What books did you read in school that you like/hate?

[catycatcat4]

What books did you have to read for school that you liked and what books (or plays) did you hate?

I enjoyed all quite on the western front, Fahrenheit 451 and antigone
I disliked gifted hands,romeo and juliet and flipped.

 

[TheDisneyGirl02]

I enjoyed, "Night", "Hiroshima", and the "The Glass Managerie".

I really disliked other books, but I can't remember for the life of me what they are right now! LOL!

 

[Sparx]

I didn't have a lot of books that were required reading. Most of my required reading consisted of short stories and poems. I think because the teacher can cover a variety of authors and styles in the same time it would take them to cover one novel.

I did have to read Huck Finn in the 12th grade. I was definitely not a fan.

 

[Eeyores Butterfly]

I loved Fahrenheit 451, The Giver (read that long before it was ever assigned), of Mice and Men (even though I always cry), Once and Future King, and Animal Farm.

I hated Great Expectations, there is a reason that people believe Dickens was paid by the word. (He wasn't). I was also not a big fan of Catch 22.

 

[CourtasanSatine]

I fell asleep during Lord of the Flies (this was also at the height of allergy season).

 

[2cats1kid]

Worst book I ever had to read at school was The Warden by Anthony Trollope. Dull, dull, dull. Not keen on Animal Farm either. Enjoyed Villette by whichever Bronte it was, though, and loved doing Shakespeare (partly because I was about the only kid in class who understood it, so I looked seriously smart!). My school were heavy on classics, can you tell?

 

[LuvCuteBoys]

I hated almost every book that was required reading in school and it's because we had to analyze the life out of it. That does not instill a lifelong love of reading!

Books I really enjoyed in spite of this were:
The Scarlet Letter
Fahrenheit 451
The Crucible

Hated every single book by John Steinbeck and off the top of my head, I would say that the thing I hated the absolute most was Silas Marner. UGH.

I was okay with Shakespeare, and Lord of Flies would have been okay except that we probably spent three days discussing the significance of Sam and Eric being referred to as one person. BLAH.

My favorite stuff was reading Greek mythology.

 

[Hollywoodhaha]

I HATED Ethan Frome. I think it was because my teacher had a crush on Ethan ... I really did not like Lord of the Flies. Maybe it was because my teacher gave us 100 words to define per chapter. We had to search the chapter, find the word, copy the entire sentence it was in, look up the definition.

I loved Of Mice And Men, Romeo & Juliet, The Great Gatsby, and a few others..

 

[Nolcrest]

My surprise favorite was The Good Earth. Also liked Of Mice & Men, Animal Farm, Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, Diary of Anne Frank. Pretty much liked them all.

Obviously aging myself here. Still love to read today.

 

[chicagodisneyfan]

Likes: Jane Austen, Hemingway, Catcher in the Rye

Hated the Canterbury Tales - felt like I never could grasp what he was trying to say.

Ethan Frome - Mill of the Floss - not a big favorite

 

[Rora]

Liked: Great Gatsby, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Awakening.

Disliked: Of Mice and Men, The Good Earth.

I generally liked or was indifferent to most books I read in school but I'm really passionate about liking/disliking these!

 

[Melmac]

I really liked "The Girl Who Owned a City" - we read that in grade school but I remember it well. I also enjoyed "The Great Gatsby" and "Slaughter House 5". "Animal Farm" was interesting. "Lord of the Flies" was tolerable but I was pretty sick of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" after reading it 3 times.

I did not enjoy "The Old Man and the Sea" and most Shakespeare plays. I think it was the intense dissection of these books that took the enjoyment out of reading them.

 

[LuvCuteBoys]

I think it was the intense dissection of these books that took the enjoyment out of reading them.

Yeah, I mentioned that too. And it's too bad, because when I was younger I used to LOVE to read. I would devour books and then once I hit high school, they sucked all the joy out of it for me. I never regained that love of reading. When I do read now, it's fluff books (Shopaholic series, Star Wars novels, etc), autobiographies of people I like, or Disney stuff. I don't think I'll ever enjoy reading "literature" and I blame high school for that.

