The worst book you ever had to read for School

[Greywolf2375]

Johnny Tremain in 5th grade...teacher made that book last all year long, just a painful experience having to slog through that when we were all done with it in reality in about a week.

[BrainFireBob]

Ethan Frome.

Yes, we get it already. What? There's story after page two? Maybe there's more added!

Nope.

[doc awesome]

I forgot the name but it was about this dumb girl with a grandmother with cancer thats it and some how it was stretched into the length of a novel.

But with a bit of luck the last guy who read this blew his brains out in boredom all over the book covering it with blood so I could not read it.

[eserafina42]

That would have to be Atlas shrugged. Did no one else have the misfortune of reading Ayn Rand for their English class?

Well, at least the teacher tried to make me - I think he was trying to "expand my horizons" or something. In 11th grade we all had to do book reports, of course, and he tried to get me to read The Fountainhead. (No one else was told which book to read.) I don't think I got 50 pages into it, and my mother, who also gave it a try, couldn't get into it either. I ended up reading Gone with the Wind - maybe not great literature, but even Scarlett O'Hara was more sympathetic than that guy!

[Katrover Swatroad]

The Iguana by Orteze. See, it was so bad, I remembered the author so that I know to avoid all books by her in the future!

Catcher in the Rye was pretty damn depressing. As were The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, The Handmaid's Tale, and many others. It was as though high school was trying to instill in us a pessimistic worldview. Now, why would it do that?

[Arbor Gold]

Go Down, Moses by Faulkner.

It's composed of 5 or 6 intertwined short stories, including one unreadable one called The Bear. Well, unreadable for my unsophisticated 15-year old brain to muddle through. Now that I'm twice that age, (though not much more sophisticated...) I often wonder if it would make any sense to me. Then I remember that I would rather bang my head against a wall for 2 hours than read that story again.

Oh, and The Red Badge of Courage sucked, too.

[DJDonegal]

I haven't read all the replies, because it's hitting 14 pages now, but my vote is without a shadow of a doubt going to On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I just did not like that book, not even a little. So many times watching TV Shows I've seen someone say how they were inspired by Kerouac, but he didn't even come close to inspiring me to do anything. Except never read another one of his books.

[Zethos]

A Finnish book called "The Centaur". It was written by Heimo Susi.

I never liked the book.. in fact I skipped a couple of pages. It can be summarized with three words: surrealistic scifi satire. >< My head is STILL hurting, even though I read it about a month ago. Thank God I won't have to read it again...

[Helm With a 'Stache]

Easy answer for me: anything by William Faulkner. I've tried to like him, believe me, but no matter how many times I tried I couldn't enjoy his "classics." Thank God I was only required to read As I Lay Dying and nothing else. Stupid junior English class...

Oh, The Catcher in the Rye and A Day No Pigs Would Die pretty much blew too.

[CryHavoc]

Call me an optimist, but for some reason there were very few books I could ever bring myself to hate in high school. There were those like The Great Gatsby and Cry the Beloved Country that kind of dragged on, but I always seemed to find something in them I liked--for those two there were occasional passages among everything else that just take your breath away if you're paying attention. The only thing I can think of that held absolutely no redeeming qualities for me whatsoever was Walden. I had this irrepressable urge to invent a time machine just so I could go back in time and slap Thoreau. As for the over-analyzation, we used to do close readings on just about everything we did in 11th and 12th grade, but a lot of things seemed to get better the second or third time through. I guess it was probably because on the first reading I was basically skimming through ten minutes before a test to see if we'd finished the book, but it was on subsquent readings while we were analyzing that I noticed the interesting things.

[RedSock in Westeros]

In all seriousness, probably "Taming of the Shrew"... not because it was a bad play, but because the experience was so bad. The teacher handed out the plays on a Friday saying that we're going to start "studying" the play on Monday. So I took it home and read the play on the weekend (something I had to do when I was in Honours English... downgraded to regular due to a schedule conflict) thinking that we're going to have some discussion. On Monday, we started READING the play out loud in class for the next MONTH!! What a waste of time. Apparently my teacher knew full well that if she asked us to read it at home, 90% of the class wouldn't bother.

That's basically what we're currently doing with "Macbeth" in my English class. (And it's a supposed Honors class). We did basically the same thing with Tale of Two Cities a few months back, I think I would have really liked that book had it not been taught the way it was, but I ended up kind of hating it, just for the fact that it was so dragged out.

I also had to read parts of Thoreau's Walden last year. Gag, gag, gag, I absolutely hated it.

