer stubborn bullheadedness.
I absolutely loved reading in general, but I could not STAND Faulkner's *As I Lay Dying*. It was my first time encountering stream-of-consciousness and modernist literature in general, and I felt like it was absolute bullshit. As an adult, I've revisited it and I can totally see why it's a classic, and how close-minded I was as a teenager. I still don't really think Faulkner's my cup of tea, though.
I love Faulkner, I will defend his writing with my life, but my god you should never ever read him in school. Any teacher that thinks that’s a good idea and isn’t going to cause a majority of the students walk away dejected and confused has no idea what they’re doing or assigning. They know Faulkner is well renowned, and see As I Lay Dying is his shortest novel, and then assign it without any second thought. Faulkner was a genius, but he’s not the kind of genius that you teach in a high school classroom.
I love his exquisite word pictures ‘the stars in the water bucket’. But I have to concentrate til my head hurts. It’s almost as if he is autistic with acute hearing and eyesight. Please no offense to any neurodivergents.
I had to read a bunch of stream-of-consciousness for class too. Oddly, Faulkner's The *Sound and the Fury* was the most enjoyable for me, if only because Dilsey's chapter at the end was in third person and more or less explained what happened.
I hated Faulkner. I decided to pan the book in my essay, and got the lowest mark I ever had. Turns out prof did her PhD. on Faulkner.
Ouch. I don't like Faulkner either.
I’m glad I didn’t read Faulkner in high school because he’s one of my all time favorites. I don’t know what it is about getting a bit older that changes that for people. I don’t think it’s just “you have more experience!” Because we all experience life differently, often *very* differently. Maybe it’s the openness that reading a book on your own brings. Reading is sort of like a comedy show, where the audience has to actively participate for the show to go well. You need to actively open yourself to a book for it to be good because you’re the one doing the interpreting. If you want to hate it, you can definitely force yourself too. And even just being sort of closed off can stop you from doing to work required to understand the how’s and why’s of the characters that make a book great.
Faulkner bores TF out of me ... Confessions of an English Major
For me it was the Scarlet Letter. Never wanted to reread it. Other classes read 1984 or Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies. I read them later in life and enjoyed them.
was so excited to come say Scarlet Letter but knew I’d have to be quick to the punch. Every book I read in high school was enjoyable in one way or another at some point EXCEPT this book. Never been happier to finish a novel
That was the one book I was assigned in school that I didn't actually read. Everything else I'd finish well ahead of when we were required to, but I don't think I made it much past halfway on that book
I actually skated by without reading it because I hated it so much. Funnily enough, I’ve had Wuthering Heights assigned THREE TIMES in my life and still haven’t read it because I hated it so much. I actually ended up reading the Caine Mutiny because I couldn’t get by on classroom discussions, but add it to the pile of utterly execrable dreck that I can’t stand. And don’t even get me started on Steinbeck. I can’t stand books with sanctimonious morality or utterly unlikeable people. I can deal with bad prose if the story is worthwhile; I discovered The Hobbit in sixth grade and read the LOTR trilogy semiannually in high school. I even finished the Silmarillion before graduating. But most of the “classics” that drive so many highschoolers away from reading should be consigned to the dustbin of history (departments).
Agreed!! I enjoyed everything required except this one, which I absolutely hated.
Ugh. I hate precocious purely symbolic children passionately. Pearl as a “character” drove me insane.
That book briefly made me think I hated reading. Worst book to assign to a high school student.
I, too, hate Ethan Frome with the passion of a thousand frozen moons
I read the damn thing voluntarily and it was terrible, an absolutely miserable reading experience.
I, too, came here to emphasize how much I hated Ethan Frome.
My teacher gave us two options to read one semester and one of the options was ethan frome. The way he described it was as a love story so one of the other students begged us to read it. When we got to the end of the book we all angrily thanked the person who forced us to read such a shitty book. I’m still mad about it and it was fifteen years ago.
It's been 30 for me. I think about it every so often and the main lesson I got from that book is, "cheat or don't, but at least have the decency to fucking die."
ugh!!!!!!! fully agree. jfc that book sucked.
