/lit/ - Literature

i liked that book, pretty great chicano lit. didn't have to read it for school.

>>4009820
Man, fuck that book.

Frankenstein also turned into a much bigger slog than I expected it to be.

a diary of a princess living in a castle... i don't remember it's name but it had "best book for reluctant readers" on the front

>tfw

>>4009820

"The Age of Miracles"

Someone please post the title art and the plot analysis (im on my phone). This is, by the way, the book I have to read for college

Shoot me now

>>4012379
I remember literally everyone chose that as their "independent reading book" some time in elementary school after we had all read it the year before. People continued abusing this exploit, claiming to their teachers they had never read it and just rehashing the same essays over and over again. Ah, public education.

>>4012357
>

>>4012320
Hey man Frankenstein's cool, back off.

Kate Chopan - The Awakening

Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andrei Makine

then again I didn't finish it

What the fuck even happened in that fucking nothing?

Nothing, I tell you. Nothing.

>>4012379
Fuck you that's a classic.

>>4012425
BEATEN WIVES AND YAMS

Worst book for school: Billy Bud

The Scarlet Letter. Why the fuck do people still read this?

the fuck am i reading

Romeo and Juliet.

What an over-hyped, meaningless waste of time.

The characters were without depth and the story was overused and stale even at the time of its writing.

I felt nothing for either Romeo or Juliet bar some relief at their death in the hopes that the mind rotting story would be over soon.

The works of Shakespeare have done more to discourage children from literature than the television could have ever dreamed of.

Reservation Blues. Fuck dat book.

>>4014306
We had to study Macbeth in Grade 11. Our teacher was shit at teaching and none of us understood a single thing. I got a B.

>>4014306
oh well holden, but you did pitty mercutio a bit, right?

>read this on grade 7
>on my essay, I call out Uncle Tom/the entire book for being well, an Uncle Tom
>teacher goes with "BUT MU HISTORY"

honestly, whats so historically important about this fucking book?

>>4014326
No.

He was a moron who made the sort of bad puns Rocky and Bullwinkle would be ashamed of. All the problems can be traced back to him and I felt no sorrow at his passing.

Effi Briest...

Fuck this piece of shit book. I don't know how long we talked about this fucking thing. I hated it.
And to make things even better, we even watched the fucking movie too, which sucked too!
God how I hate this book!

>>4014306
I think Shakespeare himself even admitted that R&J was pretty naff.

Pic related was the worst I've read. I've meticulously reconstructed what I think may have been McCabe's thought process while writing it
>haha stream of consciousness so deep
>move over james joyce
>criticisin organised religiun!! cant rite gud buk without criticisin organised religiun
>irish peeple with english sensibilities wow didnt see that won comin didja???
>patrick u r a genius :^)

>>4014306
Ah, high-schoolers. Setting the world right with their superior knowledge and wisdom.

>Brave New World
>Romeo and Juliet
>muh overrated classics
you fuckers have never expierienced true literary pain.
I think the name pretty much sums it all up ''How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else''. And this was 10th grade (albeit - English being taught as a foreign language).

>>4014310
I also had to do Macbeth at school. So fucking awful.

>>4014345
>high-schoolers

Nope. If you would have made that assumption a decade ago then you would still have been wrong.

Ah, literature snobs. Setting the world right with their mindless obedience and peer-pressure.

Man, look at all the plebs ITT.

>>4012320
>>4012357
>>4012425
>>4014267
>>4014306
>>4014348

jesus christ

>>4014387
this. except replace the things fall apart one with >>4014263

I absolutely loathed reading G.G. Marquez's On Love and Other Demons and I let my teacher know it at the end of my answering her questions about it

Now I think it may have been just a very poor translation.

>>4014392

things fall apart is a fantastic novel for kids the age of 13-18 read though

>>4014392
no

>>4014405
Things fall apart is a fantastic novel for any age.

fuck the Giver

>>4014471
I loved that shit when I had to read it in elementary school.

I really didn't like Of Mice and Men. I thought it was just really boring.

Sure is summer in this thread...

>>4012442
Fuck that book and fuck Chopin, she was kind of a cunt.

>>4009820
>hating the House on Mango Street

Sounds like somebody needs to check their privilege.

It's not a bad book and it's a good wake up call for white kids in the suburbs.

this piece of shit right here

The Scarlet Letter
The Great Gatsby
Rime of the Ancient Mariner

I never liked literature that was mandatory in public schools. These are just some of them that, while having their literary merit I'm sure, had me doze through the literature class all throughout my junior year.

>>4015069
At least you didn't have to read "My Darling, My Hamburger" like they do in "Dangerous Minds".

I think that's the point of R&J. It's a two kids thinking they are in love who die because they are stupid kids without parents watching them because they are too busy feuding.

>>4015108
I remember reading a REALLY bizarre Gundam Wing fanfic named after that book. Heero signed up for a japanese game show and accidentally summoned the devil, but it was Duo, who was retarded. Then a sandworm tried to eat Heero. I think everybody dies and then love brings them back. Or something.

So yeah. That happened. Man. Those were weird times. I'm glad that's over.

Crime and Punishment.

It's not a bad book, no. But forcing 10th graders to read it is just an awful idea.

>>4014331
haven't read it but it sounds fucking rape-y. and the cover too.

