I couldn't see any reason the people in it were so hateful and stupid. To make it worse, the teacher loved the book and it was the first book we had to completely analyze. It was sad because I really like the teacher but we were completely at odds about that book.

She also has to read "The Great Gatsby", which I also found to be insipid.

I felt the same way.

I was going to post "The Awakening" when I read your thread title.
I had to endure that book in three different classes.

You have my sympathy.

I had to read that threadbare potboiler in
Southern Lit
Women's Lit
19th Century American Lit

I certainly hope that English departments have moved on.

Along with Sister Carrie , The Sound & The Fury, and some other works I've forgotten.

I enjoyed Faulkner. No one quite captures the dysfunctional American family like he does.

We had to read Hamlet, Othello, MacBeth, A Midsummer's Night Dream, and Henry VIII. I hated it because it was just SO hard to read. The plots and characters could be interesting, but I had the same problem reading that I did with the Kind James Bible -- too archaic, too poetic, just too confusing. I never understood a lot of the Bible until I got a modern version written in contemporary American English. And I don't think I'm that hopelessly stupid, it's just hard.

Just an example I pulled by using Google -- I can actually understand the second one without having to read it 37 times.

KJV
Acts 2:24 - 'Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.'

NIV
Acts 2:24 - 'But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

I think we had to read it in 10th grade. I don't think anyone reads it anymore.

My English teacher forced us to analyze the whole book, analyze Silas Marner's transformation, and so on. We were even made to draw an accurate map of Raveloe for a huge chunk of our grade using clues out of the book.

I was assigned to read that I hated. I guess my teachers and professors generally picked worthy literature; or, I just like to read. I even remember enjoying choral reading "Dick and Jane" in kindergarten.

I am picky, though. I've read plenty of stuff I didn't much like. I finished most of it anyway, since I didn't want to just quit; I kept expecting to find something worth the read along the way.

The book that pops into my head as "least favorite" is, interestingly enough, a favorite of many DUers; as a matter of fact, I first read it in '03 after a great DUer recommended it:

A Confederacy of Dunces

In 2nd place on the most despised list: Any of the Twilight series.

Did you ever get assigned anything like Crime & Punishment, Silas Marner, Moby Dick, or anything by Ayn Rand?

I've read them all. I didn't have a problem with any of them.

Even Ayn Rand; it was worth my time to delve into her world view, and where, why, and how that view developed. I didn't have to agree or be entertained to learn how to analyze and discuss literature.

I LIKED the process enough that I didn't have to "like" the book.

It's different with my own personal reading; to "like" a book I read on my own time, I have to find something that resonates with me.

I had a Russian professor who'd emigrated in the 80s; he assigned two by Dostoyevsky for my Russian History class. He brought a different pov to the reading, and to the topic of Russian history.

By the time Silas Marner and Moby Dick were assigned in a class, I'd already read them privately, so was familiar with them, which helped.

One of my 7th graders, a particularly gifted reader, read Moby Dick last year, and enjoyed writing about Ahab. I didn't assign it; he chose it.

I have to like the book. I just can't separate the process that well -- especially now that I'm many years removed from college, and I don't have to read for anything other than information or amusement.

I was reading college-level stuff for pleasure when I was 11.

I read War and Peace when I was a Freshman, people thought I was a masochist!

They DO exist, though.

It was required for a contemporary Lit. course.

Even to this day, I suspect the Professor was a yam fetishist as there can be no other explanation to inflict that book upon innocent people.

I was taking a history of africa course in university and our professor said "you people know nothing of africa so you are going to read novels all year long and we'll talk how the novel fits into history during class". Was a great course.

However; to me it was poorly written and an indication of what is wrong with even bothering to teach contemporary literature.

There is a reason that the classics as written stand on their own, yet in contemporary literature you are forced to "reinterpret" the work for new meaning in an educational setting, it can be taken as a nod that they will never be classics.

