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

[macmars45]

The Red Badge of Courage. Awful. That and Of Mice and Men. Hated them both. Oh, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

[taratru]

This entire thread makes my English teacher heart shrivel up like the Grinch. 😂

Side note: revisit a new translation of Beowulf. It's the original hero story!

[aurora]

Oct 17, 2024 20:19:24 GMT -5 taratru said:

This entire thread makes my English teacher heart shrivel up like the Grinch. 😂

Side note: revisit a new translation of Beowulf. It's the original hero story!

I was kind of "meh" about Beowulf until we followed it up with Grendel by John Gardner. It was fascinating to look at the story told not only from the two different perspectives but also styles.

Now I'm laughing at myself because apparently what I want to talk about in this thread of worst books is the ones I like.

[basilosaurus]

Oct 17, 2024 22:38:01 GMT -5 aurora said:

Oct 17, 2024 20:19:24 GMT -5 taratru said:

This entire thread makes my English teacher heart shrivel up like the Grinch. 😂

Side note: revisit a new translation of Beowulf. It's the original hero story!

I was kind of "meh" about Beowulf until we followed it up with Grendel by John Gardner. It was fascinating to look at the story told not only from the two different perspectives but also styles.

Now I'm laughing at myself because apparently what I want to talk about in this thread of worst books is the ones I like.

That's the one I read! I'd totally forgotten the name. That was in AP Lang, but I think all juniors read it.

I'm kind of wanting to defend some of these books Or, maybe I read some of them too developmentally early and missed what was problematic.

[sakoro]

Oct 17, 2024 17:22:25 GMT -5 lillaguma said:

About ten years ago I went back and reread a lot of the stuff we had read in high school and loved a lot of it, there was a lot that I just wasn't ready for it able to relate to while in high school.

I think that was part of my boredom with the old man white 18th/19th century authors. I wasn’t raised in a super-orthodox, puritanical culture so naturally The Scarlet Letter and Billy Budd didn’t make sense. Also, I didn’t have much experience with stoic alcoholic men with untreated PTSD so I couldn’t understand why these Hemingway characters ignored their girlfriends and kept doing dangerous things.

With the novels from non-white cultures (Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe) and African-American authors ( Native Son by Richard Wright), the teacher gave a lot more background about the social context the characters were living in. I still have a great love for African literature (read everything by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie I can get my hands on).

[felicity]

Oct 17, 2024 16:11:44 GMT -5 erbear said:

Oct 17, 2024 10:45:59 GMT -5 wise_rita said:

I'm listening to this right now and enjoying it.

I'm surprised by all the Animal Farm hate! I just reread it a year or two ago and it held up for me.

Same. I read it with my 8th graders and they generally really like it. There are a few that don't but the discussions are terrific.

We read Animal Farm in middle school and I liked it well enough. I didn't hate it which is something for a school assigned book! I'm also surprised at the hate.

Although I also don't remember it being a stressful thing then either where I was being quizzed on reading that wasn't discussed first, so maybe that's why I have better memories of it. I remember a lot of quizzes in high school where they probably wanted to see if we did our reading homework, and I was being graded on how well I could understand old timey language, symbolism, and metaphors before we talked about them in class. I normally did the reading but I couldn't figure that stuff out on my own so I missed a lot of the questions. That definitely ruined a lot of books for me. 

[janegold]

I was just too disturbed by all the gory imagery in Beowulf/Grendel. Actually, I can't remember whether Beowulf itself is particularly gory, but I remember Grendel being very graphic and it was too much for me.

[eport]

Oct 17, 2024 23:27:16 GMT -5 sakoro said:

Oct 17, 2024 17:22:25 GMT -5 lillaguma said:

About ten years ago I went back and reread a lot of the stuff we had read in high school and loved a lot of it, there was a lot that I just wasn't ready for it able to relate to while in high school.

I think that was part of my boredom with the old man white 18th/19th century authors. I wasn’t raised in a super-orthodox, puritanical culture so naturally The Scarlet Letter and Billy Budd didn’t make sense. Also, I didn’t have much experience with stoic alcoholic men with untreated PTSD so I couldn’t understand why these Hemingway characters ignored their girlfriends and kept doing dangerous things.

With the novels from non-white cultures (Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe) and African-American authors ( Native Son by Richard Wright), the teacher gave a lot more background about the social context the characters were living in. I still have a great love for African literature (read everything by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie I can get my hands on).

There was a book club that met at the local Library that called themselves "Required Reading" and it was all adults re-reading or reading for the first time books that were required by school to see if they liked it later. A group of them joined us for a One Book/One City book discussion on Pride and Prejudice and they were hysterical. I agreed with some of their points about how they liked the book so much better when you didn't have to stop to discuss colors/themes/hidden symbolism or just go one chapter at a time and just enjoy the story as this story was good. They also made a good case that Downton Abbey is just P&P 100 years later-story begins with a family with only daughters, matriarch decides best course of action is to have one of the daughters marry the heir with bonus of both endings are happy but not what is desired (for Downton, Mary will never be titled/ technically the heir although her son will be and in P&P, they marry into wealth but the issue on what should happen to wife/unmarried daughters as an heir can kick them out is still an issue)

Sadly, they met at times I was busy or I would have enjoyed that group.

I was and am a reader of books by the arm load but I hated discussing books at school. Too slow and some of the not great books discussed here. Although I have an amusing story from college. We were reading Plainsong in a 100 level class and a couple of lit majors were debating over a specific point and what the symbolism meant and they were passionate and really getting into it until class ended (I forget the actual debate topic, just that it was about hidden symbolism). Professor comes in the next class and starts it well "Well, I called Kent (the author) yesterday and he says all of that is crap and there is no symbolism in that chapter, it was just what made sense for time and place". Yeah, my professor was a grad student of his and made that phone call. He said that this should remind us that sometimes a story is just a story and we don't need symbolism everywhere.

[mags]

Another Lord of the Flies hater!
Great Expectations
Catcher in the Rye

I loved Hamlet
Where the Red Fern Grows (cant believe all the hate)
5 People You Meet in Heaven

[wildrice]

I too hated Shakespeare, which was sad as a theater nerd. The stories are fine but I hated the language.

Great Expectations was boring AF, and I didn't read Crime and Punishment despite trying because it was also super boring. I didn't really see the appeal of The Great Gatsby, and that tracks with the movie. We did read The Scarlet Letter and I don't remember feeling much either way about it. Really, the only books I can recall reading in HS that I got a lot out of were To Kill a Mockingbird, Night, and Hiroshima.

I think a lot of the books you are all listing were NOT assigned for me, so maybe we didn't read in HS as much as I thought. I occasionally think I should go back and read more of the classics since that's a big gap in my literature consumption.

[wambam]

I really hated Jane Eyre with the fire of a thousand suns. It’s not objectively bad, but it was not for me.

My very favorite book I read in school was In Cold Blood. I am still searching for journalistic fiction that can top it .

[christy082]

I don't remember particularly liking any of the books we had to read, but I definitely remember especially hating Walden in 10th grade.