After the War by Carol Matas. What a terrible piece of shit. I accidentally stole two copies of it from school though, still have them.

The book "Was" by Geoff Ryman. For some idiotic reason I took a modern lit class in college that was taught by, well, let's just call her a unique woman. It was my final year and honestly, I figured that after trudging through numerous other lit courses (including Victorian lit, what a joy) modern lit would be a walk in the park. Wrong. All the books the professor (who made sure to point out every class that she had gone to Harvard) made us read were written by gay people (not that there's anything wrong with that, or so I thought until taking a literary criticism course during graduate studies).

So anyways, "Was" was just awful. Awful, awful, awful. Never read that book.

>>4014331
>MUH HISTORY
I bet it's people like you who want "Huck Finn" and "Heart of Darkness" banned because they include the word "nigger"

It happened, deal with it.

>>4012442
>>4015016
this

i also had a shit teacher tho
this crazy theater director took over for a few months and made the class a feminism circlejerk

>>4014331
>http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0030.104/--lincoln-stowe-and-the-little-womangreat-war-story-the-making?rgn=main;view=fulltext
It is important because of how popular it was and the effect it had on the country when it was published.

A Separate Peace. Fuck that shitty book.

>>4012442
FUCK THIS BOOK.

She's almost as big of a bitch as Madame Bovary.

I teach English at a public high school (about to enter my fourth year). Many of you are rightfully criticizing the books you were assigned in class, but many of them have pedagogical justifications other than "good book". Always keep in mind that even if you felt a particular piece of literature was beneath you when you were 14-17, you are in a class of 30 other students of varying levels.

>>4009820

A 9th grade or middle school text, mostly. I use it as practice for students to deduce theme and chart character growth. It's funny how many kids come in thinking "oh it's the book where the girl gets raped" and thinking that's the end of the discussion, but in most classrooms the learning focuses on analyzing the text. It's simplistic writing style and short length allows classes to breeze through the actual reading and spend more time on writing responses and determining themes/etc, which is good because at least at my school it's usually taught at the end of the year, when time is a little sparse.

>>4014306

The Big One. Romeo and Juliet is shallow predictable, and only noteworthy in canon for its establishment of tropes which are usually used to mock it. However, there are still many important reasons it's still read at the 9th grade level, usually near the end of the year:

1. It's the simplest Shakespeare story in terms of plot and characters; it serves as an introduction to Shakespeare's prose, style, themes so that students can theoretically be comfortable with them before they move on to works of actual quality.

2. Shakespeare is alienating to teenagers (and many adults), so R&J emphasizes close reading of the text to suss out important details like order of plot events in the timeline, literary terms such as irony, poetic structure, etc. At most levels of high school reading, not ever novel can be Classroom Book Club: most young people need to spend time exercising their "reading muscles", so to speak.

3. One of the weaker justifications is that the themes are easily understood by teens. I don't play this card too much because it reeks of pandering, but I do enjoy helping them point out all of the dirty jokes (first day is always a discussion of the "head of the maidens / or their maidenheads" pun).

Was not a fan of this book at all. Totally had to bs my way through a final paper

The worst I had to read were from Emerson and Thoreau, it was an underhanded way to attempt to introduce high school kids into homosexuality. Plus the books were 100% boring.

>>4015527
Yeah man, fuck this shit, bullshit had to dress up for a party and stuff

>>4015530

I've never met any teacher who does any Emerson or Thoreau outside of Self-Reliance and Civil Disobedience. Both are great texts which 11th Graders need to read (because many of them are trapped in political bubbles and have never really been exposed to a differing opinion), but they do lean a little too close to radical libertarianism for my preference,

>>4015545
You're partially right, in my opinion, and that's what's OP was asking for, our opinons, I thought books sucked. But the socialist teachers in NYC would fail you if didn't disagree with their socialist bullshit homosexual points of view. Guess I failed.

I wont agree to their bullshit politics and I never will.
I'm not a socialist, I'm not a communist, and I'm a homosexual, and I don't have some guilt complex that seems to run a lot of politics.

>>4015545
You're partially right, in my opinion, and that's what's OP was asking for, our opinons, I thought books from Emerson and Thoreau sucked, they had a political agenda and the teachers in NYC just sucked it up.

The socialist teachers in NYC, that's the majority of them would fail you if didn't agree with their socialist bullshit homosexual points of view. Guess I failed.

I wont agree to their bullshit politics and I never will.
I'm not a socialist, I'm not a communist, and I'm a homosexual, and I don't have some guilt complex that seems to run a lot of American and British politics.

13(Fri)15:04 No.4015568>>4015545
You're partially right, in my opinion, and that's what's OP was asking for, our opinons, I thought books from Emerson and Thoreau sucked, they had a political agenda and the teachers in NYC just sucked it up.

The socialist teachers in NYC, that's the majority of them would fail you if didn't agree with their socialist bullshit homosexual points of view. Guess I failed.

I wont agree to their bullshit politics and I never will.
I'm not a socialist, I'm not a communist, and I'm a not a homosexual, and I don't have some guilt complex that seems to run a lot of American and British politics.

>>4009820
It's a tossup between "Tess of the d'urbervilles" and "The scarlet letter", the only assigned books I could never finish. "A death in the family" wasn't much better. I was never assigned "Catcher in the rye" -- fortunately, because I read parts of it later and didn't like it.