It would be fascinating to see what literary works are still around in the 22nd Century!

I loved the descriptive paragraphs because the culture was all so novel to me. I like novel stuff.

I don't remember it that well though, and hell if I remember what class it was for. I didn't hate it, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't get it either.

I read every other lump of literature they put in front of me (up to and including Ulysses), but for some reason The Mayor of Casterbridge was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I doubt I'll ever touch any Thomas Hardy again because of it.

I can't see how anybody thought that sticking that in front of a class of 15/16 year-old boys was a good idea.

but I couldn't take Hardy's other "great" read, Tess of the D'urbervilles.

It actually turned some kids off from reading. Leaves Of Grass was one very dull book to me as well as Silas Marner,Scarlet Letter. Why were some books considered classics? We never had Charles Dickens but always had Shakespeare. While we were expected to read only a book on the classic list I would sneak my book choices during study hall. Airport and Valley of the Dolls come to mind.

I learned a valuable lesson about 10 years too late. Nothing, and I mean nothing makes a X-country airplane ride go faster than a Harold Robbins novel.

I just don't enjoy Hemingway's writing.

Ugh.

I haven't enjoyed anything of his that I've ever read.

If the government is going to insist on using "harsh interrogation techniques", I think forcing prisoners to read pretty much anything by him should be on the top of the list.

Put me to sleep

Horrible.

Got nothing out of those two.

Talked to an English teacher at my 40th high school reunion, which was in July.

Told her that I got nothing out of Great Expectations. They showed us the movie in glorious black and white, and the only thing I was interested in was handsome young John Mills, playing Pip, in the movie.

She was probably pissed at me, but it was true.

Our senior English teacher in high school made us read Billy Budd. That is a short novel by Melville. Yuck. I can't relate to an all-male ship crew.
I also got nothing out of MacBeth because she taught us nothing about the psychological states of the characters or their mental development; all she wanted to know was when did MacHeath come onstage before MacBeth. She was a stage director/traffic cop wanna be. No thanks for anything, Mrs. Olmstead.





Also, in college, hated Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter.

In college I was forced to read something called The Sotweed Factor. Considered it a form of torture.

or Virtue Rewarded. The subtitle alone explains much of my problem with the novel.

just couldn't get thru it and it was peppered with too many French sentences which totally lost me - since I don't understand French.....

Black Like Me(can't remember who wrote it, read it Junior year in HS).

Cry the Beloved Country(read this senior year in HS)

Merchant of Venice(college) by Shakeaspear.

Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell, one of the hardest reads I ever had, read this in my Themes and Issues in Lit class in college.

These three really stand out to me, in terms of books I disliked. (also add Twilight, and Piers Anthony novels).

Not the best written, but the premise is an eye opener.

that a man, with black face could be considered an African American. I just couldn't believe it....

I am a reader, will love most anything, but holy fuck was that depressing!

A Clockwork Orange, by Kurt Vonnegut.

It was just too violent for me. I tried, but I finally gave it back to the teacher, and chose something else.

Someone above me said they did not like "Black Like Me". I found it very eye-opening. I also can't remember the author's name, but I enjoyed reading it.

I may have also read "Cry the Beloved Country", but high school seems so long ago...I just can't remember if I read it or not.

My father tried to get me to read some Ayn Rand. I hated it...could not gag it down.

I love to read, and consider myself somewhat of a 'bookaholic'. Some books, though...just could not get in to it, or found the subject matter too disagreeable.

Besides, one can be a bookaholic and not read literature. I love Harold Robbins, Tom Clancy, John Jakes, and W.E.B. Griffin. They are good storytellers and they keep me entertained.

I read Clockwork Orange in high school as an elective. I also saw the movie, which is excellent, but which I also have no desire to see again.

And I was not the only one who corrected the poster for citing the wrong author.

Which makes you, at the very least, a snob, and rude to boot.

My teachers told my parents that I was reading, comprehending, and retaining college-level material in the 5th grade.

