POLL: What Book Were You FORCED to read in High School?

[tehawesomersace--Justina Ireland]

Hey all, planning a set of blog posts around books people were forced to read in high school that they hated.  So I'm looking for input here as to the books you read in high school that you hated.

 

For me, it was probably the Red Badge of Courage.  I just didn't get the book at the time, and thought it was ridiculously short.

 

Anyone else?

[Leah Odze Epstein]

Grendel. Loved his classic book on creative writing. Hated Grendel. #forcedtoreaditinhighschool

[Jennifer Wood]

I personally hated most Shakespeare at that age except The Taming of the Shrew - loved it, but in college I could appreciate all of it. I absolutely loathed everything about Wuthering Heights and have never tried to read it again.

[Shweta]

Vanity Fair was one book I hated reading in school but later in college I loved it for all the reasons I hated it earlier :)

[Cathy C. Hall]

I'd say the books I didn't appreciate until I was ever so much older and wiser were probably Picture of Dorian Gray and Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom. I'm glad I read 'em, gladder still that Sister MM explained 'em. (When I saw Sister MM YEARS later, we both laughed about her assigning those books to 10th graders!)

[Raven Lucrecia]

Well I'm a sophmore and so far we've only read two I didnt like but I hear the next one is a real doozy:) The first one is The Pearl by John Steinbeck and the next is A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.The other sophmore class is reading Ivanhoe and they say its Terrible:( but I think it look interesting though I haven't read it yet.

[Bria Quinlan]

We just had a great chatter on twitter a lot like this (Kicked off by my not-very-loving Catcher in the Rye comments) and found that people seem to *hate* self-indulgent or self-centered writers/characters. And yet, how many of those are listed as "great literature".

*stops herself from dissecting what makes literature great*