For me, it's a tie between The Secret Life of Bees or The Picture of Dorian Gray. Even my English teacher hated the first and the second is a prime example of everything I hate about Victorian literature.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-07 1:08
had to read poisonwood bible for my fucking ap english class years ago. i burned my copy as soon as i was done
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-07 15:15
Frankenstein. Over-rated, poorly constructed, and frankly.. stupid. She was just trying to imitate Lord Byron and his man-lovers.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-07 17:43
Children of the River, had to read it for 8th grade English.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-07 20:23
Madame Bovary. Why the hell would I want to read about a slut slutting it up all the time? Only good part was the end when she tried to romantically commit suicide and instead died in agonizing pain.
I suppose that was the point though.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-07 21:11
The Bean Trees by Barbra Kingsolver was shit. I also had to read A Mercy by Toni Morrison which was totally sappy.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-08 1:19
>3
I share your pain. I had to read that for a different class, god damn I wanted to smack that cunt who kept talking in palindromes because she was LOL SO RANDUM XD.
>7
I read the Bean Trees too, don't remember much except the girl discovering Turtle was raped.
God damn, I hate Barbra Kingsolver so much.
But you know what? I would gladly read those shitty Barbra Kingsolver books all over again if it would spare me the pain of reading "The Lone Ranger and Tanto Fistfight in Heaven." The entire book is about as stupid as the title sounds. "Hyuk hyuk, we're Indians, white people suck, reservations suck, we're dirt poor and my father was a drunk, are you feeling sympathy for me yet?" That's the entire book.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-08 8:36
>>4
Frankenstein is required reading somewhere?! It's horrible, horrible pulp, badly written, badly composed and is generally on the same level of artistic merit as modern Marvel comics, if not less.
What country made it required fucking reading? Fucking monsters.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-08 11:47
>>9
The girl was only 17 when she wrote it. Be nice.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-08 12:30
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-08 14:49
>>10
Huh? Really? Shelley started writing when she was 18 and the novel was published when she was 21.
Hm. Well, kinda explains why it fucking sucked. Doesn't at all explain people praising that crap, though.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-08 18:04
Fly Away Peter
A Fortunate Life
Just about all required reading sucks. Even books you would otherwise like. When you turn these novels into textbooks, they start to lose their appeal.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-08 20:25
Dracula. Anything by Dickens
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-08 20:29
>>13
While I agree with you to an extent, I find it incredibly helpful and enjoyable to have someone more learned guide me through mammoth literary texts like Paradise Lost, Moby Dick or Midnight's Children. Then again, that could be a matter of being taught by a good teacher.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-08 20:34
Wuthering Heights. I hated it in high school, but it was a better book once I had more life experience. Not a good book, just better in time.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-08 22:04
>>15
Same; I think part of the reason why I loved The Great Gatsby so much was because of the in-class analysis.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-08 22:05
Kinda felt the same way about Catcher in the Rye.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-09 0:33
Their Eyes Where Watching God
That book was the worst I have ever read.
It was full of "African American Dialect" but when it looks like youtube comments, I'm sure I can call it Nigger-talk
"I's gunnah rhub mah feets when ah fennish dis hea' work"
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-09 0:59
The Bell Jar. I just remember the falling asleep reading it all the time. so fucking boring, chick just needed more dicking.
That's why I hated reading Children of the River in middle school. The main character spoke in horribly broken English when speaking with fluent English speakers. Even though she returned to readable English when talking with her family I still found it distracting and unreadable.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-10 15:42
>>22
This is part of the reason I hated The Catcher in the Rye.
One exception to this rule, however, is Flowers for Algernon, I think.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-10 20:57
>>19
That is called Southern Dialect not "African American Dialect" it was also in Child of God by Cormac Mccarthy.
are you the same retard that brings up Child of God in every fucking thread? Why don't you read another book and move on already?
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-11 1:48
>>25
I was currently reading it at that time but I am now reading Brave New World. I am just saying that it isn't "African American Dialect" it is called Southern Dialect. I could have used any southern Gothic books but I chose Child of God because I have currently read it.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-11 21:27
In grade 9 I had to read "The Chrysalids", which is by the same author as Day of the Triffids.
I just didn't enjoy it at all.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-13 20:12
The Joy Luck Club, or really, the majority of "multicultural" books that are read in high school
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-15 17:50
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens. I wanted to kill myself after page 5.
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf.. Rambling shit without any kind of message or purpose, read in AP English my junior year. It's basically 200 pages of Woolf whining about temporality
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-17 1:01
>>26
Southern Anon here. It's definitely supposed to be a (rather stereotypical, and somewhat racist, at least in hindsight for older works) Southern Black Dialect. You try reading something like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or Uncle Tom's Cabin and see that most of the black characters all have their dialogue written in that manner while the white southerners speak normally, then you try justifying that it's a generic 'Southern Dialect.'
Back on topic, worst required reading I had to suffer through was Cold Sassy Tree. I accidentally skipped a few chapters but the book was so dull I didn't even notice until the reading test which I then almost failed.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-17 2:25
The Pigman, oh god just The Pigman.
My teacher in 7th grade made us read it. He kept going on about the symbolism in the book and how it illustrates growing up and how fragile and precious life is.
All I got out of it was that the author apparently loves creepy old guys and thinks teenagers are horrible monsters.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-17 2:40
Actually nearly all of the required reading I was assigned throughout middle and high school was pretty horrible.
Nearly every book we had to read was either depressing, guilt inducing or childish. Whatever was any good was ruined by the "Read one chapter a week and then answer this detailed test" method of teaching.
Meanwhile I'm twelve and busy plowing through my mom's Stephen King collection, my Dad's cold war spy thrillers and any sci-fi, fantasy, or horror I could get my hands on.
I remember being in middle school and having a low reading level because I hit random answers to questions and was forced to read Goosebumps ,while I truly wanted to read Canery Row by Stienbeck. I knew my 6th grade teacher was a bitch when she forced me to read a nonfiction book and Goosebumps.
I liked Walkabout. Can't remember exactly what I liked so much, but it did leave an impression. Maybe you just needed a better teacher.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-23 12:38
The Life of Pi takes the cake as the absolute worst book I have ever read for school or for any other reason, period. The first half of the book was a horrible, boring intro, which stands as my least favorite reading moment of all time. The second half, the beginning of the actual story, was alright at first, but it slowly degraded down to pro-religion symbolic babble. The plot twist at the end was good, but that's about the only positive thing I can say.
Runner-ups include two vapid books about "teenage problems" I was required to read over the summer in 10th grade. They weren't awful books, but it felt the same as the time I was getting a puberty pamphlet in 5th grade.
Name:
Anonymous2009-12-24 13:17
>>39
>Runner-ups include two vapid books about "teenage problems" I was required to read over the summer in 10th grade. They weren't awful books, but it felt the same as the time I was getting a puberty pamphlet in 5th grade.
YA fic has a complete lack of respect for itself and its readers. "Gee, I may have all these dark, confusing thoughts and maybe the GrimWorlde of Dragonnes doesn't understand me, but I shouldn't really put my Icingdeath in her Twinkle before marriage."