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Tamerthanthou
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#1
Old 04-15-2007, 09:12 PM

I saw that someone had posted a forum about required reading that people liked and it got me wondering, what reading are people not talking about because they hated it so much?

My personal least favorite required reading book ever is one that I have an essay on this week, Winsburgh Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. It was absolutely dreadful! I'm an avid reader and I just couldn't get through it. I like fluidity and this wasn't even a story, it was like a mixture of short, short stories that have no beggining or end, just a middle and they all somehow are connected through one person who has a minimal role in most of the stories. It just irritated me!

So, what required reading have you not liked?

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#2
Old 04-15-2007, 09:48 PM

Lets see, there were several books that I hated as summer reading. Those horrible books included Lord of the Flies, and Farenheit 451. There's also this book that I read as a summer reading book, I would've change it, but it was too late -- House of Stairs. That's it...for now.

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#3
Old 04-15-2007, 09:52 PM

The only one I've read of those is Lord of the Flies. I didn't think it was too bad. I wouldn't have read if it hadn't been required reading, though.

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#4
Old 04-15-2007, 09:57 PM

I'd have to say... A Separate Peace by John Knowles and Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I hated those books. They were boring and pretentious and I didn't care one bit about any of the characters. I didn't like Steinbeck very much, either, although Of Mice and Men wasn't too bad.

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#5
Old 04-15-2007, 10:08 PM

Huh. I LOVED Lord of the Flies, and Steinbeck's one of my favorite authors.

As for me, I can rattle off a looooong list of books I've disliked over the ages. My high school liked to do only one or two classics/significant literary works a year, and the rest of the stories we read were these godawful Politically Correct books. It was sickening.

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#6
Old 04-15-2007, 10:10 PM

"The Old Man and the Sea".

Could there be a more pointless book? He goes fishing. He catches a fish. He waits for the fish to die. He dies.

For ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN PAGES.
:gonk:

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#7
Old 04-15-2007, 10:25 PM

That does sound pretty painful, Trekkie.

I liked Steinbeck, even though the only thing I've read of his is Of Mice and Men.

I'm so glad my teacher can't give us Politcially Correct books because then she'd be the biggest hypocrite ever. Her comments are most defintely not PC.

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#8
Old 04-15-2007, 10:54 PM

I remember one summer I had decided to read a book by Jay McGraw on teenagers and whatnot from the school list... It was horrible. He basically looked down upon everything I was and am and gave the thumbs up to the "preps" and the "jocks". There were also obnoxious pictures to go along with it.
Also, I didn't like Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew because I just wasn't interested. When I don't care much for a book, I won't really get into it and won't read the whole thing. I do like most books though. I didn't really like The Witch of Blackbird Pond either, not that any fifth grader, as I was at the time, would.
I can't think of much else...

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#9
Old 04-15-2007, 11:27 PM

Farenheit 451, and Stargirl. I had read Stargirl years before, and it just seemed like such an easy book to be reading. I mean, it's a good book with a definite emotion that they're trying to evoke, and, compared to other books, that wasn't so bad. But the way that my teacher seemed to think it was a good book for eighth graders really hit me hard. I love reading, and I must have read Stargirl in fourth or fifth grade. It was just such an easy read.

Then there was "Wizard of Earthsea". It dried up every student in the class. Maybe it IS a classic in the fantasy section. But it never really earned a high opinion from me.

Another thing that irked me was the books we read in high school. Things like Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". While we were diligently reading "Romeo and Juliet" in class, I read Dante, Erasmus, Cicero... great writers. My fellow students in the honors English class had no clue who Erasmus was. I just felt like everything was too easy.

But maybe that's just me?

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#10
Old 04-15-2007, 11:33 PM

Well, I know a lot of people really liked this book, and I thought I would like it too, but I was absolutely bored to tears. The book was The Great Gatsby.

Well, let me say this, in defense of the books I despised--a lot of them I read during my American Literature class in high school, and I have come to believe that I hated the books because I hated the teacher and the way that she taught the books to us. For instance, when we read Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, I couldn't stand it. I read it again later, just for kicks, and I found that it was a decent read when I could take it out of the context of the class and stop paying so much attention to every little thing that Pearl did (the teacher, for some reason, had an infatuation with Pearl). I also really hated The Grapes of Wrath, although in retrospect I think that was more Steinbeck's fault than hers. Let's see--there was The Great Gatsby, which I pretty much still hate; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is now one of my favorite books; Call it Courage, which was kind of cool, but also boring to the max; Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible," which I actually liked while we were reading it, but again, I hated the way she taught it; the list goes on.

In another class, we read To Kill a Mockingbird, which I have mixed feelings about. It's an important period book, and I understand why it's on the required reading list, but the literature itself is nothing spectacular. As a story, it's riveting, but not a very enjoyable read. I know there have got to be more that I just did not like, but most of them escape me--there weren't very many memorable ones. I am very jealous of people who tell me that they were required to read The Hobbit early on in school. I WISH my teachers had asked me to read that. As it was, I didn't pick it up on my own until about 9th grade--sad, but true. u_u

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#11
Old 04-15-2007, 11:50 PM

In school there wasn't really a required reading book that I hated... A lot of them didn't really quirk my interest but they were OK... However I changed schools a lot, and different schools have different required books at different grade levels. So I ended up having to read James and the Giant Peach 3 years in a row, and Where the Red Fern Grows 3 or 4 times as well. Why did I have to read them over? They weren't very interesting to me, so I didn't retain all of them very well. I could answer a lot of the quiz questions from what I had remembered reading, but some of the questions were trickier and I had to refresh my memory by rereading the book.

