Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Magic Hate Ball
May 6, 2007

ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this
Was there one book that stood out? Maybe everyone else hated it and you loved it, or vice versa? How many of us were forced to read some crusty old tome with obvious gay undertones that the teacher refused to address? Tell me about your school reading experiences.

I loved Catcher in the Rye. It was vivid, funny, and sad in a way that felt really fresh, and almost ten years later I still see most of the book in my head. I didn't even mind that we read it twice in two years.

On the other hand, everyone hated A Separate Peace. Nothing could have been further from us in dusty, poor central California - mincing rich kids prancing around in the snow for a couple hundred pages, punctuated a weird, surreal part about PTSD. None of us understood it, and the butt-slapping gayness distracted everyone constantly. Almost every session our teacher would get red explaining that that's just how boys were back then and that it was in line with classical depictions of male friendship, but everyone would giggle about it anyways.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

504
Feb 2, 2016

by R. Guyovich
The book of the movie "A nightmare on Elm Street"

Hobologist
May 4, 2007

We'll have one entire section labelled "for degenerates"
Reading A Farewell to Arms was like pulling teeth. Hemingway writes like a piece of wood. But I liked 1984; Orwell is the most readable of all modern-era writers, fictional or nonfictional, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise.

Tar_Squid
Feb 13, 2012
I read 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' in school (well, college but still technically school). I enjoyed it so much it was one of the few books I didn't sell back to the school bookstore after the end of semester. If technically isn't enough, in high school we read Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain is a great writer, and its annoying to me that some morons are around wanting to censor or ban the book just because of the N-word thing. Its a big part of that entire story! Ugh.

The worst by a long country mile was 'Madame Beauregard', which was like a trip to a dentist who only has the one flavor of that tooth cleaning stuff that you hate. Its a painfully long, depressing slog of a book. Did not help we were reading it after several other better but also depressing novels ( can't recall them all but two were 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' and 'The House of Spirits: A Novel ). That was one book I do not regret just looking up the cliff notes for.

Cobra Commander
Jan 18, 2011



East of Eden is the best book, except for the lovely religious scene, and I'll fight anyone, Not because their opinion differs, but because I will fight anyone. That book for whatever reason resonates well with me, and I want to reread it over and over. The worst book I think I ever had to read for school was The Great Gatsby. gently caress off Gatsby and gently caress off Eyes of God billboard, gently caress you.

thrakkorzog
Nov 16, 2007

Cobra Commander posted:

East of Eden is the best book, except for the lovely religious scene, and I'll fight anyone, Not because their opinion differs, but because I will fight anyone. That book for whatever reason resonates well with me, and I want to reread it over and over. The worst book I think I ever had to read for school was The Great Gatsby. gently caress off Gatsby and gently caress off Eyes of God billboard, gently caress you.

A Farewell to Arms. So Ernest Hemingway and nurse drink a lot and have sex during world wars. They're not exactly relatable people to 17 year olds.

If you want better anti-war books, All Quiet on the Western Front was freshman reading material. That got across the whole War is Hell angle. If you want more stories. I would suggest Slaughterhouse 5 or Catch-22, they would be better reads for the more modernist folks.

And the Great Gatsby sucked balls back when I was in high school. I had nothing in common with 1920's gangster excess. My grandparents were picking cotton while they were partying. Who the gently caress thinks I should sympathize with any of those rich assholes?

Now the Grapes of Wrath, that's a good read. OK, It's a bit maudlin at the end.

thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Nov 21, 2016

TED BUNNDY
May 30, 2009

SO HUNGRY
Pork Pro
My high school had a really nice literary program so I got to read a lot of great books, but I think my favorite was "Shogun." Something about the way you see everything tie together in the end really stuck with me as a kid.

