Most/least favorite books you had to read for school?

[OneCentStamp]

I'm talking about middle school and high school, not college.

And I'm talking actual assigned readings, not "I had to read a book of my choice for ________, so I chose _________."

A few that I can think of:

Best: A Tale of Two Cities, The Good Earth, Animal Farm

Worst: The Catcher in the Rye, The Natural, Spring Moon

[What Exit?]

Oddly Tales of Two Cities is on my Worst list. I really dislike Dickens with a passion I guess.

Best: Probably MacBeth.

[OneCentStamp]

Oddly Tales of Two Cities is on my Worst list. I really dislike Dickens with a passion I guess.

I'm not a Dickens fan in general; Great Expectations and David Copperfield could easily have made my "worst" list.

Best: Probably MacBeth.

Ooh, good one.

And now that I think about it, I totally forgot:

BEST: To Kill A Mockingbird. Maybe the best of all. Duh.

[Taumpy]

Favorite: All Quiet on the Western Front - I was never that big a reader growing up, really, but I just devoured this one. I remember reading it in math class because I couldn't put it down. It's still one of my favorite books.

Least favorite: The Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne's writing style bored me to tears. On top of that I hated every damn character in the book. I really wanted Arthur Dimsdale to be burned at the stake, and the fact that fucker gets to unburden himself at the last moment and then drop dead? Bastard! A hell for literary characters should exist just for him to burn in it.

[OneCentStamp]

Favorite: All Quiet on the Western Front - I was never that big a reader growing up, really, but I just devoured this one. I remember reading it in math class because I couldn't put it down. It's still one of my favorite books.

Nice. Another one that would make my top five.

[What Exit?]

...
BEST: To Kill A Mockingbird. Maybe the best of all. Duh.

Favorite: All Quiet on the Western Front - I was never that big a reader growing up, really, but I just devoured this one. I remember reading it in math class because I couldn't put it down. It's still one of my favorite books.

Least favorite: The Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne's writing style bored me to tears. On top of that I hated every damn character in the book. I really wanted Arthur Dimsdale to be burned at the stake, and the fact that fucker gets to unburden himself at the last moment and then drop dead? Bastard! A hell for literary characters should exist just for him to burn in it.

I was never made to read To Kill a Mockingbird or All Quiet on the Western Front or The Hobbit for that matter. All would have been at the top of my list.

I did have to read the execrable The Scarlet Letter and I hated it, I had actually managed to forget it.

[Cluricaun]

Best would probably be 1984. I still own the same copy we were given for class and I've read it lots of times since high school.

The worst is a tie between Island of the Blue Dolphin or A Seperate Peace. Both of those books are horrid. I didn't have much love for The Great Gatsby either. Flowers for Algernon was also dumb.

[OneCentStamp]

Best would probably be 1984. I still own the same copy we were given for class and I've read it lots of times since high school.

The worst is a tie between Island of the Blue Dolphin or A Seperate Peace. Both of those books are horrid. I didn't have much love for The Great Gatsby either. Flowers for Algernon was also dumb.

I loved Flowers for Algernon, hated The Great Gatsby, wish I had been assigned 1984, and am damned glad I was never assigned Island of the Blue Dolphins.

[artifex]

I liked The Scarlet Letter! I also liked The Great Gatsby, and after being assigned Of Mice and Men, I went on to read most of Steinbeck's oeuvre.

[OneCentStamp]

I hadn't really been thinking of plays, but now that I think to include those:

BEST: The Zoo Story, Macbeth, Hamlet, Oedipus Rex

WORST: The Taming of the Shrew

[artifex]

Oh, I liked Island of the Blue Dolphin too, but that was in sixth grade, so take that for what it's worth, my taste at age ten wasn't that refined, I expect.

But if we're going back to elementary school assignments, I do remember loving Finn Family Moomintroll in third grade.

[Cluricaun]

It's not that they're the worst things ever, it's just that they were nothing new, the concepts and stories had been bastardized into hundreds of other stories, movies, and TV shows that will it's nice to see where they came from the thunder had been stolen before I ever got to the original.

I also hated Shakespere because I dislike trying to decypher page after page of things like "Heed gently kind riveter, dost thou leap into hentrousers before me? I shant proffer such a stone to befall my glade for sixwinters." He falls into his own category completely.

I didn't list Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels as the best that I had to read in college because that one was a skip for me. I'd read it on my own starting when I was 13 before I had to take the class so I just wrote the paper in the first week and hit on girls the rest of the time. Hunter would have wanted it that way.

[The Original An Gadaí]

I was never a huge fan of The Merchant Of Venicewhen we studied it, however seeing it performed was better.
I loved To Kill A Mockingbird and liked The Mayor of Casterbridge. I think I'd appreciate and enjoy Hardy more now than I did then.
We also had a poetry anthology called Soundings that had a fantastic selection of poems. The book was on the curriculum here for over 30 years until 1999. We still occasionally get asked for a copy of it by people who recall it from school. It had a lovely selection of Irish and international poets, and short biographies of each.