Best books read for school: "The Martian chronicles" (original version) and "Tale of two cities", the only assigned books I ever read again later.

>>4015514
fuck you idiot

TKAM

>>4015887
Fuck this book. I haven't read a any other Dickens after reading this one.

Oryx and Crake -- Margaret Atwood

I raged at her weak lesbian-feminist attempt and Sci-fi.

This and Anthem solidified my hatred of fiction writing.

>>4015514
Good post.

>>4016010
But Great Expectations was fucking genius. It sets up every single Dickens cliché totally striaght, then trashes them all.

>The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison couldn't even use diction properly. Every time I came across an adjective and adverb pair that was semi-contradictory, my blood would boil.

I have no image macro to describe the feeling of being forced to read a book by a person that could not write.

>>4016275
captcha: which sarywit

>>4016275

>>4016285
>>4016291
For whatever reason back in the day, my English teacher thought using the Oprah reading list as a reference point was a good idea.

>>4014471
That and Maniac McGee

I think i liked those, the first time or two i was asked to read them.

but giver was in four classes (after i'd read it on my own initiative) and maniac mcgee was in three. In a row.

Especially fucking Maniac Mcgee.

YES. RACE PROBLEMS ARE BAD AND WE'RE ALL ALIKE IF YOU LOOK AT IT OBJECTIVELY BUT SURELY SOMEONE ELSE HAS SAID THESE THINGS BY NOW CAN WE HEAR THEM INSTEAD?

>>4016302
What's wrong with Oprah?

>>4016320
Other than her poor taste in literature, not much.

>>4016320
she's a nigger

>>4016320
nigger

>>4016320
The fact that she has the sole power to turn any book into a best seller... and she chooses the garbage she chooses. She could make thousands of careers take off out of the mire of obscurity, and she picks up bullshit memoirs and rehashes of the same old fucking ideas.

>>4016320
she is a pavement ape

>>4016320
sheboon

>>4016320
she's a subhuman nigger beast

>>4016318
You know The Giver is a series now, right?

>>4016320
she's a fucking nigger!

>>4016320
she's a fat nigger

>pol samefag returns

Thread's over guys.

>>4016320
She's exceptionally exploitative. See: recent purse "debacle"

>>4016362
GENEVA — It’s a glamorous playground of the rich and famous, filled with glitterati from princes to movie stars. It’s also a land with a sometimes uneasy relationship with foreigners — especially when they aren’t white.

Billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey says she ran into Swiss racism when a clerk at Trois Pommes, a pricey Zurich boutique, refused to show her a $38,000 handbag, telling one of the world’s richest women that she wouldn’t be able to afford it. Winfrey earned $77 million in the year ending in June, according to Forbes magazine.

Perhaps something was lost in the translation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_(novel)
what is with all of these books about girls being rapedd

Farewell to Manzanar. Only read it because author was from our state, Kansas. Biggest piece of shit. It's about a girl in a Japanese internment camp in WWII, but written like every other YA novel ever and with completely unrelatable characters. And our teacher sucked and made us do horribly closed discussion groups with it. We had to talk about xyandz in 30 minutes and tnothing else about the book.

>>4016401
Probably a highlight of the US's sexual repression.

>>4016469

>US
>sexual repression

lel

>>4016476

>Implying that we Americans aren't still shitting ourselves over whether sex education should be taught in schools or nurses should be allowed to supply condoms.

I'd say we're pretty sexually repressed.

>>4012425
That book was excellent.

>>4015099
>Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Book's trippy as shit

>The Scarlet Letter
Overwrought garbage, there are better ways to learn about symbolism.

>>4016240
>Anthem
What backwater shithole of a school would make you read Ayn Rand?

>>4016476
It actually is, by 1st world standards. The Puritans fucked us good.

>>4015494
this. That book was fucking terrible.

>>4012425
The only use I have for that book is the essay that serves as a buffer before the 5 pages of porn links.

>>4015514
>English teacher
>it's

Go fuck yourself.

>>4016567
>/lit/
>mayme carrots

Have "sex:" on your'self; please?

>>4016567
In their defense, they did say they taught in a public school.

>>4014331
>What's so historically important about this book?
Are you fucking serious, son?

I took two Arthurian lit classes last year at my uni.
>History of the Kings of Britain
Goddamn Vortigern, you should've known better than to trust those damned Saxons
>Gawain and the Green Knight
Broken oaths, inner turmoil and elaborate explanations of butchery - what's not to like?
>Wedding of Dame Ragnell
Gawain jumps on the ultimate grenade by giving that bitch agency. Bitches love agency.
>Sir Lancelot, or, The Knight of the Cart
I blame Chretien de Troyes for starting the Mary Sue varieties "I hate that knight in your story, so I'll replace him with my own who's better than anyone ever in every way" and "I'm a horrible bitch and always get me way because everyone loves me so much".
>Lancelot in Hell
It's so shonen manga, it hurts. I love it. My favorite poem, and I don't even like poetry.
>The Mists of Avalon
MARYSUES EVERYWHERE, also Morgana's first husband is a bro.

>>4012357
How is that your worst book? BNW was good.

>>4016527
A middle class public high-school in south New Jersey.

God damn, the people in this thread are retarded

>>4016593
I pity you.