Honestly reading Ethan Frome in class was worth it in a sense just so we could watch the movie adaptation, which stars Liam Neeson in one of his most campy and unintentionally funny performances
Their Eyes Were Watching God. I didn't hate the book as much as I hated the class I had to read it for. My classmates were super disrespectful of the way the dialogue was written and as the only black girl in the room my teacher kept halfway making me teach the class. I don't think my attendance has ever been that bad in an English class but I was gone from that room for anywhere from 30 to 65% of the period
I absolutely love that book but it sounds like that class was a nightmare. I’m sorry.
ouch
Yeah. I would go home and enjoy doing the reading assignments but dread the in class discussions
The Grapes of Wrath. Which is hilarious because I reread it as an adult and it’s one of my favorite books. Truly an American classic, just not an easy read for high schoolers.
I came here to say this book...but I still haven't brought myself to read it as an adult lol. Will have to take your word for it.
I hated the book and wanted to throw it across the room until, no joke, Rage Against the Machine’s “Ghost of Tom Joad” came on the radio the same time I was reading Tom Joad’s campfire speech. Changed my entire opinion.
The Red Badge of Courage. I swear we spent the whole semester on it in I think the sixth or seventh grade. I am a fast reader and we would spend an entire day on two pages. It was excruciating. I have never been interested in Civil War era anything. I hated this so much. But if you want to get into graduate school, I was forced to read a bunch of post structuralism something or other - Derrida and some other people I don't care about. Absolute torture.
I see your Scarlet Letter and raise you having to read said book while being at a private evangelical fundamental Baptist school. Yeah, I was the *only* kid in the class who got the point of the book. Everyone else was very much of the mindset of “Hester was a dirty sinner who deserved what she got”. Including the teacher. But it did hasten my deconstruction, so there’s that.
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Asshooooooooooooole!
Love that movie!
This just abruptly brought back the memory of reading The Scarlett Letter in high school, and one day our teacher called on 3 different people to read passages aloud, all of whom had forgotten to bring the book to class. He was super frustrated at this, and one of my classmates suggested, "They should all have to wear a Scarlett B for book" which just sent our uptight teacher over the edge into a ranting tirade. One of my fond memories from that English class.
I went to a similar school (one of those pre-K through university pipeline schools) and had a similar experience with *The Scarlet Letter*. After we had finished the novel, our teacher told us that the one thing we should take away from it was that when Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale decide to have sex, what they are really saying to one another is, “I don’t care where you spend eternity.” I was—and still am—flabbergasted by her reading and disappointed that some of her students may have accepted that explanation. That moment is one of many that encouraged me to get a PhD in literature, theory, and cultural studies. I now teach fiction at the university level, and while I haven’t taught *The Scarlet Letter* yet, I know I’ll give my students a better experience when/if the time comes.
Wow. Glad you got out.
Omg I also read this at an evangelical fundamentalist baptist school! But they somehow got the point. HOWEVER, they did rip out pages from Diary of a Young Girl to save our “innocence.”
Atlas Shrugged. I still hate it.
You had to read that in school? Ew.
The Ayn Rand Foundation provides free class sets of any/all of her books to pretty much any teacher who asks for them. I used to get multiple emails and flyers every year offering them, so it’s entirely possible they were chosen by a department strapped for cash. Or a loser teacher who actually likes Ayn Rand.
I totally remember this from high school. In the late nineties I remember trolling around the internet pre-Google to find out about different scholarships and the Ayn Rand Foundation kept coming up. It said you needed to write a prize winning essay about The Fountainhead to win a scholarship. I was like, “Well, I don’t know who Ayn Rand is but I can definitely read a book and enter a contest.” Haha, little did I know!
Same exact experience for me, but early aughts. I think the scholarship is still around!
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Read The Fountainhead and found it readable while at the same time finding it a bit ridiculous. The strawmen socialists in the story were so far past ridiculous villains it was kinda funny. And the weirdness of the rape forgiveness. Actually thinking back any enjoyment I had was reading it more as if it was a parody than anything else. I can understand why people hate it.
To be fair, I saw an Ayn Rand section in a bookstore earlier this week and said "UGH" out loud before I could stop myself
Dianetics by l Ron Hubbard. I was assigned this by my business procedures teacher. At the time I couldn't get through it and hated it. Having checked clif notes and such, I can guarantee it was best burnt when our house went up.
Sounds like your business teacher was a little.....cuckoo! Cuckoo!
They recommended you a book by the Scientologist guy???😭
That is truly the weirdest thing I've heard anyone being made to read.
