In 10th grade, I read The House of the Spirits. I repeat: DO NOT read it. It's very gruesome--my memory is a little iffy, but a LOT of innocent characters die, and the characters you hate keep living on and creating more disaster. The front and back cover illustrations CREEPED me out so I put POST-IT NOTES all over to cover them, LOL.

So unless you enjoy death, tedious writing, loveless couples, military coups, and devices used for torture, I suggest you stray away from this book--but if you have to read it for class, sparknote it. You don't want to own the book.

No offense, Allende, but I'd rather watch a documentary about you than read a fictionalized novel of your life.

The Hot Zone: It was really an amazing book, but I passed out twice while reading it and once while hearing someone give a description of it. It was way too intense for me.

Nectar in a Sieve: Boring boring boring!!! It was almost as boring as Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. Which was mostly about rocks.

Wizard of Earthsea: I never got why people liked this book. I was too easily confused, which is strange as I like somewhat confusing books.

There are two books that I had to read that I desliked. First was, Animal Farm
It was strange...the beginning was basically the same as the ending -_-
Very annoying.
Also, it has a very deep meaning...and we had to focus on that...about real life and what it meant...


Another was Bronx Masqurade, about a bunch of kids who couldn't handle themselves, and used poetry to solve their problems...I would actually like this book except for the fact, that it would probably never happen in real life.

I thought reading was suppose to be for fun!
What happened to that?

Wow. I've never really disliked a book. Sometimes a particular writing style hits me the wrong way but usually I can't be turned off to a story no matter what.

That was until we started to read ' To Kill A Mockingbird ' by Harper Lee.
Honestly, to me that was the most pointless book! I couldn't pay attention to it at all. It lacked any sort of consistency to me. Other than that it was just plain BORING! Many disagree with me and say that somethings wrong because I didn't like such a 'timeless classic' but that classic needs to be put in a vault, thanks.

Anyone else dislike this book?

King of Shadows, Artemis Fowl, and Corner of the Universe

Originally Posted by Amy

In 10th grade, I read The House of the Spirits. I repeat: DO NOT read it. It's very gruesome--my memory is a little iffy, but a LOT of innocent characters die, and the characters you hate keep living on and creating more disaster. The front and back cover illustrations CREEPED me out so I put POST-IT NOTES all over to cover them, LOL.

So unless you enjoy death, tedious writing, loveless couples, military coups, and devices used for torture, I suggest you stray away from this book--but if you have to read it for class, sparknote it. You don't want to own the book.

No offense, Allende, but I'd rather watch a documentary about you than read a fictionalized novel of your life.

Actually that sounds a bit like the work of a sociopath. Honestly if fits the most common signs of someone who is deeply mentally disturbed.

For those of you who didn't like Lord of the Flies; 'Sucks to your assmar!'

:wink:
Kidding, I can see how you wouldn't like it.
There were no female characters at all!
Yikes.

I really hated the Scarlet Letter.
I also loathed and didn't finish Dante's Inferno.

The Alchemist. It made me want to kill myself, and then haunt my dumbass teacher.

Never read that book.

The only "classic" I've read and disliked was On The Road by Jack Kerouak. I thought the story itsef was fine and dandy, but his prose was stagnant and badly focused. Comment on the times? Maybe. Atrocious to read? Yes. For a poet, his prose was as thick as treacle ... like when they went to that undergrounf jazz club (or something like that) ... I WANTED to be in the moment and exist in the world that was being created, but it was like Kerouak didn't want to let me in. Purposeful, or do Jacky boy and I just not mesh? Don't care. Maybe his poetry is better, but the way he handled the novella made me listless toward his other endevors.

Our Town in the seventh grade, because all I can remember about it is that it was boring. And I wasn't a huge fan of Gulliver's Travels, because while I usually adore satire and parts of the book were quite funny, overall...I don't know. It just never caught my interest.

But I usually like required reading, so....yeah.

• For ninth grade honors English I had to read this terrible, terrible book called Ishi. It was about Native Americans, and it went on for literally pages describing mundane details such as how Ishi chose the perfect branch to craft his bow from. It was torture.

Ugh, recently in my sophomore English class we read Lord of the Flies. It was so boring, and complicated to pick out the alorgies. People think it's a good book, but I fail to see the good behind it o.0 The only good in there was Simon, but he was killed.

Originally Posted by boredomkills

Our Town in the seventh grade, because all I can remember about it is that it was boring. And I wasn't a huge fan of Gulliver's Travels, because while I usually adore satire and parts of the book were quite funny, overall...I don't know. It just never caught my interest.

But I usually like required reading, so....yeah.

