Classic books that you HATED

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  • Hummmingbird
    Hummmingbird Posts: 337 Member
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    My least favorite thing I have been forced to read? The Crucible. Now THAT was terrible to read. Especially when you were tested on knowing EACH AND EVERY CHARACTER.

    Aww, I LOVED The Crucible!! Of course, I'm also a theatre geek and thoroughly enjoyed reading Abigail's part in class :devil:
    Haha I did my A Level English Lit coursework on Jane Austen novels. The most irritating was Sense And Sensibility. If the characters in that had come to life I'd have given them a slap!


    the book you are referring to is The Awakening :) I enjoyed it, much better than some stuff. I love debating the end of it

    Agreed! I liked Pride and Prejudice in high school, so I thought I'd read some more Jane Austen on my own - I HATED Sense and Sensibility! And I gotta say, didn't much care for Emma either - little brat needs to get a life!

    To comment on others from the thread:
    Liked: To Kill A Mockingbird. Most Shakespeare, but not Romeo and Juliet. (Favorite = A Midsummer Night's Dream)
    Okay: Lord of the Flies. The Yellow Wallpaper (I just love that she went thoroughly insane by the end.)
    Hated: The Great Gatsby and Heart of Darkness. I could never remember just what the hell I was reading about, even right after I read them in high school.

    I also hated one that I can't remember the name or most of the book, but it was a dull boring thing about a Victorian woman who ends up committing suicide by just walking into the ocean at the end....exciting as such a scenario might sound, the author still managed to make it as dull as watching grass grow. :yawn:
    The Awakening...I don't know why but I really liked that book. Our teacher told us when we started it that it was usually the least like book of the year and it turned out to be my favorite!
  • BelleHeart
    BelleHeart Posts: 281 Member
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    Jane Eyre was pretty bad...
  • slkehl
    slkehl Posts: 3,801 Member
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    To Kill A Mockingbird

    Lord of the Flies

    Of Mice and Men

    Brave New World


    They all disgusted me. And I'm an English major :)

    What disgusted you about To Kill a Mocking Bird? I can see with the others, nasty pig head, crushed mice, little kids having sex...didn't like any of those
  • Hummmingbird
    Hummmingbird Posts: 337 Member
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    My least favorite thing I have been forced to read? The Crucible. Now THAT was terrible to read. Especially when you were tested on knowing EACH AND EVERY CHARACTER.

    Aww, I LOVED The Crucible!! Of course, I'm also a theatre geek and thoroughly enjoyed reading Abigail's part in class :devil:
    Haha I did my A Level English Lit coursework on Jane Austen novels. The most irritating was Sense And Sensibility. If the characters in that had come to life I'd have given them a slap!


    the book you are referring to is The Awakening :) I enjoyed it, much better than some stuff. I love debating the end of it

    Agreed! I liked Pride and Prejudice in high school, so I thought I'd read some more Jane Austen on my own - I HATED Sense and Sensibility! And I gotta say, didn't much care for Emma either - little brat needs to get a life!

    To comment on others from the thread:
    Liked: To Kill A Mockingbird. Most Shakespeare, but not Romeo and Juliet. (Favorite = A Midsummer Night's Dream)
    Okay: Lord of the Flies. The Yellow Wallpaper (I just love that she went thoroughly insane by the end.)
    Hated: The Great Gatsby and Heart of Darkness. I could never remember just what the hell I was reading about, even right after I read them in high school.

    I also hated one that I can't remember the name or most of the book, but it was a dull boring thing about a Victorian woman who ends up committing suicide by just walking into the ocean at the end....exciting as such a scenario might sound, the author still managed to make it as dull as watching grass grow. :yawn:
    The Awakening...I don't know why but I really liked that book. Our teacher told us when we started it that it was usually the least like book of the year and it turned out to be my favorite!

    Mine too! I love debating if she killed her self and why lol
  • slkehl
    slkehl Posts: 3,801 Member
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    Jane Eyre was pretty bad...

    It was! In high school we had to read 500 pages of outside reading a semester. When I got to page 500, I was done. There was probably less than 100 pages left, but I wasn't going to put myself through any more torture.
  • Beastette
    Beastette Posts: 1,497 Member
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    The Sirens of Titan. Firstly, because the ending sucked donkey *kitten*. Secondly, because my English teacher wanted us to be impressed that she made a sci-fi book required reading. She underestimated our tastes. An awesome book would have impressed us even more.
  • Hotanuri
    Hotanuri Posts: 53
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    I'm an avid reader, but I hated a lot of the books I was compelled to read in school.