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#12
Old 04-16-2007, 12:01 AM

Farenhiet 451 is the only one I was required to read that I could not stand to read, and I didn't even have to read the whole book. Yeah, I could interpret is just fine. In my AP Language class, I got the highest marks for it, I just could not stand it. Too graphical.

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#13
Old 04-16-2007, 12:43 AM

I absolutely abhorred Tom Sawyer and Cold Sassy Tree. I think that's largely because of the 'southern' theme, though. Very redneck. Very old-fashioned. I just couldn't get into either of them.

... Which was very annoying. I had to read Cold Sassy Tree and Animal Farm my Sophomore year. I loved Animal Farm, but my teacher didn't... so we spent absolutely no time studying it. Instead, we did an in-depth study of Cold Sassy. I wanted to shoot myself. n.n

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#14
Old 04-16-2007, 12:48 AM

I absolutely HATE 'An old man and the sea' And 'A wizard of earthsea'.

I can read almost anything, but those books were SO dry that I couldn't even read them. I actually liked the Odyssey and the Iliad, as well as many books mentioned here, but those two were absolutely awful.

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#15
Old 04-16-2007, 01:31 AM

If I ever have to read Beowulf one more time I'll scream and go grendel on everyone, jeez, it's really a lame book anyways. I've had to read it five times now ( Well I only really read it 2 times but still, I had to do work on it and I was supposed to be reading it).

Now that that is out of my system we can move on. Usually I can force myself through those boring books but The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli is boring. That's it, it's just boring. I couldn't even finish it. I refused to continue reading cause everytime I tried I fell asleep or ended up day dreaming without realizing it. Worst book EVER!

My favorite required reading was 1984 by George Orwell. It has a great plot, characters and it's kind off like V for Vendetta, so it's got the whole totalitarian (sp?)goverment and rebellion sort of thing going on.

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#16
Old 04-16-2007, 01:35 AM

I liked Beowulf. Grendel, however, was horrible! I forgot to mention that earlier. It was the weirdest book ever...

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#17
Old 04-16-2007, 01:43 AM

The first time I read Beowulf I was just to the point of not liking it but then having done so much work on it I got so incredably tired of the thing. I never read Grendel, don't think I'd like to either.

The Odyssey though was one of my favorite books, but I've always been a fan of the mythology.

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#18
Old 04-16-2007, 02:58 AM

Oh man.. Uh.. 90% of my school reading..?

I didn't mind Beowulf or Grendel--they were actually interesting the way we read them in my lit class.

There is a very long list of stuff I didn't like:
The Great Gatsby
Anything by William Shakespeare
Catcher in the Rye
Anything by Dickens
Uhh.. almost everything I read in high school other than Lord of the Flies? xD

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#19
Old 04-16-2007, 03:18 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Madness

My favorite required reading was 1984 by George Orwell. It has a great plot, characters and it's kind off like V for Vendetta, so it's got the whole totalitarian (sp?)goverment and rebellion sort of thing going on.
If you liked 1984 you should definitely read Brave New World by Huxley. While I love both books, Brave New World is much more plausible and interesting in my opinion. It's really scary how much of it is coming true, hahaha. But same sort of deal, in a different way of course.

Back on topic, my worst reads would definitely have to be The Scarlet Letter, Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gadsby and lets see... Much more, but I can't remember them (being an English major I read so much). I generally don't like American novels though. :?

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#20
Old 04-16-2007, 03:23 AM

Oh man. Living in the Deep South of the US means every year we get a book that rehashes the whole civil rights/racism/slavery bit over and over and over. Don't get me wrong, I respect what civil rights leaders have done, but making us read about it year after year? That just gets old, especially when they keep picking things like Black Boy, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and Why We Can't Wait.

Sure, they're historically important in that they remind us about the wrongs faced by blacks in the United States, but as something to read during the summer? I could barely stay awake.

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#21
Old 04-16-2007, 03:25 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aeris
Quote:
Originally Posted by Madness

My favorite required reading was 1984 by George Orwell. It has a great plot, characters and it's kind off like V for Vendetta, so it's got the whole totalitarian (sp?)goverment and rebellion sort of thing going on.
If you liked 1984 you should definitely read Brave New World by Huxley. While I love both books, Brave New World is much more plausible and interesting in my opinion. It's really scary how much of it is coming true, hahaha. But same sort of deal, in a different way of course.
I second that. Brave New World is an excellent read. It's also amazing to see that Huxley invented a good number of those scientific names and procedures as well. Kinda hard to believe that he wrote that in 1932.

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#22
Old 04-16-2007, 03:34 AM

I absolutely HATED Fahrenheit 451 and Lord of the Flies! Those SUCKED! Oh, and 1984, that wasn't good either.

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#23
Old 04-16-2007, 03:47 AM

I liked Lord of The Flies, too.

I HATED the Odyssey.

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#24
Old 04-16-2007, 05:41 AM

The Red Badge Of Courage D:
nuff said.
and i didnt like All Quiet on the Western Front or a few other of the ones from my 10th grade english honors class. American lit just isnt that interesting to me </3

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#25
Old 04-16-2007, 05:45 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Verron
I absolutely HATED Fahrenheit 451 and Lord of the Flies! Those SUCKED! Oh, and 1984, that wasn't good either.
O.o I liked all of those. war novels bore me though.
You dont seem to like government related novels. Where they either control you alot or a little. there was another novel about creating people and such it was kinda like the movie Gattaca. I cant remember the name though. Brace New World? I think... In any case I dont think you would like it ^^
[edit] Brave New World is the name of the book.

 


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