Best thing you've had to read for a class?

[rt052192]

1984 and Animal Farm; both by George Orwell
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Dude, your school is awesome, I've read all of those just for the hell of it. They're amazing books, but they were never taught at my school.

Oh there have been some very bad books we have read, but I forgot to mention Julius Caesar. It's the one Shakespeare play I enjoyed; well I guess Macbeth did have Sir Ian Mackellan play as Macbeth so that was kind of cool

 

[Xpwn3ntial]

1984 or Fahrenheit 451.

Ninja'd on both accounts.

 

[Junkle]

Life of Pi was awesome.
How Green was My Valley was ridiculously brilliant.
In the middle of Hamlet, should be good. Except for the ridiculous amount of homework and mildly annoying teacher.

 

[ajb924]

I enjoyed Julius Caesar as well as Hamlet.

Catcher in the Rye was interesting enough, mainly because I thought Holden felt real enough to not get TOO annoying. Really, the only thing that annoyed me about him was his constant use of the word "phony".

The Scarlet Letter, I believe, is a good book, but I spent half my junior year in high school studying and analyzing it that we were just got sick of it.

Overall, I think I'd say my most pleasant read was a fun novel from Spain called "The Shadow of the Wind". It's about a boy in Barcelona trying to figure out the mystery of a disappearing author and a man out to destroy his work.

How did you enjoy The Scarlet Letter? It's one of the books we had to read for my summer homework and it took me a MONTH to trudge through the thing. It might have been because I didn't understand it, but I hated that book with a passion.

And this "The Shadow of the Wind" book, brace for a stupid question, is it written or tranlated to English? I ask because you say it's from Spain, but the story sounds interesting.

 

[Ponch]

I make it a point to not ever read the books assigned to me, regardless of the subject. But my English professor did recommend Technomancer to me, and it was pretty damn good.

 

[Eliam_Dar]

The Antichrist. You have to admire Nietzche

 

[Marter]

I liked reading To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a good read, unlike most of the things I've been forced to read.

 

[Aerodynamic]

I love Great Expectations so far, and Loved To Kill a Mocking bird, so I am going to say those.

 

[Burningsok]

1984 or Fahrenheit 451.

451 was awesome. It just got weirder and weirder

 

[Luke5515]

The only one I liked was the Odyssey.
I didn't really like To Kill A Mockingbird.
Ever other book we read can basicly be sumarized as "I'm a minority, feel bad for me"
Every single one.

 

[Oilerfan92]

Farenheit 451. It had its not great moments. But from someone who hates reading ( i find it to slow ) it was pretty decent.

Worst on the other hand... a short story called The Pearl. Christ it was poor. Its about this guy who lives in a fishing village and the only way to make money is to find pearls and sell them to the local Ritch White Guy ( dont ask whats wrong with fishing as a job, i dont know) and this guy find this huge ass pearl, and he goes to the RWG and offers to sell it, but the white guys asks to see it then doesnt give it back ( the main character being of the easily bamboozled type ), so the guy breaks into the house that night and steals it back and goes with his wife and new born child into the jungle to the nearby city to sell it ( because only small, local people are corrupt in South America, not buisness men in the cities ) but as theyre running the family gets traped in a cave on a cliffside and the guy leaves his family to go kill the people following them, but when he gets back to the cave he finds that through some form of magic bullet, one of the guys chaseing them managed to shoot the baby and ( i swear you not, this is pretty much how the author described it ) blew its head off. I nearly shit myself. This was horrible. The kicker ? They gave up and went home. Apparently the guards suffer from GTA cop syndrome and whiped the slate clean after not being able to find them for 2 minutes.

 

[Quaxar]

Meh. I had to read all the interesting books at home alone.
All we read were german classics, my teacher loved them... I hate them mostly. Except for Goethe's Faust, but that's about it.
Ah yes, Animal Farm at least. And one Shakespeare, but we never got to actually reading it ...also, it was the Midsummer night's dream, so a rather boring one.

 

[Koganesaga]

Of Mice and Men, probably the only one I've like sadly, but any book that have a large dim whited fellow smack around a whore is good enough for me I suppose. Oh also if we're counting summer reading books, Angels and Demons, That was a good book (never saw the movie though).

