oh my gosh...the worst required reading EVER was 'love in the time of cholera' that book was just so creepy and perverted and they made it into a movie!? what were they thinking lol....its just about old people getting busy (if you know what i mean;)) and its gross....ew scarred me lol :o....usually books are great and i seldom have a problem but this was just weird...it went on about the most unrelevant stuff eg two pages on how this guys pee smelled like asparagus...dont need to know :lol:

I think the worst for me was Johnney Tremain, I don't remember who its by. I read like two chapters of it and thought I was going to die. :o

I hated Animal Farm back in sophomore year of high school. I just didn't bother to read it because it didn't appeal to me. Needless to say I got an F in that unit during English class, which probably lowered my grade to a B. Never reading it again.

I didn't like The Scarlet Letter only because I didn't like any of the characters. Except Pearl, I guess, because she made me laugh.

I didn't like Tale of Two Cities either, again because I couldn't stand the main two characters. Which is a shame since I really like Dickins.

Oh, and "Romeo and Juliet". To be honest, I don't like romance stories. I also don't much care for teenagers (at least the ones at my high school. Yech). So teenaged romance was just everything I didn't like rolled into one.
Which, I guess, was okay in the long run because it meant that "MacBeth" was everything I loved all rolled into one. Haha.

Pretty much anything in my Brit lit class. Beowulf, Frakenstein, Hamlet, and a few other things. Our teacher wouldn't let us get any 'modern' translations of the literature, so most of our class had no idea what was going on. Though, we did translate the Canterbury Tales ourselves, so it wasn't that bad.

I also have a deep hate for Lord of the Flies. Why? I've had to read it in three different classes. ; A;

Well, there is quite a few books that I have not liked overly much at school to begin with but then slowly get into it. Sadly as hard as I try there are two books that stand out in my mind that I really didn't enjoy.

The Long The Short & The Tall is the first. It is written in play form and our teacher said that since all the characters were male only males should be able to read it. So an English class that comprises of mostly girls was made to sit for a week as 6 15 year olds stuttered through a play and getting most long words wrong. Not getting that SGNT is short for sergeant and pronounced it "signit"

Talking In Whispers is another one. I really found the book tedious! We had to talk about the imagery and then write a critical essay. Maybe if we hadn't had to look at the book like that then maybe it might have been a bit more bareable but I just really thought that it was dull. The torure scenes were described in vivid details which added a bit of excitement but then again since everything was described in vivid detail, like the main characters car or the books he has read, it is very hard to enjoy the one exciting part of the plot.

Maybe I am just saying that because I am a very girly girl and that book was really quite boyish, both actually were very male centred so thats why I didn'rt enjoy them. But who knows, maybe they are just rubbish books/plays? Its probably just me though.

Once for a reading competition i had to read both the sword of shanara, which is an incredibly boring book, and A is for alibi. I didn't like either of them very much but I got them read.

anything that has to do with history! what's the point? we sit there and read this really long story about some old dead dude that only teachers care about. and every story in the anthology at school! sometimes they are ok the FIRST time, but we read them over and over and over! it's like when the teachers don't hav some boring math assignment or something they say "please take out your anthology and re-read this week's story.". it drives me nuts! that's why it sucks that summer's almost over...

Hm well to top the list is Things Fall Apart The only good things about it was the inside jokes it brought on. Such as pounding the Fu fu I think it was lol and my class was discussing the part about the family jewels and the principal walked in. It was hilarious.


Next would be the Illustrated Man. It was ok but kinda pointless. I know all the stories were playing out on this guys back through his tattoos but that was the only link between them...kinda pointless to me.


A Separate Peace was, again, only good for the inside jokes such as "Come over to my dune!" lol my English teacher had fun with that one. And then there was the butt room lol. That was only made worse when somebody pointed out that it was an all boys school :P not that i'm anti-gay or making fun of them, it as just a humorous coincidence that the room was called the Butt room.

Also on the list is A Streetcar Named Desire Uhg...I HATED that book with a passion. It just didn't do anything for me ya know?

"Things Fall A Part", why? It was horribly boring and I didn't know what was going half the time. Also, the ending just killed me, when I finish the book I said out loud, "I read through 200 pages for THAT?!"

"Founding Brothers", why? I'm not going to lie, it's a interesting book, it has great information in it, it's just so bloody detailed and boring.

"A Northern Light", why? The inspiration for the story was more interesting than the novel itself.

There are two books that I simply could not even get through for school:

For history one summer I had to read Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling. I actually think Michelangelo was kind of awesome. I'm an artist, so I daresay I'm more interested in painting techniques than the average person. I even have a casual interest in the time period and culture and whatnot, but... The sheer monotany of the book eventually got to me. It's the first book I ever just gave up on a SparkNoted.

The Iliad was awful. I'm sorry, but I do not need to read eight pages of how many people came to the battle and how they all brought forty black ships. I actually liked what little of The Odyssey we read in class, but The Iliad... Well, book number two I've had to use SparkNotes for.

