The worst book you ever had to read for School

[Dunhallym]

Well, I'll have to go with French books since those are the ones I studied in class. My top 3 is :

- La peau de chagrin, by Honoré de Balzac. The story of a guy who is linked in some way to a piece of leather (chagrin is a kind of leather), a bit in the same way as Dorian Gray is linked to his picture (though I love the Picture of Dorian Gray). It was terrible and disgusted me of Balzac for several years, but I finally recovered from it and enjoy some of his other books.

- Thérèse Desqueyroux, by François Mauriac. Living in the head of a woman who has killed her husband. Could be interesting, but I found this book horribly dull. And I don't like Mauriac.

- Manon Lescault , by l'Abbé Prevost. The story is not that bad, but I hate the way it's written and the way the character's feeling are expressed. A caracteristics of the pre-romantism.

Germinal, I also studied in class and didn't like (didn't hate either), but I think it was more because of the study. I really liked other books by Zola, and perhaps I should give it a re-read.

Other books I really disliked are Les Confessions, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (an autobiography) and Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley : the story is really nice but I really hate the feelings and the way they are expressed. Also, the style was awful, but since I read a translation I don't know if the original style is like that.

Poetry is hideously painful to study! I actually now must add to my list of least favourite high-school books Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal". It's not so much the reading of it but the analysing of it, the French have all these stricts rules about poetry and Alexandrins and Syllable counting, by the end of any give class my fingers were always numb from flicking the up and down counting syllables and figuring out rythmes!

I agree it's painful to study poetry, but I really love Beaudelaire ! I really don't think you should think about the length of the verses or the rhymes when you read it. Besides, he has written some poems in prose (some of which are really beautiful), and some more recent french poets don't respect this anymore (Appollinaire, Desnos, ...)

On the Scarlet Letter : I didn't read the book but one of my english teacher was infatuated by the film, and we had to watch it. I really disliked it. I thought the book would be better (the story seems interesting) but apparently not.

BTW, I deeply regret that I had to wait for my last year of High school to study a bit of English litterature (some pieces of Shakespeare's Jules Caesar). All we studied were horribly boring papers from Time or other equivalents.

[WhiteQueen]

The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot. In general, I am not a fan of his poetry, but this poem was particularly brutal.

[Knight of the Wineskin]

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Oh noes, poor aristocrat ladies! Whatever shall they do if they cannot marry a rich man?!

[Xray the Enforcer]

Never spotted this thread before... I would like to add my vote for Germinal, and particularly Zola's essay The Experimental Novel which we had to read alongside it, which was many kinds of awful. Jane Eyre and Dickens can fuck off also, but then I really really hate Victorian literature so that was never going to be a winner...

Oh gods....I hate Zola. (that'll learn me to study french!)

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Oh noes, poor aristocrat ladies! Whatever shall they do if they cannot marry a rich man?!

I love Austen. Might be a girl thing. But one can view it as a quest novel. Because the only way for women to succeed in those times was to marry a rich man. Otherwise, off to the brothels with her...

[Brude]

"The Portriat of a Lady" by Henry James is the only book I have ever willfully destroyed in my life (normally that's something I find really taboo). I hated it so much I literally ripped it to shreds. Yes, it's well written, yes, James is brilliant. I don't care, I hated it.

Edit: oh, and Dickens. I can't stant most of what I've read of Dickens. I think he's overrated and his characters' motivations often don't make sense. I've never read Bleakhouse, which a lot of people I know who otherwise can't stand Dickens really seem to like, but man, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist. Stupid, unebelievable stories.

[WhiteQueen]

Oh gods....I hate Zola. (that'll learn me to study french!)

I love Austen. Might be a girl thing. But one can view it as a quest novel. Because the only way for women to succeed in those times was to marry a rich man. Otherwise, off to the brothels with her...

I love Austen, too. But I love Zola as well. French impressionism in literature at its best.

[Mad Queen]

A stupid book for children when I was very young, it was called The Little Yellow Boat. It went like this:

John had a blue boat.

Mary had a red boat.

Ann had a yellow boat.

John, Mary, and Ann had boats.

John went to the beach.

Mary went to the beach.

Ann went to the beach.

They all went to the beach together.

John liked the sea.

Mary liked the sand.

Ann liked the fish.

John, Mary, and Ann liked the beach.

After HUNDREDS of pages like that, any child's brain would just melt. I wonder why I like to read even after being exposed to books like that.

[Snowbeat]

A stupid book for children when I was very young, it was called The Little Yellow Boat. It went like this:

John had a blue boat.

Mary had a red boat.

Ann had a yellow boat.

John, Mary, and Ann had boats.

The author wasn't named Terry Goodkind by any chance, was he?

[ennui]

Jane Eyre....the only reason this book is listed as a classic is that the author is female....

what a joke of a soap opera....crazy wife in the attic....cue the projectile vomiting.

[Faceless Dude]

Jane Eyre....the only reason this book is listed as a classic is that the author is female....

what a joke of a soap opera....crazy wife in the attic....cue the projectile vomiting.