>The Great Gatsby
That book was so boring it gave me a fucking headache

>>4016320
She's a fat whore and a grape ape negropotamus

>>4016593
>middle class
>public school
>New Jersey

That's like 3 layers of shit

OP here
I started the thread with bait and abandoned it
I came back and found this
What the fuck happened

>>4016527
Anthem is standard high school required reading these days.

>>4012320
Frankenstein was fucking awesome, are you sure you understood it? or were you expecting a Godzillaesque monster...

>>4016700
>oh no what have I done, I've created a monster
>SKREEONK
>tell me what happened after you ran away
>SKREEONK
>you've caught up with me in the Arctic - what do you want with me?
>SKREEONK

>>4014348
Macbeth was, in my opinion, Shaekspeare's greatest work, though I haven't read King Lear yet. Better than Hamlet by a mile and one of my favorite works ever. I can't believe there are people who missed out on this.

>>4016706
ah, no. I read the one with beautiful prose and monster's tragic story of despair. You read the Great Illustrated Classics version. I understand now.

>>4016684
Time for a book burning.

>>4016711
SKREEONK is the canon sound for Godzilla roaring

What was that book about the kid whose dad died in the 9/11 attack? Because that was the worst thing I've ever read, by assignment or choice.

any of the dozens of books i had to read through the years about the black man's plight.

>>4016750
Oh right, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. That was the most pretentious pile of dogshit I've ever seen. The author went along to write a novel supporting militant vegetarianism. Fuck that guy and fuck whatever school board read it and thought that 9/11 was an important enough topic to shove that crap in between Hawthorne and Orwell.

>>4016522
>Rime of the Ancient Mariner

I wouldn't call that a book, it takes like twenty minutes to read at most.

The absolute worst?

>>4016240
Dude, that book fucking rocks and changed my perspective on everything growing up.
Sure, he whines like a bitch, but it also shows the struggle of pubescence and finding your own identity.

>>4009820
Ugh, I'm about to be forced to teach The House on Mango Street to my sophomores. DO NOT WANT.

My personal least favorite was The Pearl. Turned me off of Steinbeck for nearly a decade til I gave him another chance. Second place is The Outsiders.

>>4016836
>not liking The Outsiders
I remember reading that in 8th grade and the entire class loved it. You must be quite a party pooper.

>being an Englisb teacher

How literally pleb are you?

>>4016849
I've never been in a class where anyone other than me fessed up to enjoying anything. It was always 90% just saying "I didn't like it" and stopping there and like 7% crapping on and on about things they thought were crap which were usually no big deal. I was always in the lowest class above remedial though.

I think the worst I read would have been My Place by Sally Morgan because I remember literally nothing about it.

This book
Fuck this book

from the very first sentence I wanted to kill myself. It pays no attention to sentence structure and randomly lapses into Spanish

>>4016895
And it's goddamn awesome. Dat huge sentence at the end of page 2 gets me every time.

I hated Catcher in the Rye. Holden pissed me the fuck off at every turn
My favorite book that I read for school was catch 22, for comparison.

>>4016646
People hate shitty school books. More at 11.

This piece of shit.
Predictable as fuck and boring.

>>4016646
>being surprised when people have opinions

Some shitty book about some kid who did something to some other kid in a wheelchair and had to check his able-body privilege or some shit.

I can't remember the name of it, but the wheelchair kid tries to ride down an escalator something, that's all I can remember.

I kid you not, one of those dime Romance novels about a girl and a stable boy back in the old days of Canada, who's love was forbidden. I don't remember a thing about it, except she made us skip the chapter with their sex scene. This was also in like, grade 6.

Aside from that, The Chrysalids. Or maybe something by Ondaatje.

>>4015527
This. I hated this.

>>4015527
I had to read this twice. The first time through I gave up and said fuck it after like 20 pages. The second time I actually gave it a chance. I still didn't like it. She married a dumb ass nigga.

>>4016240
This, my least favorite book I have ever read
To Kill a Mockingbird was better then that

>>4014306
Like 12 people died because Romeo couldnt keep his dick in his pants.

>>4014306
Say whatever you want but I played a swag ass Mercutio.

>>4009820
Oh god. My teacher told the class how she was raped by her uncle when we read the rape scene. Fucking awk.

>>4015514
>Girlfriend calls me stuck up and pretentious when I say I didn't enjoy Romeo and Juliet

>>4012425
I kill de white man I canna face de judgement of de white man

>>4016895
>Randomly lapses into Spanish
>Pleb doesn't understand that some stories are fundamentally multilingual
Sad sad days on /lit/

>>4017160
This was in year 9 in Australia where pretty much no one speaks Spanish, it was just completely illogical as to why we were given the book

>>4017164
Fair criticism given the context, but the story is not necessarily written for a niche audience and you can't judge its merits based on that.

>>4016804
Fuck, I despised this shit.

>>4012379
Oh man, that was a steaming turd.

>>4012357
Brave new world builds a fantastic universe, though the story and the characters dont really seem to click for me. It is often compared with 1984, but i think that 1984 has by far the better story and characters, while BNW trumps it for its scifi dystopian future.

That said, I do understand that they were two very different dystopias, but BNW really captured my imagination as a kid.

>be autist
>learn stuff
>the end

Ulysses by Joyce.

Shit was shit.

