Worst Book You've Read for School

[Dapper Ninja]

Anyway, I do a literature degree so I read at least one book a week. I'd rather talk about the favourites

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.)

Question: What exactly is your opinion of A Clockwork Orange? It seems from your post that you're mentioning it among books you hate, but you didn't actually say your opinion of the book, only that you thought Burgess was a skilled writer.

I thought it was an excellent book. I listed a few that I didn't like, then I said ones that I had to read at school/uni that I did like. Thought I made it obvious, but I suppose it does look a little ambiguous.

I loved it, too. Burgess did an amazing job.

 

[Chrono180]

When I first read "Animal Farm" in sixth grade, I thought it was so awful that I went and wrote a "lost chapter" where all the characters die in a nuclear blast. Nowadays, since I understand the symbolism and the analogy to the Soviet Union, I enjoy it a lot more. Later on, I also hated To Kill a Mockingbird, Plato's Republic, Romeo and Juliet, etc. However none of those books are nearly as stupid as the series I hate the most out of ALL the books I had to read for school:

Harry FUCKING Potter.

Yes, Harry Potter. in fourth grade the teacher had us read the first book and I hated it even then. I then forced myself to read the others as they came out hoping desperately it would get better later on. It NEVER did. Okay, maybe they weren't as bad as most children's books, but compared to most novels they are terrible. One dimensional characters, plot holes you could drop Neptune into without scraping the sides, and the hype. Oh the hype...

I don't think a piece of media has been this overrated since the goddamn bible was penned. I forced myself to finish the series so that I could participate in conversations, but by book 5 or 6 I had realized it would never get better so I really dreaded the release of the others. The worst part is, whenever I state I don't like Harry Potter, people automatically assume it's for close-minded religious reasons. IT'S NOT! I hate it for the sheer idiocy the entire series conveys during its run

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

This is why I implore all the budding authors that seem to be on this site, when prompted, not to launch into a diatribe on all of the messages you wished to put across (for it will be ignored in favour of the obvious religious symbolism that can be gleaned from "Little Jimmy was mad."), but to simply say: "I wanted to write a book with explosions and bitchez in. I did just that."

So because determining authorial intent is impossible and misinterpretations are inevitable, writers should abandon their efforts to express something meaningful and simply resign themselves to producing superficial schlock? Just trying to clarify.

It inevitably gets misinterpreted into something far worse than superficial schlock - artificial depth. I understand that we are allowed to see the message as being something entirely different, but I'd rather people would actually take the author's ideas and original intent into consideration a bit more. Perhaps read the book, then read the reasoning behind it.

Although really this is just a thought experiment - I would much prefer intellectually stimulating books (not rigorously intellectual, but one that provides a sufficient balance between being entertained, which is the entire raison d'etre of these books that we read I would hope, and stimulating your thought processes - for instance Diary of a Chav is neither entertaining nor intellectual, and yes, it exists, in serial form), but I would like to see the lengths a teacher will go to to produce an in-depth study of the book's meaning when the author's stated intentions were more or less drivel.

So, saying, "I wanted to put explosions and bitchez into a book", may not be the author's real intention , but it's the one stated by them, and I want to see how much it gets ignored anyway. I'd probably have the stated intention sounding more like a genuine attempt to explain reasoning rather than an obvious joke, and yet end up seeming pretty superficial.

Without messing around and seeing how the world reacts, there'd be no fun. Perhaps I'm just odd that way.

Plus we need more decent authors. I haven't read a good 21st-century book that hasn't been about the technicalities of politics in yonks.

Hope you know what I mean. You'd definitely need to in this instance.

 

[RouxBelle]

The Color of Water

worst book EVER!!!

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Probably All My Son's by Arthur Miller (Year 10, dunno what the equivalent grade is).

Ok, this is really finnicky but technically that's a play... Please don't hurt me.

And also, you didn't like it? I mean, it's not as good as A View From The Bridge or Death Of A Salesman but I still loved it. what didn't you like about it?


Personally I found Lord Of The Flies boring; it could have been great, but it wasn't in-depth enough and was generally poorly written.