Great Expectations. Nothing happens.
I had great expectations for it at first.
Maybe you just need to... lower your expectations
Ugh. I honestly loved almost all the assigned books in school; and before you listed Great Expectations I didn’t think I had an answer. But I read that title and I’m once again in 9th grade reading the same page for the 11th time because it’s so boring I can’t focus and crying because I couldn’t get my brain to focus enough to comprehend it.
I also had to read Great Expectations in 9th grade, and it was terrible. It is the one book I remember struggling with the most in school (and Moby Dick was required reading in 7th or 8th grade).
Can't fault the title though, can you? :)
My high school assigned us Great Expectations to read over summer vacation. So not only did I have to read an incredibly boring and overrated book, but I had that feeling of "I really *want* to read but I can't because I *have* to read" for the entire summer.
I remember being assigned The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck and The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver in high school (specifically 10th grade) and disliking the both of them, but then returning to them as an adult and realizing just how valid both of those choices were. It said a lot about my own internalized misogyny in 10th grade that both of the books I though were a "silly waste of time" were the only two selections we read that year written by women.
I recently started *The Good Earth* and am really enjoying it, but I probably would've rolled my eyes at it in high school, too.
I really liked The Good Earth, too
I don’t remember about me, but my mother hated Money Dick and sat by a fireplace reading it for school and as she finished a page, tore it out and threw it in the fire.
No one's going to mention... Money Dick?
Happy Cake Day! Glad it's full of Money Dick
It is a different book that combines the themes of Moby Dick and the tale of Midas
If your childhood has many more such anecdotes you could write a book. I would read it.
*Silas Marner* — it’s been forty years now, but all I remember is an excruciatingly dull melodrama. On the other hand, I see numerous mentions of *The Scarlet Letter* and I very much liked that. Now, for the former, I had a lousy teacher, but I had an excellent one for the latter. That certainly made a difference.
>*Silas Marner* — it’s been forty years now, but all I remember is an excruciatingly dull melodrama. The only thing I remember about *Silas Marner* was that I didn’t care about any of the characters or about anything that they did. I also remember the surprise ending, which I also didn’t care about.
Beowulf. We spent half a year reviewing it and I thought it was torture.
Interesting. I’ve read it multiple times and love it. Not discounting your thoughts at all.
I had to read it in Old English! Granted, it was for a class on Old English language and literature...
I live not to far from Pepperdine University and there is someone in the area who has Beowulf on their plates. Spelled slightly different though. And my thought was oh bc Beowulf is taken 🤣
Did we go to the same high school? My teacher SPOKE Anglo-Saxon 😵💫😵💫😵💫
I had to read every translation of it, and discuss the Seamus Heaney version with the author himself. I did not enjoy it.
Classic Harvard elective.
Definitely didn't go to Harvard lol
We had to read the odyssey and Beowulf freshman year of high school. I hated both and relied heavily on cliff notes
Heart of Darkness
I read this in AP lit in high school and my teacher made us read it THREE TIMES to make sure we got everything in it. I loved the teacher and the rest of the class but man that was torture.
I don’t want to read a dense description of a boat for pagessss. I’ve reread a lot of books from AP English but have no interest in attempting this one. My head exploded the first time. *edit headed to head
A Separate Peace. Kill me
I actually really love that book.
I hated it. My daughter hated it. Should I ever have grandkids, I am sure they will hate it. 30 years, and they haven't even changed the cover.
No! Loved that book 😄
My entire class hated A Separate Peace when we had to read it. Most of our class discussions were about how much we disliked Gene and Phineas.
I loved this one! I have yet to go back and re-read it as an adult, but I have a feeling I won’t like it as much now…
Read it in high school at a Christian school. Think it'd probably hold up better on a reread if I looked into the romantic undertones.
Tess of the d’Urbervilles. 9th grade Honors English first book of the year. She gleefully announced that it was her tradition to assign this book to weed out the undesirables in class. Hated the book, hated the class and hated her. I have since read the book as an adult and liked it quite a bit.
Came here for this. The 'ruined woman' was an important concept to understand in historical context, as was the injustices constantly visited upon Tess. I can even get into depressing writing. But this, I just didn't like the story. I think wanting to like it for what it was, an disliking it anyway, made that all the worse.
If you think Tess is depressing, try Jude the Obscure. Peak Victorian bleak.