>>4017328
>posting b8 on a board with 4-5 posters

Sive by John B Keane. Still the worst book I've ever read.

>>4014306
It is postulated that Romeo and Juliet was intended to be satire.

>>4009820

Words cannot express how much raw hatred I have for The House on Mango Street.

I'm normally cool with the books we had to read in school. Fahrenheit 451? Kick-ass. A Tale of Two Cities? Fuck yeah. I even liked The Scarlet Letter.

But Mango Street? Wanted to burn that fucker to the ground.

>>4017246
I liked this.

Prove me wrong

>>4017363
Holy shit what is up with the abundance of tripfags.

>>4016804
Oh my fucking god I was thinking LONG AND HARD about what shitty books I read in school, and this one takes the cake. Just whiny bitches ruining my life.

Unbelievable I know. I don't know what made this worse, the fucking book or my idiot teacher that year. I have no idea how the fuck my teacher got permission to teach this in class but she would just sit there fawning with all the other girls about how hot Mr. Gray was while all the guys would be texting on their phones waiting for the period to end.

>>4016804
I loved this book. Although, I didn't read it for school ... so that might be why.

>>4019317

But, anon, why did you not drop the class after seeing this on the syllabus?

>>4019329
It was a high school class, the teachers don't say what books they're "teaching" until it happens. Also English was mandatory, couldn't drop it anyway (and our school is a bitch with schedule changes).

Whatever, it was an easy A since you just had to answer her stupid ass study questions.

>>4016914
The only way to fully appreciate Catcher is to read it when you're an adult.

>>4019339
And it seems only when you are an adult.

It gets to represent a part of youth that states what youth is after the fact. Nobody has such a wave of simple realization wash over them in their teenage years, not one as universal as that.

>>4019338
>teaching that shit in high school

You have my utmost sympathies. Merciful Christ.

>>4019338
>You must be over 18 years of age to post on this website

I can't believe nobody has put this up there yet. If I ever want to whale and am looking for a boring, overly uneventful encyclopedia of whales then I will be sure to bring this piece of droll on my ship.

I mean, I got the themes and everything... I understand that in order to have the reader relate to Ishmael, Melville put in the overly long, disgustingly detailed chapters, but I don't want to read that shit in High School, much less during my winter vacation.

I Am David. Terrible pacing with a million subplots that did fuck all with the actual plot and character development.

>>4016804
What a dull, dull, dull book. What shitty, hateful characters.

My professor was praising this "work of genius" and I just don't get it. There wasn't even any 'prose' with a capital P, it read like a fucking screenplay.

>>4016330
She chose Faulkner too.
http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Faulkner-101-How-to-Read-William-Faulkner
http://www.amazon.com/Summer-Faulkner-Dying-August-Oprahs/dp/0307275329

>>4012425
asshole cant seem to think of anything but violence and killing, and this book was meant to "explane how cultured Africa was"
my teacher went on about how he was a "tragic hero" because he hanged himself. i wrote a whole essay about how he is a dick, and gave Darth Vader as an example of a true tragic hero.
B-

>>4019513
I'm convinced she chose Faulkner only give credibility to her book club, and that she doesn't actually understand it.

>>4009820
this

and I hated hated hated "Wuthering Heights" when I had to read it, but now think it's sheer genius

captcha: some storkpo

Canterbury tales

It's not that I hate what it's about but I have never been able to properly wrap my head around that style of writing and it just seems to drag on for ages especially when you have trouble simply understanding what you're reading

>>4015060
I just fucking hate the format with the vignettes. And it was boring except for like one part.

i had the hardest time reading this. i read this in 7th grade so i was probably out of my element here.

Almost anything that wins the Newbery Medal is almost guaranteed to be shit. I call it the Dingleberry Medal.

>>4015514
>simplistic writing style and short length allows classes to breeze through the actual reading and spend more time on writing responses and determining themes

what a terrible reason to choose/assign a book

you could get the same by using vonnegut and the kids would enjoy it

Not trying to be /pol/ here, but all "ethnic books" that we were forced to read. By blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims. They just were never that entertaining to read. They were only put in the curriculum so the school can't be accused of being racist in their reading choices.

This fucker right here.

>>4017246
I liked that book, but I read it by choice, and I agree, its audience is probably limited

One of my asshole hippy teachers made us read this and spend the entire semester talking about how bad materialism was for society and what a hero McCandless was for being a dumbass and wandering through the woods (while we were in a suburban-as-fuck high-class school, btw).

>>4020310
I thought the standard explanation was that Franzen hurt her feelings by calling her book club pedestrian, so she chose that book to prove him wrong.

>>4020408
>hurr U S A U S A U S A U S A

>>4020408
McCandless was anything but a hero and i think Krakauer did a decent job of bringing balance of not outright portraying the kid as a fucktard, but telling the story honestly of his delusions which eventually killed him hard. I personally hope it convinces some kids to never do anything stupid like that without a net. Just my 2 cents.

>>4020408
>>4020428
Unlike you losers McCandless had a conviction, followed through on it, and didn't regret his vision just because it didn't have the false comforts of bourgeois life you couldn't survive without. Cowards always shit on courage.

>>4020438
You're assuming a lot, Pocahontas.

>>4020443
>Pocahontas
Cut me deep bro.

>>4016711
>>4016706
It was written by a woman in a time when patriarchy was actually real, which is why the male characters are a bunch of pussies.

