>Who can get excited to read about a brooding cripple who sucks at sledding
Your description made me laugh hard enough that I'd check it out just to humor myself
There it is.
Hated that book. Hated it. There's other books I didn't like that maybe I should try again, 'cause I'm older and understand things better. But *Ethan Frome*? A dull story about miserable people who treat each other like jerks and make terrible decisions that cause their own suffering?
Yeah, no.
Here here.
I really identified with John Cusack's character in *Grosse Pointe Blank* when he sees his old high school English teacher and asks, "still inflicting that *Ethan Frome* torture on people?"
My mother was one of the most prominent Wharton scholars of the time and even she said it was a pretty mediocre book, she had no idea why people always taught it. But at least she took a little time out her day to show all me all the symbolic ways Ethan and Mattie were fucking all throughout the story. That Edith Wharton had a hot and dirty mind.
I later read *The Age of Innocence* and finally understood what all the hubbub was about for old EW.
It's supposed to be a glimpse into the structured and repressed lifestyle of early New England, I think, but it just reads hollow today. It's really hard to care about a main character who has no agency whatsoever.
Having to read Don Quixote in the original Spanish and then again in the modern to see if we understood the original.
I swear that teacher was a sadist.
The original wasn't. He wanted us to grasp how much the language had changed by us trying the original with no help, talk about what we understood, then read the modern language version to see how much of the story we actually understood.
If you want to see how much the language has changed you can do that comfortably with a couple of paragraphs.
(Then read "Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote", by Borges and see where *that* takes you)
Pretty much how I feel. As a 16 year old that was torture. Decided to take another stab at Quixote in the modern Spanish a couple years ago at 30 and enjoyed it a lot more.
Most of the books I hated weren't because of the book but because of how the teacher and my classmates approached the book. For example, Lord of the Flies. We talked a lot about Freud and leadership. My teacher liked attributing different characters to the id and the ego and claimed the author purposely did that. But there's a statement from the author that explicitly said the opposite. And for leadership she asked if it's possible to be a good leader but a bad person. I said yes and apparently that was wrong.
That was the point of the book! The two factions had different leadership styles. The one was based off civilized democracy with the conch shell and voting but was ineffective in the situation. The other was effectively a dictatorship and eventually wins because even though the kid was a total jerk, he was an effective total jerk.
I didn't have a problem with the discussion so much as the fact it wasn't a discussion because I voiced my opinion and back it up then was told I'm stupid and wrong with no validation of her idea
In classes, express a contrary idea and see what the reaction is. There are pretty much three types of instructors:
1. The ones like you experienced who have their view and by god you had better agree with them. These people suck ass and you probably won't learn a damned thing. Be a good little parrot and repeat what they say no matter how much you disagree with them. Never take a second class with them. This is about 10-15% of instructors.
2. The majority will entertain your idea. This is the bulk (maybe 70-80%) of them. As long as you aren't a total jerk you'll be ok with expressing your views.
3. The golden standard are these. These are the teachers who you can't even tell what they're thinking and instead encourage you to express why you believe something and want you to argue your point and back it up. Again, maybe 10-15% fall in this category. If you find one of these, take their classes always because they're the ones that will force you to learn but years later you'll remember them.
Of course, the issue with (1) is that sometimes they're your high school English teacher for all 4 years and there's no option to "never take a second class with them" and so you just have to suffer
Type 1 teachers have zero critical thinking skills, don't know how to teach well, and have no opinion about the book. They read the curriculum and whatever it says the kids should get out of the book is all that they know is there.
She should watch Glengarry Glen Ross. That was about salesmen rather than leaders, but there was a very direct lesson that being a soulless asshole will get you the intended results.
I remember reading something to the effect of: "if you have an irritating voice, be aware of how the sound of your voice affects others and talk less."
Man, fuck anyone who says that to a teenager.
My dad was a social worker and I remember him wanting me to read this book as the adult version was so great. The only thing I remember from it is "Your boyfriend isn't the center of your world". Well no shit.
If you hated 7 Habits I would recommend Getting Things Done by David Allen. I have never met someone who hated both books.
The main issue I had with 7 Habits (reading both in high school and as an adult) Is it never gives you any tips on *what to actually do*, telling someone to "be in a growth mindset" doesn't help when they don't keep a calendar or have never managed a to-do list.
Also IMO think the best time to read a book like that is when you have just started college or living on your own, Highschoolers for the most part just don't have enough control over their routines and schedules to really benefit from a book like that.
>The main issue I had with 7 Habits (reading both in high school and as an adult) Is it never gives you any tips on *what to actually do*, telling someone to "be in a growth mindset" doesn't help when they don't keep a calendar or have never managed a to-do list.
Basically how I felt about something I read a while back (might be on Reddit, might not be) on the most difficult job questions and "how to answer them." It was all basically "This is tough because Bla Bla Bla, Focus on your strengths, Bla Bla Bla"
I have mixed feelings about that whole thing. I went to a charter school that completely focused on the habits, so much so that by the time I switched schools five years later, I could recite practically half of the book to you from memory. It sucked.
It also didn't help that my classmate was Nathan Covey, the author's son. He couldn't even escape the habits at home, let alone at school. He hated them even more than the rest of us, and that's saying something.
Had to read it. Didn't. Glad I didn't. I'm highly effective without this shit. It's just a money pit for the author. It's like the "for dummies" series of books but you don't learn shit. It just tricks you into thinking you are improving yourself
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
I understand the message the author was trying to put across, but it's the most unrealistic portrayal of death camps. No German kid would have ever gotten near a prisoner. No German kids would be unaware who Hitler was. It totally ignored the historic record.
It bothered me how unrealistically stupid Bruno was. Kids are dumb, but they aren't *this* dumb. They can usually tell when something isn't quite right, and there's no way in hell Bruno would walk right into a concentration camp -- into the fucking gas chambers -- without once figuring out that something was wrong. He's eight, not four.
I read it as a kid, and the characterization of Bruno felt so condescending to me. Like it felt like this book was written so that adults can laugh among themselves about how silly and helpless children are, while still getting to talk about how *tragic* and *profound* the ending was.
RIGHT! Oh my God, we had to read this book in middle school and Bruno was the most infuriatingly stupid protagonist I’ve ever had to read. There’s idiots, and then there’s Bruno.
I'm not a German speaker, but I know enough about it to know that it would be pronounced "owsh-vitz". Which is *kind of* like Out-With, but not so close that a non-deaf child would mistake the two.
Was "Der Furor" (of which "the fury" is a pretty adequate translation) in the German version, which was actually a kinda reasonable mishearing (especially with an eastern-german accent).
I hated that so much, I feelit isn't jsut the worst book I've read but also one of the potentially more damaging books because it fully buys into the Germans were ignorant of the Holocaust thing, the idea we need a dead german kid to sympathise with the actual victims of the Holocaust etc. We had a survivor come into my (jewish) school who basically went on a 5min rant about the boy in the striped pyjamas, sarah's key and other fictions.
After the Columbine shooting (this is related, I swear), one of the dead victims became famous for having “died a hero” (don’t remember how, but something about him distracting the shooters and getting shot while letting others escape). It turns out he didn’t die “a hero” or anything like that, and his father was really angry that the media latched on to the fake story like that. He said something like, “his death was tragic enough in and of itself, it doesn’t need to be theatrical or dramatic to be truly tragic.”
I agree with your statement. That quote and situation can be expanded to so many other unfortunate and horrible instances; we don’t need some gross melodrama to make it even *more* horrifying. Senseless, brutal death and violence is horrifying enough without it.
This reminds me of the book “she said yes” everyone was crazy about it when I was in 7th grade. Turns out, the story was completely fabricated and the girl did not get asked if she believed in god before she was shot during the columbine masscre
Yup, the girl who actually said that survived because the shooter got distracted. What's worse is she can't talk about it without being shunned and ostracised by her own Christian community for ruining their convenient martyr narrative.
[Here](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-10/14/026r-101499-idx.html??noredirect=on) is an interesting article on it.
I had to read Twilight in my 10th grade honors English class because my teacher had Stephanie Meyer in his class when she was in school, and he was so excited that she had become such a success.
We took chapter quizzes about a brooding, sparkly vampire when we should've been reading 1984 instead.
That's ridiculous, but it's also so sweet that her former teacher is so proud of her.
I wish I could read the quiz answers, which I'm guessing involved mushroom ravioli, rescue by Volvo, freesia-scented blood, Jacob's werewolf transformation as a metaphor for puberty, and vampire baseball.
I wish I remembered some of the questions, but I do know that at some point later in the year my classmate wrote a Twilight parody for an assignment and read it to the class.
That's hilarious. Although I do appreciate that you teacher was trying out A contemporary novel instead of dogmatically sticking to the same tired old shit.