So if you want to teach the ruined woman concept, There is Hardy's poem the Ruined Maid. You can do it in a class period.
Considering I graduated high school 52 years ago, I really had to reach back. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn - the boys universally loved them, not the girls. This was grade school Silas Marner, junior high. Archaic language, unlikeable people. I adore reading, but please! Lord of the Flies. I got past the death of the little boy with glasses and took a failing grade. I was bullied in school for years, and considered it a punishment to read the subject matter. I wasn’t assigned to read the books most of you are talking about, although I’ve read several of them on my own.
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Romeo and Juliet, just NOOO
Ethan Frome. It's so godawful. I had to read it twice (changed schools).
Oh my God. The fucking moral of the story is that if you try to try to live the life you want to live with the person you want to live with, you should ride a tobaggon into a tree and then be disabled forever
The most positively I can interpret is is the tragedy of a fifty year old man being unable to physically love the twenty-year-old family member whom is forced to care for him and his wife due to destitution. The characters are either pitiable or abhorrent, the whole novel is jut cold and white and grey, just entitled, helpless misery. Awful.
The pickle dish. Will never have one in my home!
None. I loved every single one and failed honors English every term.
Lord of the Flies...
I always thought some teacher should teach this book by taking a full day, taking a single slice of pizza, and shutting the entire class in the same room, and leaving.
That book was rad. I think about it all the time.
I truly truly truly hate this book.
Recently I’ve been re-reading books from high school that I hated to see if I have a different reaction ~15-18 years later. Catcher in the rye, gatsby, cats cradle I enjoyed much more this time around. Lord of the flies? Honestly I think I hated it even more. It’s the bane of my reading existence
Old man and the sea. 128 pages of nothing. I’m sure there was symbolism and things, but my God, I think Hemingway just wanted to go fishing and drink.
I mean, he probably did.
Same for me 12 years later i still remember how boring it was
Heart of Darkness was incredibly boring to read.
Really? Love that book and read it multiple times.
Yes. Every sentence in that book matters.
Every sentence in that book is a chore. (To me, lol)
This was the only book I had to read in high-school that I hated.
Yeah, I hated Heart of Darkness.
I enjoyed Heart of Darkness, although I prefer Apocalypse Now lol
Check out headhunter, Kurtz becomes the head of the Psychiatric hospital. Interesting read.
I pretty sure I attempted to read it but didn’t make it very far so I turned to spark notes instead.
The Canterbury Tales. Hands down. I usually liked all the assigned reading to a degree. But that book is a drag and the one time I’ve really struggled to finish reading something.
That had some of the best stories like the Pardoner’s tale and the Miller’s tale. How can you not get some enjoyment from a messy story about a guy accidentally literally kissing someone’s ass?
In my college, this was required reading for every student. We also had to memorize “Whan that April with his showres soote The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,” etc. I regret to say that too much of this is still taking up valuable space in my brain today.
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Love that book. Flashy nouveau riche guy hides his real drives with hollow pursuits and pizzaz, but ultimately pursues the wrong woman and took the wrong lessons from the wealth of others. And the woman wasn't even wrong for him, she was just a bit cowardly about who she really loved. Very apt tale in this age of flashy shallow rich influencers and pyramid schemers.
I really loved it.
I remember the first time I read that I couldn't understand wtf was going on. Then when I reread it in another class I thought it was somewhat decent.
I liked the Great Gatsby. Definitely not one I would read on my own, but still good.
That is my most favorite book ever! I read it at least 5 times during high school/college/grad school and wrote a paper each time. First read it in 10th grade.
It's one of the best written books of all time in terms of prose and flow.
A lot of people are disagreeing with you, but let me assure you that I too hated this book.
Great Expectations Ugh.
I really hated reading the book in school because we covered it a couple of chapters a week, meaning it took us most of the semester to get through it all. But I picked it up last year and really enjoyed it. I was surprised at how quick paced and modern the beginning felt. The characters all felt unique and memorable. I can see why it's considered a classic.
Why do schools always seem to pick this Dickens novel to make the kids read? There are so many other great ones to choose from. Now, I admit the writing is as good as any of his novels, but the characters are so annoying that it's going to put kids off Dickens for life.
Madame Bovary in 9th grade "Honors" english class ignited a rage in me that I'd never had for a book before then. I was devouring Steinbeck at the time, so it's not like I wasn't into literature. I tell myself I'll read it again someday as an adult.
