Crap books that you were forced to read at school

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Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Ulysses, James Joyce
An absolutely idiotic book called In Country.
Moby Dick-I couldn't get past the first chapter
Huckleberry Finn
Justine-by Lawrence Durrell
The Magus

Sure, I had problems with Shakespeare when I was in school. I have since learned to appreciate his language and literary skill. It takes revisiting and maturity and a love of language.

It's been my experience that most plays make lacklustre reading. They're meant to be experienced as performance pieces, not as bone-dry scripts.

Sorry, I have to join the "bash Catcher in the Rye" bandwagon... it was truly a horrendous experience. (I had a bad teacher too - so that probably contributed).

I just found the book boring.


also... in a predominantly boys school - Jane Austen's Emma.
What were they thinking.

The Bible... Admittedly, there are good bits, but one year, we spent several months reading Deutronomy and Numbers. Those books really suck. I'd rather have had the gospel of Judas.

I liked "Catcher" and keep a copy of it nearby at all times. I actually quoted from it in a major paper!

Books I didn't like that I read in school include:

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Patterson
The Slave Dancer (not sure of the author)
We Shall Not Be Moved (not sure of this author either...it was about women's history)
The Witch of Blackbird Pond (again, don't recall the author)
The one about the guy who taught evolution named Bert Cates...don't remember the name of it
From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, I think it was by EL Koenigsberg
Any of the Sherlock Holmes stories

I remember another one that really annoyed me...

Watership Down.

Damn, those rabbits took forever to do anything.

We had some good books too, but I might start a new thread on them.

oh, and I liked Macbeth - fast, horror/thriller Shakespeare. Try comparing that to Romeo and Juliet.

Even Hamlet (or as we used to call it, piglet) wasn't too bad. It just wasn't too good either.

Mythology by Edith Hamilton-Lady sure could make a good thing dull.

All the short stories I had to read in sixth grade when I was surely ready to read novels. Public school English classes before high school were really awful because I was always three years ahead and there were no advanced classes I could take.

Maus by Art Speigelman made me want to smash things. I guess they thought that we would find WWII more accessible in comic-book form. I am so jealous of everybody who had to read Night, because that book was so much better.

That's about it, really. I like most books they make me read for school.

Atlas Shugged and The Fountain Head by Ayn Rand. She has to be the worst author ever. Having to read those two pieces of useless crap made me almost want to pluck my eyeballs out.

City of Light

About Buffalo Ny, where I live.

That is the ONLY reason we read it.

If not for it's "history" it would have been long forgotten.

It's supposed to be some classy murder mystery, but I say it's a long, boring piece of garbage not worth the paper it's printed on. At the end, the author kills off a few characters to tie up storylines. This is most likely because if these books were any longer, they would collapse in on themselves, becoming intellectual black holes and halt all human development.

"Clock Without Hands" by Carson McCullers
"L'herbe rouge" by Boris Vian
"Flight to Afar" by Alfred Andersch

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - 400+ pages of some hick kid rafting the Mississippi River
The Rich Boy - Paula Hagerty was a b***h. "HI ANSON I GOT MARRIED AFTER YOU REJECTED ME SO I'LL SUCK FACE WITH MY DARLING HUSBAND PETE SO YOU FEEL LIKE s**t."
O Pioneers! - Boring as hell.
A Separate Peace. - That kid died because he broke his f*****g leg. Jesus. What a lame way to go.
The Picture of Dorian Gray - The only character I liked was Sybil, and she died. Boo.

There have been some stinkers mentioned indeed, but these are my top (or should I say bottom) six overall:



1. "Wuthering Heights" -- overall the most depressing story I've ever encountered. Don't get attached to anyone... they're most likely going to suffer a slow, miserable death at the hands of their own health.

2. "The Scarlet Letter" -- Seriously, did Roger Chillingworth have nothing better to do with his time than harass Arthur Dimmesdale? I know it was the 1600s and things were primitive, but damn...

3. "The Wind in the Willows" -- something about toads and bunnies having tea parties in the woods just doesn't compute with me.

4. "The Telltale Heart" -- Yes, don't we all want to be reminded what paranoia is like?

5. "Siddhartha" -- Three letters: W, T, and F, followed by a "?" -- Never got this one at all. Way too boring to even get the gist of it.

6. "The Odyssey" -- I sure hope Odysseus hires himself a navigator the next time he makes a voyage. With his sense of direction he might die of old age before he comes back from the next one.

Some of the books listed, I read and I like very much because they made sense and had passion inside build up. The Things They Carried was a great book in 11th and Beowulf was good as well. Night remind me of what I horribly said because people shouldn't be killed off like that.