/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4757566]

What's the worst novel you were assigned in high school?

[Anonymous No.4757570]

It's a toss between The Outsiders and Ender's Game.

[Anonymous No.4757575]

>>4757566
'The stone angel.' It's a shitty book by a shitty Canadian shitty woman

[Anonymous No.4757578]

The Fjord Murder

Teacher was only there for like three months. Guy smoked behind the black board, smelled like alcohol all the time. Rumours had it that his wife was pregnant from his best friend/neighbour.
I think he ended up in an asylum.

Oh, and the book was about a murder story that basically solved itself as the few pages went by.

[Anonymous No.4757580]

Great Expectations. Bullshit.

Best? DoaS.

[Anonymous No.4757583]

>>4757566
I didn't appreciate it as much in high school as much as I do now. I wasn't intelligent enough to appreciate it.

Anyway, worst novel was...Life of Pie.

Wasn't necessarily a "terrible novel", but comparatively (when weighing against brave new world, animal farm, lord of the flies), it's the worst.

[Anonymous No.4757591]

We had like 6 options and I'd read most of the others so I picked "The Handmaid's Tale" which wasn't, like, abject shit, but a bland book with a blander message

[Anonymous No.4757598]

[Anonymous No.4757610]

The awakening

[Anonymous No.4757628]

[Anonymous No.4757634]

the house on mango street

[Anonymous No.4757658]

>>4757570
Fuck you faggot, The Outsiders is a fantastic book.

[Anonymous No.4758108]

>>4757634
Whut? It's a pretty damn short novella.

>>4757566
For me, Secret Life of Bees. I didn't finish it. Got an F.

[Anonymous No.4758114]

Some shit by Tolstoy or Marx

[Anonymous No.4758129]

Eichendorff's "Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts", it had its moments though, if you can understand German
>Und sie zogen gen Italien
>eine fatale Fliege

[Anonymous No.4758142]

>>4757566
I was always assigned great novels in high school.
Grade 10: The Catcher in the Rye.
Grade 11: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The Stranger, The Metamorphosis and Notes From Underground.
Grade 12: Down and Out in Paris and London.

[Anonymous No.4758145]

>>4757628
This

[Anonymous No.4758150]

>>4757628
>"Anyone who finds [The Chosen] is finding a jew"

[Anonymous No.4758163]

>>4757566
Ethan frome

[Anonymous No.4758194]

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

[Anonymous No.4758196]

>>4757610
thisthisthisthisthis

[Anonymous No.4758201]

>>4757580
W-why didn't you like Great Expectations?

I know it's long and I've heard it can be bland. I'm curious about your reasoning.

[Anonymous No.4758320]

>>4757658
It's about juvenile delinquents who care about their education, go out for sports, have jobs, read, etc

Everything about it is corny, glurgy, and unconvincing.

[Anonymous No.4758322]

Absolute shit. It almost reads like a parody of African-American lit

[Anonymous No.4758431]

Things Fall Apart. Hated it.

[Anonymous No.4758478]

>wahhhh muh 6 billion

Apart from that there was one scene where I nearly teared. But everything else is utter whiny.

[Muck Bulligan !!ryE2gEjGbpu No.4758483]

>>4758322
Beloved is worse than Song of Solomon in this regard, but i think they both have a sort of charm. better to think of them as intentionally absurd
>>4757583
Life of Pie
>>4757634
how did you possibly find anything offensive in any of those vignettes
>>4758142
your grade 11 teacher had great taste

>am i the only person who had to read Go Ask Alice in high school
fucking god-awful trash nonsense

[Anonymous No.4758508]

>>4758322
Is this the one with the kid everyone calls "Milkman"?

Truly awful.

[Anonymous No.4758528]

A Million Little Pieces

[Anonymous No.4758531]

What did Melville see in him. Fucking hell what a wordy bitch.

[Anonymous No.4758543]

The Catcher in the Rye, it's hard as FUCK to read when you were 15 something.

