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

[NEVERENOUGHWDW]

In college "The Handmaid's Tale" gave me nightmares!

 

[NeverlandClub23]

I loved Hatchet and Island of Blue Dolphins in middle school (read Where the Red Fern Grows on my own and cried like a baby ) and would ready every short story literature book we got from beginning to end before we even got to any of the stories they picked for us to read (I always hated that we got these huge short story collection books and would only end up reading 3-4 of the stories out of it because we had to analyze each one to death). My favorite short story is the Scarlet Ibis.

I hated Great Expectations, The Scarlet Letter, and probably many others that I tried to burn from my memory.

 

[NotUrsula]

High School?

Camus' L'Étranger and Ellison's Invisible Man.

Also, ANY of the 19th century Russians.

Luckily I CLEP'd out of 90% of the English requirements for college, so I only took a couple of English classes, and I dodged novels in both of them. I always found that literary analysis in the classroom was an exercise in butt-kissing -- the trick was to parrot the instructor's opinion.

 

[Diznygrl]

For me, the in-class analyzation process actually helped to enhance my enjoyment and appreciation of a book. It was finding the time to do the reading assignments piled on top of all the work for other classes that was annoying, and writing papers sucked too.

But as far as the actual books are concerned, I guess there were very few that I didn't like. Animal Farm was one. I wish we could have read 1984 instead, which is actually one of my favorite books. I also disliked Merchant of Venice, didn't even bother with A Separate Peace, and Great Expectations was a bit hard to slog through. So that's only 4 of about God knows how many books I had to read during my high school career.