My least favorite book was that godawful "The Old Man and the Sea." Yeah you gross old bastard it's wet out and your hands are mushy shut the hell up. The worst part was the teacher played an audio book of it while we would read it and the guy narrating had this deep, drawling voice that put me to sleep every single time. When the teacher pulled me aside about it I just said "hey I'm way ahead of the audio and if you turn that tape off I guarantee I'll stay awake, that is the entire issue here" so after that she just let me sleep. :3:

Skoll
Jul 26, 2013

Oh You'll Love My Toxic Love
Grimey Drawer
My favorite book was probably Ender's Game, that story has stayed with me for almost two decades since I first read it in 5th grade. I felt Ender was relatable because of his distance to everyone and his preference to just be alone.


My least favorite was Harry Potter. To this day I still don't understand how that garbage got so popular.

Trumps Baby Hands
Mar 27, 2016

Silent white light filled the world. And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.
If we're talking assigned reading, then hands down it was Holes by Louis Sachar. That book is incredibly plotted. Not a wasted page, and all its disparate elements converge perfectly at the finish line.

Only book I remember not liking was Island of the Blue Dolphins, but I'm sure I'd dig it if I revisited it now.

Also reading Hamlet in high school was a treat, especially when we followed it up with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I had an amazing AP lit teacher.


People ITT dissing Hemingway is an excellent throwback to how frustrating language arts could be in all of public school. Morons complaining that there was no deeper imagery inside Gatsby, getting actively angry at having to do critical analysis. "It's just a billboard! They're just books on a shelf! It's just a green light!" I blame video games and parents who didn't encourage pleasure reading at home.

GenericGirlName
Apr 10, 2012

Why did you post that?
My favorite high school assigned reading was Ordinary People. I also recall using sparknotes for A Tale Of Two Cities and then digging in the book for quotes and accidentally getting interested in the middle of the book, which wasn't as dry as the beginning. So I wound up reading it Middle -> End -> Beginning all in one weekend.

My most hated high school book. It was the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I remember for some reason getting really stuck on "the end of the book entirely nullifies everything they did in the whole book oh my god!!!!!". Teen-me understood that the ~adventures~ of this kid was the whole point of the book but lovely teen me also couldn't get around the fact that I hated the main character and also hated that reading this book aloud in class was a constant embarrassment of white teens dealing with saying the n word in a variety of poor ways.


Trumps Baby Hands posted:

Morons complaining that there was no deeper imagery inside Gatsby, getting actively angry at having to do critical analysis. "It's just a billboard! They're just books on a shelf! It's just a green light!" I blame video games and parents who didn't encourage pleasure reading at home.

I read Gatsby 3-4 times in prep for an essay that I was actually incredibly interested in writing because The Green Light. After turning in those essays the majority of the class complained when we were 'reflecting on the book' that it was extremely boring and all the imagery (they read about on spark notes) felt made up and totally irrelevant to the book, surely the author wouldn't want us to read all this into a book! Its just a book! This was a creative writing class. Why are you in this class if you think books are just boring terrible things you're forced to read and should never attempt to analyze? (Because my school encouraged taking anything and everything because IT LOOKS GOOD FOR COLLEGE!)

EDIT:

Magic Hate Ball posted:

How many of us were forced to read some crusty old tome with obvious gay undertones that the teacher refused to address?

Had an english teacher who was adamant that we not bring up anything :siren:gay:siren: when reading/writing/talking about the picture of dorian gray :v:

GenericGirlName fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Nov 21, 2016

Blurred
Aug 26, 2004

WELL I WONNER WHAT IT'S LIIIIIKE TO BE A GOOD POSTER
Reading Great Expectations was a pretty miserable experience. Whoever it was in the Australian education who decided that it would be an interesting, relatable book for 14 year-olds needs a slap in the face.

Earwicker
Jan 6, 2003

in grade school I don't remember particularly liking any of the books I had to read for school, but I do remember hating the really depressing poo poo like Bridge to Terebithia and Where the Red Fern Grows

in high school my favorite books I read for class were One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Postcards (an early E. Annie Proulx novel). my least favorite was The Scarlet Letter


thrakkorzog posted:

A Farewell to Arms. So Ernest Hemingway and nurse drink a lot and have sex during world wars. They're not exactly relatable people to 17 year olds.