[Shadiou]

I hated 'Bridge to Terabithia" and any "Australiana" book I was forced to read. But most especially I hated anything they made us read by Ruth Park, including "Playing Beatie Bow" "Poor Man's Orange" and "The Harp in the South". So, so, so depressing.

[L'Sana]

That's basically what we're currently doing with "Macbeth" in my English class. (And it's a supposed Honors class). We did basically the same thing with Tale of Two Cities a few months back, I think I would have really liked that book had it not been taught the way it was, but I ended up kind of hating it, just for the fact that it was so dragged out.

I can top even that. In my "Honors English" class, it was obviously too much work to expect the poor little dears to have to read a book all by themselves. It was even too much work to expect them to read parts of it aloud while their classmates listened. Instead, we spent a month listening to the "book on tape" being played in class. And this wasn't even Shakespeare or anything like that. It was Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry. Needless to say, anything I learned in that class came from the books I was actually reading while the tape was playing.

I have been forced to read some pretty awful ones, but I think the winner has to be Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men. (Dis)honorable mentions go to Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund, and an unbelievably awful book called The Sybil whose author escapes me at the moment.

[Jesus]

I had to read Les Miserables, and the only redeeming factor of that book is that it was basically the first novel, or so we were taught, so there is some *ahem* novelty to it.

However, that is not the worst book I've ever read.

Tuck Everlasting. The only positive is that it was short and I don't remember it too well cause I read it in 5th grade.

[L'Sana]

Tuck Everlasting. The only positive is that it was short and I don't remember it too well cause I read it in 5th grade.

I remember not reading that one. Our teacher was convinced it was the best book ever, and if we just gave it a chance, we would love it. So she made us read the first fifty pages. After that, the class's decision was unanimous: we moved on to something else.

[Brienne the Beauty]

I had to read Les Miserables, and the only redeeming factor of that book is that it was basically the first novel, or so we were taught, so there is some *ahem* novelty to it.

The first novel? Hahahaha. Not even close. It was published in the late 19th century. Are you sure you are not thinking of Don Quixote or something?

[Brienne the Beauty]

I can top even that. In my "Honors English" class, it was obviously too much work to expect the poor little dears to have to read a book all by themselves. It was even too much work to expect them to read parts of it aloud while their classmates listened. Instead, we spent a month listening to the "book on tape" being played in class.

Sounds torturous. Did the teacher even bother to turn up? What an easy job.

[Manderly]

Go Down, Moses by Faulkner.

It's composed of 5 or 6 intertwined short stories, including one unreadable one called The Bear. Well, unreadable for my unsophisticated 15-year old brain to muddle through. Now that I'm twice that age, (though not much more sophisticated...) I often wonder if it would make any sense to me. Then I remember that I would rather bang my head against a wall for 2 hours than read that story again.

Oh, and The Red Badge of Courage sucked, too.

As a student at The University of Mississippi(English major) I was required to read quite a bit of Faulkner. I had trouble from the start. One of my Profs told me instead of reading Faulkner I should let the words flow into my brain as a stream of images forming a mental painting. I did not know what the hell he was talking about so I just toked some kb before my next Faulkner reading session and it all came together. I actually took a Faulkner course after that!

My least favorite assigned book, The Awakening.

[Manderly]

Go Down, Moses by Faulkner.

It's composed of 5 or 6 intertwined short stories, including one unreadable one called The Bear. Well, unreadable for my unsophisticated 15-year old brain to muddle through. Now that I'm twice that age, (though not much more sophisticated...) I often wonder if it would make any sense to me. Then I remember that I would rather bang my head against a wall for 2 hours than read that story again.

Oh, and The Red Badge of Courage sucked, too.

As a student at The University of Mississippi(English major) I was required to read quite a bit of Faulkner. I had trouble from the start. One of my Profs told me instead of reading Faulkner I should let the words flow into my brain as a stream of images forming a mental painting. I did not know what the hell he was talking about so I just toked some kb before my next Faulkner reading session and it all came together. I actually took a Faulkner course after that!

My least favorite assigned book, The Awakening.

[Ebenstone]

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

I'm about to start Animal Farm with my 10th graders when school starts again on Monday. I actually intended for them to read it over vacation so we could do it as a "mini-unit" but Mother Nature interveins. It's an easy book that really resonates with the kids...ESPECIALLY the boys. I teach it at the same time as they are studying the Russian Revolution in Social Studies and also as a satire. I use the Chappelle Show when teaching it and I basically GIVE them the answers, who is who and what is what. The boys are the hardest to get to read but they really took to Animal Farm. When we were grading the state tests in January, I noticed a lot of my former students using Animal Farm as an example for their critical lens.

This year, they've really hated Things Fall Apart so far.