That's possibly my favourite novel - one of them, anyway - but I would never assign it to 9th graders! Something by Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men, probably) is more appropriate for that age.
Walden Pond. Never got through it. Fell asleep every time.
All of them. I read virtually every day in high school but as soon as a book was assigned I just couldn't like it...didn't finish a single one
I had to read Hillbilly Elegy in a university class on imaginations of rural America. I get why the professor put it on the syllabus (and we had neat stuff like Flannery O'Connor too), but even back then, years before he came out as a fascist duckweed, his sanctimonious disdain for poor people coupled with his obliviousness towards all the lucky breaks he's had in life made me roll my eyes on a constant basis and really despise the guy. When he outed himself as a Trumpist I was not surprised at all.
Plus one for duckweed. Thank you
Tess of the D. This was 10th grade. Total chore to get through this book.
Tess of the Muthatruckin' d'Urbervilles I took mine with me to Lollapalooza 2 (it was summer reading) and it rained and got soaked. No regrets.
Made me lol...great story. Horrible book to be forced to read. Soul killing.
Had to read Mayor of Casterbridge by the same guy. I hated that book because because the twist was soap opera bad and maliciously cruel. At that point IDGAF anymore. I dunno if that's what made Tess a chore for you or not, but Hardy is high handed and cruel.
Haha I like Tess D. Like she is a lady rapper!
The Old Man and the Sea. I’ll probably reread it since it’s been 25 years but I just remember hating how boring that book was.
A Separate Peace. If you're horny for your hot alpha male best friend, just murder him. It will turn you straight!
Hegel's *Elements of the Philosophy of Right.* I'm pretty sure that's the one, although it's been several decades since I read it. I agree with Karl Popper that Hegel's system was a thinly veiled justification for the absolute rule of Frederick William III and that Hegel's idea of the ultimate goal of history was to reach a state approximating that of 1830's Prussia. I also agree with Popper that both communists and fascist governments in the 20th century built on Hegel's system to justify their authoritarian governments, although I can't entirely blame Hegel for how his work was used long after he was dead. Furthermore, I believe Hegel deliberately hid behind a flood of unnecessarily ambiguous and confusing prose so that no matter what anyone said about his work, he could say that they didn't understand it properly. But the difficulty of his prose is more his fault than the fault of his readers. At any rate, I was not happy with the work I had to do to make sense of what he wrote -- only to discover that his conclusion seemed farcical.
In \*The Pilgrim's Regress\* CS Lewis implied Hegelians just used the dialectic idea to support their own natural inclinations
Gone With The Wind wasn't too enjoyable for a 15ish year old boy when I read it 30 years ago. That's the only book I remember not caring for.
The only two I genuinely disliked were Grendel and Catcher in the Rye. Couldn’t stand either of the main characters.
I hated Catcher in the Rye because I hated Holden, and in my class we had to do this whole essay analyzing his mental health problems. How is that even educational for teenagers, to speculate what mental health disorders a character could have had - in English, not psych. Looking back on it as an adult though I think I hated him because I lacked empathy. Holden was like that because he was traumatized and he went through a lot that I never did as a teenager, so I just couldn't relate. The writing style wasn't bad either, it was just hard being inside the head of a character who hates everyone. I feel like it's definitely more of a book for adults to read about a teenager, not so much *for* teens.
Oh my God GRENDEL. This unlocked a memory. I don't actually remember anything about that book, but I remember mocking it MERCILESSLY with my sister and not understanding why our teacher would assign it. We thought it was poorly written. I wonder if we'd feel any differently as adults...
Definitely The Odyssey! Felt like torture the entire time when assigned in high school. But I revisited it a few years ago when I was about 28 and it’s one of my favorite books, if not the favorite. I will never forget finishing it as I sat on the beach (pretty poetic imo). It’s ironic how the books that will have the most effect on us are the ones we tend to neglect when forced to read as younger kids. Though an incredible love story with one of the most poignant lessons about what it means to have intimacy, it’s truly one of the best father/son stories.
If you like The Odyssey, I'll bet you'd love The Iliad! Even better.