    The two that stand out most are I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Scarlet Letter

    I teach both of them....and The Scarlet Letter is AMAZING - Anything Hawthorne I'm a fan of!! I'm a big Hawthorne fan.
    Also Arthur Miller - his plays are phenomenal!! I loved 'Death of a Salesman' and 'The Crucible'.
    I'm a huge fan of reading plays - 'A Doll's House' by, Henrik Ibsen oh!! And how can I forget 'The Glass Menagerie' by Tennessee Williams!

    Ok, I'm an English teacher - I love to read....Just some of my favorites.......

    All-time favorite short story is 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    And anything Edgar Allen Poe ('The Tell-Tale Heart', 'Annabel Lee', 'The Bells', 'Lenore', 'The Raven' )

    And.....Shakespeare. lol I can read him all day long too....

    *kitten*....I sound like such a nerd!!! grrr....lol

    And for what I didn't like to read lol ...um..... 'The Red Badge of Courage' by Stephen Crane........YUCK!!!

    I like so much more....just won't even attempt what I love to read on this thread since it's about what I DON'T like....

    I wrote my college English term paper on The Yellow Wallpaper. Only term paper I enjoyed writing :D
    And I had a English teacher in 8th grade that told us the histories of Poe and Shakespeare, which just made me appreciate their writings so much more.

    I read Pride and Prejudice in the 8th grade, but didn't really understand it. Now after seeing the movie, I think I'll go get it from the library since I'm old enough to understand now :D
  • RoboLikes
    RoboLikes Posts: 519 Member
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    Sophie's Choice. She made the wrong choice.
  • robin68562
    robin68562 Posts: 116 Member
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    I tried to read Pride and Prejudice at least three times and just could not do it. I know it's a classic and it's supposed to be one of the best books ever written, but PLEASE! :explode:
  • kaylurzz
    kaylurzz Posts: 121 Member
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    I enjoyed most of the classics I read in high school. But I couldn't stand "The Grapes Of Wrath" at all. I don't even think I finished it and just guessed on the test.
  • slkehl
    slkehl Posts: 3,801 Member
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    A Tale of Two Cities by Charles ****inson

    The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck



    Both were serious snooze-fests for me! :yawn:

    you HATED grapes of wrath? when did you read it? if it was as a teenager, you may want to read it as an adult. it is seriously amazing.

    All of Steinbeck's stuff is so dreary to me. Very depressing reads.
  • kayemme
    kayemme Posts: 1,782 Member
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    Beowulf. To Kill a Mockingbird. Scarlet Letter. Wuthering Heights.

    Call me a d*ck, but mostly anything that was assigned in high school is going to suck.

    I think that it might be more that at modern high-school age, kids aren't mentally able to grasp the deeper levels of these kinds of books. i'm not hashing on kids today or anything, i didn't like many of these books when i was younger either. it wasn't until i was older and had gained some relative experience where i could relate to either the characters or the story itself.
  • PhoenixRising7
    PhoenixRising7 Posts: 194 Member
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    I used to teach literature, and I love most of the classics. However, I absolutely hated Ivanhoe and The Last of the Mohicans.
  • angusmike
    angusmike Posts: 97
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    "Catcher in the Rye" -- complete trivial bull$hit. :frown:
  • Stpjudge
    Stpjudge Posts: 129 Member
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    The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

    I was tortured with that book in my 10th grade English class. It was SUPER boring!
  • wisters
    wisters Posts: 84 Member
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    I LOVE to read and will read just about anything and everything, but the one book I absolutely could not get through....

    Moby ****, seriously WHY?!?!?!?!
  • NoAdditives
    NoAdditives Posts: 4,251 Member
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    Catcher in the Rye
  • slkehl
    slkehl Posts: 3,801 Member
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    I tried to read Pride and Prejudice at least three times and just could not do it. I know it's a classic and it's supposed to be one of the best books ever written, but PLEASE! :explode:

    I loved it, but I think it's because I watched the BBC TV series first. It follows the book almost word for word and the acting is phenomenal. When I read the book, I was just envisioning the TV series, so it seemed quite entertaining. So witty!
  • pizzapiglet
    pizzapiglet Posts: 1
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    The Stone Angel By Margaret Laurence...I pity all victims of the Canadian education system who had to slug through that with me.
  • wisters
    wisters Posts: 84 Member
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    I tried to read Pride and Prejudice at least three times and just could not do it. I know it's a classic and it's supposed to be one of the best books ever written, but PLEASE! :explode:

    This makes me so very sad as it is my all time favorite book on the planet. I love it. I love it. I love it!!!

    Thank God, for different colors in the rainbow ;-)

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