Continuing book threads...What was a book that you hated but teachers made you read

[DisKim]

DisKim, why do you have to teach books you don't like? Our curriculum isn't specific as to what literature to teach as long as you can make it fit the standards

You are so lucky. We have core novels that we MUST teach at each level. Then, we have choices for extra reading. My freshman must read Night, Great Expectations, To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet and The Odyssey. I love everything except GE. I'm teaching honors next year and they have to read Jekyll and Hyde. I don't care for it. My seniors do Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World, Macbeth and Hamlet. I hate Brave New World. I've learned to love Orwell, but he is a bear to teach if you do it right. Rock'n Robin - it sounds like we have the same taste. I love teaching Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, etc. I did not like teaching Beowulf in the past, but I found many innovative ways to get the students to connect to it now.

 

[rcyannacci]

Shakespeare is definitely tough in high school...honestly, I only started enjoying reading these plays once I hit my 20's. Of course, they're meant to be seen and not read, but it doesn't help that there are so many bad Shakespeare productions.

Now I teach freshmen and sophomores in college, and I get really frustrated when I'm expected to teach a particular play/book/etc. If I had to teach Great Expectations, I think I'd go batty! I made a decision last year to drop Oedipus Rex from our reading list and substitute a more contemporary play, The Laramie Project. The students loved it, and we had a much better discussion about questions of art, community and citizenship. The only thing they would ever say about Oedipus was "That was his mother? Gross!"

 

[sjh801]

The two books I hated the most were Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The interesting thing is, in college, when I was to read more Conrad and watch movies based on the books, I chose to write a persuasive paper on Conrad. And I got an A in the course! So...take something you dislike and turn it into something you do like and let it work for you.

 

[CourtasanSatine]

Count me among haters of Lord of the Flies,it put my entire Senior English class to sleep(and I used allergy season as a excuse)

 

[Cindy B]

I remember also reading Flowers for Algernon /1984 in 7th grade. I liked both of those books.

I really liked Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, we read that senior year.

I remember yawning my way through Thoreau in 10th grade! It was a huge existenilism unit!

 

[mickeyboat]

katerkat - Grendyl

Denae

 

[Pooh Girl 71]

Jack London's Call of the Wild. It was awful!

 

[solotraveler]

I personally dispised Wuthering Heights!! Oh dear me what a yawnfest. Even when we watched the movie in class after reading it-- still a yawnfest.

The Mayor of Casterbridge was like pulling teeth. In a class discussion regarding this particular classic I actually said "I just don't care anymore. The story makes no sense and I don't feel anything for any of the characters.".... which was met with applause by my fellow students.


The Scarlet Letter on the other hand I really enjoyed, which was a good thing since we spent a LOT of time with it. Animal Farm I didn't mind too much either.

This is a really interesting thread... Keep 'em coming!

Solotraveler

 

[theSurlyMermaid]

Hmm, interesting that some people count Tess among their favorites. Perhaps I should give it a second chance....my primary issue with it was I would read and read it, then take the in-class daily quiz and end up with a 30. It was enraging, because the questions were along the lines of "What was Tess wearing on page 43?" or something similarly obscure. I hated it when teachers would purposely make you MEMORIZE instead of read and broadly understand themes. And this was an honors class!

 

[Microcell]

I am only the second person to say it, and I imagine I will be flamed, but Catcher in the Rye was really a hard one to get through. Hated it. Holden Caulfield, whiny boy. I had plenty sitting around me in class in 10th grade. It was amusing to me to wonder if all the boys in my class were as obsessed about sex as Holden. I am sure they were!

Heart of Darkenss too, but even more when I was forced to watch Apocalypse Now. I suffered through it in College- we had to come to class special to watch it, at night, during fun time! UGH!

In college I took Greek classics to read the Illiad and Oddessy because they were missed in HS and because of the professor it was the single most boring class I ever had, and I took Statistics! He was monotone for a 7:30 AM class and he had us read Ovid FIRST- for those who don't know Ovid wrote many satirical books poking fun at Homer, but if you are like me, and read Illiad and Oddessy AFTER Ovid, it didn't make sense. Loved Homer by the way!

Charles Dickens was paid by the word. I do not believe I need to elaborate! I liked the storyline of Great Expectations though, it was about 450 pages of verbiage too long!

 

[Microcell]

Originally posted by Pooh Girl 71
Jack London's Call of the Wild. It was awful!

I was fascinated by him saying it was so cold that if he spit it would freeze coming out of his mouth! Liked it!

 

[theSurlyMermaid]

I thought Catcher in the Rye was Ok as in "readable", but I didn;t really "get it". I think as a freshman in high school I was too young for some of the themes.

Another one I loved....The Once and Future King.

 

[thelittlemermaid]

Another dislike for Of Mice and Men. Maybe because out of the 4 years of high school had to read it 3 times out of the 4. Luckily the 4th year a new teacher was hired and we were allowed to pick what we wanted to read.

You would think that the teachers that made us read Of Mice and Men would have said something to each other about what book they have their students read. Especially when we had to take a English course every year. Or maybe they just used the same lesson plan. If you knew the teachers that I had, that could be the reason.

Now don't flame me, I am not putting teachers down. My mom was a teacher for 25 years before she had to retire and loved what she did. But out of all of my school years, these three were so lazy and they only taught one subject. My mom taught everything since she was a elementary teacher.

 

[tar heel]

I loved and love reading too much to HATE anything, but I needed a good teacher in college to enjoy Faulkner and I can remember getting bogged down in Dickens and Hawthorne. I think we make a mistake assigning books like Animal Farm to kids too young to understand the symbolism. My son read Things Fall Apart for his summer reading last year. I read it, too, and got a lot more out of it than he did.

It's funny how books I absolutely loved as a teenager are on these lists: The Good Earth, The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, Rebecca. The Diary of Anne Frank was the first inclination I ever had that such a thing as the Holocaust had happened. None of my teachers had ever taught it -- I think it was b/c they spent so much time on colonization and the Civil War that we didn't get to WWII.

I read Tess when I was a high school senior. Only the girls read it. The boys read another Thomas Hardy book -- can't remember which one. It was one of the best literature experiences I had in high school -- perhaps, because most of the really good books I read on my own.

 

[Jockaroo]

Well, I know boring since I have a minor in English and a masters in American History...so I'll just rate the High School experience since I had no choice in this.

Worst was Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. I don't know why it was soooo bad for me. I may have had problems since I was assigned a book report on House of the 7 Gables at the same time (and I hated this one too). It was horrid. I also was not a fan of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Triology. I could not get into that book. It's funny because I love other types of literature like these.

BTW--I loved Rebecca. Even if you hated it, the Hitchcock movie is so skillfully shot it is fantastic.

 

[DisneyVillain]

Herman Melville's "Billy Budd" wasn't nearly as good as "Moby Dick", but I think it comes in second to James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" as my least favorite.

 

[rcyannacci]

Originally posted by DisneyVillain
Herman Melville's "Billy Budd" wasn't nearly as good as "Moby Dick", but I think it comes in second to James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" as my least favorite.

Yea, I might have said Billy Budd, but I would have felt guilty because I never finished reading the whole thing. And, my American lit prof. totally knew- I tried to get by with some vague response, and he called me out. "Actually, no...but nice try." I believe that semester I was more interested in pledging a sorority and mixing drinks that studying.