Books that do and don't suck

[Godavari]

1984,Animal Farm, We

not appropriate for high schoolers.

wat?

Your teachers are messed up, dude. My library stocks the most sexually explicit titles you can get without there being any pictures. Seriously, I read a book from my school library that described how a serial kidnapper/rapist/murderer hung a girl from the ceiling by her ankles and wrists, injected milk into her anus, and then let a snake crawl inside of her.

On topic, I recently finished Farenheit 451. One of the best books I've read in the past year, for sure.

Yah, don't read Shakespeare, if anything watch it. No Scratch that, watch Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Or the BBC adaptations.

I thought nobody else had ever heard of R&C are Dead. Great movie, that was!

 

[kahlzun]

1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World are what I'd call the 'big 3'.
Enjoyed them all, for varying reasons.

Anything by Dante is pretty interesting, if a bit heavy.

 

[BuckminsterF]

I'll stick with ones I've been forced to read

Books that Suck- Farenheit 451, Scarlet Letter, Their Eyes were Watching God, The Outsiders.

Books that Don't- Julius Cesar, Romeo and Juliet, Antigone (and the rest of the Oedipal Cycle)
Erewhon, The Time Machine.

 

[Lukeje]

Yah, don't read Shakespeare, if anything watch it. No Scratch that, watch Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Or the BBC adaptations.

I thought nobody else had ever heard of R&C are Dead. Great movie, that was!

[small]It's a play...[/small]

 

[Zeryxis]

hmmm...welll I do enjoy reading The Black/White/Silver Gryphon (three titles respectively), as well as R. A. Salvatore's Drow books *plenty of em, tho I've only gotten so far as the Road of the Patriarch after branching off the main line from Drizzt...gods I even got my mom & sister reading them XD) and the Landover series

 

[countrysteaksauce]

Good: Gulliver's Travels - Great satire
Bad: The Wind in the Willows

 

[SideburnsPuppy]

It hasn't been assigned to me yet, though I'm sure that at some point it will, but I tried to read The Catcher in the Rye and couldn't make it past halfway. Symbolism is all well and good, but if it doesn't have a good story to back it up then it's way too easy to get bored.

One book I wish we read in school is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. It's a British book about an Autistic child who must solve the mystery of the murder of his neighbour's dog. Of course, I'm fairly confident that nobody else in my entire school would like it.

 

[Vanbael]

I had to read Twilight in 9th grade. God, what an awful, awful book.

Proof that the education system is failing. I'm sorry you had to suffer that, poor bastard. Was your school teaching the definition of bad literature?

OT: The bad book I read was The Alchemist, just as it gets interesting the book cuts to the ending.
The best book I read was Homer's The Illiad. Oldest (I think) book ever and its still kicking ass as an epic.

 

[Godavari]

Yah, don't read Shakespeare, if anything watch it. No Scratch that, watch Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Or the BBC adaptations.

I thought nobody else had ever heard of R&C are Dead. Great movie, that was!

[small]It's a play...[/small]

I know, but I saw the adapted movie version.
Don't go thinking I don't like plays, because I do. I'm an officer in my school's theatre group. It's just that 1) I've never seen the stage version, and 2) I was responding to ioxles who was clearly talking about the film.

 

[Valate_v1legacy]

Dangit DUNE DUNE DUNE!!!!!! Or I guess hyperion... both were excellent.

 

[Lukeje]

Yah, don't read Shakespeare, if anything watch it. No Scratch that, watch Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Or the BBC adaptations.

I thought nobody else had ever heard of R&C are Dead. Great movie, that was!

[small]It's a play...[/small]

I know, but I saw the adapted movie version.
Don't go thinking I don't like plays, because I do. I'm an officer in my school's theatre group. It's just that 1) I've never seen the stage version, and 2) I was responding to ioxles who was clearly talking about the film.

I read it as him referring to the play... (mainly because he refers to Shakespeare in the same way) but I may be wrong.

 

[S-Unleashed]

The Artmis Fowl books are a good read.

 

[aakibar]

This is the problem with high schools(at least in America) is that the required reading is nothing that is interesting to anyone not even the most avid reader. AND i totally agree with your recommendations to your teacher. Teachers want kids to be interested how can you do that with out books that could create intrist.

 

[Bored Tomatoe]

I fucking hated The Scarlet Letter. I also hated Ethan Frome. Just be happy that you don't have a teacher who thinks that their "hip" and assigns Twilight to be read.

 

[RabidusUnus]

Bad: Mythology by Edith something or other.

If you would ever want to read that for fun, you have the personality of a piece of cardboard.

Good: The Inheritance Cycle, but I wouldn't start it until there's a confirmed release date on Book 4 (DAMN YOU CHRIS PAOLINI)

Tom Clancy's Patriot Games, haven't finished but is incredible so far, I would go as far as anything by Tom Clancy.

For 13-16 I have some.

-Darren Shan series
-Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer
-Raptor by Paul Zindel (gory as hell though)
-Twilight, if you can get over the fact that it's an emotionally confused teenage WHORE.

 

[Timotei]

Twilight, Oryx & Crake.

Guess which one sucks and which one doesn't.

*hold chin* Hmmm.... You got me on that one. /sarcasm

OT:
Good: The Kite Runner, Ask the Dust, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Book(s) I threw into a fire: Twilight.

 

[Trivun]

In English Lit I'm reading poetry anthologies by Philip Larkin and Carol Ann Duffy and they suck maaaajor donkey balls

But in English Language I'm reading Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs by various female authors and if you can get over the PURE FEMINISM then it's actually a pretty good read.

Also, I read 1984 and Animal Farm for recreational purposes and they were boring as fuck. Still way better than Larkin and Duffy though

Wait, wait, wait just one cotton picking minute there. You're doing English Lit and you have to read poetry anthologies? I'm guessing by the way that you're in your second year of A-Levels, am I right in that assumption?

I did English Lit for one year then dropped it, mainly because I suck at writing essays (mainly why I do Maths now at university). But I loved the actual reading material and kept an eye on the stuff my former classmates were reading and studying during their second year of the course. While I was on the course we did Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (good play but the RSC production we saw in London was shit, the RSC of all people took it entirely out of context) and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. We also studied the works of Byron and the Romantics, which were amazing. In the second year my former classmates looked more at the Romantics and also at Twelfth Night. I actually weasled my way onto a trip to see it performed in Stratford, which was lucky because I shouldn't have been on the trip due to not taking the course anymore, but a place was available at the last minute (literally) after someone dropped out right before the minibus was due to leave.

TL;DR: Studied Antony and Cleopatra, Heart of Darkness, poetry of the Romantics. All were awesome.

On the flipside, I wasn't a fan of some of the GCSE stuff we had to do, which was mainly war poems from WW1 and short stories from ethnic authors. Fine, the stories were okay, but the poetry really grated on my nerves in general, even if a few poems were alright (In Flanders Fields was the main one that I liked, the rest I could leave well alone).

 

[Nimbus]

Blackwater Lightship.

Blackwater Fucking Lightship!

 

[A random person]

The Wizard of Oz is the only book I've ever enjoyed that the school made me read.

Farewell To Manzanar, on the other hand, was crap in all of its horribly dull day-to-day glory.