 

[Someperson307]

The Red Badge of Courage. The whole story consists of "I'm a Union soldier in the Civil War, and I got in a battle with Confederate soldiers, but I got scared, so I ran away. Oh no one of my fellow soldiers hit me, now I have courage."

It was awful. Flowers for Algernon was great though, and I loved how it got so depressing towards the end. 12 Angry Men was pretty good too.

 

[Verex]

In my English class in High School we had to read 5 books by the end of the year, because we were going to base our finals on the books we read. I was in a higher English class which is why I had to do this. This was also my 10th grade English Class. ((Flippin' hated it!))

The books I had to read were:
1. "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
2. "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D Salinger
3. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
4. "Animal Farm" by George Orwell
5. "1984" by George Orwell

Not to mention there was a book of poetry we had to read as well and write why the author wrote it, what do you think inspired the author to write it....etc. There were a total of 35 poems in that book.

Ended up getting a 'C' in that class. xD I was never so grateful for a 'C' in my life.

But the book I didn't like the most was "The Cather in the Rye".

LOL were you in my class? Sounds exactly like it.

 

[nohorsetown]

The Scarlet Letter was fucking terrible. I could've stomached the overblown, heavy-handed puritan crap a little better (thems were the times, I reckon) if only Hawthorne wasn't such a godawful writer. Also, I didn't care for Huck Finn. Twain's "edginess" and "humor" are hopelessly dated for me, and the overall plot is just a buncha crap strung together, windin' down the river, for way too long. Oh yeah, and freakin' "Go, Dog, Go!".. that one gave me nightmares for weeks. One big dog goes in, two little dogs come out.. what the fuck? I still don't get it, and these scars still won't heal. Damn you, P.D. Eastman.

 

[Squiggles]

'I am the Cheese' was the biggest cop-out of a book Ive ever read. At first the 'you've been under witness protection since you were born,' thing was kinda cool but then they go and bollocks up the ending..

Spoiler: just incase you want to read it...

the mafia got his parents and he turns crazy... Sitting in the room repeating a nursery rhyme where 'he is the cheese' ugh!!!

The other book in year 9 was something about a kid living in Ireland during the war and was helping the IRA... cant remember the name for the life of me it was THAT boring..

 

[Anti-gravity]

the outsiders...god...*face palm*

 

[FairlyFrightenedFeline]

Probably All My Son's by Arthur Miller (Year 10, dunno what the equivalent grade is).

And also, you didn't like it? I mean, it's not as good as A View From The Bridge or Death Of A Salesman but I still loved it. what didn't you like about it?

I didn't say i didn't like it. The thread is called worst book you read at school. It's good in its own right but compared the other books I read at school it's at the bottom of the scale, ergo, the worst.

Still friends, random stranger?

 

[adamroberthenry]

I have similar feelings about Eragon, though most people i know didn't even like the book.

I for one love the Inheritance Cycle (eragon being the first of such) Cannot wait for the fourth book!

 

[FinalGamer]

Does Macbeth count? Because I really fucking hate Macbeth.

 

[The Procrastinated End]

I'd have to go with either Black Boy or Scarlet Letter.

 

[brainfreeze215]

A Separate Peace. Also, this book "Joel" by Joel Sonnenberg which I guess was supposed to be inspirational... It's the biography of a guy who was in a car accident as an infant and basically grew up without a face. It is just as awful as it sounds.

 

[RowdyRodimus]

Anything by James McPherson. Dear God I had a professor in college that had such a hard on for the guy we had to read Battle Cry of Freedom which was bad, then McPherson came to our school to give a lecture about it we had to attend (six hours) which was worse, but since I was one of the proffesors favorite students I had to attend an informal lecture with him earlier that day where he went over what he was going to cover in the main lecture which was the worst. On top of that, I had an overnight drive after the lecture to make some bookings I had in PA the next few days.

As for his writing, he is the most dry, boring author I've ever read that wasn't British and from the 18th century.

 

[LRT]

Jane Eyre.

 

[Blemontea]

The last of the Mahicans in the ninth grade. FUCK!