 

[Quaxar]

Worst on the other hand... a short story called The Pearl. Christ it was poor. Its about this guy who lives in a fishing village and the only way to make money is to find pearls and sell them to the local Ritch White Guy ( dont ask whats wrong with fishing as a job, i dont know) and this guy find this huge ass pearl, and he goes to the RWG and offers to sell it, but the white guys asks to see it then doesnt give it back ( the main character being of the easily bamboozled type ), so the guy breaks into the house that night and steals it back and goes with his wife and new born child into the jungle to the nearby city to sell it ( because only small, local people are corrupt in South America, not buisness men in the cities ) but as theyre running the family gets traped in a cave on a cliffside and the guy leaves his family to go kill the people following them, but when he gets back to the cave he finds that through some form of magic bullet, one of the guys chaseing them managed to shoot the baby and ( i swear you not, this is pretty much how the author described it ) blew its head off. I nearly shit myself. This was horrible. The kicker ? They gave up and went home. Apparently the guards suffer from GTA cop syndrome and whiped the slate clean after not being able to find them for 2 minutes.

That was one of the best summaries I've ever read!
Here, have a cookie and some wise words

Spoiler

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a144/lomis/fortune_cookie.jpg

 

[Shock and Awe]

None, I have not read one book for school that I would consider entertaining in any way other than not putting me to sleep.

 

[Quaxar]

This is not the post you are looking for.

How embarrassing, I clicked the wrong button.

 

[ShogunGino]

I enjoyed Julius Caesar as well as Hamlet.

Catcher in the Rye was interesting enough, mainly because I thought Holden felt real enough to not get TOO annoying. Really, the only thing that annoyed me about him was his constant use of the word "phony".

The Scarlet Letter, I believe, is a good book, but I spent half my junior year in high school studying and analyzing it that we were just got sick of it.

Overall, I think I'd say my most pleasant read was a fun novel from Spain called "The Shadow of the Wind". It's about a boy in Barcelona trying to figure out the mystery of a disappearing author and a man out to destroy his work.

How did you enjoy The Scarlet Letter? It's one of the books we had to read for my summer homework and it took me a MONTH to trudge through the thing. It might have been because I didn't understand it, but I hated that book with a passion.

And this "The Shadow of the Wind" book, brace for a stupid question, is it written or tranlated to English? I ask because you say it's from Spain, but the story sounds interesting.

"Enjoy" isn't exactly the word I would use to describe my experience with Scarlet Letter, but, like I said, I had to spend half a school year reading and studying it. While yes, I got sick of it, it does help you understand it better, and once you start understanding all the symbolism and crap, it become far more engrossing and you start to see the level of craftsmanship behind it.

Shadow of the Wind was translated to several languages, I believe. The copy I read was an English translation, and it was very nicely written. If you seek a copy, I'd recommend finding one of the earlier editions of the English copy, since later copies re-worded certain parts to be slightly less offensive. (i.e. First print has the narrator describing how he saw a very attractive woman sitting in an interview, and that he just started undressing her with his eyes. Later copies changed it to "giving her an x-ray", which makes not sense.)

This is assuming you are American, though. I don't know how it was released elsewhere.

 

[Pinstar]

My teacher's face, to see if he/she was the type to assign homework. Or more importantly, the type to check homework. I was right about 85% of the time which, as coincidence would have it, was about my GPA in both high school and college.

 

[jmoore4ska]

Spoiler: -snip-

I liked Catcher in the Rye. And Lord of the Flies, for that matter.

-m

I just remember my class had a strange obsession with the pink rocks from Lord of the Flies. I think for some reason they thought it meant Piggy was gay...? Who knows?

Aaaanyway, I had to read "All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren for a course and it became one of my favorites pretty much instantly. Oh, also "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon for the same course. Both fantastic.

To the OP, i just wonder why anyone would hate Shakespeare...I forget where i heard it, but this quote is appropriate. To paraphrase: When you read Shakespeare, it is not his work that is being critiqued, but you.

It's not that I don't see how is work is good, it just doesn't intrest me. To be honest, I've only read Hamlet, Julius Ceaser, and Romeo and Juliet. But, aside from Hamlet, I hated them. The stories were bland and uninteresting, the characters were sort of boring, and the premise wasn't too great. I see how they were good works and would have been better had I seen them instead of read, I just don't care for them.
But Hamlet didn't have those problems. The story was ingulfing, the characters were alive and colorful, and the premise was amazing.

You know, i think part of the problem is that so many people now go to Shakespeare for inspiration that his ideas now seem completely played-out for anyone that saw all the new stuff first. ...That isn't to say that Shakespeare's plots or characters were new even then. Lord knows he stole the crap out of most of the popular stories told back then for ideas, but he portrayed them and characterized them so differently for his day.

I really just like his use of the language. Take all of the story out of everything and you're still left with some of the wittiest and most beautiful words you can find. That's just me, though. I 'm aware that it's no shocking claim to assert that Shakespeare is good hehe