[Anonymous No.4758547]

>>4757591

I read this too holy fuck "bland" is the best possible word

[Anonymous No.4758552]

>>4758478

lel crybaby faggot

[Anonymous No.4758565]

>>4757566

Pedro Paramo is by far the worst book I have ever read. It's literally written by a schizophrenic who can't put together continuous narrative if his life depended on it. Can't believe I had to read that shit in highschool

[Anonymous No.4758575]

>>4757570
What year were you assigned The Outsiders? Almost everyone I've met and talked about it with was handed the book in seventh grade, out here in California.

[Anonymous No.4758585]

The Skull Beneath the Skin by P.D James

[Anonymous No.4758642]

Fucking Scarlet Letter. Most boring shit I had to slog through.

Only thing worse was Jane Eyre. Fuck Bronte.

[Anonymous No.4758645]

>>4757634
yea I didn't enjoy this book

[Anonymous No.4758671]

>>4758642
Jane Eyre rules

[Anonymous No.4758709]

>>4757634
This. It wasn't exactly bad, but I found it really boring, and I read it in 7th grade so I didn't have the right mindset to appreciate it.

[Anonymous No.4758713]

Catcher in the Rye.

Not that bad per se, but so very overrated.

[Anonymous No.4758720]

Jane Eyre. There's a special place in hell reserved for Charlotte and her hysterical sisters.

[Anonymous No.4758723]

>>4758194


>>4757580
>>4758431
>>4758531
>>4758543
>>4758642
>>4758720

Damn...

[Anonymous No.4758735]

>>4758723
The characters were so arrogant and ignorant. They couldn't stand up for themselves and were generally 2 dimensional

[Anonymous No.4758737]

The Skin I'm In. Had to read it in 6th grade, absolutely hated it. Although my school was 70% black, so everyone else gobbled it up.

[Anonymous No.4758738]

>>4758735
In things fall apart I mean

[Anonymous No.4758751]

>>4757634
I thought this was okay.

[Anonymous No.4758763]

>>4758483
I just looked that up on Wikipedia, and holy shit. She gets addicted to drugs after doing LSD? What the fuck. How can you understand drugs so little.

[Anonymous No.4758768]

>>4758763
what's even more unsettling is how did people believe that glurgy shit was real

[Anonymous No.4760769]

A light in the forest was probably the worst.

[Anonymous No.4760863]

Raisin in the Sun. Even worse than to Kill a Mockingbird.

I liked the Giver and Gathering Blue. Good shit. Watership Down is awesome, too.

>>4757570
>Ender's Game

Oh hell no, you ain't talking shit on my baby.

>>4758543

>YA lit
>hard to read

[Anonymous No.4760897]

>>4758478
i really don't get the hate for this book other than antisemitism

it's better than most of /lit/core

[Anonymous No.4760945]

>>4758575
Seventh, and I was on the other end of the continent.

[Anonymous No.4760953]

I think it was called Animal Dreams. Honorable mention goes to All the Pretty Horses. Both were real chores to read.

I'm sure someone's going to call me a pleb for mentioning Pretty Horses because /lit/ seems to have a collective boner for McCarthy. Oh well.

[Anonymous No.4760956]

>>4760863
Ender's Game was the worst. Why do people slob knob this fanfic?
> Author was never a child, just a pederast.
> MUH CHOSEN ONE
> Let's play laser tag to simulate 40k

[Anonymous No.4760961]

>>4758565
>being this pleb
holy shit

[Anonymous No.4761047]

>>4760956

I like how OSC handles time dilation of space flight. I liked his strategy that Ender used during the games. I liked Ender's cold logic. In the latter books (I'm on the third), I liked the xenobiology puzzle, and the torturing kids with OCD as a religion. I like Ender, as a character. He's empathy personified, yet was responsible for a damned genocide of an entire sentient race. And he's so lonely. I think that's a good interpretation of space travel. Long, lonely. He's lived for thousands of years compared to the normal passage of time on planets. That's a unique feeling.

I'm not saying his plots are amazing, nor his prose. He has interesting ideas that are worth a read.

It's interesting. A lot more so than some ghetto niggers bitching how they don't have opportunities.

You're just latching on to the it's-popular-let's-hate-it bandwagon. I haven't watched the movie and don't intend to. The fact that the populace suddenly like EG does not have any bearing on how good or bad EG is as a book/series. Into logic.

