Bellis Posted August 15, 2006 Share Posted August 15, 2006 The worst book I had to read was probably something by Margaret Lawrence. I don't even remember what, it was so boring. Made me want to give up my dreams of writing if this is what it took to be published in Canada. It also turned me off reading for a while. The most relevant and therefore by far the best thing I had to read was the play Les Justes, by Albert Camus. We had awesome discussions in broken high school French about terrorism, hate, religion, class, suicide bombing, love... by the time September 11 rolled around, serveral years later, I just couldn't take any of the popular discourse seriously. I was ruined, I tell you, ruined by Camus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Centrist Simon Steele Posted August 15, 2006 Share Posted August 15, 2006 I didn't like the Awakening either. Something about the idea that when a woman "awakens" from her male enslavement it's okay to cheat on your husband really bothers me. Any book or movie about a woman escaping the world of men involves her cheating on men. I guess men are dicks so it's cool to break an oath. It goes with the whole new psychological theory that if your wife/husband cheats on you, it's your fault. The cheating is a symptom of something YOU caused. I love that shit. A book I might consider the "worst" is Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys but you see I am conflicted on this one. For those of you who don't know it is considered a prequel to Jane Eyre written a number of years after the fact by a different author. It covers the story of Bertha from Jane Eyre and what her life might have been like. This book is a hundred pages and damned near impossible to read. It is mind numbingly horrible, but at the same time it is good. Antoinette (Bertha) is in the situation I described above--a woman enslaved by the world of men. Sure she cheats on Rochester, but that is not the source of her "awakening" it is a further symptom of the sickness. Matter-of-fact she might not have cheated on Rochester--the book leaves that unambiguous and as a matter-of-fact I think what Rochester considers cheating is a relationship she had BEFORE she met him. The story is so good, but there is something terribly hard about this book. And not in a good way. In the end you really do feel sympathy for Bertha/Antoinette, you hate Rochester too. But it's not all him who ruined this girl. That book has so many layers to work through. I didn't find any appreciation for it at all until I had to do a report on it. That's when I began to understand just what exactly Rhys had done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Boy's Jester Posted August 15, 2006 Share Posted August 15, 2006 The worst book I had to read was probably something by Margaret Lawrence. I don't even remember what, it was so boring. Made me want to give up my dreams of writing if this is what it took to be published in Canada. It also turned me off reading for a while. I'm guessing that would be either The Diviners or The Stone Angel, and I feel your pain. I drew The Odyssey three years in a row - - once in high school and in my first two years each of undergraduate. I liked the story and writing well enough, but my eyes were ready to bleed if I had to read one more paragraph starting with "Eos' rosy fingertips touched the land" or whatever that was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CVN73 Posted August 15, 2006 Share Posted August 15, 2006 It is a tie between "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Crucible". I loathed both books and they made me hate Hawthorne with a passion. I also always hated anything Shakespeare. It seems like only real pretentious asses like (or say they do) reading his plays (watching them is another thing) and I really loathe the dialogue and stories. On a side note, The Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorite books of all time. I laugh out loud at so many parts of the book on each reading even though I know they are coming. A masterpiece. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSorrowfulMan Posted August 15, 2006 Share Posted August 15, 2006 Probably going to sound like a total bigot but all books involving black people who have been oppressed and are now rising up and seizing the day, or get horridly and unlawfully persecuted. Guilt trip liturature FTL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Bengali Menace Posted August 15, 2006 Share Posted August 15, 2006 The Great Gatsby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Jorath Posted August 16, 2006 Share Posted August 16, 2006 the turn of the screw was terrible. It was just two little kids that are supposedly so innocent and cute that they can do no wronge being possessed. I also hated reading Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, seriously you could probably cut those books in half and still tell the same story. And then some. You know what, why don't we just put all gothic novels on the table. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Herbie of High Heart Posted August 16, 2006 Share Posted August 16, 2006 I had to read Faulkner's "Light in August" in my American Nobel Prize Winner Literature class in high school. Dull, dull, dull, dull. Didn't get it, didn't stir any interest, etc. Now I liked the class overall, but Faulkner was definitely worst. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yakman Posted August 19, 2006 Share Posted August 19, 2006 Jane Eyre and Ethan Frome Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galactus Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 the turn of the screw was terrible. It was just two little kids that are supposedly so innocent and cute that they can do no wronge being possessed. I also hated reading Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, seriously you could probably cut those books in half and still tell the same story. And then some. You know what, why don't we just put all gothic novels on the table. Isn't the point about the Turn of the Screw that (like a lot of horror) it can be read as either a straight-up supernatural horror or as the story of a person who goes absolutely bonkers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merentha Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 Probably going to sound like a total bigot but all books involving black people who have been oppressed and are now rising up and seizing the day, or get horridly and unlawfully persecuted. Guilt trip liturature FTL. I do understand what you mean, actually. The most insipid, godawful book I read for school has to be A Town Like Alice. There's no conflict at all! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuwa Slayne Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 The worst is "The Red friggin' Pony" or anything by Steinbeck for that matter. The best books that I had to read include "Dune", "The Count of Monte Cristo", "Crime and Punishment" and "The Woman in the Dunes". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaldanya Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 Animal Farm by George Orwell. I dislike getting smacked around the head by philosophy. It was crudely done, in my 14-yr-old opinion Also, Wuthering Heights fucking sucked. N Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DemonKing Posted August 21, 2006 Share Posted August 21, 2006 I had to read The Lord of The Rings for uni and boy that was awful...so pondorous and long-winded, with those awful poems and songs scattered liberally throughout...don't get me wrong, there is a great story lurking beneath it all but the writing was just so utterly tedious. I think the worst book I read at school was Dicken's a "Tale of Two Cities" - it was the perfect cure for insomnia. I'd only have to read one page and I would be fast asleep! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seventh Pup Posted August 21, 2006 Share Posted August 21, 2006 Lockesnow while I disagree with you about Catcher in the Rye, I do agree with you about The Spirit Catches you and you fall down. God that is a wonderful book. Had to read it in college and I have never enjoyed an assignment more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oorag Posted August 21, 2006 Share Posted August 21, 2006 Isn't the point about the Turn of the Screw that (like a lot of horror) it can be read as either a straight-up supernatural horror or as the story of a person who goes absolutely bonkers? Yeah, that's what I love about that story, even though I generall hate Henry James' writing. There's such nuance in the way almost every detail can be taken on way or another. It's a great example of the unreliable narrator. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazydog7 Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 I'm bumping this because its a very good thread and we should keep it going. My least favorite will always be Great Expectations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caligula_K Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 The book I just read is not only the worst book I've ever had to read for school, but the worst book I've ever read in my entire life. Persuasion, by Jane Austen. What a bunch of fucking bullshit. Seriously, its two hundred pages of one dimensional Victorian era British people (ie: One dimensional boring assholes) talking about propriety at social parties and occasionally blushing when a member of the opposite sex looks at them. The most exciting thing to happen in the first one hundred pages is when a child grabs onto the protagonist, Anne, and won't let go until luckily Captain Wentworth grabs the child off. The villain's evil plan involves saying rude things about his family in secret letters that three people are ever going to read, and of course he is "the blackest and most evil of rogues." Funny how the Brits consider him more evil than Napoleon, or you know, how Jane Austen, although writing about the period after the battle of Trafalgar and who has many navy men as characters completely ignores everything about it (so much so that I'm not sure if it is after Trafalgar.. Is it Waterloo?). In the end of course, Anne marries Colonel Wentworth, as anybody whose read 20 pages into the book could tell, and we're all happy knowing we spent 200 fucking pages reading about the most excruciatingly boring aspects of life with no purpose whatsoever. Harlequinnes are better than this bullshit. How anyone can get anything out of this book or enjoy any part of it is completely beyond me. The first book that I've ever yelled at or wanted to light on fire, and the last Jane Austen I will ever read. Up next in this shitty five book English class: Wuthering Heights! Woohoo! And then more romantic crap! Though I can't imagine anything would be worse than Persuasion, and at leaast there's one Tolstoy in there. Other bad books I've read for school: Hard Times by Dickens. Like all other Dickens I've tried to read (this being the only one I finished due to having to write a paper on it), mainly boring and unnecessary. Its painful though, because there's always aspects of his work that I like; but its not worth wading through the crap to get there. Midsummer's Night Dream. I love Shakespeare, but this play I've always found to be bad. Hurray, lets throw out character development and instead have fairies and dust! Huzzah! Mrs. Dalloway was half bad; I liked most of the parts with Septimius (sp? Been a while) but Mrs. Dalloway was mainly a boring character, even if I understand and respect what Woolf was trying to do. But in the main, most books I've read for school (and books in the vein that I've read by myself) I've loved. Love Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath, Les Miserables, nearly all Shakespeare plays (especially the histories and tragedies), Doctor Faustus, poetry (mainly the Romantics), On the Road, War and Peace etc.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathis Bright Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 Slaughter House Five. Trees died so this book could be published, actual living things died so this pointless story about nothing could happen. A thousand Acres. A modern retellng of MacBeth. The only positve about it was that it's set in Iowa ( Go Hawkeyes!). The Scarlett letter. How did anything get done back then with everyone bitching so much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riverrain Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 Walden. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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