Pride and Predjudice. Cannot stand that work.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

I'd have to say anything by James Joyce. Portrait of an Artist...Ulysses...blah. Nonsensical crap.

I have to give a disclaimer that I am drunk, but I belive that the best thing that you can ever read at the age of 14 is A Catcher in the Rye. It's just the idiots who make it their lifestyle (emo!) that need to be murdered.

Loved Great Gatsby(Fitzgerald), Sirens of Titan (Vonnegut), and All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque?). Of course, I read a lot of other books during English in order to stay sane. A lot of fantasy, some Bukowski, some Hunter S.T. John Steinbeck made me want to put a 12 gauge in my mouth. And any non-American doing stream-of-consciousness is about the same. Plus I'd like to murder e.e. cummings (too good for capitalization, ha ha!) with a blunt object.

Also like Hemingway and TS Eliot (Wasteland, not that utter shit about cats), plus HL Mencken and Sherwood Anderson.

[PhoenixFlame]

Wow, I hated so many books in school. Well, still do really. There are a few rare ones I liked. Most are in elementary school.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

- Bridge to Terebithia: I actually liked this one. I didn't love it, but at my age, I thought it was cool that one of the main characters DIES. "Wow, that never happens!"

- Holes: I liked that one too. The characters were amusing, though my favorite parts were by far the wild west ones.

- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Probably the only book in school I downright loved. I adored it, so, so much.

- Freaky Friday: Blah, so friggin predictable!

- The Giver: As someone else said, very heavyhanded. I quasi-liked it up until he kidnapped the baby. Then, blah.

- Maniac MaGee: I hated it. The teacher kept going on about the guy's amazing writing because of sentences like "April dragged May back by the collar a few weeks." Even at my tender age, I felt there was far more to writing the personifying everything. Like interesting (not pointlessly crazy) characters.

MIDDLE SCHOOL

- Where the Red Fern Grows: I'm an animal lover, so it kept me interested, but I was far from wild about it.

- Flowers for Algernon: It was decent. At least fairly unique.

- A Seperate Peace: Yuck! The athletic kid was a twat and the other one was just annoying.

- Dealing with Dragons: I loved this book.

- The Hobbit: At the time I disliked it, but then I reread it later and liked it.

- Z for Zachariah: It was alright. Nothing special. (As a side note, I wanted to strangle my grade. No one shows the slightest interest in the book until the crazy scientist tries to rape the girl. The suddenly everyone is talking about it. Sickos.)

HIGH SCHOOL

- Huckleberry Finn: I love Twain as a person, but I hated the book. Huck made me want to slap him. Jim was like a less sassy female version of Mammy from Gone with the Wind. I thought it would perk up when both Tom and Huck were together but nope, just got more boring. Best part for me was when he was at that family who was in the middle of a blood feud.

- Pride and Prejudice: Bah, the romantic comedy of the Victorian era. This book never grew on me. I hated the fact that Lizzie talked her way through everything (sometimes it works but I just never grew fond of it here), I thought Darcy was a stuck-up prat, and Mr. Collins was just creepy. Lydia had more personality (albeit an unlikeable one) than the rest combined.

- Jane Eyre: I suprised myself by liking this. I wasn't fond of Jane but I loved Rochester. His tortured coolness was interesting. He could whup Darcy's ass any day of the week.

- The Canterbury Tales: I really liked these! So funny!

- David Copperfield: BLAH! David is the dumbest child/teenager/adult in the world. I have no interest in his breakfast, lunch, and dinner! I could care less if he had chicken or beef! Steerforth was kind of interesting because he was such a complete smarmy bastard. Who just randomly dies. Then everybody seems to move to Australia.

- Tale of Two Cities: I liked Sydney. That was it. Dickens you aren't funny! I picture a guy sitting in his room by candlelight chuckling at all the mincing little jokes he puts in. I love sharp wit, but hated it here. Plus, I hate plots where EVERYTHING hangs on coincidence.

- The Odyssey/Illiad: These were good! The Greeks knew how to do things!

- The Inferno: I liked this pretty well. Our English teacher locked us in her photo lab to show us "utter darkness of the soul." It was fun!

- Paradise Lost: LOVED it. It had its slow parts, but something about this book really moved me.

We read lots of other stuff, but those stick out. I dislike how British-centered my highschool is. Get past ancient Greece and suddenly its "ENGLAAAAAND!" Who were France and Germany and Russia again?

Things I'd like to see on a reading list:

- Les Miserables: So much truth and conviction and sadness and elation. Few books have touched me so much. Javert was probably my favorite character. Plus, Victor Hugo's prose is so warm and comforting, very fireside chattish, despite the agony his characters are going through.

- Notre Dame de Paris: Not quite as good as Les Mis, but I love it. Frollo has to win an award for one of the most fucked up characters ever. Phoebus was such a slimeball...I hated how the Disney movie made him a dashing hero.