[Anonymous No.4761431]

>>4761047
The movie didn't make the book popular, the book is up there among the most read YA novels. The movie was a flop and didn't generate much interest compared to the massive reputation the book already has.

[Anonymous No.4761456]

>>4760897

The author admitted it was a fraud, he basically cashed in on the holocaust with fictitious exaggerations. Thats not very nice.

[Anonymous No.4761468]

Either "The Awakening" or "Wuthering Heights".

I actively hated those books, and I really wished my school picked better female authors then what was recommended by the Feminists, but at least Edith Wharton was good. Also the belief that Wuthering Heights is a romance boggles my mind, it's clearly a revenge story.

[Anonymous No.4761499]

The worst I had to read has to be Macbeth. I live in a Spanish-speaking country so I read a terrible and quite difficult translation of it. Fortunately we only had to read like some of the acts and not the entire play but it was still a hassle. I haven't read any Shakespeare since

The worst book we had to read entirely was The Sorrows of Young Werther. Oh, Werther, why are you such a faggot?

[Anonymous No.4761538]

>>4758194
>the pickle dish

Jesus Christ, why are so many people completely incapable of accepting even the most ham-fisted symbolism?

[Anonymous No.4761554]

I had to read A Separate Peace and some fairly boring historical novel about the late '60s by my teacher's dad.

[Anonymous No.4761560]

>>4761468
>Edith Wharton good
>Wuthering Heights bad

Jonathan Franzen detected.

[Anonymous No.4761609]

>>4761468

what would you consider good female authors?

[Anonymous No.4761627]

>>4758163
It has one of my favorite endings to a book. Such a wonderfully wicked 'fuck you' to suicide romanticism.

[Anonymous No.4761649]

>>4758194
>Gods, I hated that book

[Anonymous No.4761657]

>>4761649

>hating on polytheism
>gb2pol

[Anonymous No.4761672]

A Day No Pigs Would Die.

It was the first year my teacher used it in his curriculum and neither he nor anyone in my class, myself included, were prepared for what was in store. Why he didn't read the book himself before hand, I'll never know.

>graphic description of a boy pulling a bloody squealing calf out of a cow's gaping vagina
>graphic description of a cute pet puppy being thrown in with fighting animals to see if it was strong enough to be a guard dog (spoiler: it wasn't and died horribly)
>graphic description of the protagonists beloved pig being violently raped by another pig
>graphic description of said beloved pig being held down by the protagonist while the father slaughtered it in good ol 'Quaker fashion and then made it into sausage for the family to eat

[Anonymous No.4761683]

silas marner

[Anonymous No.4761687]

>>4761627
Not really though. It just makes it even more tragic that they didn't die.

[Anonymous No.4761717]

>>4757566
Romiette and Julio.

Absolute trash and cliche-filled.

[Anonymous No.4761774]

Pilgrim at tinker creek, its just a middle aged woman rambling about her pointless thoughts on nature in an incoherent writing style.

[Anonymous No.4763429]

>>4761456
>fraud

he admitted that it was a blend of reality and fiction, which makes it even better imo

[Anonymous No.4765494]

Pride and Prejudice. Scarlet Letter was a close second. Fuck, even looking back on them is torturous.

[Anonymous No.4765521]

>>4763429
>he admitted that it was a blend of reality and fiction, which makes it even better imo

He published it as non-fiction until he was called out, he, himself a jew, tainted the memory of the real holocaust to make some money. I cant think of a more distasteful entity right now as the person of Elie Wiesel.

[Anonymous No.4765524]

to kill a mockingturd

[Anonymous No.4765705]

>>4765521
1/2

It's still published as non-fiction.

The original manuscript written by Wiesel was pruned and edited when it was published in Yiddish for the first time. This Yiddish edition was further edited and partially rewritten when it was published in French for the first time. It was then translated into English and other languages, again with editing.

None of this is surprising or new. Look at all the different editions of Anne Frank's diary--there are editions which edit out certain content entirely or censor it, editions where different 'editions' written by Anne (original diary vs. publication manuscript) are used, etc etc, depending on when the edition was published and the audience it was targeting.