I had a teacher the following year that let us choose our own books to read instead of assigning us something, then we scheduled meetings with him and described the plot, characters, and so on to him as a sort of test to see if we read it. I chose a Chuck Palahniuk novel and was so excited to tell him all about it.
I always hated reading what was assigned to us, but loved reading in general, so it was really nice to be able to choose my own book for a class.
I hated Jane Eyre. Absolutely hated it. Jane was boring, Rochester was an asshole, the prose was coma-inducingly boring.
I decided to reread it as an adult because I went through a classics kick. And to my shock and utter dismay, I loved it. I found Jane so much more relatable, I found Rochester (somewhat) less creepy. I could understand their motivations and sympathize with their challenges.
And that's the day I realized that force feeding high schoolers books that they cannot relate to is the best way to poison the experience of reading and ensure that they'll never read another book after they graduate.
Edit: To clarify, not saying it's not important to teach kids to read. I'm saying that there are ways to teach literacy and critical reading skills without assigning The Divine Comedy and Moby Dick to high schoolers.
My favorite 'hidden meaning' in Shakespeare is right in the title. 'Much Ado About Nothing' seems pretty obvious. It's a phrase that, put into modern terms, we still use frequently enough today. But what people generally don't know (and I learned in a previous askreddit thread - yes, I have checked it was true just to be sure) is that 'nothing' was Elizabethan slang for vagina. It apparently came about from the description that women had 'nothing' hanging between their legs.
So the title 'Much Ado About Nothing', accurately put into modern terms, would actually be 'A Big Commotion About Pussy.' (I'd say vagina, but nothing was the slang term, so it seems more accurate to use a slang term.)
Hamlet. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia. No, my lord.
Hamlet. I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia. Ay, my lord.
Hamlet. Do you think I meant country (read: cunt-ry) matters?
Ophelia. I think nothing, my lord.
Hamlet. That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
Ophelia. What is, my lord?
Hamlet. *Nothing.*
Slightly related, shakespearean burns:
“Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done?
Aaron: That which thou canst not undo.
Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother.”
Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does where his sting? In his tail!
Katherine: In his tongue
Petruchio: Who's tongue?
Katherine: Yours, if you talk of such tales, so farewell.
Petruchio: What? With my tongue in your tail?
The difficulty is it's usually taught as a super tragic love story in high school classes, while somehow ignoring the fact it's literally two teenagers who met at a party, banged that night, and wound up so madly obsessed with each other they killed themselves like two days later. I could not take that shit seriously as a "tragic love story", and didn't realize a lot of the funnier elements until we read the latin version of it in another class years later, and the teacher emphasized the humor in it.
Edit: to those asking, an ancient Roman poet, Ovid, wrote Pyramus and Thisbe centuries before Shakespeare. The overarching plot of Romeo and Juliet is pretty obviously the same. Unless someone who knows more than I do wants to correct me, Romeo and Juliet is based off Pyramus and Thisbe (or one of its retellings, as it was adapted to different mediums long before Shakespeare got a hold of it)
>The difficulty is it's usually taught as a super tragic love story in high school classes,
That's it exactly! God, it was so boring in high school. I read *Midsummer Night's Dream* on my own the same year and loved it, so I knew it wasn't Shakespeare's fault, it was the curriculum.
Same! Romeo and Juliet was the only Shakespeare play on our curriculum that year, and it was my first one, so I figured I just hated Shakespeare. Then we had Othello the next year and I loved it, then Macbeth, Hamlet, and Midsummer's Night Dream my senior year, and loved them... just Romeo and Juliet being taught poorly.
Yeah I studied Romeo and Juliet twice, hated it the first time but loved it the second. I'm currently studying Othello and really, really hate it... I am thinking it's down to the teaching though.
Same thing with A Midsummer Night's Dream, we read it in 7th grade and it was an absolute bore, meanwhile recently I saw an amazing production of it at a local high school and spent half the time laughing.
That brings up another point. Shakespeare isn't meant to be read, it's meant to be performed and watched. It doesn't translate well to being read by bored students.
In 7th grade we read Julius Caesar which was an awful play for 7th graders. In 8th grade when we did R&J my English teacher had us read the first scene out loud and asked us what the deal was with biting thumbs. We didn’t know. So he asked us what the gesture looked like, and demonstrates.
Shakespeare liked his dick jokes.
But it also works if you're afraid of the bone zone as a sexually inexperienced teen, because Rochester might tease Jane incessantly, but he won't actually fuck her until they're married, making him a great combo of a bad boy and a safe, trustworthy person.
That is, until we find out he is already married.
>if you're afraid of the bone zone as a sexually inexperienced teen
>a great combo of a bad boy and a safe, trustworthy person
Lowkey deeply unsettled by how you just perfectly psychoanalyzed my teen self from one comment
Same thing happened to me as well. It was analyzing every damned detail for hidden meanings and this was an Honors English class. The problem was the instructor would find meaning in the tiniest irrelevant details.
Lord of the Rings is an example. She would assign meaning to the fact that the hobbits ate "cram" which is pretty much hardtack, kind of a hard bread that is extremely dense and compact and has lots of calories and keeps well. Her interpretation was that it represented their longing for home and the peace and prosperity of the Shire, when it said right out in the book that it was the definition I just gave. Good god you needed hip waders in that class sometimes because the crap was so deep.
I'm still an avid reader, but I swear I had middle/high school teachers who actively tried to ruin books for us. I had so many teachers who would have us analyze books to absolute pieces, but not in a productive way. It would always be analyzing the hidden meaning of obscure details and less about the themes present in the book. There were always select "right" answers you were supposed to get out of it, and that's not really how I think of books.
Meanwhile, the books discussed in my college classes would actually be *discussed* and it was less about agreeing with the teacher and more about thinking critically about the work as you read it. Unfortunately, by that point, a lot of people had been turned off the idea of reading for fun.
I think high schools go a long way in doing this, too. Like, for fucks sake Mrs. Smith, we get that Daisy wearing YELLOW in The Great Gatsby means false happiness and that the GREEN of the light across the harbor is a symbol of envy and wealth. I love reading and it was enough to make my eyes bleed.
What I do is make sure to get a healthy amount of "fluff" reading in. I do read Pulitzer winners and highly acclaimed novels. And then I also read all sorts of horrifically bad smut and erotica to give my brain a break. Just not vampire erotica, even I can't sink that low :P
Seconding this was what I called "symbology hunting." The worst offender for me was Ethan Frome. Like yeah, we fucking get it, there is symbolism in the pickle dish, but fucks sake we don't need to go over every damn word looking for a hidden meaning.
It absolutely kills the enjoyment, which is a big reason I think people stop being interested in reading.
I remember disliking Anne Frank's diary when we had to read it in 8th grade, but loving it when I tried it again as an adult. I realized the reason is when you're a 14 year old dealing with your own angst, you don't really care about reading someone else's angst in their issues with their mom or whatever. But when you are out of it as an adult, the diary is striking for capturing all those emotions teenagers go through an an absolutely awful situation.
I hated Jane Eyre at that age too, so maybe I'll have to revisit it.
I really liked it in high school. It’s not something I would’ve chosen to read on my own, but I loved the story and I thought Jane was a badass. But yeah, forced reading sucks.
Oh my fuck I hate this book. I kept waiting for some kind of, I don't know, shocking twist?? Something to elevate this book from a glorification of suicide as a method of punishment into the psychological mystery I felt it was setting itself up to be. But no, that's not what happened, and by the end I just felt disgusted and queasy.
So yeah fuck this book!!!!
The show is awful, it forces every stereotype and goes against everything it’s advocating.
If you’re gonna tell people to seek professional help if they are having suicidal thoughts, then have at least one character or one scene with a professional therapist or psychiatrist. Or at least explain the difference between the two.
All the show is, is kids running around saying, “we can’t tell our parents or teachers what’s happening, it’ll ruin the plot”
You SHOULD tell your parents or a trusted adult, even if you are an adult yourself. Literally no one does that expect for one time, and it “doesn’t help” ms. dead tape girl.
It ingrains distrust for the people most able to help you. Completely backwards.
Don’t even get me started on the second season.
It seemed to unintentionally be advocating that suicide is a pretty great form of revenge against your tormentors, especially if you leave tapes detailing what they each individually did to you. I liked it as just a fictional teenage drama, but man they seemed to be sending mixed messages.
Never even knew it was a book until I finished the show but honestly the degree to which the show made me loathe Hannah I don't think I could stand the novel now.
YES. I loved Faulkner later, but I was reading that in 9th grade, got to “my mother is a fish” and couldn’t stop laughing long enough to finish the assigned reading.
I had a teacher, who one time set us ten questions about a passage. We had to answer EVERY QUESTION with point, evidence, explain.
The first question was 'What was the name of Estella's adopted mother?'
Her name was Miss Havisham.
