Man, ack, all these people hating on Lord of the Flies! It breaks my little heart, because I love that book!

However, I have to agree with the "like Beowulf hate Grendel" sentiment.

Grendel was a whiny emo wanker. That was one of the most frustratingly stupid books I was ever assigned to read! It sucked majorly. I wanted to flog the teacher that assigned it. Just what teens need, wore whiny emo tripe! I wanted to smack the character! And the author! Burn the book! Rip out the pages! Erase it!

Beowulf, on the other hand... It's a really old epic poem and I still enjoyed it. It's stood the test of time I think. Unlike--

The worst book I was ever assigned to read was Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. It's the equivalent of having a screw turned in your head. It is utterly mired in outdated style and it was just excruciating to read these sentences that go on and don't end for four pages. Like, learn to use a period, James! END YOUR DAMN SENTENCES.

I finished it, and then successfully argued with my teacher to let me write the assigned paper on something else.

My most favorite piece of assigned reading was probably Shakespeare's King Lear. Kudos to the teacher for assigning us that play. I mean, we did Romeo and Juliet four times in my school career and I've never much liked that one, so it kinda put me off Shakespeare until we got to King Lear and it was great. That Earl of Gloucester was so great.

By the way, middle and high school teachers, please STOP DOING ROMEO AND JULIET. That whiny emo stuff was good the first time. It was kind of okay the second. But around the third time it was painful. Shakespeare wrote how many plays, now? And we keep doing that one why?? (Granted, I did Julius Caeser twice in school, but Caeser rocks. I got that speech by Marcus Antonius memorized.)

So, yeah, hated assigned reading award goes to The Turn of the Screw, Grendel, and Romeo and Juliet, The first two for being awful and the third for being completely overdone.