Worst book you had to read in school

[Sultan]

The Old Man in the Sea is pretty bad, it's like someone tried to stretch one paragraph worth of content into 200 pages.

 

[LordThemberchaud]

the bible

 

[The Mind Electric]

I've been fortunate enough to avoid reading anything that I truly dislike in English classes, and I didn't have to read this particular book, but I had to do a project on a random AP novel of my choosing and I chose The Centaur by John Updike at random. I liked the book overall, but I struggled to get through it at points because there's just so much damn description and so little actually happening. There are paragraphs dedicated to describing details like the way snow falls under a street lamp. Characters walking down the street in silence will have pages dedicated to describing every detail. The pace of the book is like pulling teeth at times because the simplest actions have beefy descriptions, and while the imagery is vivid I eventually stopped caring and just wanted something to happen. You could cut all the unnecessary description from that book and it would probably be 250 pages shorter.

 

[Dragonbread]

Call of the wild

 

[かたわれ時]

My friends from another school are reading Ulysses and hating it lol

 

[Aura Guardian]

Worst for me was House on Mango Street. Couldn't like the narrator much, the topics didn't interest me, and the format didn't click, either.

 

[The Mind Electric]

Worst for me was House on Mango Street. Couldn't like the narrator much, the topics didn't interest me, and the format didn't click, either.

I had to read this one too, and I remember thinking it was alright. The sentences have a sort of loose quality to them that made it enjoyable to read for me. Not sure if "loose" is the right word, but yeah.

 

[Gekokeso]

I feel like people are talking way too much trash over Shakespeare, those plays were goated due to how straightforward they were.

The real trash are non-shakesperean plays, these are absolute snoozers. The ones I remember hating the most was this one of naughts and crosses or that one called raisin in the sun

 

[Mr.E]

the scarlet letter but the catcher in the rye was also pretty awful

catcher in the rye I really disliked until my teacher went over the symbolism. Scarlet letter was straight up horrible though lol.

I forget what grade in high school but at one point in class we got to choose between reading The Scarlet Letter, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, and a couple other books I forget. The class was to split into discussion groups and basically lecture the rest of the class on our chosen book at the end of the assignment. I chose The Scarlet Letter because it was the shortest. Dear Lord, what a terrible mistake.

Wuthering Heights should never be allowed in the education system. Making anyone read books with old english should be considered terrorism.

The Canterbury Tales owns pretty hard, though.

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

I appreciate it more as I've aged -- I didn't like it back in the day because it was a summer reading assignment for AP English and it's obviously a pretty long book that ate up a lot of my vacation time -- but it's literally like 300 pages of pointless hand-wringing.

 

[SupremeFashion]

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

Wow. I’ve never seen someone misinterpret a piece of text that is so straight forward.

 

[cityscapes]

fahrenheit 451 was goated i dont see how anyone could dislike that book

 

[Snessy!]

how too spel. ist dnidt fjluking wrok