I picked up a copy of Catcher in the Rye right after Salinger died, and it's still sitting, unopened, on my bookshelf.

 

[Kitty 34]

I disliked In Cold Blood.

 

[rabyoga]

I didn't have to read Farenheit 451 in high school (my hubby introduced to it). My favorite book of all time.

My favorite reads in high school:
MacBeth, Othello (I also had to read Romeo and Juliet and Julius Casear- hate them both)
Huck Finn- I was suprised how progressive Mark Twain was.
The Great Gatsby
The Lottery- I liked the twist ending.

The reads I hated:
Animal Farm
The Scarlet Letter ( I didn't have trouble with Shakespeare but I actually had to get Cliff notes to make sense of this book. Funny story- one day I conviced all the girls in my honors English to wear A's on their chest. My teacher wasn't amused.)

I was a big Stephen King reader during high school. It was rare that you didn't find me with a King book in my possession-often instead of what I should've been reading for English.

 

[mom2rb]

I hated " The Call of the Wild ".

 

[aduck126]

LOVED all the Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, Dickens, Mark Twain, Lolita, Sister Carrie, The Sound and the Fury, Alice Walker (her fiction and her criticism), Toni Morrison, Tolstoy just to name a few,

HATED: Beowulf, Gertrude Stein, most Hemingway, most Virginia Wolf

 

[WeLoveLilo05]

Liked: Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Streetcar Named Desire, Great Gatsby, Death of a Salesman, Of Mice and Men....my all time FAVORITE is Where the Red Fern Grows, LOVE that book.

Disliked: House of Diers Drear (don't even know I spelled it correctly, it was just awful, this was in 5th grade), Dicey's Song, and I know that it is historical but it was just too sad- Diary of Anne Frank, I was depressed after reading that book. And in HS I was not into Shakespeare and in 8th grade I remember reading Black Boy and having to reenact a scene, that book was pretty depressing too. And the one that has "Water, Water everywhere, but not a drop to drink." Ugh, what book is that from? I can't even remember the name of the stinkin book, just the quote lol.

 

[Lintasare]

I really liked The Great Gatsby. Very few in my entire class liked it. I also liked MacBeth, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet and A Mid'Summer Nights Dream.

I disliked Native Son, Siddartha and Jane Eyre.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

For high school:

Most hated novel: The Scarlet Letter
Most favorite: As I Lay Dying

Both were during junior year in a challening English class. To be fair---I really didn't like any mandated reading. It led me to not enjoy any reading at all. Especially for classes with pop quizzes that were designed to make sure you read but were always so specific that short of studying a 20 minute reading assingment for 3 hours--these quizzes were nothing but anxiety for me.

The Scarlet Letter---I felt like I was running hurdles. I kept tripping over the language. In discussions, I was amazed at what people got out of the reading. Since our paper could be based on any presented discussion---I took copious notes of all the presentations and wrote based on the translations those fine students provided. I think I squeeked out with a B on that paper.

As I Lay Dying was our final novel of the year. I have no idea if it was great. But I started the year with a paper that got a C. Either Great Gatsby or Death of a Salesman. I don't recall. With each novel and paper, I'd get a little bit better. My first semester was a C. My second semester I ws finally well into the B grades. But I wanted an A for once. As I Lay Dying was my summit. The teacher warned us about the 15 different POVs, so I was keenyly on my toes so I wouldn't trip. And finally, I understood a novel well enough and wrote a paper well enough to earn a solid A on an assingment.

For that reason, that book is my favorite from high school. It made me feel smart in this quite challenging magnet high school.

The following year, I was in my 3rd high school. It was senior year and they told me about dual enrollment English. It ws English Composition 101 and 102 and I jumped at the chance to avoid Literature and its painful analysis.