We all know those books, the ones that you got in high school and middle school that made you wanna cry, cause they were so boring. Books that ruined what we held dear to our hearts. This is a discussion of what books people can't stand and why...make it more intersting, what is it that this book did that was just bad.

Currently the book that I hate more than any other is Maya Angelou's "I know why the caged bird sings."

A long, tiring story about her life, filled with 10 metaphores (at least) per page and a plot that makes you want to cry. It does not deserve to be a best seller, and if not for every school buying them every year, I am sure that it would have faded from knowledge long ago.


((If you like a book that is listed and want to defend it, then do so, however, do not post about how a book is great just because it is, if you want to debate do it properly, or find another thread (this is especially for Twilight lovers and haters)))

I really can't stand the book 'A Separate Peace' by John Knowles. I had to read it in school when I was younger and we had to write a paper analyzing the hidden meanings in the book. I remember that my paper pretty much bashed the entire book and called the main character partially insane with a severe case of survivors guilt. I am pretty sure I got an A on that paper too.

I remember reading a horrible book when I was about fourteen, they made us read it for my english class: "Lockie Leonard" by Tim Winton. It's was horrible and left me with the strong impression of an older man trying to write about teenagers without really having any prior knowledge to them. I have never really read any of his other books because this one turned me right off him. Sadly, he is an Australian author (I'm from Australia) so it was a very big disappointment.

Probably a book i culdnt stand for 1 bit was called camelot it was a play thn she (our teacher) made us watch the movie which made it worsseeee!!!!!!


I LOVE MY BABY SO MUCH!

Oh! I know! Nina Of The Dark! Talk about a bad storyline! New Zealand author. :( I really wish he wasn't.. this is a disgrace to literature. (If you haven't read it... DONT)

The book Ann by Kristien Hemmerechts. It's a Dutch biographic book about a woman who suffers from anorexia, she asked Hemmerechts to write it for her and Hemmerechts was so intrigued by this woman that she decided to go through with it.

The book was so bad though! Unbelievable, the whole story was about the writer herself and her non-existent friendship with Ann. She completely misunderstood Ann's motives about a lot of the things she did and kept twisting everything so it ended up being a book about her own insecurities and her attempt at understanding this woman she was supposed to be writing about.

It really sucked.

I could not tolerate Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver. My freshman year of highschool, our summer reading list was entirely comprised of novels by that woman -- and most of the class agreed that the books they'd chosen sucked, too. There was just something about it that rubbed me the wrong way. It's the only book I've ever thrown out. >_>

There's a book out there known as "Blonde Geisha" and I couldn't even finish it, it was so horrible. I know others disagree, but the characters were just so bland and annoying (stupid). The story was slow and the whole 'erotic-ness' of it was laughable at best. The summary on the back makes it sound like a very interesting book, but it's not worth it.. at least to most.

I have to say normally I don't pick up books that don't sound like they'd interest me. I'm very bias. I research like everything XD yay internet.

Now the book I hate, is "Lord of the Flies". Don't get me wrong, it's well written. It's really famous.. but it's the most disturbing book I've ever read. I didn't like it at all. We had to read it for my brit lit class, and there were just so many parts that I felt nauseated. I didn't like it *Has a vivid imagination*

Books I read in school. One was Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry. That was sooo boring, I don't think any one liked it. Dx

I'm kind of against anything by Mark Twain. The plots of his stories are great. They're interesting in ways that are both comical and touching. However, the way he writes just... It puts me to sleep so much.

Then there's The Blood Confession by Alisa Libby. It's supposed to be a fiction book based off of the life of Elizabeth Bathory. I absolutely love reading about Elizabeth Bathory, so when I found it in the bookstore, I grabbed it right away. Alisa writes really well, actually. She has amazing imagery and uses beautiful word-flow. However, it's just... It's so uncreative. And maybe I dislike it so much because I don't feel like it portrays a knock-off of Elizabeth Bathory well enough, but come on.... The author could barely be bothered to even come up with a different name. Elizabeth's Hungarian name was Erzsébet Báthory and the main character of the book was called Erzebet Bizecka. It's kind of trivial, but it just annoys me so much.

Ok for in class my most hated book was for my collage english class and we had to read "The Heart of Darkness" not even sure who by...our teacher told us it's supposed to be your interpretation of the righters interpretation on the main characters interpretation of another guys life...and we cant even fully understand it, also the language is that of a child in many parts such as the climax, ok to set it up for you they are stuck on a river at night, the people native to the area are in the bushes, arrows are flying from the bushes to kill of the people on the steam boat, and the people on the boat are blasting bullets into the bush, blood everywhere...now the type of phrases he uses are "the little sticks were whizzing through the air" and "the guns squirted led into the bush" it was such a hard read i didn't get through half the book myself and i was crying from the migraines it was giving me trying to read it...