I didn't read it for school but I read it while I was IN school.

>>4012442
I taught this to my 12th grade Honors American Lit class when I was student teaching last semester.

I felt so, so sorry for them. They looked at me and I mouthed "I'm sorry" to them when my cooperating teacher's back was turned. Never again.

This.

I didn't read Huxley or 1984 or Catch 22 or Dickens in school. I read stupid shit like this.

A book written during that period would've been more beneficial if we actually wanted to do African American lit

>>4012379
There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. There once was a very large lake here, the largest lake in Texas. That was over a hundred years ago. Now it is just a dry, flat wasteland.
There used to be a town of Green Lake as well. The town shriveled and dried up along with the lake, and the people who lived there.
During the summer the daytime temperature hovers around ninety-five degrees in the shade—if you can find any shade. There’s not much shade in a big dry lake.
The only trees are two old oaks on the eastern edge of the “lake.” A hammock is stretched between the two trees, and a log cabin stands behind that.
The campers are forbidden to lie in the

>>4020584
Also this

What a fucking sad reading program they must've had. Oh. And they made us listen to an audiobook in class.

Absolute guff

>>4020585
Were kids in the 19th and early 20th century smarter or do authors of childrens books just suck shit these days?

Here's Treasure Island:

> SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.

>I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:

I was bored to death by House of Mirth. rich (and "rich") british people problems.

>>4020599
A good kids book, movie, show, and cartoon is one that adults can enjoy as well.

>>4020599
Treasure Island wasn't really meant as a childrens' book. It was just a great story which happened to appeal to all audiences.

>>4009820
HA. Did you read this freshman year of high school OP?

Remember the vignette with the clown rapist?

>>4016804
>couldnt stand to finish that book over the summer
>mfw it's on the curriculum for my english class next year

>>4017246
I liked that book. Albeit, it did get slow at the end in the train station, but I think the good outweighed the bad here.

>>4016895
Are you a fucking faggot?

>>4016527
The only one who lives in a backwater shithole is you
>hur dur ayn rand sucks
yeah...sure it is you welfare sucking cunt

>>4020584
God I read that when I was 11. Absolute Shit.
6th grade: Goodnight Mister Tom
7th grade: Outsiders
9th grade: Pic Related

>>4020879
DIVERSITY!

Forcing kids to read niglit should be illegal

>>4020599
>Were kids in the 19th and early 20th century smarter
Kids today have higher phenotypical intelligence.

>>4020881
I don't understand what you're trying to say. Could you be a bit more explicit?

>>4020886
He doesn't like schools making kids read a buch of black and slavery literature. I agree, keep that shit for history class and give kids some Joyce.

>>4016836
I think my least favorite is a three-way tie between The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, and this

Of Mice and Men isn't so bad on its own but I had one of those "what does it mean that the curtains are closed, and that the light is off, and that the queen in his hand was a spade" kind of teachers and it literally took us 4 months to read it... in a high school honors course

I never quite did get over the aversion I built to steinbeck off of The Pearl

>>4015574
> and I'm a not a homosexual
> with their socialist bullshit homosexual points of view
pls go homophobe

Fuck this gay shit

>>4023799
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

>>4023799
You were forced to read that in school?

I pity you

>>4014306
i'm in love with the girl from that movie

>>4016972
nah it wasnt it was shit

People have to read shit books in school because English teachers are massive plebs. I know that the word 'pleb' is thrown around a lot, but it's true. The English teacher at my high school was absolutely obsessed with Harry Potter. My younger brother's teacher is in love with The Hunger Games, and so he was made to read it.

English teachers are people who dreamed of being authors, yet failed because they didn't have what it takes.

>>4015080
oh man I feel bad for you

>>4024057
looks like you had a bad english teacher and think everyone suffered the same.

>>4024120
I've met several English teachers, and it was almost always the same thing. The two exceptions I can think of are also the only two male English teachers that I know. I guess saying this makes me sexist, but I feel like women more commonly strive for goals that they have no reason to think they could ever reach.

>>4024057
University professor here. English teachers are "plebians"? The reason we occasionally assign insanely popular bestsellers is so (for once) most of the class will have read the book or enjoy reading and discussing it. We get tired of pulling teeth trying to get responses to classics. And we aren't "failed authors." I study literature, I don't want to write it.

>>4024144
*plebeians

I'm surprised no ne has said this.

>>4024144
Well the ones who I met were absolutely in love with the books they assigned. I was speaking of high school English teachers, not university level teachers.

>>4024155
That is a large difference, actually. To teach English at secondary level all you need is a four year BA with enough English courses and then a few education courses focused on the subject. Most of them have never done any graduate-level work at all and may not have much familiarity with classics, or interest in them. And yes, "plebeians," forgive the typo.

A Midwife's Tale.

No one on here can beat me. No one. It was literally the diary of a 18th century midwife in New England.

>>4015108
>Mah Dahlin
>Mah Hamboiga

>>4024153
sorry, if you're an anglo male you'd have definitely appreciated this as a kid

maybe if you got into college and had to read it i could see what's up

but i remember this book made the rounds of my friends in like 6th grade, it spoke to us

Not to being up this circlejerk again, but The Alchemist.