:ssh: 17 years olds drink a lot and have sex.

also Hemingway was like 18 years old himself when he left for the war and his character in the book is probably the same age?

Hobologist
May 4, 2007

We'll have one entire section labelled "for degenerates"

Earwicker posted:

:ssh: 17 years olds drink a lot and have sex.

I don't know where you went to school, but I went to a private school that was half Mormon and half overachieving Asian-Americans. More than half the class just completely missed that Blanche's husband in Streetcar Named Desire was gay. But it was more fun in college. Huck and Jim? Gay. Ishmael and Queequeg? Obviously gay. Antonio from The Merchant of Venice? Possibly gay...

Earwicker
Jan 6, 2003

Hobologist posted:

More than half the class just completely missed that Blanche's husband in Streetcar Named Desire was gay.

I'd bet there were plenty who caught it but didn't want to say so out loud.

grumpy
Aug 30, 2004

Grade school: Me and Caleb, The White Mountains. Always looked forward to the 20-30 mins the teacher would read these to us.

High School: Hated, hated Billy Budd, Sailor. Pretty sure I never even finished it and haven't tried Melville since.

Rent-A-Cop
Oct 15, 2004

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

gently caress To Kill a Mockingbird.

West With the Night is fantastic.

Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Nov 22, 2016

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

Animal Farm is the only school book that ever caught my interest, so much that I read it a few times later in life. It's short and to the point.

BattyKiara
Mar 17, 2009
I hated Moby Dick with a passion. One million derails to highlight stupid ship details. I do not care what that specific piece of wood is called, OK? Get on with the plot already will you? How long is this stupid thing? HATED it.

In advanced English we spent a term reading nothing but plays. Which would have been fun, if the teacher had not constantly given us her interpretations about everything. And some of her analysis were stupid to say the least. Gregers Werle is NOT the hero of The Wild Duck by Ibsen, you idiot! The Taming of the Shrew is not an analogy about witchcraft! Stupid teachers can ruin otherwise great reads.

Namarrgon
Dec 23, 2008

Congratulations on not getting fit in 2011!
I did not particularly like or dislike Lord of the Flies while reading, but in retrospect it is likely my favourite of the "high school curriculum" collection.

My least liked was... some book I don't remember the title of. I never got further than the first maybe two chapters but that was okay because the answer to every. single. question. about motivation and symbolism was "pain and suffering". Of the books I remembered I thought The Great Gatsby was a bit too full of itself, but again now that I am older I appreciate it more.

Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


My least favorite was either Bless Me, Ultima or My Antonia. Also, every single play we read in school. Whether or not the plays were any good, they were all mangled by the 'everybody is assigned a part' in class readings that gave important parts to people who could barely loving read so that loving Mercutio had to sound out his lines like a kindergartner.

My favorite was probably Frankenstein or maybe Of Mice and Men.

Zogo
Jul 29, 2003

My favorite YA novel read in school was The Outsiders. Rich and poor people constantly fighting and calling each other names was appealing and memorable.

Magic Hate Ball posted:

Was there one book that stood out?

The Pigman stands out as the most perplexing book we read. I'm sure I'd get more out of it now but back then the basic plot struck me as odd for kids.

The basic plot: Two teenagers keep lying and scamming a sad/old widower who collects pig statues. Then he has a heart attack and they throw a party and completely trash his house while he's in the hospital. Then he returns and realizes his favorite chimpanzee at the zoo has died (IIRC) and then he has another heart attack and dies.