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Oh i do have another
This book though was my choice making it a bit worse, i work at a book store so i see new once come in all the time and i am a "read the book by the cover" kind of person, so the book in question is "Swoon" the description sounds ok, i read very little of the inside still sounding ok, with my discount i decided why not and it all when down hill from there. The book doesn't have a plot till maybe the last 5-3 chapters, its mainly about the ghosts who makes kids horny and fool around causing chaos in the town and at the end all of a sudden he's like "oh im here for revenge" he then gets it and the next morning poof he's gone...
not worth the money i spent even with the discount...i don't put a book away till i finish it normally but this one i was wanting to throw away since the first few chapters...
sorry to anyone who did like the two books i talked about, they were just really really wrong for me

Originally Posted by Silver Whisper

Ok for in class my most hated book was for my collage english class and we had to read "The Heart of Darkness" not even sure who by...

Heart of Darkness was written by Joseph Conrad.
I didn't much care for it, either. We read it as a class my senior year. The only thing that made it bearable was the fact that my 50-something, 4'10" English teacher read it aloud, and her impression of the cannibals was absolutely hilarious.

I LOVED Heart of Darkness. It's one of my favorite books. There's a lot of great themes behind it. It's too bad you all didn't enjoy it. XD

I love Heart of Darkness. It was a tricky read but once I could understand all the crazy symbolism, and once I wrapped my brain around the half dozen narrators, I really appreciated it. I was one of the few in my class though. >_>;

When I was little, my dad pretty much forced all the "classics" on me, and I hated all of them. Maybe if I read them now, a decade later, I might like them, but they just stand out in my head as being horrible and boring.
The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London were two of my least favorites.
Probably the worst book I've ever read is The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway. No, just... no. Old man goes in boat, goes fishing, catches huge marlin that drags him out to sea, spends at least 50 pages battling this fish, (SPOILER)catches it, ties it to his boat, SHARKS EAT THE FISH, and he goes home and is sad.(END SPOILER)
F*** THAT BOOK.

Also? Twilight. Second worst book I ever read. It's not even close to The Old Man and the Sea, but it's still pretty godawful.

I don't know what exactly it was about Heart of Darkness, but it just bored me to death. I'm not usually like that; there are very VERY few books that I've read that I haven't liked. I respect the work, it just bored me. Plus, it gave us my class's catchphrase of the year: "The horror! The horror!"

@ TalkingBackwards - When I was in third grade, my teacher had abbreviated versions of tons of classics, and I distinctly remember loving White Fang and The Call of the Wild. It may have been different if I were reading the full-length novels, though. XD

since no one has mentioned it, "the Metamorphosis" by Frank Kaza. Starts off with a promising idea , goes no where and ends like the author just got bored of writing it.

"The great gatsby" no redeeming characters, no redeeming morals, boring as hell

"The Crucible" i hate Hypocrisy and idiots who don't know their religion.

"Tale of Two Cities" Okay i can't diss this one fairly since i couldn't get past the first dull page.

"War of the Worlds" starts off well and then just gets tedious towards the middle. better left as a radio drama

and that's all i can think of now.

"the Sound and the thunder" was tedious but good, same as "Grapes of Wrath" and "Jekyll and Hyde"
i didn't care for "heart of Darkness" but it wasn't and either.

I did not like Huckleberry Finn mainly because the book didn't hold my attention at all, there were a few chapters that were good but over all the book wasn't that great.

I can't stand Thomas Hardys Mayor of Casterbridge because I could fall asleep reading the first page of the story. Seriously, I though I was going to drop down dead during class.

Originally Posted by Twisted Insanity

Books I read in school. One was Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry. That was sooo boring, I don't think any one liked it. Dx

I've read that... it wasn't too bad really... but more of a time filler because it only takes about an hour to read.

I had to read "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" for summer reading. Why they picked it for a 97% white school district I really don't know.

Also, "Tale of Two Cities" was a good story, however I was in 9th grade at the time and my teacher gave us no assistance. Honestly, I read the book and barely understood it until I sparknoted it.

I loved the plot of "Fahrenheit 451" but Ray Bradbury's writing style doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. It just put me to sleep!

I am very surprised by what I am finding on here, maybe because my class has done deep analysis on a lot of the books that have been listed (Heart of Darkness, Fehrenheit 451, others). Most of them are boring and terrible because they are written in periods of time that are different than our own, so they use words that were understandable at the time or in Fehrenheit's case, it took an event and blew to it a rediculous level so as to show people a possible outcome of how they were reacting to the Red Scare. I would defend Call of the Wild but for that one it is all opinion on my part, nothing really spectacular about the reading, it was just enjoyable for me.

A Separate Peace, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Hatchet, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Breaking Dawn, Call of The Wild, etc.

@Jenny: I hear you! I had to read A Separate Peace my freshman year of high school and I hated it! I had such a hard time reading and following it. I can barely remember what it was about (some kid dying in a tree, I think?). I really ought to go back and read it again sometime now that I'm older just so I can go, "Ah! So that's what it was about!"

I don't remember the name of this book... but wow was it horrible. It was a requirement for my English 101 class in community college. The book was mostly about this woman who fell in love with this man with a mysterious past. Later she finds out that he is an interrogator with the Israili military. The story is mostly about her debate whether to stay with him due to his work and the at least 40+ times she has sex with the guy. I seriously felt like it was more a porn novel than any real book. It could've been good but WAY too much sex. Last time I saw this book was at the clearance section at a book store at LA International (LAX).