Have you seen the play Our Town? My school did a production at the beginning of the year and if was lovely.

>> Hmmmmm, not that I can recall...
I loved Romeo and Juliet. D':
I must be weird?
I like never read anyways...
So I don't know why I liked what we read in class.

I deeply disliked Snow Falling on Cedars.
The long, drawn-out descriptions of the snow were the best part. The rest was racist lunacy and agenda-talk. If it hadn't been required for English class, I would never have picked it up.

There were a lot more that I hated than actually liking.. I don't think I can even remember them all.

There's

• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -just ugh
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -couldn't even finish this one, I wanted to throw it out the window ;<
• The Scarlet Letter -way too much symbolism
• Oliver Twist -never finished this one either, but then again the only ones I did actually finish were ones I liked
• Macbeth -saw the ending from a mile away and got bored e_e;
• Lord of the Flies -just wasn't interested D:

those are the ones I can remember, I'm sure there are more @@;

Ah.. all of them? The idea of "required reading" just defeats the whole purpose of reading a book - unless it's a textbook 8).

Originally Posted by Koaimi Shino

Ugh, recently in my sophomore English class we read Lord of the Flies. It was so boring, and complicated to pick out the alorgies. People think it's a good book, but I fail to see the good behind it o.0 The only good in there was Simon, but he was killed.

Try picking it up again in a few year, when you have the time to read it on your own.

I swear to you, it is a good novel. I've met a number of people who have had it ruined for them because of school, but loved it on a personal basis years later. You just need the ability to enjoy it on your own, not in terms of analysis and forced comprehension.

I have 2 books that I HAD to read and it was the worst! They were Bud not Buddy and Teachers Funeral Alot of people say those book are the funniest, but to me..they are lame...

The only required reading that I absolutely hated was "A Farewell to Arms" I hate that book so much and never want to touch it ever again. Everything else I had been required to read had at least one redeeming quality to me.

I find it odd so many people hated reading Farenheit 451, unless we are talking about two different books. I read it on my own and found it interesting.

All Quiet on the Western Front.

I don't understand why we were studying a German author in Honors English. o.o; The poor translation might have been part of the reason I disliked it.

But after reading about people dying and then the survivors smoking cigarettes for so many pages, I got annoyed. My grandmother forced me to finish reading it. ;_;

Anna Karenina tops my list. It's the typical story of a woman ostracized because she sought happiness outside of her crumbling marriage, and the end result was suicide.

It's too darn dated, and overly depressing too. Surely there would've been another way to end it? Tolstoy should have been given a good kick in the teeth for writing such a mediocre story.

The Great Gatsby (confusing and dull and I failed most of the quizzes and tests from it)

Death of a Salesman (depressing and stupid)

Animal Farm (no point to it whatsoever)

The Pearl (just really quite stupid)

A Day No Pigs Would Die (so boring and dull that I never really read it and still got A's on tests!)

Lord of the Flies (would have been better had the teacher not picked it all apart)

and those are all the most hated required reading materials I can think of at the moment.

I really didn't like When the Legends Die. I mentioned in another topic about the writing style... basically the book read like this: This happened. Then this happened. Then someone died. A song was sung. Memories. Then something else happened. Dramatic change of scene. A return to the old ways. The End.

And, when I first read Lord of the Flies and took at face value I disliked it. I didn't start to enjoy it until we actually covered it and class and had to write a few papers. Reading the book with an understanding of the symbolism is better than just reading it as 'some little boys on an island do craaaaaazy things'.

We also read The Pearl, and it wasn't too bad of a book. I mean, yeah, there's a good moral to the story here but honestly, it wasn't honors class material. My teacher treated it like The Novel to Change Your Life, and it really wasn't that impressive.

Book mentioned in this topic that I actually did like: Fahrenheit 451 is actually my favorite book, but of course that was independent reading and so I haven't had a teacher force me to pick apart yet. And also All Quiet on the Western Front. I loved that book when we read it in history.

For me, I hated reading I Heard the Owl Call My Name in eighth grade (I was very slow at understanding that book back then) and A Tale of Two Cities in ninth (we were the guinea pigs for that one, and we failed miserably because, except one person, no one coming out of middle school actually had the attention span for that book. Now the 9th graders get to read Ender's Game, lucky.)

(Edit)

Originally Posted by Zakuro

The only required reading that I absolutely hated was "A Farewell to Arms"

...I have to read that this summer. My teacher's been setting it up as "Oh, it's not that bad!" But that's what my teachers say every year. I hope it's not like my sister's Heart of Darkness (where one sentence will be more than one page, and the sentence can be just description. Eeee.)