There were others I've disliked, but those two just take the cake. Really, just... *shudders*

Catcher in the Rye, Great Expectations, Speak and White Teeth. All books I never want to see again.

hate all required reading, lets leave it at that ;3

For a while I hated reading, period, so any required reading was forced if I did it at all. But then, I began to enjoy reading just before high school, so anything before then, can't really say if it was just me hating to read, or that I really disliked the book. Still, probably my least favorite Novel I was ever required to read would have to be To Kill a Mockingbird mostly due to the fact that I had to read it twice after changing schools. I don't like reading books like that twice, and I hate over analyzing books, as we did in class so much. School ruins books, in all honesty. Even if they claim to be trying to encourage reading, books aren't meant to be over analyzed so much, in such a way as they force you to share their opinion on what the book is over. That's not right. Books are like poems, there's no right or wrong to what you took from it, in the end, or what you found meaningful. Taking a book, chopping it up, and force feeding it, only serves to ruin it's purpose in the first place.

The book I neve want to see again is The Great Gatsby. Not only is it drab, but there's no action until the very end of the novel. Or maybe it's just a thing I have with most American literature haha... :sarcasm:

Oh, I love the Great Gatsby. It was probably the only required reading I did like. But I liked Fitzgerald before I read it, so...

I could not stand Red Badge of Courage or, what was that other civil war book... I can't recall now. But pretty much everything that the teachers made me read in tenth grade I hated.

Hmm... most of it. I hated everything I had to read in elementary school. Where the Red Fern Grows, Stone Fox, and various other things I can't remember because I blocked them out. Why do they always feel the need to kill the dog? Why can't kids learn about mortality from having the mean teacher kick the bucket?

Then there was middle school. The Bridge to Terabithea (or however it's spelled). I'd say the only thing this book has going for it is the fact that the dog didn't die. FINALLY! That's said, I can't really think of anything bad about it except that it bored me.

Of course, next was high school. Ender's Game: ridiculously predictable, and I just found the plot a bit stupid. Killer Angels: eh, I'm just not a fan of the Civil War. Not bad, just not my cup of tea. You Don't Know Me: this was by far the WORST book I ever had to read. I am so over the whole abusive father thing. It's way overdone, and this one was poorly written to boot.

Sorry for the rant there. :sweat: You kinda hit a nerve with me.

i never want to see all creatures great and small thats the only book i have ever wanted to incinerate

Ok let me think on that one for a bit. I hated to read a few books for school. Like one of Charles Dickens works, I think it was The Christmas Carol. Don't get me wrong, I do love that story. Its sweet and beautiful, but I just couldn't handle reading it with the darn wording in it. Plus The Lord of the Flies. OMG that one was crap. My mom refused me to read it for class and when I had homework for it, she would scan through the book and give me the answers. She even told the teacher I was not allowed to read it, she thought it was inappropiate it and I thought it was disgusting as hell. The words they used to describe things in it were not for a girly girl who loved animals more than anything else in the world.

I really disliked Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. It was so boring, luckily we only read a short passage of it. I guess I don't like most of Dickens' books though. A Christmas Carol was one of the few I enjoyed.

We never seemed to have much required reading in primary school or high school though. The most I can remember were the books you had to read while learning to read. They were pointless, but they were all so short that it didn't bother me too much. Normally we just read short passages of things. That was ok, I think I preferred it to reading a full book as when we read in class progress was much too slow, at least with something short we got it over with quicker.

All my required reading was horrible last year. The only good book was To Kill a Mockingbird. The worst was Farenheit 451. Ironically though, one of my classmates burned his copy beyond recognition, it made us all laugh(Though the teacher wasn't too happy)

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

it wasn't necessarily the worst writing i've read, but i just thought that the whole plot was quite stupid to be honest

When in secondary school I was forced to read a number of books and stage plays, I loved most of them, but two stuck out that I loathed to read-

-To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
-Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (forgotten the name of the author)

Roll o' Thunder was the first one I read, it was the education system's idea to increase racial awareness and consideration. Now, my secondary school was in north Wales, and I was racially discriminated against because I'm of English/German origin, I was used to being called an idiot by someone who couldn't speak my languages properly... So, being that I travelled a lot as a child, I was also not a complete rube and treated people with respect regardless of what they looked like, and then I have to study this lesson in detail!? The Hell!? ... Other than that, I can honestly say that it was a dull book, I prefer works of comedic fiction.

Mockingbird... Oh, how I hate it! The same lesson! I was in the top set of our English classes, my tutor said she hated the book so much that she was going to hire someone else to teach it to us (and she did!). It's a very dull book, written from a niave point of view, and (apparently) Harper Lee stole most of it from a friend of hers and published it without their permission. The hardback copy (that was compulsary to buy, I might add) that I have is still at my parent's house, awaiting a fitting and horrible end that I haven't been able to figure out yet because fire is too good for it.

Fahrenheit 451, 1989, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Gatsby.... me thinks people detest thinking a trifle much. And a teenager burning a copy of Fahrenheit 451 simply because he didn't like reading it for school is far from ironic for the reasons he or many of his classmates think; thank god I hate kids, otherwise I'd have a field day on that one if I were the teacher. I love those books, for the most part.

I despised reading and doing the required analytical work -papers, questionnaires, vocabulary sheets.. - when I read Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, and Lord of the Flies. But I can appreciate why I read them and what meaning they held.

On the other hand.... I hated and to this day see no point in reading To Kill a Mocking Bird, and Our Town. They are not universal symbols of american life, growing up, or any other all encompassing human themes they survive in grade school curriculums for. Also that 'where the red fern grows' that nidhogg13 mentioned, had to read that (actually, I had to catch up on it as well since I moved to the school in the middle of my class reading it) in 5th grade. I had happily forgotten it's existence until just now.

to kill a mockingbird. If I read it again I probably wouldn't dislike reading it, but I read it when I was in 8th grade and I read it solely to do the report.