The worst books (or movies or plays or whatever) that they made you read or watch in grade school

[Saladfork]

As a counter to this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.398193-The-best-book-your-school-made-you-read] thread, I began wondering what the worst pieces of art your junior high or high schools may have put to you. Criteria is bascially just not liking it, though you should explain why. Also, I'm not including university work because I found (in my experience at least) they tended to be more art pieces than attempts at making a piece of entertainment.

Here are mine:

Books
The Pigman - We read this in junior high, and I don't remember much of it, but I do remember it being just awful. The characters were completely unlikable and felt like they were written by somebody who doesn't understad how thinking works, and the story was lazily written and stupid.

Pride and Prejudice - This one is personal, I know a lot of people like this one but I find Jane Austin's writing to be incredibly boring. Nothing happens in this novel. Well, nothing worth writing about, anyway. It's like a novelization of a soap opera a century before its' time.

Movies
Simon Birch - This is another one I don't remember all that well, but the pathetic attempts at comedy were just atrocious and the characters (especially the eponymous Birch) had a grande total of one character trait between them all: obnoxious. Also the story was absolutely pitiful.

Anyway, that's it for me. All the other books and movies I did in school were from okay to actually pretty damn good.

 

[Marter]

We had to watch The Village in school. I think we actually saw it twice, in different grades. It was pretty bad both times.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I always liked the books they made you read at school, give or take a few short stories.
The worst movie, though, is The Passion of the Christ. I had seen it in theaters and loathed it already before the religious stooge we had teaching philosophy brought the damn movie to class. It's bad enough for me to watch a movie twice that close, let alone a movie that bad. I left the classroom altogether.

 

[alphamalet]

Great Expectation by Charles Dickens

FUCK THAT BOOK

He goes on and on like he loves the sound of his pen touching paper to spew out more mindless drivel that is boring, melodramatic and inconsequential. It made me want to ram my head into a wall. Not a book for 14 year olds.

 

[Vegosiux]

Most of the SLovenian native literature they made us read. Honestly, those things suck.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Most of the SLovenian native literature they made us read. Honestly, those things suck.

Just out of curiosity, what would be the Slovenian high school must-read?

 

[generals3]

The worst was probably that one movie about two lesbians. It's so bad i even barely remember what it was about. All i know is that the movie was slow, plot empty, acting was abysmal and i didn't care at all for the theme/genre (i despise romantic dramas). All in all i would have preferred sitting through two hours of Latin classes than that.

 

[MysticToast]

For it's a multi-way tie between everything that wasn't The Hunger Games.

 

[shrekfan246]

Hey, I get to be controversial for once!

The Odyssey.

Now, I know it's a fine story in itself and everything, but trying to read through that is the most tedious slog of transcription I've ever had to attempt muscling through before.

Also, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. Again, it's not even that it's a bad story, but Hawthorne's writing is just so bland and plodding that he managed to make an interesting story boring.

 

[PsychicTaco115]

Red Scarf Girl

There was nothing WRONG about it, it's just that after reading a lot of Holocaust survival books, the things that happened in this book seemed... not as bad

 

[The Scythian]

Good God, the Scarlet Letter. I just didn't care.

 

[shogunblade]

I had to try and sit through Julius Ceasar, the Motion Picture with Marlon Brando after reading the play. I do remember falling asleep through it.

As for books, well, I had to read The Jungle in college two years ago or so, and that wasn't much fun to read. It was about an immigrant who comes to the United States with hope and dreams and ends up basically being shite on throughout. I never finished the book, but really, there wasn't much more about it that made me end up caring for it, sorry to say.

 

[janjotat]

The Scarlet Letter, it was a boring pointless book. The author rambled describing everything completely interrupting the flow of conversations. I could not bring myself to care about the main character and her problems. And yes I have read Jane Eyre, The Scarlet Letter takes everything that was bad and uses only that

 

[Veylon]

The only thing that sticks out to me as being particularly terrible was the film Outbreak. I think it was the first time I ever watched a movie where I thought the villains might well be right.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

Worst thing I ever had to read is 'The Catcher in The Rye'.
200 pages of some whiny **** bitching about how life is full of "phonies" and how he still hasn't gotten over the death of his brother. Hoo-fucking-rah!

 

[sextus the crazy]

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

you think your book has nothing happen?
It's a navel gazing book about a boring person who lives in a boring town in the middle of nowhere in idaho. Hell, even the insane foster parent is boring, which is quite a feat. You know you're boring, when escaping to a small city (spokane, wahington) is supposed to be interesting.

 

[Rascarin]

I remember having to read a book that I think was called "I Am David" that was the biggest snore-fest ever inflicted on me. Urgh.

 

[Saladfork]

Hey, I get to be controversial for once!

The Odyssey.

Now, I know it's a fine story in itself and everything, but trying to read through that is the most tedious slog of transcription I've ever had to attempt muscling through before.

Also, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. Again, it's not even that it's a bad story, but Hawthorne's writing is just so bland and plodding that he managed to make an interesting story boring.

I agree, Homer (or perhaps his translator) has this really weird tendancy to interupt himself in the middle of something important to start describing a certain city that we never see, or some historical event, or some legend about some irrelevant spear that never gets used, or (I'm serious) spending like 3 pages describing a scene depicted on some guy's shield.

That's largely the same reason why I didn't really like Tolkien's writing as well; He'd just go off on some random nonsequiter about some song the elves were singing or what the ents did last Tuesday or why Boromir was a fan of KISS or where Sauraman kept his wallet in that robe of his or whatever. Lord of the Rings is one of the few cases where I think the movies turned out better than the books they were based on simply because they had to cut out all the superfluous crap that didn't add anything.

 

[Dead Seerius]

Finishing The Scarlet Letter was like pulling teeth for me. I could summarize the entire plot in probably one minute. Almost NOTHING happens. Just dim melodrama and sadness. Not my cup of tea, for sure.

And for movies, for most of my elementary school experience I would dread what I liked to call 'that point before Christmas break where we all have to sit and watch James and the Giant Peach.'
...The horror.