Most class discussion involved kids laughing at what things the two kids would do next to this old guy. The class was probably too young. The same could be said for assigning really young kids The Giver.

silvergoose
Mar 18, 2006

IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS




Worst was The Education of Little Tree. Really bad "let's teach a native american boy to live with white people" life lesson book? Or something? Really awful.

fantastic in plastic
Jun 15, 2007

The Socialist Workers Party's newspaper proved to be a tough sell to downtown businessmen.
My favorite book that I encountered in English class was a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne called Young Goodman Brown. I was world-weary even as a teenager and found that I could relate to a guy who sees the rot and hypocrisy in his community and doesn't cope well with it.

I can't think of a school book that stands out as my least favorite, but I do recall that I pretended to like The Fall of the House of Usher because I was trying to date a goth girl.

Zogo
Jul 29, 2003

fantastic in plastic posted:

My favorite book that I encountered in English class was a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne called Young Goodman Brown. I was world-weary even as a teenager and found that I could relate to a guy who sees the rot and hypocrisy in his community and doesn't cope well with it.

Yea, that's a good one that I remember too.


"Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion of your race! Ye have found, thus young, your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!"

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted
I really liked The Giver when I read it the first time in middle school. And then I got to college and started not liking it very much. And now, I would have a serious discussion with my kid if/when they read it.

I love and loved The Sun Also Rises in high school because it was the first story I read where things didn't really pan out for anybody. We read it right before reading Their Eyes Were Watching God which was also an incredible thing to read as young white boy in an all white community.

RC and Moon Pie
May 5, 2011

TED BUNNDY posted:

My least favorite book was that godawful "The Old Man and the Sea." Yeah you gross old bastard it's wet out and your hands are mushy shut the hell up. The worst part was the teacher played an audio book of it while we would read it and the guy narrating had this deep, drawling voice that put me to sleep every single time. When the teacher pulled me aside about it I just said "hey I'm way ahead of the audio and if you turn that tape off I guarantee I'll stay awake, that is the entire issue here" so after that she just let me sleep. :3:

The word whore was on page 38 (or 35). That's what got my 9th grade class through it.

The worst, by far, was The Hound of the Baskervilles. It was a slog to get through and it most certainly did not help that it was the first assigned book we had that year. There was also a book called Run whose author I can't remember, which was set at a vacation home in New England. All of us sped through it because of its one drunken and near sex scene, but figuring out the meaning of Run was impossible and all us got terrible grades on the test. I figured out the author at one time, but have no idea who it is now. Run was set in the 1970s.

Summer of the Monkeys was assigned in middle school. It was terrible. So was Across Five Aprils, which was historical fiction and failed on both levels.

I actually loved A Separate Peace. I was also one of those weirdos who dug Wuthering Heights, which probably had everything to do with the teacher.

Quite possibly my favorite, though, was Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca. The English teacher told us to read the first chapter last, which I believe helped immensely.

Cowslips Warren
Oct 29, 2005

What use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price?

Grimey Drawer
In grade school, The Giver was good. I remember in fourth grade we were read Where The Red Fern Grows, and Summer of the Monkeys. As in the teacher read it to us. When we had a sub, she didn't want to, so one of the kids volunteered. And loving hell she was amazing at reading those dull books. When the teacher came back, we insisted the girl keep reading it. To this loving day I can't remember a drat thing about the fourth grade other than sitting and listening to Kerrianne Morgan read because she just had this voice that didn't put you to sleep and wasn't whining. She was made to give speeches. And the boring books actually were good then.

I loving hated Brighty of the Grand Canyon. Grade school, some dumb poo poo about a donkey. At the Grand Canyon. It was a huge deal for us to read, being we live in AZ, of course. I never wanted an animal dead so much as that goddamn donkey, even as a kid.

In high school, Pride and Prejudice was a loving drag. We watched Wuthering Heights and Sense and Sensibility. 1984 was a good read.

We did read a LOT of Flannery O'Connor. I really enjoyed it, to the point I bought her collection years later and still love reading it and trying to dissect the meanings of everything. I really wish we could have read "The Lame Shall Enter First" for all the idiot religious kids in the class who had the Holy Attitude pat.