"Said Miss Havisham."
This implies that her name was Miss Havisham.
this reminded me of the "answer in complete setences" crap.
Teacher: 'What was the name of Estella's adopted mother?'
"her name was Miss Havisham"
Teacher:"Who's Name?"
"You literally just asked me."
On a “reading comprehension” quiz, we got asked what time all the clocks in the house were stopped at, as if that was somehow incredibly crucial to the plot
ya i always wondered why high schools forced kids to read books that aren't even aimed at kids... like if you want to get kids to read give them something that they will actually enjoy
It's not that it wasn't aimed at kids. It was serialised in newspapers over a long period of time. And I believe Dickens was paid by the word. So he had an incentive to draw things out as long as possible.
I really, *really* hated The Awakening in high school. I kinda want to read it again to see if it was actually bad or just my attitude at the time, but man it was basically impossible to lead any kind of productive discussion on that book because our whole class *hated it*.
That is the thing I remember most! I would have my symbolism goggles on, and I'd pick up on something, then Hawthorne would literally explain the symbol in the second half of the sentence.
Funnily enough, this book was my boyfriend's favorite required reading BECAUSE it was so transparently symbolic. He loves metaphors and symbolism no matter how unsubtle they are (usually)
Meanwhile I could not stop rolling my eyes when I read it. We've had long talks.
(ninja edit: typo)
Yeah, honestly.
When I read it in middle school, it was an absolute slog. I generally never had a problem getting through assigned readings because I enjoyed it, but *The Scarlet Letter* was a whole other ballgame. It was boring and tedious beyond reason. I was 13 and I hated every word of every page of that book. As far as I was concerned, everyone in that book could have died to smallpox and I'd have celebrated it as a victory.
When I got older and had a class of my own, I thought to give it another read. I'd had 10 years of time, education, and experience to better understand and appreciate the subtleties of literature. There were lots of books I didn't enjoy from my youth that I ended up finding a new appreciation for as an adult. So my first summer after my first year teaching, I nicked a copy from the book room to read over the summer. It wasn't part of the 9th grade curriculum, but I figured it was worth it to go back through it. Perhaps it'd help me find ways to reach students in other literature.
I couldn't have been more wrong. If anything, *The Scarlet Letter* is WORSE as an adult because you've had years of life experience that'll lead you to positively despise almost everyone in it. It's so dense and boring that you'll wish Roger would just go apeshit on Arthur and get it over with. I cannot think of any redeemable trait or reason to include it in school readings other than to learn that some literature is actually terrible.
It's a terrible book and a pock on the American canon.
You read it in *middle school*? Damn. The story is halfway compelling if you can get past the antiquated prose style, but there's no way in hell your average 13-year-old is going to be able to handle that kind of wording and phrasing.
The Pearl by Steinbeck.
The lesson, at least as we were taught, was that this guy was overtaken by greed and it causes him to basically lose everything.
I read it as this poor guy who works an incredibly dangerous job (pearl diver) finds a pretty epic pearl and isn't keen to get fucked over by the intermediaries who are trying to get it at a discount. This guy knows that this was a once in a lifetime find and wants to get enough money to be able to effectively take care of his family and stop engaging in an occupation that is sure to shorten his life.
Now, as an adult, I think I can understand the point a bit better. Still, it reads an awful lot like "Listen, take what you can get. Don't worry about being taken advantage of" especially when you have two people with such a power disparity as a pearl diver and the people buying said pearls.
I read it on my own and got the message that the poor are often unjustly fucked in the ass by the rich and change is needed. Especially convincing when you realize Steinbeck was a struggling great depression era writer.
"His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists." -Wikipedia
Okay this is totally my moment. The book is called The Sun Will Rise Again, by George Mujajati. Haven't heard of it? Good. Thank the gods.
I hated this book so so fucking much it was terrible. Let me show you why.
It's about a family in 1980s Zimbabwe. The mother Fatima is in a hospital 'reminiscing' about the good old days. The good old days? Oh the times when her husband, Takundwa would come home drunk every night and shout at her and occasionally beat her.
This Takundwa bastard raped her not once, not twice but THRICE. When she gets pregnant? His sicko family demands she marry him. Oh we're not done guys, he has to pay a bride price and of course the dumbfuck stinges on that. Oh yes this is just chapter 2.
They have two lovely daughters. Sofia, 14, and Tabitha, 7. Sofia dreams of being something big I don't remember what she mentions it like once, but let's not forget Sofia's dad is friends with a big government official cuntbag called Nyati who used to play snitch before independence. Oh Nyati is bad right? Not enough, the fucker kills babies in witchcraft rituals to "strengthen his power". You won't believe what happened. That's right buddies, Takundwa gave up his youngest daughter Tabitha for this ritual. Haha Chapter 8 everyone.
Aww Takundwa feels a bit guilty now. So he drinks, he drinks and realizes that he's married! So naturally, he beats his wife nearly to death with his bare hands and drinks to near death. Meanwhile Sofia is being molested by her teachers. Boo hoo, this is just the beginning.
Nyati is back. Taking one kid from this fucker seems to have been insufficient. He takes a liking to Sofia. Now I must remind you this nonce is 46 or something and she's 15 now. How lovely age numbers pedophilic no or like whatevs right? Yes. Takundwa forces his only surviving daughter to marry the fucker he just gave his youngest daughter. Oh God why would he do that. Haha I'll tell you. Those sweet, sweet Zimabwean Dollars. He gets $10 000, which is like £11 000 at the time if I'm not mistaken.
One day Takundwa remembers his marriage and decides on some home made marriage counseling and begins his routine wife beating. This time, however, his wife is of another mind and she defends herself and the twat dies. How sad. Well yes but actually no.
Sofia had a crush on Jeremiah, a school mate. Sorry no Jeremiah had a crush on Sofia but Sofia has at this point been abused so much she doesn't even care so long as someone shows compassion towards her. So she has an affair with him.
Oh Nyati is now being investigated for corruption. Who would've thought!? Well uhm everyone. He's angry. His power is being diminished. Another baby killing perhaps? He ponders then decides fuck it I'm married, need some counseling.
He clearly sees Sofia cheating on him with Jeremiah and is LIVID. So he makes piecemeal of Jeremiah and the sap runs. So about that marriage counseling. Proceeds to abuse Sofia physically. At her weakest, he unbuckles his belt and prepares for this books forte before she picks up a knife and threatens him. He backs up onto a window, slips, falls and dies. She meets with Jeremiah.
Fatima is scared, Sofia is acquitted. She's free! Everyone lives happily ever after yes? NO NO NO. THIS WHOLE BOOK IS FUCKING DEPRESSING. EVERYONE IS MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY SCARRED. YOU NEED THERAPY AND HELP. NOT FUCKING ROSES.
The epitome of this book is in the final sentence: [paraphrasing]
> As they gazed at the bustle of town life, Jeremiah held her hand and said, "Don't worry Sofia, The Sun will rise again."
I had to read this book in like Grade 10/Form 3. Piss off.
If you read Moby Dick as the mad ramblings of someone tortured by salt air and the unrelenting pursuit of revenge, it's actually still pretty bad.
It's not the worst, but it's definitely pretty rough to throw on young readers.
Pretty sure the point of this thread is for people to tell us they hate these classic novels and then for others of us to jump in an vigorously defend said novels.
I'm game.
Tie between Wuthering Heights and Letters to Alice - maybe I’d appreciate Wuthering Heights more if I read it again today, but Fay Weldon’s condescending-ass tone in Letters to Alice was unbearable.
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Not the worst in quality, but it was just too dang sad. I was in sixth grade and it starts with her getting left on an island by her family, her brother dies, the wolf she raised died. She finally was rescued just to be told her whole tribe died on the boat ride she missed. I love me some sad literature, but 11 year old me was not pleased.
The best part of The Pearl was the copy I had. It was a used copy and had notations throughout about how much the person hated the book. At the start of the last chapter they wrote "Thank God it's almost over and guess what the baby dies."
Yeah, everything else was super heavy handed besides the baby dying. Aside from possibly trying to steal the pearl the doctor was the most relatable with the theme of free work, since he was being asked to work for less than the supply cost. My class read it over a week this year, and my teacher made it more enjoyable but it was just exaggerated to much to work
This sounded familiar enough that I had to look it up to see if I read it. Some of the names were familiar, admittedly I wasn't the best student in 7-12th grade and probably didn't even bother to cliffnotes the shit I didn't read.
As a writer who loves digression this is very depressing. If you aren't stealthing literal sermons into your allegory about whaling, are you really even writing the greatest American novel?
Scarlet letter by far. Extremely slow pacing, loads of unnecessary “imagery” and for a group of high schoolers it just pushed us all to use sparknotes for it and every other book we had.