- Anything by Kafka

- Anything by Nieztche

[Brienne the Beauty]

I love Austen. Might be a girl thing. But one can view it as a quest novel. Because the only way for women to succeed in those times was to marry a rich man. Otherwise, off to the brothels with her...

Not exactly a probable fate for the rich girls who populate Austen's novels. And of course, Austen herself succeeded in life at that time without marrying.

[saint777]

The Catcher in the Rye: A big heaping stinking pile of shit.

Silas Marner: Boring.

[Crazydog7]

A tie between "A Seperate Peace" and "Lord of the Flies"

[Corbolt]

The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

[ChaosTheory]

Anything by Thomas Hardy - but especially The Mayor of Castorbridge - have no idea how I managed to get through that one. I would also cheerfully dump every Dickens book in the deepest, darkest pits of ... wherever they have deep dark pits type place. But I love Austen, especially P&P!

Oh and The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner - Sorry I might start foaming at the mouth if I carry on so ...

[Astra]

Oh, there is a whole bunch of the books I hated in school.

A whole list of Russian classics.

Dostoevsky

Gogol

Chehov

Gorky

Tolstoy

Turgenev

Pushkin

Lermontov

I was escaping them by reading Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas etc

[lokisnow]

The only book I truly took nothing away from in high school was Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Even though it's ridiculously short it's just pointless and annoying.

The only book I truly took nothing awary from in college was Pynchon's the Crying of Lot 49. again, pointless and annoying.

The book I most hated reading (though I acknowledge its good) was Rebecca because the teacher drew out our assignments on it over two months.

I'm never surprised to see people hating on great books like the Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, a wrinkle in time, Lord of the Flies etc. because I've seen my classmates hate on the Yearling (because they couldn't 'hear' the dialect) and the Hobbit (because it wasn't real and was 'weird'). Then again most of the former books I read on my own, in the case of Lord of the Flies I had read it about three times before it was ever assigned to me in tenth grade.

I remember not caring for some of the books like Endless Steppe or True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

Worst offense against literature was a dopey english teacher who taught us the concept of 'frame story' by making us read the ending and beginning of the Celebrated Jumping frog of Calaveras County, then we read the center bit. Bitch. I was the only person in class that liked it because I'd read it before.

I've always loved the sound of Shakespeare never cared much for the reading of it. So I prefer it acted out. though it has been taught to me VERY BRILLIANTLY I might add, by two separate teachers in high school and college. Both made the works come alive and exciting even to just read them. And both in entirely different ways. Neither was a close reading that really 'interpreted it.'

stupidest device related to class is the Close Reading. expounding five pages on three or four sentances is nuts.

death to the five paragraph essay.

and death to that whiny bitch Holden Caulfield--so frustrating to see a bunch of whiny spoiled children of wealth talk about how wonderful and important the book was to them. I liked the book okay but it drove me nuts to hear my classmates layer effusive praise on it.

Best boosk I ever read for a class?

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

the Cement Garden/In Cold Blood/Among the Thugs (same class).

How would I approach the teaching of literature? Read major shorts from all genres and periods, one a week. No excerpts unless it's self contained and awesome like the 23rd Canto of Orlando Furioso. Through this discuss the basics of literature and the development of storytelling from oral myth to modern novel/story/film. Go through the mechanics of storytelling, talking about how things function, not how they're interpreted. so avoiding the subjective interpretations of theme and main idea but incorporating the tools of language and cinema. Show how things are expressed, not lecture about what you think is expressed. This is not a writing class but a class meant to encourage understanding and spark pleasure of reading, to avoid that you must avoid lecture and 'importance' at all costs.

Assign a list of books the students can chose from or make personalized suggestions (that's how I ended up with I Claudius and Catch 22 in ninth grade only a week or so after school had started (separate classes)), have two a semester. The first one's assignment will be a breakdown and analysis and critique of how the book functions on a level such as structure or character development etc and whether or not the reader believes it to be effective.

The second woudl be a research comparison of two similar books (Of Mice and Men and Lord of the Flies or Starship Troopers and a Day in the life of Ivan Isenovich, the education of little tree and the land that I lost) that develops a thesis and presents evidence at addressing a topic and uses the books as the main tentpoles of the argument.

This could be done with films too: Natural Born Killers and Bonnie and Clyde, Rashomon and Reservoir Dogs,

Out of curiosity did most people here dislike the totality, dislike the story, dislike the way it was written or dislike the way it was taught or were they disturbed and didn't want to experience the story.

I for one dislike the totality of The Awakening, I dislike the story of Catcher in the Rye, dislike the way Crying of Lot 49 was written and dislike the way Rebecca was taught. I was really distubed and didn't want to experience the Grapes of Wrath but it remains one of the most powerful literary experiences I've ever had.

[Klegane the Kinhater]

I had to read The Crysalids in one of my first High School English Classes and absolutely hated the book. I've all but loved every other book I've since finished, so I think it might have been my teacher at the time, or the fact that I just wasn't in the least bit interested in any aspect of the story of the children