>>4014346
> blurb on the cover from the Wall Street Journal
lol

>The Awakening
>Jane Eyre
>Austen
>Don DeLillo
>Toni Morrison
What possesses English teachers to praise and propagate this trash?

>>4015514
Good luck trying. This thread is mostly high-schoolers complaining about what they had to read this year.

>>4015514
>hs lit teacher
>misses and misunderstands every critique of R&J and why it should not be taught

1: it's simple to the point to tedium, even to the most mentally deficient nigger gets it and just doesn't fucking care anymore because it's nothing new or exciting. that placid glazed look a class gets when discussing / reading it? it's not that they don't understand it, or that it's simply simple, it's that it's so simple that they find it beneath their time to even bother with. 9th graders are young, not teh downs, challenging them is a good idea.

2: yeah, unless you pick something that doesn't blow donkey dick. R&J blows donkey dick pretty damn hard. there's no reason you can't enthrall them with something like Twelfth Night instead of forcing them to quit R&J half way through. Exercising one's "reading muscles" shouldn't consist of slogging through sucking 8 miles of equine phallus

3: the jokes are pretty fucking lame, that's pretty weak justification for someone to force 3/4 of a class to never read for pleasure ever again

>>4024153
That's because it's a good book.

>>4024291
only if stilted prose, obvious symbolism, and colonialist rhetoric count as positive features, seeing as that's basically all it offered

i'd second lotf as worst book from high school. jesus christ was that stupid, had all the seuds riding it hard with their high school understanding of what anarchy is

This shit was laughably bad. Fuck you grade 10 French and fuck you Mme Furgiuele.

Worst:

Diary of a Young Girl

Best:

Les Miserables

>>4022007

>muh white guilt

doesn't help that my county was run entirely by jews. makes me sick. I almost ended up hating books forever from my school years

>>4021412
>had to read this for 6th grade
>telling my mom what books to get on the phone
>think it's called "The Night of the Eli Weasel"
>mfw get it and it's about the holocaust

>>4014331
When she met Lincoln, he supposedly said, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."
While I'd say that's an overstatement (and the story is probably not true), it was an extremely influential book. It made slavery advocates and abolitionists alike even angrier than they already were. There's a reason Orwell names it as the archetypal example of a "good bad book."

>>4024261

>Toni Morrison
>trash

Them's fightin' words, bro

>>4017241
Gotta agree. Loved every detail about the world itself; disliked the characters.

The book I hated the most in school was The Pearl. I understood the themes it was trying to get across, but it was just too much.

>>4009820

your whiteness is showing

>>4012379
Oh, I had to read this during the eighth grade. Then we watched the film.

I live in Australia, so we always had to read some shit Australian fiction. I remember reading a book called "Came Back to Show You I Could Fly" in grade 9 that was pretty terrible.

>>4024612
Poor baby. Thank God you realized that it's possible to only read books that affirm your beliefs, thereby never exposing yourself to ideas that might burst your fragile bubble of ignorance.

However, the last person who possessed my copy had the s scribbled out so it read "Cumbuster." I still grin whenever I think about it. I don't care if that makes me childish. These books were easily the worst shit I've ever read, though.

Fuck this book so much

>>4020347
The rape part?

>>4024069
Where you by any chance in the IB

>>4016617
>tfw all three
>tfw going to a top 15 uni but still
>tfw

>>4016323
>>4016302
>>4016330

>the sound and the fury
>as i lay dying
>light in august

yes, those books are terrible

oh wait

>>4025561

Well? What is life's greatest lesson?

great expectations is without a doubt the worst book i've ever read.

>>4009820
>Detroit or some shit
>Nigger Mary Sue in the bad side of town
>Mexican Mary Sue moves there (literally from the city that I live in, with the shittiest and most absurdly untrue stereotypes the uneducated nigger author could come up with)
>Inexperienced, forced-ass chatroom chapters. the couple literally fall for each other over the internet
>Gang of niggers hate Mexicans, especially TexMex, and want to separate the two
>Father of the Mexican faggot hates niggers because they killed his first wife
>mfw kid in my class imagines him on the ground screaming "PORQUEEEEEEEEEE"
>no face
Long story short, no one dies, no one develops, the book just ends after the climax.

There was also The Wave, which was about a teacher who simulates Nazi Germany in his course and the kids wind up actually becoming pseudo-nazis. Another one that has no resolution after the climax.

>>4027337
To drive your enem....wait a minute...

>>4027362
Die Welle is a classic.

>>4017241
One time a classmate walked in when i was reading 1984 for fun and only halfway through it when he blurted out DID X HAPPEN YET???
Ruined, man.
i'm not gonna reread it for a couple more years in hopes that i forget.

>>4027362
>The Wave
m8 have you seen the vhs of it? I had to watch it in primary school, shit was hilarious. I used to do the stupid salute to my friend who was in the same class all the time

This. It's the Twilight of it's time.

Close second: The Handmaid's Tale

>>4020446
>>4020438
does courage still count if it's completely delusional courage, though?
like, really: he neglected to research properly or anything; he either had a death wish or was monstrously stupid. Yeah he had ideals, but when your ideals are created in a vacuum and you disregard reality because of them without even trying to make a statement, you're automatically worthless, because to do so will
be to taint the message of your ideals with youthful disregard for reality.