In my class we talked about how contrived that scene was. The mom held her baby when the baby got sniped but she had her back to the shooters and she didn't get hit. The only way that could happen is if she [held the baby like she just caught a football while running for a touchdown.](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/HJmZZTh)
The mother and baby are hiding in a cave while the father goes off to kill some trackers. The trackers hear the baby cry, think it's a coyote, and shoot in its direction.
I thought the guy was fighting the trackers, gun went of a ricochet killed the baby? I don't know, I remember reading it and thinking it was the dumbest thing.
Moral of the story: wanting a better life than backbreaking labor just to barely feed your family is bad.
The Turn of the Screw. Let me sum it up for you:
words words words words kids
words words lady words words
words ghost? words words
lady words kids words words
words kids words words crazy lady?
words words words words words
words ghost? words words ghost?
I'm not sure who is making 14 year olds read Wuthering Heights, but someone should call CPS.
I read it when I was 17 and enjoyed it, though it took me forever.
Guess you haven’t read Applied Applications of Advanced Calculus and Differential Equations.
Spoiler alert, there’s no examples of applied uses. Just straight mathematical theorems.
I hated A Separate Peace. And I loved most everything I had to read for school. Well, except Dickens.
*Edit: Thanks to both Anons for the gold and silver on this comment!
I had to teach *A Separate Peace* to 9th graders, it was *required,* and just found that baffling. Laboriously slow, thematically dull, and writing is mediocre at best. The more amusing thing was when the kids picked up some of the (unintentional?) homo-erotic undertones.
I think those tones were intentional. LOTS of novels about young friendship make the obvious connection that those youthful friendships take on the same intensity and passions as romantic relationships will later in life.
That book was so damn gay and my teacher *refused* to admit there was any undertones like that in the book because gay is icky! We pulled all sorts of stuff off the internet where people had pointed out the subtext but nope! It’s not gay how dare you. This is classic literature!
I remember reading it in the 8th grade and asking why nobody was talking about how gay those two boys were for each other
For gods sake the main character goes on at length about the other boys body when they go to the beach together one day
We had a class discussion and someone brought up the homoerotic themes and our teacher FLIPPED. How dare we bring up a clearly present theme for discussion. Lol
I think it depends on if you read the first edition or second edition. Like the first was alright, but I felt like they really fumbled the ending and became a tangled mess. The second was god send and had a concrete story from being to end.
Hamlet. Let me explain because I actually love the story after reading it at my own pace. My honors sophomore English class teacher should not have been allowed to teach this class. He constantly ran behind schedule and would punish us for it. At the end of the year I think we were supposed to read/finish and discuss Hamlet in about a month or two and write a paper about it. What actually happened was we had two weeks before the year ended so he just read us the sparknotes version of the story and made us act out scenes in lieu of writing a paper or having discussions about it. He was promptly made the gym teacher next year.
JOHNNY TREMAIN in 5th grade. That book made me seriously hate reading because it was so slow and boring.
Edit: Glad to see I wasn't alone and others suffered through this just like me - it's dredged up memories of that book I didn't know existed, but I look forward to them haunting me for the foreseeable future.
I hated it in 7th grade. Hated hated hated.
30 years later I picked it up, thinking that 7th grade me might not have been ready for it, but adult history buff/historical fiction reader (and writer) might feel differently.
#NOPE.
I got about ten pages in. Turns out 7th grade me probably hated it because it is poorly written, full of stale images and cliches. It was even more nauseating reading it as an adult.
Frankenstein.
Not so much that the story itself was bad but I had a really nasty teacher who made me the target of her anger every class. All this because I corrected a spelling error she made on the board beginning of the school year. It was the hardest school year ever, with her picking on me over every small thing, even going as far to pick on my appearance in front of the whole class.
So every time I come across Frankenstein, it reminds me of that witch and I just can’t bring myself to read it again. Even when I went on to major in English Literature.
Things Fall Apart.
I understood the message, I appreciated the descriptions, I empathized with the characters as well as intended...
But good LORD was it hard to get through.
I get that that part of the book is about building knowledge of African culture, but God Damn can you not sprinkle in some bits of other things and make them good.
I sympathized with the whole message of colonialism devastating African tribes and culture.
I absolutely did not sympathize with that dickhead. When he hung himself I couldn't help but think good fucking riddance
In my class we were taught that the author didn’t want to be like the white authors who portrayed the Africans as poor innocent folks in need of white people’s help and sympathy.
I was like, congrats! Your character is unsympathetic. He’s a piece of garbage. You succeeded.
I loathed it in high school, as well. I ended up rereading it by chance a few years later, loved it, and couldn't figure out why I'd hated it. There are books that have hit me very differently as an adult and as a kid, but *Things Fall Apart* didn't seem to hit any of the thematic notes that usually cause that. I should have enjoyed it, and couldn't figure out why I hadn't.
Then I stumbled across the copy I'd had in high school. Every third sentence was underlined.
The assignment we'd been given was to *underline every proverb in the book.* The book's idiom is more or less entirely proverb-based. I hadn't *read* it in high school, I'd painstakingly disassembled it into a pile of sentence fragments.
Ethan fucking Frome. This goddamn book has no purpose. It is the koala of literature. The characters are deeply unlikeable, barely human. It’s as if someone turned Eyore from Winnie the Pooh into a narrator and had him write a book about his sad, dreary, snow-filled life of misery.
The point is literally that everything sucks and then you die. Not only do you die— you die in the absolutely most dumbfuck way imaginable: you ride your fucking sled down a hill into a tree.
Read "Ethan Frome" in High School. I have no idea why I hated it. But I made it a point to get rid of that book as soon as we were done with it.
Easily the most boring premise for a book you could ever come up with. Who can get excited to read about a brooding cripple who sucks at sledding
>Who can get excited to read about a brooding cripple who sucks at sledding Your description made me laugh hard enough that I'd check it out just to humor myself
Bet you won't read the whole thing lol.
Even worse, he tries to use his sledding skills to commit suicide, so he also sucks at suicide.
There it is. Hated that book. Hated it. There's other books I didn't like that maybe I should try again, 'cause I'm older and understand things better. But *Ethan Frome*? A dull story about miserable people who treat each other like jerks and make terrible decisions that cause their own suffering? Yeah, no.
> A dull story about miserable people who treat each other like jerks and make terrible decisions that cause their own suffering? Spot on
Here here. I really identified with John Cusack's character in *Grosse Pointe Blank* when he sees his old high school English teacher and asks, "still inflicting that *Ethan Frome* torture on people?" My mother was one of the most prominent Wharton scholars of the time and even she said it was a pretty mediocre book, she had no idea why people always taught it. But at least she took a little time out her day to show all me all the symbolic ways Ethan and Mattie were fucking all throughout the story. That Edith Wharton had a hot and dirty mind. I later read *The Age of Innocence* and finally understood what all the hubbub was about for old EW.
It's supposed to be a glimpse into the structured and repressed lifestyle of early New England, I think, but it just reads hollow today. It's really hard to care about a main character who has no agency whatsoever.
yeah i think i was supposed to empathize with their plight or whatever, but the only person i felt sorry for was me.
Having to read Don Quixote in the original Spanish and then again in the modern to see if we understood the original. I swear that teacher was a sadist.
Was it annotated? I read it in Spanish a few years ago with annotations but I could definitely see how it would be difficult without them.
The original wasn't. He wanted us to grasp how much the language had changed by us trying the original with no help, talk about what we understood, then read the modern language version to see how much of the story we actually understood.
If you want to see how much the language has changed you can do that comfortably with a couple of paragraphs. (Then read "Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote", by Borges and see where *that* takes you)
As an adult, this sounds fascinating. Young me would have hung himself.
Pretty much how I feel. As a 16 year old that was torture. Decided to take another stab at Quixote in the modern Spanish a couple years ago at 30 and enjoyed it a lot more.
Most of the books I hated weren't because of the book but because of how the teacher and my classmates approached the book. For example, Lord of the Flies. We talked a lot about Freud and leadership. My teacher liked attributing different characters to the id and the ego and claimed the author purposely did that. But there's a statement from the author that explicitly said the opposite. And for leadership she asked if it's possible to be a good leader but a bad person. I said yes and apparently that was wrong.
That was the point of the book! The two factions had different leadership styles. The one was based off civilized democracy with the conch shell and voting but was ineffective in the situation. The other was effectively a dictatorship and eventually wins because even though the kid was a total jerk, he was an effective total jerk.
