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Dec 30, 2016 06:36
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 11:06 |
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My least favorite was The Odyssey, probably because we had to read it three fuckin times, once each in middle school, high school, and college. I think my favorite would be either Catch-22, which I picked for a book report in middle school, or the Epic of Gilgamesh that I had to read in college. Both kept me completely hooked.
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Jan 2, 2017 03:24
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So many assigned books that I loved! The Giver, The Cryalids, The Wave, The Outsiders, Flowers for Algernon, Ender's Game, Ferenheit 491, Brave New World, I could go on. Of course, going back to most of these books as an adult made me pretty disappointed to realize how heavy-handed they are. Most hated book, by far was Shane. Jesus Christ, that stump's not going anywhere, just move the gently caress on. The whole class hated it so much that we got the teacher to agree to just move on to another book, ANY book. I pretty much liked any assigned book until 12th grade when I got a teacher that insisted on over-analyzing everything as symbolism. That annoyed me enough, except that all her assignments required you to prove her analysis right, you were never allowed to come up with your own, ever. I even tried once to argue that her analysis was the opposite of wha the autor was saying with tons of quotes and evidence, but she wouldn't have it. Oh, also, she wanted you to find an example of an oxmoron in everything you read. Sounds pretty tough until you understand what she considered to be an oxymoron. Things like "dry oceon" or "dull knife" were oxymorons in her world. It drove me insane and I just couldn't make myself agree with her made-up rules so I lost marks on every assignment. Then, one fateful day, I found "civil war" in my book, so I happily wrote that down to which she promptly marked as "not an oxymoron." I asked her in front of the class how that was not a perfect example and she responded with "because civil war is a real thing." I got my lowest grade ever that year.
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Jan 3, 2017 06:49
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Kazak_Hstan posted:Gary Paulsen's The Hatchet in fourth grade was terrific. That kid was resourceful as hell and don't you even try to gently caress with him, not even if you're a bull moose. A similar thing happened with Supersize Me, which came out while I was in high school. We ended up seeing it 3 times in 2 years and I was pretty tired of it after the first go around.
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Jan 5, 2017 08:23
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Does it count if you hated it in high school but ended up loving it several years later? If so, then I'd have to say The Scarlet Letter. For years I thought it was the worst book I had ever read and I re-visited it because I eventually forgot why I had hated it so much. Upon the second time reading it, I felt very differently and now see why it's considered the masterpiece it is. I still think it's a bad idea to make it required reading for many high schools, though.
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Jan 5, 2017 08:32
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In my entire school career there was only one book I flat refused to read. That book was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The book was handed out and we were given the period to start reading it. I read about the first ten pages, skipped to the middle and then the end to see if maybe I had misjudged this author, found out that nope, this whole loving book is going to be like this, and took it back to the teacher at the end of the class. She asked what I was doing and I just said, "I'm not reading that. I'll happily fail the test on it. I only have so much life, and there are so many good books worth reading that I flat-out rebel and refuse to read this one for so much as one more second." She was aghast that I could not recognize the genius of Austen's God-loving-awful everything and told me it would grow on me as I got older. She was wrong about that. A year or so later I saw a quote from Mark Twain (a good writer) who said something like, "There is no library that cannot be improved by removing the works of Jane Austen, even if the library consists only of the works of Jane Austen," and yeah, that's about my take on that. The standout good books I read in school were Slaughterhouse Five, Catch-22, and Farenheit 451. I go back and reread all of those every year or two because they're great.
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Jan 7, 2017 03:04
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 11:06 |
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My favourite assigned reading was Lord of the Flies, Cannery Row and My Family and Other Animals. Absolutely hated Great Expectations (like most of his novels, serialised and paid for by the word) and Far From the Madding Crowd. By and large anything written before 1900 is off my reading list (Though there are some writers that are OK). Macbeth and Twelfth Night was the assigned Shakespeare for English - I enjoyed Macbeth and found the 'misunderstandings' and cross-dressing of Twelfth Night tedious.
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Jan 8, 2017 14:26
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