Book spin-off - worst "literature" you had to read in school

[erbear]

My 10th grader is reading "Heart of Darkness" right now and I just cringed remembering how much I hated that book. We also had to read "The Red Pony" in 6th grade (why? Who makes 11 year olds read Steinbeck?), which we called "The Dead Pony" because that pony died on page 1.

What do remember reading in the name of "the canon"? 

[acuore]

I actually really liked “Heart of Darkness.” Hated “My Antonia” and “A Tale of Two Cities.” Oddly, many (many) years later I tried Dickens again, and really enjoyed him. 

[simpsongal]

Dh hates the Scarlett letter and he’s read almost all the classics (he just picked up Infinite Jest for fun reading).

I read A portrait of the artist as a young man and thereafter thought I was a dult who couldn’t understand good literature.

[Deleted]

I didn’t care for most of Shakespeare. I think its main relevance, for me anyway, was understanding when other literary works referenced Shakespeare. Otherwise, there was nothing redeeming about it.

[StrawberryBlondie]

Middlemarch by George Elliot.

We also read Faulkner's A Rose for Emily and I didn't hate it, but kinda side-eyed the teacher for trying to claim with a straight face there wasn't any necrophilia in it.

[tacokick]

I couldn’t pretend to care about The Hobbit in sixth grade

[StrawberryBlondie]

Oct 16, 2024 19:02:12 GMT -5 tacokick said:

I couldn’t pretend to care about The Hobbit in sixth grade

I just re-read that with my 5th grader (who loved it) and the whole time I kept thinking "wow, this is a *lot* of words."

[Jalapeñomel]

I had to read As I Lay Dying in 10th or 11th grade, and I understood none of it.

And I read and enjoyed almost all the books I read in HS.

[litasail]

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Ain't no 11th grader who really needs to read that.

[suzyp]

Heart of Darkness was one of mine. That and Ethan Frome. I think the teacher ruined Ethan Frome. We all thought it was dumb and had no interest in discussing the symbolism of the pickle dish or whatever it was.

[jinkies]

As I lay dying was also going to be my choice.

[pixy0stix]

The only book I didn't read was Animal Farm. I read about 10 pages, decided it was stupid and peaced out. I listened to the discussions about it, got the over all theme and what would be on the test, and aced the test. My teacher totally knew but let it slide.

[pixy0stix]

Oct 16, 2024 19:10:00 GMT -5 litasail said:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Ain't no 11th grader who really needs to read that.

I had to read this so many times as an English major. I didn't start out hating it, but ended up there.

[underwaterrhymes]

Either Beowulf or The Odyssey.

[abs]

The list I DID like would be shorter. (All Steinbeck, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird).

Great Expectations was my intro to high school level literature and I hated it. Beauwolf was bad. Native Son was one I read in college and while it stuck with me I really didn’t like it.

ETA: Don Quitoxe and Moby Dick were also bad. Some Shakespeare was better than others but I didn’t like that much either.

[Susie]

I'm not sure I feel qualified to say anything is normatively good or bad, but I didn't care for:
- Shakespeare.  I had to read Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet.
- The Grapes of Wrath
- Last of the Mohicans

[1yeartogo]

Crime and punishment…I never even finished it. I used to say 10 pages of crime 500 of punishment. Honestly I should probably go back to it at some point and see if as an adult I would appreciate it.

[fortnightlily]

I remember Tess of the D'urbervilles annoying the heck out of me.

[mcsangel2]

I read Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury freshman year of college, I haaaaaaated it. Leading me to have never read any other Faulkner.

[rubytue]

It’s easier for me to mention the books I read in high school, because I didn’t read most of what I was assigned. Just did well enough to pass tests from class discussions.

All quiet in the western front - this was powerful
The great gatsby - my English teacher accused me of using cliffs notes, because it was the first paper I wrote where I clearly got the symbolism. To this day, I am horrible at seeing symbolism.
One day in the life of Ivan Desnesovich - I was a Cold War kid with a special interest in russia, so I had a weird passion for this one, for its insight into the gulags.

[babsbunny]

The only book I remember being excited to start was 1984. The book I could easily understand and not like was Into the Wild. I found the main character to be an idiot, I did not get why he deserved attention for doing something stupid, and I was not surprised how it ended.

[cville]

Literally any Hemingway.

Again, Tess of the D'Ubervilles. Fuck Angel Clare.

I also was very meh on Of Mice and Men.

[cville]

Oct 16, 2024 19:38:35 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Oct 16, 2024 19:10:00 GMT -5 litasail said:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Ain't no 11th grader who really needs to read that.

I had to read this so many times as an English major. I didn't start out hating it, but ended up there.

This is me and Heart of Darkness.

[katfco]

A Separate Peace. Our teacher that year was obsessed with imagery and metaphor, so he treated everything as symbolism.
Anything by Hemingway or Twain.

I love Shakespeare, but hate Romeo and Juliet. Everyone in it is just so stupid.

[erbear]

Oct 16, 2024 20:03:00 GMT -5 rubytue said:

It’s easier for me to mention the books I read in high school, because I didn’t read most of what I was assigned. Just did well enough to pass tests from class discussions.

All quiet in the western front - this was powerful
The great gatsby - my English teacher accused me of using cliffs notes, because it was the first paper I wrote where I clearly got the symbolism. To this day, I am horrible at seeing symbolism.
One day in the life of Ivan Desnesovich - I was a Cold War kid with a special interest in russia, so I had a weird passion for this one, for its insight into the gulags.

I LOVEEDDDD this book for some reason

[cricketwife]

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

[mrsslocombe]

I fucking hated A Separate Peace. The whole time I was annoyed that we had to read about these fucking prep school dudes and never read anything with women in it.

Not that kind of canon but we also had to read Loving Jesus by Mother Theresa and it was barely coherent (just…in terms of sentence structure, let alone dogma). Still bitter we wasted our time on that shit.

[meowmaps]

Reading Lord of the Flies was a traumatic experience I'll never forget. I'll hate it forever.

[statgirl]

Another one who hated Heart of Darkness. We read it last quarter of senior year. I failed the reading quiz and so I had an F in AP English Lit when I received a merit award for English at senior rec. Oops.

The only person who passed that quiz only read the Cliff Notes.

We read Pygmalion to redeem ourselves. I survived with my 4.0 intact.

[sent]

In 6th grade in English Lit, we had this textbook with short stories and excerpts from books that was our main source for the class. We were assigned to read the excerpts from "Beowulf" and "Sounder" in the same marking period. I skimmed the stories on Monday of their respective weeks and noped out of reading them. What little I skimmed in Beowulf terrified me and I couldn't get myself to make it through the paragraphs about Sounder getting injured. I got a 40 on the Beowulf quiz and a 65 on the Sounder quiz. It dragged my grade that quarter down to a big fat C.

I can still see that red "40" on the top of the page. It was the lowest grade I ever got in anything.