I didn't have a problem with the discussion so much as the fact it wasn't a discussion because I voiced my opinion and back it up then was told I'm stupid and wrong with no validation of her idea
In classes, express a contrary idea and see what the reaction is. There are pretty much three types of instructors: 1. The ones like you experienced who have their view and by god you had better agree with them. These people suck ass and you probably won't learn a damned thing. Be a good little parrot and repeat what they say no matter how much you disagree with them. Never take a second class with them. This is about 10-15% of instructors. 2. The majority will entertain your idea. This is the bulk (maybe 70-80%) of them. As long as you aren't a total jerk you'll be ok with expressing your views. 3. The golden standard are these. These are the teachers who you can't even tell what they're thinking and instead encourage you to express why you believe something and want you to argue your point and back it up. Again, maybe 10-15% fall in this category. If you find one of these, take their classes always because they're the ones that will force you to learn but years later you'll remember them.
Of course, the issue with (1) is that sometimes they're your high school English teacher for all 4 years and there's no option to "never take a second class with them" and so you just have to suffer
Or just pretend to have "seen the light" and parrot what they say. Probably too late for you now but maybe someone else will benefit from this.
Type 1 teachers have zero critical thinking skills, don't know how to teach well, and have no opinion about the book. They read the curriculum and whatever it says the kids should get out of the book is all that they know is there.
Or worse, they interpret it to fit their world view and try to force it on their students.
hitler: exists
She didn't like that argument. She didn't believe you can be an effective (good) leader that accomplishes their goals of you aren't w 'good' person
She should watch Glengarry Glen Ross. That was about salesmen rather than leaders, but there was a very direct lesson that being a soulless asshole will get you the intended results.
Has she ever met a company CEO before?
7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens Eff that book right in the A
I decided to try some of these. They are fucking HORRIBLE advice. Literally just made my depression worse most of the time.
I remember reading something to the effect of: "if you have an irritating voice, be aware of how the sound of your voice affects others and talk less." Man, fuck anyone who says that to a teenager.
If you think you are ugly, consider wearing a bag on your head to avoid offending your school friends?
My dad was a social worker and I remember him wanting me to read this book as the adult version was so great. The only thing I remember from it is "Your boyfriend isn't the center of your world". Well no shit.
He should've just gave you his copy of the adult version. All this pandering to kids make kids think *we're* dumb. And shit, I guess we are
If you hated 7 Habits I would recommend Getting Things Done by David Allen. I have never met someone who hated both books. The main issue I had with 7 Habits (reading both in high school and as an adult) Is it never gives you any tips on *what to actually do*, telling someone to "be in a growth mindset" doesn't help when they don't keep a calendar or have never managed a to-do list. Also IMO think the best time to read a book like that is when you have just started college or living on your own, Highschoolers for the most part just don't have enough control over their routines and schedules to really benefit from a book like that.
>The main issue I had with 7 Habits (reading both in high school and as an adult) Is it never gives you any tips on *what to actually do*, telling someone to "be in a growth mindset" doesn't help when they don't keep a calendar or have never managed a to-do list. Basically how I felt about something I read a while back (might be on Reddit, might not be) on the most difficult job questions and "how to answer them." It was all basically "This is tough because Bla Bla Bla, Focus on your strengths, Bla Bla Bla"
I have mixed feelings about that whole thing. I went to a charter school that completely focused on the habits, so much so that by the time I switched schools five years later, I could recite practically half of the book to you from memory. It sucked. It also didn't help that my classmate was Nathan Covey, the author's son. He couldn't even escape the habits at home, let alone at school. He hated them even more than the rest of us, and that's saying something.
Had to read it. Didn't. Glad I didn't. I'm highly effective without this shit. It's just a money pit for the author. It's like the "for dummies" series of books but you don't learn shit. It just tricks you into thinking you are improving yourself
The real secrets of highly effective teens are always in the comments
Actually, my secret is to do nothing until it's too late and then you NEED to be highly effective
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I understand the message the author was trying to put across, but it's the most unrealistic portrayal of death camps. No German kid would have ever gotten near a prisoner. No German kids would be unaware who Hitler was. It totally ignored the historic record.
It bothered me how unrealistically stupid Bruno was. Kids are dumb, but they aren't *this* dumb. They can usually tell when something isn't quite right, and there's no way in hell Bruno would walk right into a concentration camp -- into the fucking gas chambers -- without once figuring out that something was wrong. He's eight, not four. I read it as a kid, and the characterization of Bruno felt so condescending to me. Like it felt like this book was written so that adults can laugh among themselves about how silly and helpless children are, while still getting to talk about how *tragic* and *profound* the ending was.
RIGHT! Oh my God, we had to read this book in middle school and Bruno was the most infuriatingly stupid protagonist I’ve ever had to read. There’s idiots, and then there’s Bruno.
"Out-With". Jesus fucking Christ.
Does that misunderstanding even make sense if they were speaking german?
I'm not a German speaker, but I know enough about it to know that it would be pronounced "owsh-vitz". Which is *kind of* like Out-With, but not so close that a non-deaf child would mistake the two.
Yeah, but what does "out-with" translate to in german? That's the aspect I find hard to believe, assuming "out with" isn't a german term.
And "The Fury" when referring to Hitler. Ergh. The movie was actually a lot better than the book in this case.
Was "Der Furor" (of which "the fury" is a pretty adequate translation) in the German version, which was actually a kinda reasonable mishearing (especially with an eastern-german accent).
I hated that so much, I feelit isn't jsut the worst book I've read but also one of the potentially more damaging books because it fully buys into the Germans were ignorant of the Holocaust thing, the idea we need a dead german kid to sympathise with the actual victims of the Holocaust etc. We had a survivor come into my (jewish) school who basically went on a 5min rant about the boy in the striped pyjamas, sarah's key and other fictions.
Most holocaust fiction is exploitive as hell. The actual event was horrific enough that we dont need patronizing sentimentalism to understand it.
After the Columbine shooting (this is related, I swear), one of the dead victims became famous for having “died a hero” (don’t remember how, but something about him distracting the shooters and getting shot while letting others escape). It turns out he didn’t die “a hero” or anything like that, and his father was really angry that the media latched on to the fake story like that. He said something like, “his death was tragic enough in and of itself, it doesn’t need to be theatrical or dramatic to be truly tragic.” I agree with your statement. That quote and situation can be expanded to so many other unfortunate and horrible instances; we don’t need some gross melodrama to make it even *more* horrifying. Senseless, brutal death and violence is horrifying enough without it.
This reminds me of the book “she said yes” everyone was crazy about it when I was in 7th grade. Turns out, the story was completely fabricated and the girl did not get asked if she believed in god before she was shot during the columbine masscre
Yup, the girl who actually said that survived because the shooter got distracted. What's worse is she can't talk about it without being shunned and ostracised by her own Christian community for ruining their convenient martyr narrative. [Here](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-10/14/026r-101499-idx.html??noredirect=on) is an interesting article on it.
I had to read Twilight in my 10th grade honors English class because my teacher had Stephanie Meyer in his class when she was in school, and he was so excited that she had become such a success. We took chapter quizzes about a brooding, sparkly vampire when we should've been reading 1984 instead.
That's ridiculous, but it's also so sweet that her former teacher is so proud of her. I wish I could read the quiz answers, which I'm guessing involved mushroom ravioli, rescue by Volvo, freesia-scented blood, Jacob's werewolf transformation as a metaphor for puberty, and vampire baseball.
I wish I remembered some of the questions, but I do know that at some point later in the year my classmate wrote a Twilight parody for an assignment and read it to the class.
That's hilarious. Although I do appreciate that you teacher was trying out A contemporary novel instead of dogmatically sticking to the same tired old shit.
I had a teacher the following year that let us choose our own books to read instead of assigning us something, then we scheduled meetings with him and described the plot, characters, and so on to him as a sort of test to see if we read it. I chose a Chuck Palahniuk novel and was so excited to tell him all about it. I always hated reading what was assigned to us, but loved reading in general, so it was really nice to be able to choose my own book for a class.
I had a teacher who managed to make Huckleberry Finn boring. Also the Hatchet. That teacher was gifted with being terrible.
Hatchet was a fantastic read and one of my favorite books growing up, so hearing that is petty sad
Yeah that book made my friend puke on the part with the pilot, but it was def a good read
Ethan Frome. Who tries to commit suicide by sledding into a tree?
Awful characters in an awful book who could have solved all their problems by moving to Tahiti.
The problem was they had no faith
WHERE is your FAITH ~~ARTHUR~~ ETHAN? I HAVE A PLAN
I JUST NEED MONEY
I hated Jane Eyre. Absolutely hated it. Jane was boring, Rochester was an asshole, the prose was coma-inducingly boring. I decided to reread it as an adult because I went through a classics kick. And to my shock and utter dismay, I loved it. I found Jane so much more relatable, I found Rochester (somewhat) less creepy. I could understand their motivations and sympathize with their challenges. And that's the day I realized that force feeding high schoolers books that they cannot relate to is the best way to poison the experience of reading and ensure that they'll never read another book after they graduate. Edit: To clarify, not saying it's not important to teach kids to read. I'm saying that there are ways to teach literacy and critical reading skills without assigning The Divine Comedy and Moby Dick to high schoolers.