High school was a long time ago for me. It is not a sign of illiteracy if I forgot the author's name.

Rude, much?

that was Anthony Burgess

Vonnegut gave us Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, The Player Piano...

But I'm with ya...saw the Kubrick film, but couldn't finish the book.

I also hated Naked Lunch--but after reading it, I knew I wouldn't never in my life shoot up heroin So maybe all the graphic detail in these books is there for a reason!

.. and that burgess regrets writing Clockwork Orange in many ways.

The book was partially inspired by Burgess' personal experiences; his wife was assaulted during the London Blitz.

Back in the 80s, Rolling Stone published the unpublished final chapter of the book, which was interesting.

is Kurt Vonnegut's Clockwork Orange than Anthony Burgess' tome of the same title? Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five was pretty bad, so his Clockwork Orange must have really been a piece of work!

anything written by Dickens. He was crashingly boring. Not a fan of Hemingway either -- same reason: boring. However, I did like F. Scott Fitzgerald. There's a book at the library I've checked out a few times that is a collection of his short stories.

Some pab with a woman finding out she has an assassin (why? who knows?) and then the sexy body guard turns out to be the assassin.

Crappy fiction at its nadir.

The same teacher gave me Macbeth though. Maybe she was just making a point.

I was the only stoner in the Honors English Class and I just couldn't abide it, it was too haughty, too prep school and I thought it was foolish....

A boarding school in New England may as well as been Mars as far as I was concerned. I read it when I was 14 years old and as self-centered as I was at that age, I found the characters problems petty and they over reacted to them. I'm female which also may have colored my perception of the book.

I think Knowles was motivates by Salinger and probably was trying to tie into Catcher in the Rye...

when I was 37 (four years ago), and I felt much the same way.

(Often books we don't like as teens seem to open up to us when we're older. Not true with that one.)

I was a high school student in the 1960s.

We had to watch the movie, which is dreck.

a mess of kids in a prep school whining about their terrible lives...

There's this big mock trial scene where all of the preppie kids dress in bizarre costumes (doubtless inspired by Skull & Bones or some such nonsense) try the preppie who knocked the other preppie off of the tree.

If it's ever on TCM, it shuld be viewed clinically -- in the same manner one would view Ishtar, Shriek of the Mutilated, or any Ed Wood movie.

A Separate Peace is up near the top of the list.

I thought I was supposed to like it. Or something. Just could not relate.

We had to read it because Knowles was originally from our county. Imagine a group of students in bum-fuck West Virginia reading about the lives of the prep school elite. Not to mention that we spent 9 weeks on the damn book and the word homoeroticism never came up.

Finny!!!!

We had to read that book in our freshman year of high school. It's been almost 20 years now, and I'm pretty sure that I could still make Finny/limb jokes with my friends from that class.

Seriously - she said to skip the first twenty chapters. At that point, apparantly the pace picks up.

Its not the book I hated actually, it was the timing it was assigned to be read. The rest that made me nuts were any that were written in the "olde English", including the Bard. Since those days when you HAD to read this book or that, came to see the better side to the olde English, but to this day any time I see that cover of "Native Son"-it reminds me of how little progress our Society has actually made-as a whole.

Loved Vonnegut in college. Hated Ayn Rand. Even enjoyed Plato.

Nice topic OmahaBlueDog...thanks. Interesting responses that made me recall some of the "required reading".

We had to read "Black Boy" and "Native Son." My entreaties to read Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul on Ice" fell on deaf ears.

It was depressing.

my teachers kept jamming it in my face saying "These are your grades for the year, read them! You could do better."

Also, while in general I love Shakespeare: 'Henry IV Part 1'. I could not work up sympathy with ANY of the characters: Prince Hal, the King, Falstaff (ugh), Hotspur, etc., etc.. Perhaps the one whom I hated the least was Hotspur, and he was supposed to be the enemy.