Any memoir is going to contain fiction. It doesn't matter who wrote it, or when, or what experience the memoir is talking about. It's the nature of the beast. A memoir is a narrative written by someone who wants to tell about their experience in a certain way, which is influenced by an infinite number of factors, memory gaps notwithstanding.

Take two people from differing backgrounds and have them write about the same experience and you will see differences--for example, revolutionary accounts of the 1789 March on Versailles present a radically different view of events than the account of the same March by the aristocratic governess of the royal children, and that's before considering political or cultural factors influencing a written account.

In the original Yiddish edition, Wiesel notes that some of the male camp survivors wanted to go and rape German women after liberation. in the French edition, this is altered to some male camp survivors wanting to go and have sex after liberation. Why the change? Because the original Yiddish edition was arguably aimed at the people who had survived the camps or the families who had been left devastated by the Holocaust, who would have still been enraged at Germany for what had happened. To this audience, violence against Germans--even civilians--may have been taken as a justifiable vengeance. But when the book is being published outside of a specifically "Jewish" audience, saying that they want to rape German women is no longer "they had it coming" but a horrific crime that would push readers away. So the sentence, along with other passages which were exceptionally angry and bitter, are changed. No chance for controversy.

(If you want to read more about how the Yiddish edition and French edition differed wildly in tone, check out Elie Wiesel and the Scandal of Jewish Rage. I read it a few years ago and it was enlightening.)

[Anonymous No.4765710]

>>4765705
2/2

Are there parts in Night which are fiction? Oh, I'm sure of it. But that is true of every memoir. Fiction in memoir is commonplace--conversations that are invented or half-made up because of vague memories (how many people can exactly recall conversations that happened a day ago, much less a month, a 1 year, ten years, etc?) events that are reordered so they make more sense for the story, anecdotes meant to illustrate perfect points, 'filters' put on memories due to political or personal beliefs, etc etc.

tl;dr yes, parts of Night are no doubt fictionalized and/or edited but this it not shocking or new. Memoirs need to be taken with giant spoonfuls of salt.

[Anonymous No.4765733]

>>4757570
I loved the outsiders ;-;

I can understand that someone would not like it, though. It was really good for where I was in life, not good on it's own merit besides the theme.

[Anonymous No.4765748]

A Million Little Pieces.

I'm not even joking. The teacher fucking loved it.

[Anonymous No.4765774]

This piece of shit.

[Anonymous No.4765785]

>>4765774
What kind of high school did you go to? I was assigned that in elementary school.

[Anonymous No.4765805]

Jellybeans in elementary.
I am still fat to this day because of that book. It was about fat kids that were forced to go to fat camp and they ended up stealing food to sate their hunger.
Gatsby
Dense as shit and dated. Language taught me fucking nothing and I was too young to fathom why the fuck I should care.
Mockingbird
Couldn't relate, southern bullshit etc.
Some Shit by Maya Angelou
more black people fucking cows and stuff. I have no idea why english departments have a hardon for the old south and bestiality.

[Anonymous No.4765810]

>>4765805
>more black people fucking cows and stuff
you mean beloved?

[Anonymous No.4765812]

>>4757591
Oh god this.

[Anonymous No.4765816]

>>4758142
>rye
>good

[Anonymous No.4765831]

I'm looking for a point of view of a sperm inside a ball.

[Anonymous No.4765836]

>>4765831
there's a story in "Lost in the Funhouse" from the POV of a spermatozoa

[Anonymous No.4765842]

>>4765748
I'm this guy
>>4758528
Luckily, it was a school-wide thing and my teacher also loathed the book. I wrote my essay on how it was fucking atrocious, got a 98.

[Anonymous No.4765845]

>>4765810
The fuck I know.
I just remember this hot black girl was apparently agreed upon by all the other black guys on this ranch or whatever to be the girlfriend of some other black guy so they just fucked the cows to relieve themselves or some shit.
I swear, I can't stand anything that has 'muh minorities' in it. The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellision gave me the same feeling, that as a person you have zero control and are at the mercy of a system that the only option in dealing with is to suffer and complain like a bitch.