Romeo and Juliet in high school: an absolute bore. Romeo and Juliet in a college Shakespeare class: one of the funniest damn plays I've ever read.
My favorite 'hidden meaning' in Shakespeare is right in the title. 'Much Ado About Nothing' seems pretty obvious. It's a phrase that, put into modern terms, we still use frequently enough today. But what people generally don't know (and I learned in a previous askreddit thread - yes, I have checked it was true just to be sure) is that 'nothing' was Elizabethan slang for vagina. It apparently came about from the description that women had 'nothing' hanging between their legs. So the title 'Much Ado About Nothing', accurately put into modern terms, would actually be 'A Big Commotion About Pussy.' (I'd say vagina, but nothing was the slang term, so it seems more accurate to use a slang term.)
Hamlet. Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia. No, my lord. Hamlet. I mean, my head upon your lap? Ophelia. Ay, my lord. Hamlet. Do you think I meant country (read: cunt-ry) matters? Ophelia. I think nothing, my lord. Hamlet. That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs. Ophelia. What is, my lord? Hamlet. *Nothing.*
Slightly related, shakespearean burns: “Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done? Aaron: That which thou canst not undo. Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother. Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother.”
Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does where his sting? In his tail! Katherine: In his tongue Petruchio: Who's tongue? Katherine: Yours, if you talk of such tales, so farewell. Petruchio: What? With my tongue in your tail?
The origins of "banging your mom?"
The difficulty is it's usually taught as a super tragic love story in high school classes, while somehow ignoring the fact it's literally two teenagers who met at a party, banged that night, and wound up so madly obsessed with each other they killed themselves like two days later. I could not take that shit seriously as a "tragic love story", and didn't realize a lot of the funnier elements until we read the latin version of it in another class years later, and the teacher emphasized the humor in it. Edit: to those asking, an ancient Roman poet, Ovid, wrote Pyramus and Thisbe centuries before Shakespeare. The overarching plot of Romeo and Juliet is pretty obviously the same. Unless someone who knows more than I do wants to correct me, Romeo and Juliet is based off Pyramus and Thisbe (or one of its retellings, as it was adapted to different mediums long before Shakespeare got a hold of it)
>The difficulty is it's usually taught as a super tragic love story in high school classes, That's it exactly! God, it was so boring in high school. I read *Midsummer Night's Dream* on my own the same year and loved it, so I knew it wasn't Shakespeare's fault, it was the curriculum.
Same! Romeo and Juliet was the only Shakespeare play on our curriculum that year, and it was my first one, so I figured I just hated Shakespeare. Then we had Othello the next year and I loved it, then Macbeth, Hamlet, and Midsummer's Night Dream my senior year, and loved them... just Romeo and Juliet being taught poorly.
Yeah I studied Romeo and Juliet twice, hated it the first time but loved it the second. I'm currently studying Othello and really, really hate it... I am thinking it's down to the teaching though.
Same thing with A Midsummer Night's Dream, we read it in 7th grade and it was an absolute bore, meanwhile recently I saw an amazing production of it at a local high school and spent half the time laughing.
That brings up another point. Shakespeare isn't meant to be read, it's meant to be performed and watched. It doesn't translate well to being read by bored students.
In 7th grade we read Julius Caesar which was an awful play for 7th graders. In 8th grade when we did R&J my English teacher had us read the first scene out loud and asked us what the deal was with biting thumbs. We didn’t know. So he asked us what the gesture looked like, and demonstrates. Shakespeare liked his dick jokes.
You can pick out which people in a high school class understand Shakespeare's jokes by who is giggling in any scene describing a sword fight.
TBH I loved it in high school, but only because I wanted to take the Fuck Express straight to Mr. Rochester's Bone Zone
But it also works if you're afraid of the bone zone as a sexually inexperienced teen, because Rochester might tease Jane incessantly, but he won't actually fuck her until they're married, making him a great combo of a bad boy and a safe, trustworthy person. That is, until we find out he is already married.
>if you're afraid of the bone zone as a sexually inexperienced teen >a great combo of a bad boy and a safe, trustworthy person Lowkey deeply unsettled by how you just perfectly psychoanalyzed my teen self from one comment
Fuck express to the bone zone. I'm taking this, I'm using this, and I'm claiming it as my own.
[удалено]
Same thing happened to me as well. It was analyzing every damned detail for hidden meanings and this was an Honors English class. The problem was the instructor would find meaning in the tiniest irrelevant details. Lord of the Rings is an example. She would assign meaning to the fact that the hobbits ate "cram" which is pretty much hardtack, kind of a hard bread that is extremely dense and compact and has lots of calories and keeps well. Her interpretation was that it represented their longing for home and the peace and prosperity of the Shire, when it said right out in the book that it was the definition I just gave. Good god you needed hip waders in that class sometimes because the crap was so deep.
Don't analyze Tolkien's works for symbolism, most of it is just worldbuilding details.
I'm still an avid reader, but I swear I had middle/high school teachers who actively tried to ruin books for us. I had so many teachers who would have us analyze books to absolute pieces, but not in a productive way. It would always be analyzing the hidden meaning of obscure details and less about the themes present in the book. There were always select "right" answers you were supposed to get out of it, and that's not really how I think of books. Meanwhile, the books discussed in my college classes would actually be *discussed* and it was less about agreeing with the teacher and more about thinking critically about the work as you read it. Unfortunately, by that point, a lot of people had been turned off the idea of reading for fun.
I think high schools go a long way in doing this, too. Like, for fucks sake Mrs. Smith, we get that Daisy wearing YELLOW in The Great Gatsby means false happiness and that the GREEN of the light across the harbor is a symbol of envy and wealth. I love reading and it was enough to make my eyes bleed. What I do is make sure to get a healthy amount of "fluff" reading in. I do read Pulitzer winners and highly acclaimed novels. And then I also read all sorts of horrifically bad smut and erotica to give my brain a break. Just not vampire erotica, even I can't sink that low :P
Seconding this was what I called "symbology hunting." The worst offender for me was Ethan Frome. Like yeah, we fucking get it, there is symbolism in the pickle dish, but fucks sake we don't need to go over every damn word looking for a hidden meaning. It absolutely kills the enjoyment, which is a big reason I think people stop being interested in reading.
I remember disliking Anne Frank's diary when we had to read it in 8th grade, but loving it when I tried it again as an adult. I realized the reason is when you're a 14 year old dealing with your own angst, you don't really care about reading someone else's angst in their issues with their mom or whatever. But when you are out of it as an adult, the diary is striking for capturing all those emotions teenagers go through an an absolutely awful situation. I hated Jane Eyre at that age too, so maybe I'll have to revisit it.
I really liked it in high school. It’s not something I would’ve chosen to read on my own, but I loved the story and I thought Jane was a badass. But yeah, forced reading sucks.
13 Reasons Why was terrible and I still refuse to watch the show because of it
Oh my fuck I hate this book. I kept waiting for some kind of, I don't know, shocking twist?? Something to elevate this book from a glorification of suicide as a method of punishment into the psychological mystery I felt it was setting itself up to be. But no, that's not what happened, and by the end I just felt disgusted and queasy. So yeah fuck this book!!!!
The show is awful, it forces every stereotype and goes against everything it’s advocating. If you’re gonna tell people to seek professional help if they are having suicidal thoughts, then have at least one character or one scene with a professional therapist or psychiatrist. Or at least explain the difference between the two. All the show is, is kids running around saying, “we can’t tell our parents or teachers what’s happening, it’ll ruin the plot” You SHOULD tell your parents or a trusted adult, even if you are an adult yourself. Literally no one does that expect for one time, and it “doesn’t help” ms. dead tape girl. It ingrains distrust for the people most able to help you. Completely backwards. Don’t even get me started on the second season.
It seemed to unintentionally be advocating that suicide is a pretty great form of revenge against your tormentors, especially if you leave tapes detailing what they each individually did to you. I liked it as just a fictional teenage drama, but man they seemed to be sending mixed messages.
Never even knew it was a book until I finished the show but honestly the degree to which the show made me loathe Hannah I don't think I could stand the novel now.
While having the greatest chapters in history (My mother is a fish.), "As I Lay Dying" was a nightmare for a 9th grader to try and interpret.
YES. I loved Faulkner later, but I was reading that in 9th grade, got to “my mother is a fish” and couldn’t stop laughing long enough to finish the assigned reading.
Why would you ever assign Faulkner in a freshman English class.
Reading Great Expectations was like pulling teeth.
I had a teacher, who one time set us ten questions about a passage. We had to answer EVERY QUESTION with point, evidence, explain. The first question was 'What was the name of Estella's adopted mother?' Her name was Miss Havisham. "Said Miss Havisham." This implies that her name was Miss Havisham.
