Voxcorvegis started this great meme. Her choice of the most terrible book she had to read in school is Ethan Frome. I don’t get this at all because I love that novel with a passion.
I read a lot of crap in school but nothing traumatized me more than Tolstoy’s excruciatingly boring and poorly written War and Peace. Tolstoy was a woman-hater and religious fanatic who only knew how to churn out bad imitations of the great French writers.
What is the most terrible book you were forced to read during any period of your schooling?
Clarissa's Blog 
A separate peace
Native son
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Almost anything from the long 18th century. But I especially hated The Rape of the Lock or anything written in rhyming couplets. I know it’s the age of satire and the Enlightenment. Maybe I’m just not ironic enough in my mind to “get it.” I hate that entire set of literature, though, and guess what I get to teach in Humanities next semester?
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When I was in college, I loathed the 18th century; when I was in graduate school, I gained a big appreciation for the prose (both the fiction and the nonfiction). And I actually came to ADORE 18th cetnury novels but I was still lukewarm on the poetry. I was slated to teach a course on the 18th century and I was, like you, dreading the poety. And then I taught Alexander Pope for the first time and then I all of a sudden really loved it. I still wouldn’t curl up with a Pope poem or anything. But he was really fun to teach and it made me read his work in a different way. I suddenly “got” the humor and my students and I were laughing together over the “Rape of the Lock.” (Plus he was such a sad but brilliant man. He kind of breaks my heart now. That line “this long disease my life” kills me.) So keep heart! You might find that teaching makes you like the 18th century! 🙂
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Yeah, I thought I didn’t like Beowulf until I was forced to teach it. Then, I thought it was really interesting, despite having to struggle with it mightily. I think I’m keeping my long 18th century to things that I “get” — Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Candide, and The Sorrows of Young Werther. I’m not teaching any poetry — thank the universe. If there’s one thing in literature I can’t stand, it’s rhyming couplets.
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A Separate Peace by John Knowles.
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As with most books I read for school, I didn’t hate A Separate Peace until we started analyzing it. (I didn’t love it, either, though). I was really not a fan of The Pearl (Steinbeck), which I had to read in 7th grade. And I HATED “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe. I didn’t really enjoy Death of a Salesman or Ethan Frome either. American Literature was a weird year. But really, my dislike of books I had to read in school always came after we started to tear them apart. I love reading fiction and so I always read the books right when we got them, and while none of them made my “favorite books” list, I didn’t hate them. Then when class started to analyze them, that was when I stopped enjoying them. Sorry Clarissa, literary analysis is just not for me. I don’t doubt it is important and interesting to many people. I just find it painful.
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I always want to think that this is only because you were never one of my students. I know how to make literary analysis painless and fun! And now I’m sounding like a used car saleswoman. 🙂 🙂
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I’d love to believe you. I actually had a wonderful literature teacher in 11th grade – the only year I took honors English, and I loved her. She really got me. And despite the fact that I rarely made over a B on her essays, I entered her class as a really terrible analytical writer and left it to go on to be one of the best writers in my entire college writing program. So while she didn’t make literary analysis fun (or painless), per se, she did teach me to write, and to think and analyze well. And she tried her absolute hardest to make it fun, I just didn’t really enjoy it.. She does have a special place in my heart as one of my best teachers. And every time I go visit my home town, I go visit her classroom and thank her. So there may be hope for me yet?
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The problem with a separate peace… well, there are many problems (the main one being it’s aimed at whiny boys), is that the literary analysis is both in your face obvious and stupid. I remember when our teacher got to the exciting reveal and I thought, no, she’s going to say he died of a broken heart. I know she’s going to say he died of a broken heart.
And she did.
Even worse than Bridge to Teribithia in terms of “and his friend dies” books. Oh the angst.
Also it will take you about as long to read as Teribithia. Not a difficult book.
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Everybody seems to hate this Separate Peace so much that I want to read it to see what is causing all the aggravation. I even think I have a copy somewhere.
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The main character embodies the worst of what many intellectuals fear they are, deep down. I think that’s some of it. And just that the rest of it is annoying.