It was assigned reading in 1980. I refused on the grounds that I didn't want to read it until 1985. On the promise that I was, the teacher gave me an alternate assignment. I bought it on 2 Jan 85 and immediately read it. Good book.

The reason I "hated to have to read" it was exactly the reason I avoided reading it until 85.

I managed to fake it without reading most of it. Horrible book.

I think if I had done I would be dead

I find old English with the unknown references and unfamiliar spelling terribly difficult to comprehend.

Brave Beocat,
brood-kit of Ecgthmeow,
Hearth-pet of Hrothgar
in whose high halls
He mauled without mercy
many fat mice,
Night did not find napping
nor snack-feasting.
The wary war-cat,
whiskered paw-wielder,
Bearer of the burnished neck-belt,
gold-braided collar band,
Feller of fleas
fatal, too, to ticks,
The work of wonder-smiths,
woven with witches' charms,

Sat upon the throne-seat
his ears like sword-points
Upraised, sharp-tipped,
listening for peril-sounds,
When he heard from the moor-hill
howls of the hell-hound,
Gruesome hunger-grunts
of Grendel's Great Dane,
Deadly doom-mutt,
dread demon-dog.

Then boasted Beocat,
noble battle-kitten,
Bane of barrow-bunnies,
bold seeker of nest-booty:
"If hand of man unhasped
the heavy hall-door
And freed me to frolic forth
to fight the fang-bearing fiend,
I would lay the whelpling low
with lethal claw-blows;
Fur would fly
and the foe would taste death-food.

But resounding snooze-noise,
stern slumber-thunder,
Nose-music of men snoring
mead-hammered in the wine-hall,
Fills me with sorrow-feeling
for Fate does not see fit
To send some fingered folk
to lift the firm-fastened latch
That I might go grapple
with the grim ghoul-pooch."

Thus spoke the mouse-shredder,
hunter of hall-pests,
Short-haired Hrodent-slayer,
greatest of the pussy-Geats.

That dude was so whiny and annoying.

Thought the book was awful.

I don't think she hated it as much as "Far From the Madding Crowd", but it's close.

Summer reading for upcoming senior year.

Burn!

No matter how badly you hated that book (and I'm on the side of the people who think Holden is a whiny asshole), go back and read it, and you will think "this worthless piece of shit is going to be standing in front of a row of porta-potties with a loaded rifle, making sure no liberals pee in them, sometime in the next five years."

considered a pain in the ass by many, but I found his ability to cut through bs and his disdain of phonies refreshing.

full of racist stereotypes.

maybe because you knew whatever they gave you to read, you were going to be tested on it, so enjoyment was immediately out the window.

Reading a book for school rarely led to reading the book itself. Instead, it was generally an artificial exercise in trying to dope out what you would need for an exam or report.

Plus I think I read a lot of books for school before I had the maturity to appreciate them. A few of my classmates might have been "ready" but most were not, when it came to anything at all subtle.

Stupid, stupid book. I still think it's a stupid book.

Four if you count The Hobbitt

The biggest barf ever!

I just hated it. I cannot believe humans could sink to that level.

Some on the hate list hear were very powerful, like Cry the Beloved Country. I endured many and read a few on my own. The classics were always a good read, but some of the modern ones suck. They are not worth the cheap paper they are printed on.

the premise is unsavory to me. I hope my kids aren't assigned that book, 'cause I don't even want to talk about it.

It doesn't seem to have a real point to me. It's just "some nasty stuff happens to a bunch of twits you don't care about".

I love to read but that book was horrible!

I think it was The American, but I have blocked it from my memory.

Freshman English class in college. Of all the great novels in American Lit, our professor chose that one.

Agreed on that one. Just does not translate well in the modern era. Oscar Wilde once criticized him for writing "fiction as if it were a painful duty".

(forget the title, think it was "Star of the Sea" ... not a famous book or author).