[Taumpy]

Oh, and The Canterbury Tales (at least, the parts that were assigned) is on both my best and worst list. Loved "The Miller's Tale" very much. Hated "The Knight's Tale".

[OtakuLoki]

I first had to read A Day in the Life of Ivan Dennisovich for Russian History in 9th grade. It was a staggering work, that I devoured in just under 8 hours. I couldn't put it down. It's probably the one work I most often recommend to people looking for a good read. TKAM is another great book.

Other good works, Ionesco's Rhinoceros, and Anouilh's Antigone. Oddly, though, I hated the Sophocles.

I also enjoyed Tartuffe, and being introduced to the works of Moliere.


I hate Dickens with a passion. I haven't made a study of his works, but the ones I have read I all loathed. Especially Great Expectations. 1984 was meh for me. Likewise, I didn't care for James Fenimore Cooper, nor Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne, at least, wasn't even just the 'assigned reading sucks' reaction: I've tried for years to read The House of Seven Gables and find that reviewing 10CFR20 is more interesting. Yes, that does mean that I find Federal regulations about radiation controls and exposure to be more interesting than many of the books I had to read for school.

I enjoy seeing most Shakespeare plays, but I don't care so much for reading them. And of course, anyone bringing up a dirty interpretation of Shakespeare makes me want to pull out their hair.

[OneCentStamp]

I first had to read A Day in the Life of Ivan Dennisovich for Russian History in 9th grade.

I read it in 10th. After To Kill a Mockingbird, it might be the best book I had to read in high school.

[dread pirate jimbo]

My faves from back in my high school days were The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Honourable mention has to also go to Hamlet, which is in my top five most favouritest of Shakespeare's plays.

Worst? I'm pretty sure I've blocked out all the stuff I didn't like at this point... We were forced to read a Bob Dylan song as poetry once in grade 12 -- that was pretty lame, especially when the former-hippy teacher got mad at me for doing my hilarious Dylan impersonation in class. I think perhaps my least favourite novel from high school was Who Has Seen The Wind? by W.O. Mitchell, which is basically required reading for all Canadians living in the prairies, but which I found to be endlessly boring.

[Orual]

Loved: The Odyssey, All the Shakespeare, To Kill a Mockingbird, Canterbury Tales. I liked Ayn Rand's Anthem and Brave New World at the time. I blame this on some kind of adolescent hormone-poisoning.

Hated: The Catcher in the Rye and A Seperate Peace (aka books about teenaged shitweasels who need their asses kicked), The Grapes of Wrath.

One time, I managed to use Anne Rice as the basis for some kind of English assignment. Because I was a teenaged shitweasel.

[OneCentStamp]

Man, I'm jealous of you folks who got assigned stuff like Ionesco and Rand in high school. Not because I would have uniformly liked everything I read, but it would have been a hell of a lot more noteworthy than Great Expectations.

[Taumpy]

I liked Ayn Rand's Anthem and Brave New World at the time. I blame this on some kind of adolescent hormone-poisoning.

Wait, what's wrong with Brave New World?

[Orual]

Wait, what's wrong with Brave New World?

Painfully detailed ruminations on how humankind completely sucks no longer have much appeal for me.

[OneCentStamp]

Painfully detailed ruminations on how humankind completely sucks no longer have much appeal for me.

Are you sure you're on the right message board? Those are our stock in trade.

Happy 1000th post, BTW!

[Orual]

Are you sure you're on the right message board? Those are our stock in trade.

Well I know YOU like A Song of Ice and Fire.

Happy 1000th post, BTW!

Wait, what? Crap! That wasn't an awesome post at all.

[jali]

I hated reading MacBeth in HS. I didn't get it. I passed the exam but class readings were over the top annoying to me.

I remember The Pigman from 7th or 8th grade and Death Be Not Proud from the 8th or 9th grade. I loved them both. I cried after reading each one.

I HATED The Scarlett Letter and didn't finish it, and got in big trouble.

I was shocked by Animal Farm, but loved it as well as 1984.

I can't remember anything else - I must have blocked them out.

[OneCentStamp]

BEST: Lord of the Flies.

[eleanorigby]

Lots of Worst and lots of Best....

Worst: Bridge Over San Luis Rey; The Sound and the Fury; Something by DH Lawrence (that I have blocked out); Tess of the D'Ubervilles; Romeo and Juliet; Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man; Lord of the Flies.

Best: The Great Gatsby; The Chosen; Tale of Two Cities (that might be junior high--can't remember); Jane Eyre; Old Times on the Mississippi (Clemens-not sure if have title right, and I think this was junior high); Twelfth Night; King Lear; Hamlet; Waiting for Godot; The Rhinoceros (because it was just so odd); Pride and Prejudice; Old Man and the Sea (the only Hemingway I can stand).