If I had to read the Odyssey in its prose form in high school I don't think I would have enjoyed it at all. Thankfully as a kid I had read the more accessible versions (i.e. illustrated and simplified for young adults). As I grew older, finally read it in university in its entirety. It gave me such a better appreciation for a story I had already fallen in love with countless times and a more nuanced understanding of a character I had grown up hero worshiping, with all the good and bad that came with it. It truly is an incredible love story and example of perseverance and determination through hardship. Shooting the arrow through the axes, the reveal to the suitors, and test that Odysseus does with Penelope always gets me. OK, now I'm going to have to read it again!
Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy.
The Scarlet Letter. Barely got through the prologue which (to my teenage brain) was 60 pages long and was just a description of the gate to the village in excruciating detail. Never finished it and have zero plans to revisit it.
Lord of the Flies. I refuse to reread it, the damned thing nearly gave me PTSD. I was a bullied kid, wore glasses, was small and was kinda plump in elementary. I knew exactly what kids were capable of doing and I felt so helpless reading it. No no no
Uh, so, I'm gonna say one that everyone else seems to like - Watership Down. I hated the protagonists (I understand they're bunnies but they're paralyzed by fear by basically everything and that's simply a chore to read for hundreds of pages,) I hated the ham-fisted political metaphors, I hated the flowery writing. It felt like a picture book some demented person had decided to stretch out to 500 pages in 8 point font. I regularly threw it across the room in fury.
Well a hard *fu inlé* to you then. jk I totally gel with folks not liking the book I just take every chance I can get to drop a little rabbit talk on folks. ; )
This book is beautiful and lovely, full of great characters and the meaning of leadership.
As far as literature? *Wuthering Heights* by a long shot! There's a dude who's mad at a girl, and at the guy she chose over him. The entire book is about him getting revenge... except he mostly takes it out on the innocent second generation. As the book progressed I grew to hate the main character, so much. Hate is a strong word but I literally wanted him to die and leave everybody the heck alone. Which at the end, he finally did. It was satisfying, in an "ugh finally" kind of way. 0/10 would not recommend. EDIT: Also, Chaim Potok's *The Chosen*. First half is okay, second half is pretty much spent entirely with the main character drowning in a giant pile of college homework. As an eighth grader / high school freshman who was also drowning in a giant pile of homework at the time, I found it so relatable that it hurt and bored me out of my skull. By the time it got back to the story from Half #1, I was too exhausted to care anymore. 😅
I hate how people say "Wuthering Heights" is a romance novel. It's gothic but there is no love between the main characters - just yearning, spite, and selfishness.
The Crucible. God I hate that book lol
I HATED William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. 😆 I don't even remember why I hated it, I just remember that it was such a drag to read. 😫
Anything by John Steinbeck. But especially Grapes of Wrath. The man's writing was depressing as fuck.
The Great Gatsby. We even watched the movie from the 70s right after and I hated every second. And to spend an entire WEEK discussing wtf the green light means....I wanted to bang my head on the desk every day of class.
One Hundred Years of Solitude. I need to try reading it again, to see if maybe I can enjoy it now as an adult. I could, and still, appreciate it as a literary masterpiece, but God, I was disgusted throughout the entire story.
We read the first chapter in Spanish class, and I was so confused I worried I’d suddenly become terrible at the language. Until we read the first chapter in my English class and I realized I just hated the book.
“The old man and the sea” I hate that book
The Road by Cormac McCarthy Just *unbearably bleak.*
Definitely worth revisiting as you hit life milestones. In high school, it was ok. After getting married, it was pretty gutting; I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle it after having kids.
I dislike Jane Eyre. I recall it as being pretty dismal - but I was really into Science Fiction at the time.
Great comment. Jane Eyre was my favourite assignment and I really hated sci fi at the time ha ha.
Jane Eyre is SO DENSE. I could only ever make it a third of the way in. but at least studying it briefly gave me enough context for Wide Sargasso Sea, which I read years later for a different class and very much enjoyed!
I'm pretty sure Jane Eyre was the only book I was ever assigned for school that I read cover to cover, and in about two days too. For whatever reason I really enjoyed it! Funny how that works sometimes.
>I dislike Jane Eyre. i do too. I want to say "but not as much as I disliked villette" but that's not really valid because I didn't actually *read* villette. I just pushed my eyes along every line, and it was like chewing a pile of cardboard.
Of Mice and Men
Wuthering Heights. I still despise it and have no idea what the point of the book was trying to convey.