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Well I read _A Seperate Peace_ when I was in Junior High. At the time, I loved it; to me, it was tragic and beautiful. I remember crying in my room at the end. I don’t know what I would think about it now. It might be “Junior High Girl” type of book.
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I liked a Separate Peace too, but I enjoyed it because of the obvious homoerotic subtext. I don’t think John Knowles meant to write a love story, but he most certainly did.
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The Confessions of Nat Turner. UGH!
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I’ll go with the Scarlet Letter.. but my objecting vociferously to the “purpose” of the book and how it was a waste of time to read sure did piss off my AP english teacher. The situation ended with him telling me to go “knock a girl up”.. and then pointing at one he was so mad (long story how it went there.. but sure was funny) … as you can see you are probably lucky to have never had me as a student 🙂
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I’m the kind of teacher who LOVES students who care enough to object vociferously. So I’m sure you’d be more than fine in my class. 🙂
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I love when studens argue but do get annoyed if someone’s “argument” is that something is a “waste of time.” Love it or hate it, _The Scarlet Letter_ is an important American novel. And it’s good for your cultural awareness that you read it. In retrospect, do you think it was a waste?
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Eyes wide out. S. kubrick
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Curiously, everyone amongst my peers thought Great Expectations was terrible, so many of us, including me, never finished it. I think it was the only book that I was assigned in high school that I did not ever read. I have no idea what I would think of it now. I am not even sure of the author…Dickens, perhaps? Or George Eliot?
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Oh _Great Expectations_ is a beautiful, amazing book. It’s Dickens’ best I think. Please give it another chance! 🙂
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I love Great Expectations. It’s the Pickwick Papers that defeated me every time I tried to read them. I never managed to get past the first 5 pages.
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I forgot about Great Expectations! Everyone hated that, me included. I’d forgotten about The Pearl too. I even like Steinbeck, but I hated that book. So many hated books I’d forgotten about . . .
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I thoroughly enjoyed the Pickwick papers. It’s very episodic– makes for good bathroom reading. Hilarious characters.
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Silas Marner by George Eliot. Oh how I hated that book!
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Watership Down by Richard Adams.
In addition to being an avid reader, I was a very dutiful student in high school, so it’s pretty telling that I actually quit this book halfway through.
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How come I never even heard about this book?
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You got lucky?
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“You got lucky?”
– Probably. 🙂
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From American literature, one author I simply don’t get is Willa Cather. They will torture me in hell with Willa Cather.
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I liked My Antonia.
We didn’t read it in school though because we only read books by male authors. Literally.
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I read Watership Down in the summer between 2nd and 3rd grades, because I decided that I was bored with the children’s section of the library and so I snuck out of the kids section behind my mom’s back (she was chasing my little sister), and ran to the adults section, where I grabbed the first book on the shelf that I could reach – Author “Adams”. It took me ages to get through the first 50 pages, then the next 250 were amazing. I really enjoyed it, though I couldn’t say anything more than that. Besides, I liked animals, and it was a “book about rabbits” (in my little 8 year old mind, anyway.) It holds a special place in my heart as the first real “adult” book I read that I picked out myself from the library. (And no, Lord of the Rings didn’t count because my dad and I had read The Hobbit together and I went onto LOTR after because it made sense… That, and my dad had a phenomenal collection of Sci-Fi books that I just thought were normal reading books. Watership Down was an “Adult” book.)
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Ahh I hate Willa Cather too! I liked watership down because I read it after I was already a big fan of the animated movie version. I had to read The Professor’s house last semester and the book was just awful!
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Watership Down was my favorite book in about 4th grade or so. I want to reread it as an adult, when I’ll understnadm roe than “bunnies go to war”.