Never had The Great Gatsby. Instead we had Things Fall Apart, which was about a African man who watched as his world, ahem, fell apart due to the white man. But it was so hard to read and understand, things just randomly seemed to happen. OH NO his favorite daughter is sick! Now she is being.....carried by some witch and run into the wilderness and brought back? Okay? Something about missionaries and lots of poo poo about not being lazy. The teacher didn't really care about no one in the class liking the book, might have made a difference.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug
The only books I read in school and enjoyed were sciency things that I read for book reports or whatever. These were days when the teacher would say "find a book about stars or something in space, like whatever" and most kids picked easy poo poo. I saw it as an excuse to read all about black holes and all the neat things out in space.

The specifically signed books were pretty universally terrible. Most of them were bad. The Poe stuff we read was good, as was the Shakespeare but boy howdy was there a lot of garbage. The absolute worst were Great Expectations and Johnny Tremain partly on account of the fact that we probably spent 10 weeks on each of them. Ten god damned weeks analyzing the hell out of and writing interpretations of every single chapter of some of the most dull things I've ever read.

I read the crap out of a whole pile of other stuff in school and all told found myself wondering why school seemed to always pick the worst things.

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted
I had forgotten about Johnny Tremaine. Who is the kid that gets jazzed up about American history because of Johnny motherfucking Tremaine?

shame on an IGA
Apr 8, 2005

The most relatable thing about Hemingway to a teenager is that he bought his shotgun from Abercrombie & Fitch

JnnyThndrs
May 29, 2001

HERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWELS

Trumps Baby Hands posted:

I blame video games and parents who didn't encourage pleasure reading at home.

Yeah, and you'd be wrong too. I had to suffer through Gatsby twice(changed schools) and it was pretty much universally reviled even though I was in honors English lit and we enjoyed some fairly complex books. Oh yeah, this was 1981 - '83, when video games weren't really a cultural influence.

That wasn't the worst book though, I loathed Wuthering Heights more. East of Eden was very good - really, I liked pretty much all Steinbeck.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
Oddly, my least favourite was "The Outsiders" which was poo poo, and my favourite was "The Outsider" (a.k.a. The Stranger) which was good.

I will never, until my dying day, figure out what the loving point of The Outsiders was. I may never understand The Outsider fully either, but at least it's interesting to think about.

Killingyouguy!
Sep 8, 2014

We did some reading in elementary school, and the best by far was The Giver. It was basically 1984 For Tots, but in Grade 6 how were we to know? At that age, that poo poo was deep. I remember crying when they euthanized the baby because... Twins aren't allowed? Or something??.

It wasnt assigned on the curriculum, but over the course of grades 4 and 5 I read everything Kenneth Oppel had written, and as an adult I will admit to occasionally revisiting them. Firewing kicked a lot of rear end.

Worst of elementary school was definitely Stuart Little. We were too old for that poo poo in Grade 4. Did that book even have a plot?

During high school, I thought Catcher in the Rye was kind of annoying but I liked reading it because I could tick off one more thing in my 'learn about everything mentioned in We Didn't Start the Fire' list. What was actually good, on the other hand, was Fahrenheit 451. I powered through that book in 2 nights and hated having to wait for the rest of my class to catch up.

Worst books from high school were Lord of the Flies and Night. Lord of the Flies ended with, what I felt, was the biggest loving Deus ex Machina possible. The boat shows up and everything just ends?? gently caress that, I wanted more bloodshed!! I also hated how everyone treated the book as the gospel truth about human nature, instead of just a parody of an existing work.

I felt bad for being extremely bored by Night while everyone else was crying over it, but I think that made me resent it more. The writing just didn't affect me and that made me seem heartless within my class.

I have the impression that most American high school students read The Grapes of Wrath? I ended up reading that on my own time after high school and it's now my favourite book. Good job doing something right, America!

