Worst Book You've Read for School

[gostchiken]

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, GAAAAAAAAAH! -eyegouge-

 

[Aesir23]

It's a tie between
The Time Machine (6th grade)

If you mean HG Well's book I strongly disagree, I thought it was a good book.

OT: The Corn Raid, a short shitty book about early-day America.

Nothing happens throughtout the entire book.

Sounds like Who Has Seen the Wind. Only switch "early day America" for "early day Canada". So incredibly boring.

 

[Sethzard]

The great gatsby

 

[Arisato-kun]

I despised Jane Eyre. That was not only the worst book I've read for school but the worst book I've ever read.

 

[Banana Phone Man]

The books I've had were actually quite good.

We had Point Blanc and I love my Anthony Horowitz books.

We also had Whoes Life is it Anyway. A great book which combines very touchy issues with euthanasia and smutty humor and brings it together wonderfully.

One thing I did hate reading was WW2 poetry. My god that was boring. Oh and also the OCR short stories. 12 in total I think. They are a good 30 lessons of English that I will never get back.

 

[A random person]

Woodsong, it was a rather boring book about raising sled-racing dogs. Come to think of it, the only school book I recall enjoying is The Wizard of Oz.

 

[Girl With One Eye]

Cold Mountain. I had an exam on this book and I didn't even finish it because it bored me to death. So I watched the film instead, failed and dropped English. (This was during AS-Levels, we were allowed to drop a subject)

 

[Uber Evil]

*snip*

That summary made me laugh.

 

[Wordslinger]

Bronx Masquerade, for our 9th grade english poetry unit. I hate it because now all of my classmates think that angsty "Oooh the gov'mint be hatin' police be corrupt n' stuff" poetry is the only good kind out there.

 

[JugglerPanda]

Ethan Frome was the only book I found uninteresting enough to not even read on Sparknotes.

Honorable Mentions would be Scarlet Letter, Great Gatsby, and Catcher in the Rye.

 

[Dapper Ninja]

The history textbooks, all lies and mistruths

Like what? It's just a bold statement to make and I'm intrigued.

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.

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 feel I'm going to be crucified for this, but Romeo and Juliet can go shove it. In reality, it felt like a great big, poorly written porno of the time period.

You'll be fine. Pretty much everyone with any sort of intelligence regarding literature hates Romeo and Juliet, even those who like Shakespeare and most of his work. The people who say they like R&J are mostly just people trying to sound like they're cultured or mindless slaves to Stephanie Meyer.

OT: I've been forced to read quite a few bad ones.
The House on Mango Street was dull and pointless.
Romeo and Juliet had some of the least likable characters I have ever seen.
A Tale of Two Cities had some of the least interesting characters I have ever seen.

July's People was one that I particularly hated. It was pretentious, stupid, and incredibly annoying to read. Why would you ever replace quotation marks with hyphens for dialogue? It's just idiotic and serves no point whatsoever. Also, the author, completely at random, includes lines describing how a character's penis is positioned when he sits down, or the smell of a character's vagina in she's bathing, or other irrelevant shit like that. Details like that are absolutely pointless and contribute nothing to the book, so why mention them? July's People was probably the worst book of the bunch, made worse by just how much more in-depth we had to discuss such a pointless book when compared to every other book in the year.

Immediately after July's People, we had to read Their Eyes Were Watching God. It was bad on its own, but because it was another book with no point other than "Hey kids, did you know that racism isn't very nice?", it felt incredibly redundant, too.

 

[Neurowaste]

Farewell To Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston- Most un-imaginative, un-emotional, dramatic description of a WWII Japanese US camp i have EVER heard....

Romeo & Juliet by you know who- After reading this, Julius Caesar was a godsend.

Catch-22- I can appreciate the literary complexity and deep themes of this book but someone challenge me and try to find a more confusing clusterfuck of a book.


Out of all the books I have ever read in school, my favorite was probably The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein back in 3rd grade.

 

[scrambledeggs]

Jane Eyre (9th grade)

This also had to be read simultaneously with two other books, both for the same English class. Naturally, not a single student didn't end up resorting to SparkNotes.

Jane Eyre is the most torturous read I have ever been forced through the displeasure of experiencing.

 

[senschuh]

We also had to read a book about a very unlikeable African man in tribal Africa who's life gets ruined when us English try to bring civilisation into their way of life. I would probably have more sympathy for the guy if he stopped bitching about his yams.

Would that book be "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe?

 

[Shock and Awe]

Probably "The Call of the Wild", it just bored the ever living hell out of me.

 

[Tiny116]

Romeo and Juliet the amount of times I bloody read that book....

 

[silentsentinel]

Wuthering Heights. I never managed to finish that book.

 

[Davrel]

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: Fucking horrible book - the works of Thomas Hardy should be erased from existence for crimes against entertainment.

 

[Jumplion]

"Great Expectations" by Charles Dickins. It wasn't horrible, but I did end up just going to the SparkNotes which, if printed out, is 50+ pages long. And that's just the chapter summaries. Not "horrible", but definitely not something I want to read again.

Now, one book I did absolutely hate was "Majyk" or however it was by whogivesafuck, intended for younger audiences I admit, though I was the target age at the time. Disregarding the clearly misspelled use of the word "Magic" to make the book sound artsy, the author goes for a weird type or writing that makes no sense and leaves me confused and not caring one bit. And the main character's name is Septimus Heap , or as I like to call him, a Heap of Septimus. And he's the 7th son of a 7th son, THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU CLEVER!

For perspective, this was one of the verbal exchanges in the book.

Lady: Okay Septimus, you must go to this place to get that.
Sep: Okay, I'll do it.
Lady: In fact, it's so important that you must go there now!
Sep: Okay, I'm going!
Lady, In fact, it's so important that I order you to go right now!
Sep: Okay! I was going anyway!

.....riveting.

Oh, and there are 4 more books with horribly misspelled titles to seem intelligent; Flyte, Physik, Queste, and Syren. Seriously? Queste?

I hate you whoever authored those books.