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Well as I commented in reply to “Fie” up above, whenever I teach something, I end up liking it. Speaking for me personally, when I didn’t like something, it was because I didn’t understand it. I originally didn’t like Eliot’s _The Waste Land_ but then I taught it, and I loved it. At this point, I can truthfully say that I like just about all British Literature. I have my favorites and my least favorites, but I can appreciate all of it. Now personally I find American Literature painful. There is some American literature I like of course (Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, William Faulkner.) But there are so so so so many American authors that I don’t like. I don’t like Steinbeck, or Fitzgerald, or Cather. _The Grapes of Wrath_ remains my post painful high school reading experience. I think Robert Frost is a terrible poet. So there is just a lot of American lit that I don’t like. Still, like I said above, I bet that if I gave myself time to really learn about American literture, I would probably form an appreciation and a love for it. So part of my dislike is certainly born of ignorance!
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The only one I really didn’t like was The Pearl. There were others I disliked, but that one was the worst. I was also bored out of my skull in ninth-grade English. Once I got out of that class everything was at least tolerable, if not enjoyable.
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Grapes of Wrath. Oh how I hated that book. I disliked Of Mice and Men too, but at least it didn’t go on forever. I also loathed The Catcher in the Rye – even at 13 I had very little patience for pretentious teenage wangst. Macbeth was also very nearly ruined for me; halfway through the year substitute teacher couldn’t read aloud, and so had a tape of the play. Which would be fine, but for her habit of playing it one line at a time and then stopping to dissect it.
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“wangst” Ha! I don’t know if that was intentional portmanteau or not, but it should be!
We read that in my junior year of high school, and literally no one in our class “got” this book. Not a soul identified with the lead character. It was so bad that after the first day of discussion after we had all finished reading the book, the teacher just gave up. He decided we would move on to the next book because the discussion was so painful.
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Wow, that’s fascinating because catcher in the rye transformed my english class, and many in my class were profoundly touched by it. I still have a soft spot for it to this day.
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I think it has to do with who was in my english class. We were a class full of Type-A personalities, all straight-A students (more or less), and some combination of class/student body president (or VP or…), captain of one or more athletic teams, section leaders in band, soloists, etc…. Basically every stereotype of a perfect high school student trying to get into the Ivies you can think of. So I don’t think any of us felt disenfranchised enough to relate to the book – the world was our oyster!
In a different english class taught by the same professor, but where the class comprised social misfits and other stereotypically “bad” students (though I am sure they weren’t necessarily bad, just didn’t take to traditional schooling or had different learning styles, etc.), Catcher in the Rye was a total hit. “A break through in reaching the students,” the professor told us.
Which makes me curious if this is always the case. What kind of students were in your class?
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The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene. Never been able to read anything else he wrote.
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I loved “A separate peace” (which I read not for school). Would be interesting to hear your impression.
The one book I quited reading after several pages, despite being a diligent student, was “The Stranger” by Albert Camus. What do you think of it? The main character was disgusting to me (and I may love reading RE bad people, so “being bad” wasn’t a problem, he was like a disgusting psychopath), don’t know whether Camus’s style of writing contributed or not to my quitting.
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There is a recent novel called MEURSAULT: COUNTER-INVESTIGATION by an Algerian writer named Kamel Daoud. It retells THE STRANGER from an Algerian point of view. I have been meaning to read it. I was interested to learn a few years ago that Camus thought France ought not to have granted Algeria independence.
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Sounds very interesting.
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Madame Bovary. *So* very boring.
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Cry, the beloved country, The things they carried, Peace like a river, to name a few. Most surprisingly, I hated ever single Mark Twain book I read in high school. (I still hate them)
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Goodbye Mr. Chips. Most godawful piece of schmaltz imaginable.
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Two years before the mast. And thanks for making me feel better about not being able to finish War and peace
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I hated, hated, HATED “A Farewell to Arms,” which I had to read in tenth grade. But probably the dullest book I ever had to read for a class was “Giants in the Earth” by Ole Edvart Rølvaag, which was assigned my freshman year of college. (I actually did read “Native Son” later on in college for an African-American Literature class, and I didn’t think it was bad at all!)
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Oh, I hated “A Farewell to Arms”, too. I hated it so much I repressed the entire experience.
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Probably BILLY BUDD. Reread it last year and thought it wasn’t so bad. But it paled beside “Benito Cereno” which I read at the same time.
Also, anything by Faulkner. But I keep reading him, I don’t know why.
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