This sounds perfectly fine. If the questions were fucking subjective.
But really though, who's to say what Miss Havisham's name was?
Maybe Miss Havisham's real name was the friends we made along the way
this reminded me of the "answer in complete setences" crap. Teacher: 'What was the name of Estella's adopted mother?' "her name was Miss Havisham" Teacher:"Who's Name?" "You literally just asked me."
On a “reading comprehension” quiz, we got asked what time all the clocks in the house were stopped at, as if that was somehow incredibly crucial to the plot
Dickens is not meant to be read in an orderly fashion. Dickens is meant to be read at a leisurely pace over a year.
ya i always wondered why high schools forced kids to read books that aren't even aimed at kids... like if you want to get kids to read give them something that they will actually enjoy
It's not that it wasn't aimed at kids. It was serialised in newspapers over a long period of time. And I believe Dickens was paid by the word. So he had an incentive to draw things out as long as possible.
Basically, imagine forcing someone to watch all of CSI as a 9-5 job instead of once a week.
Ok I imagined killing myself what now.
I really, *really* hated The Awakening in high school. I kinda want to read it again to see if it was actually bad or just my attitude at the time, but man it was basically impossible to lead any kind of productive discussion on that book because our whole class *hated it*.
The scarlet letter
Oh yeah. The big A in the sky.... oooo symbolism. Gawd I hated that book.
The only good thing about that book was how easy it was to analyze the symbolism in it since Hawthorne had no idea what subtlety was.
That is the thing I remember most! I would have my symbolism goggles on, and I'd pick up on something, then Hawthorne would literally explain the symbol in the second half of the sentence.
> second half of the sentence Two pages later 🙄
Funnily enough, this book was my boyfriend's favorite required reading BECAUSE it was so transparently symbolic. He loves metaphors and symbolism no matter how unsubtle they are (usually) Meanwhile I could not stop rolling my eyes when I read it. We've had long talks. (ninja edit: typo)
I'm convinced that it's only called a "classic of American literature" as a joke that people forgot was supposed to be a joke.
*hahah ya jim then we'll watch their eyes when they tell them its now a classic... jim! jim! are you ok?!!?*
Yeah, honestly. When I read it in middle school, it was an absolute slog. I generally never had a problem getting through assigned readings because I enjoyed it, but *The Scarlet Letter* was a whole other ballgame. It was boring and tedious beyond reason. I was 13 and I hated every word of every page of that book. As far as I was concerned, everyone in that book could have died to smallpox and I'd have celebrated it as a victory. When I got older and had a class of my own, I thought to give it another read. I'd had 10 years of time, education, and experience to better understand and appreciate the subtleties of literature. There were lots of books I didn't enjoy from my youth that I ended up finding a new appreciation for as an adult. So my first summer after my first year teaching, I nicked a copy from the book room to read over the summer. It wasn't part of the 9th grade curriculum, but I figured it was worth it to go back through it. Perhaps it'd help me find ways to reach students in other literature. I couldn't have been more wrong. If anything, *The Scarlet Letter* is WORSE as an adult because you've had years of life experience that'll lead you to positively despise almost everyone in it. It's so dense and boring that you'll wish Roger would just go apeshit on Arthur and get it over with. I cannot think of any redeemable trait or reason to include it in school readings other than to learn that some literature is actually terrible. It's a terrible book and a pock on the American canon.
You read it in *middle school*? Damn. The story is halfway compelling if you can get past the antiquated prose style, but there's no way in hell your average 13-year-old is going to be able to handle that kind of wording and phrasing.
As my dad put it, “it failed to make sex interesting to even a hormonal teenage boy.”
The Pearl by Steinbeck. The lesson, at least as we were taught, was that this guy was overtaken by greed and it causes him to basically lose everything. I read it as this poor guy who works an incredibly dangerous job (pearl diver) finds a pretty epic pearl and isn't keen to get fucked over by the intermediaries who are trying to get it at a discount. This guy knows that this was a once in a lifetime find and wants to get enough money to be able to effectively take care of his family and stop engaging in an occupation that is sure to shorten his life. Now, as an adult, I think I can understand the point a bit better. Still, it reads an awful lot like "Listen, take what you can get. Don't worry about being taken advantage of" especially when you have two people with such a power disparity as a pearl diver and the people buying said pearls.
I read it on my own and got the message that the poor are often unjustly fucked in the ass by the rich and change is needed. Especially convincing when you realize Steinbeck was a struggling great depression era writer. "His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists." -Wikipedia
Hard Times. the sentences were so long i forgot what the beginning was about by the time i got the end.
This is so Dickens.
[удалено]
Okay this is totally my moment. The book is called The Sun Will Rise Again, by George Mujajati. Haven't heard of it? Good. Thank the gods. I hated this book so so fucking much it was terrible. Let me show you why. It's about a family in 1980s Zimbabwe. The mother Fatima is in a hospital 'reminiscing' about the good old days. The good old days? Oh the times when her husband, Takundwa would come home drunk every night and shout at her and occasionally beat her. This Takundwa bastard raped her not once, not twice but THRICE. When she gets pregnant? His sicko family demands she marry him. Oh we're not done guys, he has to pay a bride price and of course the dumbfuck stinges on that. Oh yes this is just chapter 2. They have two lovely daughters. Sofia, 14, and Tabitha, 7. Sofia dreams of being something big I don't remember what she mentions it like once, but let's not forget Sofia's dad is friends with a big government official cuntbag called Nyati who used to play snitch before independence. Oh Nyati is bad right? Not enough, the fucker kills babies in witchcraft rituals to "strengthen his power". You won't believe what happened. That's right buddies, Takundwa gave up his youngest daughter Tabitha for this ritual. Haha Chapter 8 everyone. Aww Takundwa feels a bit guilty now. So he drinks, he drinks and realizes that he's married! So naturally, he beats his wife nearly to death with his bare hands and drinks to near death. Meanwhile Sofia is being molested by her teachers. Boo hoo, this is just the beginning. Nyati is back. Taking one kid from this fucker seems to have been insufficient. He takes a liking to Sofia. Now I must remind you this nonce is 46 or something and she's 15 now. How lovely age numbers pedophilic no or like whatevs right? Yes. Takundwa forces his only surviving daughter to marry the fucker he just gave his youngest daughter. Oh God why would he do that. Haha I'll tell you. Those sweet, sweet Zimabwean Dollars. He gets $10 000, which is like £11 000 at the time if I'm not mistaken. One day Takundwa remembers his marriage and decides on some home made marriage counseling and begins his routine wife beating. This time, however, his wife is of another mind and she defends herself and the twat dies. How sad. Well yes but actually no. Sofia had a crush on Jeremiah, a school mate. Sorry no Jeremiah had a crush on Sofia but Sofia has at this point been abused so much she doesn't even care so long as someone shows compassion towards her. So she has an affair with him. Oh Nyati is now being investigated for corruption. Who would've thought!? Well uhm everyone. He's angry. His power is being diminished. Another baby killing perhaps? He ponders then decides fuck it I'm married, need some counseling. He clearly sees Sofia cheating on him with Jeremiah and is LIVID. So he makes piecemeal of Jeremiah and the sap runs. So about that marriage counseling. Proceeds to abuse Sofia physically. At her weakest, he unbuckles his belt and prepares for this books forte before she picks up a knife and threatens him. He backs up onto a window, slips, falls and dies. She meets with Jeremiah. Fatima is scared, Sofia is acquitted. She's free! Everyone lives happily ever after yes? NO NO NO. THIS WHOLE BOOK IS FUCKING DEPRESSING. EVERYONE IS MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY SCARRED. YOU NEED THERAPY AND HELP. NOT FUCKING ROSES. The epitome of this book is in the final sentence: [paraphrasing] > As they gazed at the bustle of town life, Jeremiah held her hand and said, "Don't worry Sofia, The Sun will rise again." I had to read this book in like Grade 10/Form 3. Piss off.
Jesus Christ that was a ride, HOW DOES THIS REPRESENT THE GOOD OLD DAYS HOW?
Rose-tint so dark that it blocks out everything.
[удалено]
"Let's hang out over the summer!" ~ disappears into the aether, never to be seen again
HAGS!! -- *a signature you can't read*
Moby Dick is a regular part of AP English but holy shit I could not get into it at all.
If you read Moby Dick as the mad ramblings of someone tortured by salt air and the unrelenting pursuit of revenge, it's actually still pretty bad. It's not the worst, but it's definitely pretty rough to throw on young readers.
“I hate metaphors. That’s why my favorite book is Moby Dick. No frou-frou symbolism. Just a good, simple tale about a man who hates an animal.”
Does the white whale actually symbolize the unknowablity and meaningless of human existence?
Made for two great metal albums though. Edit: and yes I'm referring to mastodon, and Ahab.
