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?

[Ash Yuhas]

A Separate Peace was another one I couldn't stand! My friends and I called it A Separate Piece of Crap. :P

Elizabeth Burton said:

In high school, I loathed Lord of the Flies and A Separate Peace (still do, for that matter). I hated them so much my teacher actually allowed me to write on another book just so she wouldn't have to read my "I hate this" comments. I absolutely loved Crime and Punishment, As I Lay Dying, and Heart of Darkness, on the other hand, so I must have been a pretty strange teen, lol! I also remember Agee's A Death in the Family making a huge positive impression on me.

Other books whose appeal I just don't get include anything by Thomas Hardy and George Eliot.

[L-A Steeleworthy]

There weren't many books that I hated, but The Old Man and the Sea was definitely one of them. I hated every minute of that book.

Jessica Varin said:

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

[Bonita Kale]

Oh, God, Faulkner. I still can't read Faulkner, and at seventeen, The Sound and the Fury was just too much. I think I passed on Cliff notes.

Bonita

[Jo Ramsey]

I refused to read most of the required reading books in high school. I did my essays, projects, etc. based on the cover blurb and class discussions. (Somehow managed to pull off A's and B's on most of them.) Out of the few I did read, I'd say the one I disliked most was Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield just plain annoyed me.

[Janet Flora Corso]

I remember reading "Billy Budd" and then having NO clue what happened when I was done. Somehow I just read it without absorbing any of the boring descriptions :) My most memorable Required Reading book was "Scarlet Letter" which we were assigned in 7th grade Catholic school by a nun. It was painful. Then I had to read it again in 11th grade (public school) and I actually appreciated having studied it already, and getting different views. Did not necessarily enjoy the book, but I understood it more. Ironically, I am planning on re-reading it soon to prepare for a future YA book brewing in my head.

[KC Clyburn]

Pretty much anytime we had to read analyze Shakespeare's plays was a bad time for me. Mainly because I never got the point of analyzing the plays. They were plays; I always thought they were meant to entertain people, not for high school kids to spend week analyzing. Maybe it was the fact that the teaching was so dry--I've seen people speak about those plays and keep me very interested. But in high school it was just a huge burden. I never understood what the big deal about The Catcher in the Rye was, either.

I didn't care for Their Eyes Were Watching God, either--the seemingly random punctuation and speech in the novel pulled me out of the book and made the whole thing practically unreadable. I just didn't like being told what to read in general--the thing about reading in school is that it takes what should be an enjoyable experience and turns it into a friggin' chore. Why would I want to read the book the school is forcing me to overanalyze, looking for symbols where there probably are none (except those which your teacher sees, and even the English teachers don't agree on all the symbolism) when I could read a book by myself and actually be able to like it on it's own merits and because it makes me happy.

If when I was younger I was forced to look for all the "symbols" in Paper Towns by John Green, which is one of my favorite books, it probably would've soured me on that book and his other ones forever.

[Tiffany Truitt]

I teach middle school, so I get to "force" some reading of my own. My students read the following novels: The Outsiders, A Christmas Carol, The Giver, and Night. They also get to choose from one of the following for our unit on gothic / science fiction lit (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Shiver, The Uglies, New Moon).

In high school, I hated reading Things Fall Apart and anything by Mark Twain. I also hated reading Moby Dick, but found it fascinating while working on my MA. Maybe I should give Things Fall Apart another chance.

[Kim Baccellia]

Ok, this isn't high school but eighth grade. I was forced to read THE HOBBIT. I hated the class and had a really hard time that year as I was the targed girl that the mean girls picked on. Needless to say to this day even seeing that book or any other Tolkien books brings up bad memories.

[Bonita Kale]

Oh, that's so sad, to have Tolkien spoiled.

Kim Baccellia said:

Ok, this isn't high school but eighth grade. I was forced to read THE HOBBIT. I hated the class and had a really hard time that year as I was the targed girl that the mean girls picked on. Needless to say to this day even seeing that book or any other Tolkien books brings up bad memories.

[Lexie]

Ohhh let's see--I hated all but three of the books I had to read in HS (Edith Hamilton's Mythology, Oedipus Cycle and And There Were None).

The Scarlett Letter, Poems of Lord Byron, Schindler's List, The Pigman, Scarlett Pumpernickel, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Night...

That doesn't even include all the short stories, poems and essays...really I only enjoyed 11th Grade English (the 3 books mentioned above) as far as required reading went.

[Lexie]

I had to read Things Fall Apart in 8th grade, as part of the Honors course, and it was actually my first experience with anything that was genre fiction (not fantasy or romance or scifi...). Surprisingly I enjoyed it quite a bit and still enjoy reading it now.

Tiffany Truitt said:

In high school, I hated reading Things Fall Apart and anything by Mark Twain. I also hated reading Moby Dick, but found it fascinating while working on my MA. Maybe I should give Things Fall Apart another chance.

[Jessica Love]

The Scarlet Letter. Ugh.

At the time, I hated both Old Man and the Sea and Slaughterhouse Five when I was forced to read them, but now as an adult I really appreciate them. I'm a huge Hemingway fan now, and Slaughterhouse Five is one of my absolute favorites.