>inb4 "he's so existential" bullcrap

>>4024159
>>4024155
>>4024144
>>4024057
yeah i can confirm... a lot of english lit teachers I've had (american here) when i was younger ranged from good (enjoyed classics, could explain why, could challenge my thinking) to middling (boring, not knowledgeable widely but gives ok books and allows for class discussions) to batshit terrible (spends more time on pseudoscience/mnemonic activity and articles on how to read than on actual books, martinet-ish when it comes to talking out of turn/socratic seminars).
Some of these women (ALL women, and i've had 7 years of english teachers and 9 teachers thanks to disability leave/pregnancy).

>>4024194
i-i'm sorry anon-chan

but we were forced to read my teacher's graduate degree dissertation essay about how she taught a special ed class to write poetry

and that was worse

>>4027931
i think you might have missed the point

>>4025561
Oh god, the feels.

>>4016588
Wait, I thought we were posting things we felt were shit. It sounds as if you enjoyed all of those poems.

>>4016928
This sounds hilarious, please try to find the name.

Bumpan because this thread was hilarious to me.

>>4012442
undisputed winner

Anything written by a black woman.

My Brother Stevie. Hated this fucking book.

>>4014397

Have you read any other Marquez? He's one of my favorite authors.

>>4029243
Especially if she's a lesbian. Christ

you wanna talk about BAD?

>>4029258
>The Color Purple

I thought I was in English class, not Ebonics class.

>>4029258
>>4029279
>>4029243
all dis edge

>>4029258
>The Color Purple

I thought I was in English class, not Ebonics class.

>>4029258
pol leave

>>4015514

Good post, thanks for your perspective

>>4015514
Romeo and Juliet is literally about how dumb teenagers are. Why no one ever "discusses" this obvious aspect of the work confounds me. A character even speaks the entire theme of the work at one point.

When studying it in high school, this was glossed over. It might've increased my enjoyment a little if this stuff was pointed out, but whatever.

I remember hating this book while reading it, but it's been long enough that I don't actually remember why.

>>4031951
Fuck you, was about to post it.
>boring, nothing happens
>makes no sense
>forced grade 9 read when its level is of 4th grade
>creepy as fuck romance
>retarded ending
>fucking stupid
>even worse movie, top 3 worst I've seen

The movie isn't even fucking canon, half of the shit in the movie is not in the boom.

The Scarlet Letter.

I fucking hated that book. It's a mix of 1800's shit-tier love story and Hawthorne's "muh ancestral guilt".

The ONLY character that wasn't two-dimensional was Chillingworth.

Pic related. I wanted to shoot a school full of kids.

>>4020848
>reading the assigned books

Except for like the first month of freshman year, only like four people in my entire class read the books. A handful of people would read them and then tell everyone else about the shit that we couldn't already get off SparkNotes.

"The Awakening" by Kate Chopin
Dear....God...why did our teacher hate us so?

Runner Up:
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

>>4025561
Ah, I only heard one chapter of this, which my teacher read out and It was the worst thing I'd ever read, I didn't go to a single other lesson which was prescribed to reading it. I remember our teacher getting really pissed off that people weren't paying attention because we were somehow disrespecting 'Morrie' and what he had to teach us.

I think the only book I got in highschool that I actually read was To Kill A Mockingbird, the rest I just couldn't be bothered. All the books we read basically stemmed from 'racism is bad', I honestly can't remember a single book prescribed that didn't deal with that, besides Shakespeare.
I hated English.

>>4024736
Ugh, I read this book in 7th Grade and despised it. Then again, I didn't really like Of Mice and Men either, so I may just not be a fan of Steinbeck.

Of Mice and Men was great. What did you guys not like about it? I enjoyed reading it but maybe because it was one of the only books I was ever assigned that wasnt about preaching feminism or black power.

Of Mice and Men was great. What did you guys not like about it? I enjoyed reading it, but maybe because it was one of the only books I was assigned in high school that wasnt about preaching feminism or black power.

>>4016700
>Plotholes out the ass
>Every character has the same voice: Mary Shelley
>Dr. Frankenstein is the most insufferable peice of shit ever created
I thought it was a fun read but it's definitely not awesome

>>4016836
Really? I loved the Pearl, one of the few books that has brought me close to tears

>>4009820

NO GUN FOR ASMIR

damn the multicultural agenda for english in australia:

>http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aisnsw.edu.au%2Fservices%2Fpl%2Fenglishsecondary%2Fdocuments%2Fsuggested%2520texts%2520for%2520australian%2520curriculum%2520-%2520helen%2520sykes.docx&ei=l9MNUvLJBKvyiAf1mYCwAw&usg=AFQjCNH-7C6xTacy-huAygOC2QI9ro-4Jg&sig2=0llQwbSbWLlpX5z-RNmLOQ&bvm=bv.50768961,d.aGc

>>4029243
THIS

In general, I think public schools need to move away from their autopilot curriculm of the Great Gatsby and the Odyssey and the Scarlet Letter and Shakespeare plays. You need to engage teens more by providing selections that are more relevant to them.

>>4029243

All dis edgy. That said, I had to read "Their Eyes were Watching God" and hated it.

But I like Toni Morrisson. Song of Solomon is the shit, haters gonna hate.

>>4025561
Morrie was such a fucking cliché douche...

This fucking book...Ireland has some of the most interesting history in Europe and all we ever learn about is that time everyone was hungry...