I read Ayn Rand for Econ class: Atlas Shrugged. How tedious. I think I read her Anthem for American Classics--I liked that one, even though it's simplistic.


I excelled in English and took AP in HS. At that time, my HS allowed upper, classmen "honors English" students to take "seminars" every quarter--much like college classes--so every 6 weeks or so, we switched to another aspect of English Lit. I took Lit of the Absurd, Shakespeare, American Classics; Poetry (I think), Brit Lit and then AP. It was a very cool program and exposed me to much more Lit than I would have in a more traditional curriculum.

[OneCentStamp]

Wow, you hated Lord of the Flies?

That book really changed the way I think. I read it in ninth grade, and it was the first book I remember reading that took such a pessimistic view of human nature. I just remember being shocked...I don't know if I agree with its assessment of humanity, but it was my first exposure to the very idea.

[Cluricaun]

I liked Lord of the Flies. My brother and I still say "sucks to your assmar" to each other as a dismissive catchall term. That, along with Heart of Darkness just have to be read so that you can get all the jokes that are made about both in popular culture.

I remember we had to do some a book report in junior year English on any book we wanted and my first three choices were shot down by the teacher. On The Road by Kerouac was the first one shot down, and it was because my teacher had never heard of him and so it couldn't be a good book. Fuck you Mr. Calvert.

[OtakuLoki]

OCS, I found it boring and overdone, really. Of course, I'd been reading disaster/survival stuff for years by then.

I mean, seriously, just how jaded does a 10 year old have to be to be struck mostly by how well and sensibly everyone in Alive! acted after the crash, rather than being shocked by the open admission of cannibalism?

[OneCentStamp]

I remember we had to do some a book report in junior year English on any book we wanted and my first three choices were shot down by the teacher. On The Road by Kerouac was the first one shot down, and it was because my teacher had never heard of him and so it couldn't be a good book. Fuck you Mr. Calvert.

Never heard of him?

I can understand maybe not liking him, but who the hell graduates from college with a degree in English and has never heard of Kerouac? Was he really an English teacher? I thought they were supposed to let the assistant football coaches teach shop or something to justify their paycheck, not English.

[Cluricaun]

He was actually just there for the theatre nerds, which gave him a sense of literacy that he literally did not possess. Kind of like how they made the football coach teach a class sometimes, he was the theatre head and they made him teach English.

He had also never heard of Dylan Thomas come to think of it. I was always way more literate than any teacher I ever had in school. I never saw any teacher I ever had reading a book or even having a book on them for breaks.

Edit - I'm veering dangerously close to SDMB levels of "I'm soooo smart" here, but it's true. This one dude was a complete moron when it came to 20th century literature and I really didn't ever see any of my teachers through high school read for pleasure.

[vison]

We were never assigned a novel to read when I was riding my dinosaur to school, back in the early Paleolithic. But I read everything that came my way and the thousands of books I read as a kid are just a blur in my head now. In high school we "did" Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet and because we had pretty good English teachers they made the plays enjoyable to read. Our class went to see a production of R & J that was so bad we booed Romeo off the stage, an incident of which I am oddly still very proud. I can still see that awkward dork just breaking down, shrieking, "I can't go on!!!" and running off the stage. Our teachers (and all the other teachers in the audience) tried to pretend they were angry but in the end we left the theatre early and went for Chinese food. We were pretty much all country mice and this was a memorable new experience for most of us.

My most favourite? Lord luv a duck. Since we didn't have to read a novel, I'll go with a poem: With rue my heart is laden, by A. E. Housman, my favourite poet to this very day.

btw: Great Expectations is by far Dickens' best book, but he wimped out by writing 2 endings.

If we had had to read James Joyce's Ulysses? That would have been the book I hated the most, I think.

[Clothahump]

Best: To Kill A Mockingbird

Worst: Great Expectations. I hated every book I "had" to read, but after a while, I went back and re-read them. Most of them I reclassed as okay. A few, such as TKAM, I classed as great. But GE sucked dead donkey balls in 8th grade and it still does today at age 61.

[RabbitMage]

Bests: Lord of the Flies, The Outsiders

Worsts: The Great Gatsby, The Pearl

Not a novel, but my 11th grade history teacher read aloud a Maya Angelou poem that mentioned having diamonds at the meeting of their thighs. There is no bleach strong enough.

[RabbitMage]

Bests: Lord of the Flies, The Outsiders

Worsts: The Great Gatsby, The Pearl

Not a novel, but my 11th grade history teacher read aloud a Maya Angelou poem that mentioned having diamonds at the meeting of their thighs. There is no bleach strong enough.

[Marsilia]

Best: I loved Animal Farm, though I always tell kids who come through my line at work that To Kill a Mockingbird was "my favorite." Yeah, I lie to customers. It's not a big lie. I really did like To Kill a Mockingbird.

Worst: I had to give up on The Scarlet Letter. That book was so bad, so boring.