Really? I loved that book. In fact that might be my second-favorite book I've read. Maybe it's because you read it for school. I read it on my own and I loved it.zHellas said:
Worst Book You've Read for School
- Thread starter Verex
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Like what? It's just a bold statement to make and I'm intrigued.ogreloot said:
As for the original discussion I'll go with Jane Eyre. I really gave it a go but it just angered me. I held a grudge against the Brontes for years, then I read Wuthering Heights. What a book! I also did not get on with Turn Of The Screw, utterly pointless garbage and the literary equivalent of spunking over someones face without invitation or even offering to return the favour.
Anyway, I do a literature degree so I read at least one book a week. I'd rather talk about the favourites
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein (AWFULLY written, but the story was gripping. A bit like why Twilight is popular)
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange (It's a real skill that he could make the language so understandable, by the end of the book you could get all the slang despite it never being explained.)
Joseph Conrad - Heart Of Darkness (The best writer of the English language I have ever read, yet he is Polish and did not speak fluent English until his 20's. Apocalypse Now was based on this.)
John Fowles - The French Lieutenants Woman (Just craps all over itself in places, throws form to the wind and even has 3 endings.)
A bit worried that so many people have said Catcher In The Rye is bad, I have JUST bought it.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I think it was one chapter I think, and I don't remember too much about it other than the fact I was bored and didn't care for what I was reading. That's probably close to the point where fiction books no longer interested me and non-fiction and technical books began to replace them.
Johnny Tremain
OR
The Golden Goblet.
They were just plain boring. And this is coming from someone who loves history. (Johnny Tremain takes place during the beginning of the Revolutionary War and The Golden Goblet takes place in Ancient Egypt.
OR
The Golden Goblet.
They were just plain boring. And this is coming from someone who loves history. (Johnny Tremain takes place during the beginning of the Revolutionary War and The Golden Goblet takes place in Ancient Egypt.
Katherine Patterson's "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" (7th grade)
Non-stop, insipid drivel from start to finish. Imagine "The Crucible" if you took out what few interesting characters it had, eliminated John Proctor's CMoA speech at the end, and tried to make the female leads all poster children for the word saccharine. Essentially, it's a horrendously watered down imitation of "The Crucible" with nothing to keep the reader's attention.
OR
Bernard Malamud's "The Fixer" (10th Grade)
I despise stories that have a message that can be summed up in one sentence. In "The Fixer"'s case that sentence is "HURR DURR, STALIN OPPRESSED THE JEWS AND THAT WAS BAD!" Seriously... that's it. If it isn't directly indicting the Stalin regime it's piddling about like the world's least interesting man playing the intro of Heavy Rain. The amount that Malamud babbles on about exactly nothing could make Hideo Kojima take a step back and say "Damn, you need to slow down." The book was so dull that my father, an avid reader who has read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy 37 times in his life, picked up this book and, after enduring the first chapter, put the book down and said "wow this is so bad I'm going to buy you the crib notes." I swear to god. I could go on but those are my top two worst.
Runners up include A Separate Peace, The Outsiders, and Black Boy.
Non-stop, insipid drivel from start to finish. Imagine "The Crucible" if you took out what few interesting characters it had, eliminated John Proctor's CMoA speech at the end, and tried to make the female leads all poster children for the word saccharine. Essentially, it's a horrendously watered down imitation of "The Crucible" with nothing to keep the reader's attention.
OR
Bernard Malamud's "The Fixer" (10th Grade)
I despise stories that have a message that can be summed up in one sentence. In "The Fixer"'s case that sentence is "HURR DURR, STALIN OPPRESSED THE JEWS AND THAT WAS BAD!" Seriously... that's it. If it isn't directly indicting the Stalin regime it's piddling about like the world's least interesting man playing the intro of Heavy Rain. The amount that Malamud babbles on about exactly nothing could make Hideo Kojima take a step back and say "Damn, you need to slow down." The book was so dull that my father, an avid reader who has read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy 37 times in his life, picked up this book and, after enduring the first chapter, put the book down and said "wow this is so bad I'm going to buy you the crib notes." I swear to god. I could go on but those are my top two worst.
Runners up include A Separate Peace, The Outsiders, and Black Boy.
Looks like I might be the only one who hasn't hated *any* of their school books. Most of the books we were asked to read I already had or I went and read 'em quick out of the library and I can pretty truthfully say I loved them all. This is because, perhaps just in my English curriculum (thank you UK?), all the books were good classics.
Not to say I don't hate books. I do. I hate Twilight and all other hideous trashy romance teen abstinence boreathons. I hate pretty much every fantasy series that isn't Tolkien, Pratchett, George Martin, Frank Herbert or Stephen Donaldson. Didn't read these at school, though- because the books your teachers are instructed you to read are the *best*. Or at least, I got that opinion from my education.
Not to say I don't hate books. I do. I hate Twilight and all other hideous trashy romance teen abstinence boreathons. I hate pretty much every fantasy series that isn't Tolkien, Pratchett, George Martin, Frank Herbert or Stephen Donaldson. Didn't read these at school, though- because the books your teachers are instructed you to read are the *best*. Or at least, I got that opinion from my education.
I have 4 horrible books that I was forced to read:
1. "The Giver" (or as my class called it "The Gyver") horribly boring and over done.
2. A Seperate Peace, I may or may not have shoved my friend off a tree. Whine whine whine.
3. Some story about how poor kids make a garden on a roof and then get yelled at by the people who on the building and then throw it 12 stories to the ground. And I think someone died.
4. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Reading it twice was horrible and so was any adaptation of it.
1. "The Giver" (or as my class called it "The Gyver") horribly boring and over done.
2. A Seperate Peace, I may or may not have shoved my friend off a tree. Whine whine whine.
3. Some story about how poor kids make a garden on a roof and then get yelled at by the people who on the building and then throw it 12 stories to the ground. And I think someone died.
4. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Reading it twice was horrible and so was any adaptation of it.
