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The worst book you ever had to read for School


Alwyn

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House on Mango Street

I also despise Ethan Frome and and Catcher in The Rye, especially after having to sit through a couple weeks of imbecillic class discussion about the profound symbolism of Holden's snowball and hunting hat reflecting his childlike innnocence and isolation.

I tried teaching Mango Street with my 9th graders last year and it S-U-C-K-E-D! I did some creative stuff with it but I HATED it. So much so my wife razzes me to this day about it.

I am with you about Frome and I was just talking about this with my dad and we were arguing about the book. And Catcher doesn't resonate with African-American kids and I read it when I was like 26 years old so it didn't move me.

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Last year we read Ali and Nino, which was the unbearably pointless and poorly-written. What possessed my teacher to force-feed us that book, describable as nothing but a waste of paper, is beyond me.

Also pretty much all the poetry I have read at school can be summarized as painfully pretentious.

This year we read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and I'm not gonna lie, I didn't like it at all. It seems like the entire book was a tribute to his expanded vocabulary.

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Who Has Seen The Wind, W.O. Mitchell and Wuthering Heights have become my least favourite books of all time because of reading them in high school. Loathe, loathe, loathe!

I found my high school copy of WH last year and immediately sent it on its way via BookCrossing.com. Couldn't stand to have it polluting my shelf, even in the back row. Because every time I look at it, the bile rises in my throat. Can't explain this irrational vehement emotion, but there it is.

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My Antonia by Willa Cather, mostly because my teacher was OBSESSED with the metaphor of the plow against the sun. Oh god, she went on and on about that until I wanted to stab my eardrums with my pencil so I didn't have to hear it any more.

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Of Mice and Men has to be one of the worst books ever. I also hated Lord of the Flies and never finished The Great Gatsby.

I liked those ones

Then again, I also liked Catcher in the Rye, which a lot of people seem to really hate.

I DIDN'T like Brave New World (ugh)

Our Town

or anything by Mark Twain

But My Antonia was the most painful. The plow. :bawl:

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I really liked Lord of the Flies, and there were good parts to Brave New World, both of which I read this year. As a tribute to this year's English teacher (who is a total baller, pretty much the coolest person ever. I actually consider him part friend part teacher, and he is great at both), I have read more enjoyable books this year than any other year. One book I loved was Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Attwood... another was Angela's Ashes. I really enjoyed both, which is more than I can say for most English classes.

eta: We are currently reading Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh, whuch of course is excellent, and soon are reading The God of Small Things, which I have read before and loved. So this year's English class has been far less painful, even enjoyable, than years past.

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I really liked some of the books getting panned here (Les Mis, Catcher, to name 2) - diverse crowd (I love it!).

My least favorite:

High school - Moby Dick (quit explaining whales and harpoon the damn thing already!). I keep telling myself that I should give it a second chance now that I'm older, but the original experience was so horrific that I can't seem to push myself to do it.

College: Sanctuary by Wm Faulkner. I admit it - his lack of punctuation drove me crazy, but if that's his thing, fine. Still, the story went absolutely nowhere slowly...very slowly. I still don't know how I managed to write a paper on it. And I thought it would be OK since the story takes place around the area of the country where I went to college, but even that couldn't save it for me.

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