After a while (and in the days long before the "internet" and Google/Wikipedia), I found out that the book THE STUDENTS HAD TO BUY was written by ... you ready? The instructor's SPOUSE ...

Gee, wonder how they got to sell so many books?

Solaris in college, Siddhartha in 10th grade

HATED THAT!!

still don't get it

Although having said that, I can imagine the Australian curriculum was different to the one that Americans use so some of our literature would have been very different. Ayn Rand and the Confederacy of Dunces et all were just never on our reading list

There were one or two books I think I read in my first and second year of high school that weren't that great. But they weren't any of the classic works of literature -just mediocre young adult fiction, the titles of which I've long forgotten

There was an Australian poet named Les Murray whose poems we had to study and I seem to remember some of his poems being better than others. He was probably the one poet I was less than enthusiastic about studying

Not strictly speaking a work of literature since it's a play, but the Merchants of Venice was probably my least favorite Shakespeare play that we studied. Racial overtones, storyline and plot irritated me slightly and didn't have the same enthralling qualities that made me such a devoted admirer of all the other works of his I've studied.

I didn't understand it and I didn't know why Mr. Stolte said it was so good. I hated it.

I might like it now. I should get it for my Kindle.

The thing about Hardy is, I always like the idea behind some of his books (like this one about an educated guy coming back to teach the poor community he's from), but, maaaan, I can never get past the first couple pages. "Jude the Obscure" is another one.

Rand's book was just boring, plodding, soul-less tripe. We had to read it and some essays from "Virtue of Selfishness," too. It was a philosophy class and the professor was a Randian. I had no idea who she was back then (back in the early '80s), nor did I ever imagine Rand would go on to be the "cult" phenom she is today among the right.

That said, I liked a lot of the books I read in high school and in college, even the ones I wouldn't go back to read today. I liked many of the books posted in this thread, in fact...I think the instructor and the context of the class often helped. I probably wouldn't read "The Awakening" now, but I liked it in the Sexuality and American Culture course I read it in. Same with "Ethan Frome" in the Intro to American Lit class I took.

A lot of the most hated "big" books here like "Ulysses" and "Moby Dick" I didn't read until after college. Yeah, I read them on my own and actually ended up liking both of them (although I needed a lot of "study guide" help with "Ulysses&quot .

By Salvador Borrego

I was only 14 years old, and even then I knew this was absolute bullshit.

I failed the course and had to go to extraordinary exams to graduate because of this abomination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Borrego

I've never been more proud of failing a course, than when I failed this one.

"The Oxbow Incident". I don't know why, but *no one* in my English class read it (and we were supposed to be the *bright* ones ). I *still* don't know what it was all about

Last edited Wed Aug 22, 2012, 12:42 AM - Edit history (1)

KOED, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was part of the local cable company's lineup at that time, but its broadcast tower was a little too far away from our cable company's reception tower, and the cable company could never get a clear, noiseless signal. So I tried to watch it when it came on, but the signal kept fading in and out, and even when there was a signal it was fuzzy and noisy, so I gave up.

Someday, I may finally either finally read the story or watch the movie

If that wasn't enough of an insult,we had to read it a couple of months the Newt-led congressional takeover of '94

The funny part is I wasn't even that politically aware about much at that age, I still had a decent opinion of Reagan then, etc...But she made me rage so hard with her smug, self-important, punch-a-hippie Nixon-Reagan-Bush ballwashing that my politics were firmly in the Michael Moore region when I finished...

Not a fan of the misogynist shit in that book, including where no apparently means yes.

but the movie was a lot more boring.
I liked several of the books that people here didn't like. A few of them I might not have "liked", in that the story was just "awful" but I thought that the author did a good job of making his/her point.
I also made myself get through the books even if they weren't especially entertaining.

Other than that, I agree with you.

"he told me to hush and I hushed" 400x

endlessly...for days.

Finally I got up in lecture hall, and shouted at the top of my lungs "enough with the muddy drawers, already! He told me to hush, and I hushed.