Worst book you had to read in school

The Contrast said:
Fahrenheit 451, The plot of this book is extremely dumb. It's just a radical boomer take on the future. The ending sucks ass too.
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Yes. I actually enjoyed the first half to 451, but I felt that the second half was rushed, and it ended way too suddenly. I also had the misfortune of reading Ben Franklin's autobiography, which almost made me commit arson to get rid of the damn book. Ben was a fascinating person, but reading a book written in the 18th century for class should be considered child abuse.

For the best book I read for a class (and my favorite book overall), it has to be The Kite Runner. It has an incredible, emotional story with fantastic characters, and the ending was one of the few times I cried in any form of media.
 
P Squared said:
In the first few pages of Jane Eyre, someone throws a book at Jane and this is what happens next



Even in 10th grade I had read fanfiction with less blatant “let’s establish how our protagonist is super awesome and smart” lines


edit: for some positivity, some books I remember liking from school: Catch 22, The Kite Runner, The Stranger, Pride and Prejudice, Heart of Darkness
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only book I had for school that I genuinely just couldn’t tolerate reading and had to sparknotes and pray.

GatoDelFuego said:
The Hobbit
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Also abysmal but at least a lot shorter.
 
I kinda liked Catcher in the Rye tbh...

In my senior year of high school, The Fountainhead. It was long af and kinda annoying in its symbolism (second-hander gang). Of Mice and Men in junior year was pretty bad too.

On a lighter note, by far the best book I read for school was A Clockwork Orange in that same senior year class, and we got to see the movie in class too LOL. We had to get permission slips to watch it, but we were all pretty impressed by how fucked up it was ("it's just an R-rated movie, how bad could it be?")
 
Crime and Punishment was definitely the biggest snoozer for me. Wasn't required reading but on the list of titles that you had to choose from to read. Big mistake on my part lol.

And it's not even that the overall story and stuff is bad it just fucking draaaaags
 
vonFiedler said:
I read Grapes of Wrath in high school and thought it sucked. I read it ten years later and it was pretty good (though not as good as Of Mice and Men or East of Eden).
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In high school Grapes of Wrath was the only book that I just couldn't finish and used Sparknotes for. Soooo dry. Glad to hear you liked it better when you were older, maybe I'll give it a shot again someday.
 
I also lowkey like catcher in the rye

A tale of two cities in 9th grade fucking hurt to read. Like goddamn
 
Non-ironically the biggest problem with all these books is English as a subject. And the problem with English as a subject is the way it's taught and examined. You aren't actually examined on your understanding of the book, you're tested on your ability to pick quotes out of a book to suit an argument that is pre-set for you, and write out an explanation of why that quote is appropriate in a formulaic manner.

The teachers then are told to teach you to pass the exam, rather than actually trying to make you engage with the book and think about it independently. The result is a boring as hell subject even for the most devoted book-reader like me. (Heck, I even attended Creative Writing Club, and I still hated English).

I learnt more about Of Mice And Men from 2 hours of discussion with my dad than I did from my teacher in 3 double lessons a week for 2 years. If anyone here who did Of Mice And Men can actually tell me what it is about and the actual message behind it, they win 20 likes. Bonus 10 likes if it's an equally valid and thorough interpretation that's different to mine. (Hint, it has nothing to do with the Fing colour of her Fing boots or racism, whatever your English teacher would try and make you believe.)
 
Esio Trot, a book about one creep boomer which steals a lady's tortoise pet and swaps it with bigger tortoises to manipulate her that he's making him bigger, then fell in love and marry him. Oh and the tortoises are given away once the deed is done, including the original pet.
 
There was this one in my Spanish class that we called El Toro but it had an actual title that nobody knew about. We had to read 20 parts of it and translate it in a week and do a test. It had the worst plot ever, like I would rather watch a Hallmark Christmas movie. There were these 4 random characters going around Spain and finding fake money and notes about "el toro" (the bull) and it ended up being the biggest let down after seeing El Toro was a hotel clerk that had 2 lines.
 
The worst book I've ever had to "read" in school was probably Fahrenheit 451. I put read in quotes because I say I've read it but what I really did was just look up a chapter summary for each chapter.
 
Ironmage said:
The grade 10 main book in English class was Lord of the Flies. One of the points has a character's glasses being used to focus light to start a fire. Said character was confirmed as nearsighted, meaning their glasses could not do that. By sheer coincidence, grade 10 was when optics were notably covered in the general Science course. It was the one time I could point out how the entire plot fails because of some minor physics knowledge, and have a room full of people go "now that you mention that, you're right."
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I was gonna mention Lord of the Flies, but it's because I actually think it's a shite book.

Edit: I think LotF may be the only bad book I've had to read for English classes. Shakespeare tends to be pretty good, War of the Worlds was okay ig, Jekyll & Hyde was p. good.

There was a dumb book I had to read which was about Midsummer Night's Dream but not actually Midsummer Night's Dream. Some kid playing Puck is teleported to the 1590's. That was shite. Can't remember the name of it.
 
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