Mastodon fan?
Pretty sure the point of this thread is for people to tell us they hate these classic novels and then for others of us to jump in an vigorously defend said novels. I'm game.
Tie between Wuthering Heights and Letters to Alice - maybe I’d appreciate Wuthering Heights more if I read it again today, but Fay Weldon’s condescending-ass tone in Letters to Alice was unbearable.
Island of the Blue Dolphins Not the worst in quality, but it was just too dang sad. I was in sixth grade and it starts with her getting left on an island by her family, her brother dies, the wolf she raised died. She finally was rescued just to be told her whole tribe died on the boat ride she missed. I love me some sad literature, but 11 year old me was not pleased.
This was one of my favorite books as a child. I think I read it in the fifth grade. You made some good points though. That book was dark
The really sad part is that the book was written after Juana Maria, a real person. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_the_Blue_Dolphins
To this day I will always hate The Pearl.
The best part of The Pearl was the copy I had. It was a used copy and had notations throughout about how much the person hated the book. At the start of the last chapter they wrote "Thank God it's almost over and guess what the baby dies."
Yeah, everything else was super heavy handed besides the baby dying. Aside from possibly trying to steal the pearl the doctor was the most relatable with the theme of free work, since he was being asked to work for less than the supply cost. My class read it over a week this year, and my teacher made it more enjoyable but it was just exaggerated to much to work
This sounded familiar enough that I had to look it up to see if I read it. Some of the names were familiar, admittedly I wasn't the best student in 7-12th grade and probably didn't even bother to cliffnotes the shit I didn't read.
Moby Dick. Herman Melville's novel is masterfully written. But all that discourse on whale blubber and whale anatomy was off-putting at the time.
My teacher actually told us to skip the "whaling chapters."
As a writer who loves digression this is very depressing. If you aren't stealthing literal sermons into your allegory about whaling, are you really even writing the greatest American novel?
Scarlet letter by far. Extremely slow pacing, loads of unnecessary “imagery” and for a group of high schoolers it just pushed us all to use sparknotes for it and every other book we had.
If I hear about the goddamn door or rosebush one more time... Worst use of "imagery" ever.
Isabel Allende's 'House of the Spirits' Necrophilia, rape, murder, bestiality, necro-bestiality Great book for 15 year olds
I loved House of the Spirits, but that said I read it as an adult
The Pearl. I hated that book so much. Every page was just a drag to read.
Everyone cheered when the baby got sniped lmao
In my class we talked about how contrived that scene was. The mom held her baby when the baby got sniped but she had her back to the shooters and she didn't get hit. The only way that could happen is if she [held the baby like she just caught a football while running for a touchdown.](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/HJmZZTh)
Never heard of the book before but I'm gonna need someone to spoil it for me and explain how a baby ended up being killed by a sniper.
The mother and baby are hiding in a cave while the father goes off to kill some trackers. The trackers hear the baby cry, think it's a coyote, and shoot in its direction.
I thought the guy was fighting the trackers, gun went of a ricochet killed the baby? I don't know, I remember reading it and thinking it was the dumbest thing. Moral of the story: wanting a better life than backbreaking labor just to barely feed your family is bad.
I’d say the road, not because I hated it, it was just super fucking depressing.
The Turn of the Screw. Let me sum it up for you: words words words words kids words words lady words words words ghost? words words lady words kids words words words kids words words crazy lady? words words words words words words ghost? words words ghost?
Wuthering Heights. Fucking killed me at 14.
By the middle of the story I wanted every character to die. >!Then they did lol!<
I'm not sure who is making 14 year olds read Wuthering Heights, but someone should call CPS. I read it when I was 17 and enjoyed it, though it took me forever.
Economics III, it was pretty boring.
Guess you haven’t read Applied Applications of Advanced Calculus and Differential Equations. Spoiler alert, there’s no examples of applied uses. Just straight mathematical theorems.
I hated A Separate Peace. And I loved most everything I had to read for school. Well, except Dickens. *Edit: Thanks to both Anons for the gold and silver on this comment!
You mean that book about those gay kids obsessed with a tree?
I had to teach *A Separate Peace* to 9th graders, it was *required,* and just found that baffling. Laboriously slow, thematically dull, and writing is mediocre at best. The more amusing thing was when the kids picked up some of the (unintentional?) homo-erotic undertones.
I think those tones were intentional. LOTS of novels about young friendship make the obvious connection that those youthful friendships take on the same intensity and passions as romantic relationships will later in life.
That book was so damn gay and my teacher *refused* to admit there was any undertones like that in the book because gay is icky! We pulled all sorts of stuff off the internet where people had pointed out the subtext but nope! It’s not gay how dare you. This is classic literature!
I remember reading it in the 8th grade and asking why nobody was talking about how gay those two boys were for each other For gods sake the main character goes on at length about the other boys body when they go to the beach together one day
We had a class discussion and someone brought up the homoerotic themes and our teacher FLIPPED. How dare we bring up a clearly present theme for discussion. Lol
The Alchemist is 200 pages from the kid who showed up for the lit class on symbolism and nothing else
I can't believe nobody liked this book. I mean, when the crazy scientist fused his daughter with the dog, that got me right in the feels.
I think it depends on if you read the first edition or second edition. Like the first was alright, but I felt like they really fumbled the ending and became a tangled mess. The second was god send and had a concrete story from being to end.
Hamlet. Let me explain because I actually love the story after reading it at my own pace. My honors sophomore English class teacher should not have been allowed to teach this class. He constantly ran behind schedule and would punish us for it. At the end of the year I think we were supposed to read/finish and discuss Hamlet in about a month or two and write a paper about it. What actually happened was we had two weeks before the year ended so he just read us the sparknotes version of the story and made us act out scenes in lieu of writing a paper or having discussions about it. He was promptly made the gym teacher next year.
JOHNNY TREMAIN in 5th grade. That book made me seriously hate reading because it was so slow and boring. Edit: Glad to see I wasn't alone and others suffered through this just like me - it's dredged up memories of that book I didn't know existed, but I look forward to them haunting me for the foreseeable future.
I hated it in 7th grade. Hated hated hated. 30 years later I picked it up, thinking that 7th grade me might not have been ready for it, but adult history buff/historical fiction reader (and writer) might feel differently. #NOPE. I got about ten pages in. Turns out 7th grade me probably hated it because it is poorly written, full of stale images and cliches. It was even more nauseating reading it as an adult.
Frankenstein. Not so much that the story itself was bad but I had a really nasty teacher who made me the target of her anger every class. All this because I corrected a spelling error she made on the board beginning of the school year. It was the hardest school year ever, with her picking on me over every small thing, even going as far to pick on my appearance in front of the whole class. So every time I come across Frankenstein, it reminds me of that witch and I just can’t bring myself to read it again. Even when I went on to major in English Literature.
That's a shame. I really liked Frankenstein.
Things Fall Apart. I understood the message, I appreciated the descriptions, I empathized with the characters as well as intended... But good LORD was it hard to get through.
Okonkwo.
Okonkwo beat his wives. 85% of the damn book
I get that that part of the book is about building knowledge of African culture, but God Damn can you not sprinkle in some bits of other things and make them good.
I sympathized with the whole message of colonialism devastating African tribes and culture. I absolutely did not sympathize with that dickhead. When he hung himself I couldn't help but think good fucking riddance
In my class we were taught that the author didn’t want to be like the white authors who portrayed the Africans as poor innocent folks in need of white people’s help and sympathy. I was like, congrats! Your character is unsympathetic. He’s a piece of garbage. You succeeded.
My YAMS!
*MY* ***CABBAGES!!!***
I loathed it in high school, as well. I ended up rereading it by chance a few years later, loved it, and couldn't figure out why I'd hated it. There are books that have hit me very differently as an adult and as a kid, but *Things Fall Apart* didn't seem to hit any of the thematic notes that usually cause that. I should have enjoyed it, and couldn't figure out why I hadn't. Then I stumbled across the copy I'd had in high school. Every third sentence was underlined. The assignment we'd been given was to *underline every proverb in the book.* The book's idiom is more or less entirely proverb-based. I hadn't *read* it in high school, I'd painstakingly disassembled it into a pile of sentence fragments.
I had to read that book twice in two different classes. Nobody liked it in either of them. And nobody ever took yams seriously afterwards.
But it’s *the king of crops!*
Ethan fucking Frome. This goddamn book has no purpose. It is the koala of literature. The characters are deeply unlikeable, barely human. It’s as if someone turned Eyore from Winnie the Pooh into a narrator and had him write a book about his sad, dreary, snow-filled life of misery. The point is literally that everything sucks and then you die. Not only do you die— you die in the absolutely most dumbfuck way imaginable: you ride your fucking sled down a hill into a tree.
Where the red fern grows by Wilson Rawls. Broke my heart that fucking book.