Edit: +1 on The Outsiders being great

Killingyouguy! fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Nov 24, 2016

Tony Montana
Aug 6, 2005

by FactsAreUseless

Blurred posted:

Reading Great Expectations was a pretty miserable experience. Whoever it was in the Australian education who decided that it would be an interesting, relatable book for 14 year-olds needs a slap in the face.

Yeah I don't get this. I get there would be some bright kids and I'm sure a few get something out of it but surely the vast majority will either totally be oblivious to the quality of it or actually be actively discouraged from deeper reading because they associate it with a particular work that was beyond them at the time and being forced to read it.

I can't think of many 'classics' that any current teenager would read. We've got a problem at the moment that a newspaper is too serious and long and tl;dr.

edit: although I do get necessity to force kids to do things or we'll all end up reading Twilight

Tony Montana fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Nov 25, 2016

GWBBQ
Jan 2, 2005


I keep trying to think of something I hated reading in high school and all I can think of is a few books that one terrible teacher made miserable for me. Maybe I should give Ethan Frome another chance.

In my college freshman year literature class I bought my copy of Joyce's The Dead for class, turned to the first page, and read every word on every page in order. Two hours later, I had read all of the words in the story and I might as well have put the book under my pillow and slept on it.

I genuinely liked most of the books I was assigned in those classes, but those two stand out as notably unpleasant.

RC and Moon Pie
May 5, 2011

GWBBQ posted:

I keep trying to think of something I hated reading in high school and all I can think of is a few books that one terrible teacher made miserable for me. Maybe I should give Ethan Frome another chance.


Ethan Frome is poo poo.

I didn't read it in school, but years later. It's an awful, awful book and that has symbolism for the sake of symbolism. I've read a lot of Wharton and like most of her writings (The House of Mirth is an all-time favorite). Ethan Frome is far and away the worst and that's including The Buccaneers, which she didn't finish.

Now I'm trying to remember what was required reading in school.

9th: Run, Lord of the Flies, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Romeo and Juliet, The Old Man and Sea, A Tale of Two Cities
10th: Animal Farm, A Separate Peace, Great Expectations, Julius Caesar, To Kill a Mockingbird
11th: The Witch of Blackbird Pond and The Red Badge of Courage. Pretty sure that's it, other than having to recite a portion of Thanatopsis.
12th: Rebecca, Hamlet and Wuthering Heights.

mostlygray
Nov 1, 2012

BURY ME AS I LIVED, A FREE MAN ON THE CLUTCH
Favorite assigned reading: Everything Steinbeck. We spent a whole quarter in high-school reading and discussing East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, and The Moon is Down.

Worst assigned reading: When the Legends Die. I know a lot of people like it but I thought it was terrible. I grew up in a community that's over 50% Native American and I don't think the book represents the struggle. Neither did the Ojibwe people in my class. It comes across as pretentious. I know the Ute experience may be different then the Ojibwe experience but I just couldn't stand it.

Miigwetch neej

forkboy84
Jun 13, 2012

Corgis love bread. And Puro


I can't for the life of me remember most things we read in secondary school. Some first world war poetry, some Shakespeare, the only text that really stands out in my mind as something I really enjoyed was Of Mice & Men.

Shakespeare always felt like reading another language which was a massive chore, and being forced to read it at 14 or 15 has since probably lead to me being unable to enjoy Shakespeare, either to read or watch. Even the fact that Macbeth was set near where we were in school didn't change the total lack of appeal it had. We must have read other things but it was a long time ago and I'm totally blanking on them. Some more poetry presumably.

Namarrgon
Dec 23, 2008

Congratulations on not getting fit in 2011!
Yeah school did that for me with poetry; can't enjoy it anymore. It has become impossible for me to just read one and enjoy without automatically thinking of the writer as a massive pretentious twat, which strongly hurts reading pleasure.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

WampaLord
Jan 14, 2010

Favorite assigned school book: Brave New World. Future dystopias/attempted utopias are my jam,

Least favorite? Either The Great Gatsby or Wuthering Heights. Romance plots about rich white people. :jerkbag:

  • Locked thread