[Anonymous No.4765853]

>>4765845
Yeah that's Beloved

I actually liked Invisible Man though, I think it's one of the few pieces of black fiction that deserves the praise it gets

[Anonymous No.4765927]

>>4758483

Came into here to post Beloved.

[Anonymous No.4766916]

>>4765774
>not liking the part with Sam and Catherine
>not wanting a novel about Kissin' Kate Barlowe's crime spree

well I never

[Anonymous No.4767416]

>>4758431
>dem yams

[Anonymous No.4767530]

>>4758531
b-b-but symbolism

[Anonymous No.4768189]

>>4767530
symbolism and theme deconstruction is why high school english curricula are such shit

[Anonymous No.4768235]

>>4757566
Looking for Alibrandi

It's the best local work for Australian kids. It's the most pointless read ever, shows how truly pathetic australian society is

Highly recommended from that angle

[Anonymous No.4768237]

I refused to do any assignments related to this book. This is why I rarely have sympathy for rape victims.
Coming in at a very close second is Whale Talk. Freshman year sucked.

[Anonymous No.4768269]

>>4768237
what about it made you not have sympathy for rape victims? all i remember is some girl got raped and was quiet for the rest of the book. she also drew trees.

[Anonymous No.4768276]

High school made me fucking hate reading until I left

They really should just start with the Greeks and teach philosophy, the truth and meaning of things.

Less about our feelings and what we're all thinking and more about what is. I do not give a fuck about the teacher's boring, tautologous interpretation of this or that novel, or what literary devices the author is using.

[Anonymous No.4768278]

>>4768276
This. Everyone should always start with the Greeks.

[Anonymous No.4768898]

>>4757566
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. It's like a shitty version of Black Boy.

[Anonymous No.4768921]

>>4768276
>>4768278

Well, I wish I was formally schooled in ancient Greek and Latin at a young age. I'd be much further around. But there's no use in wishing.

[Anonymous No.4768976]

>>4761047
>I liked Ender's cold logic. ... He's empathy personified, yet was responsible for a damned genocide of an entire sentient race.
So you're admitting that he's the least believable child in fiction...

[Anonymous No.4768978]

>>4761499
Funny, my teacher hates that book too.

[Anonymous No.4768996]

>>4760953
I'm a huge fan of McCarthy, but the focus of his style may not appeal to some. Doesn't make you a pleb if you can't deal with it.

[Anonymous No.4770868]

All of the token books that were on the curriculum purely because they were written by a black or Latino person and about black or Latino people.

They were total and unredeemable shit, every single one of them.

[Anonymous No.4770895]

>>4768235
The girl in the movie was cute.

Also it was mostly about Italians not like Australians

[Anonymous No.4770909]

>>4770895
not /being/ like Australians, sorry.

[Anonymous No.4770937]

Rinascimento Privato by Maria Bellonci.
Please, God, she is dead now: may she burn in the hottest flames of Hell.
What a drag it was.

[Anonymous No.4770949]

>>4765774
Fuck off. It was simple but sweet.
On the other hand, The Giver was bullshit.

[Anonymous No.4770950]

this piece of shit right here
poorly written
poorly plotted
inept social references

[Anonymous No.4771462]

This shit right here. I don't even hate Hardy in general, but this book....

>>4757566
Also this book. Read one chapter, threw it aside in disgust, and BSed all the assignments.

[Anonymous No.4771467]

>>4771462
goddamnit, forgot pic

[Anonymous No.4771779]

>>4768278
In italy we start by studying latin and greek classics (we actually have a separate subject for mithology and such), alongside modern literature like kafka
(I'm talking about high school 1st year)

[Anonymous No.4771797]

>Any book listed in this thread
>Worse than this

[Anonymous No.4771805]

>>4758720
nigga Wuthering Heights is incredible

[Anonymous No.4771827]

My freshman year teacher kept interpreting Romeo and Juliet as a romance. Can't stand that fucking play anyways...
(I adore the Taming of the Shrew, though)

[Anonymous No.4771831]

>>4771797
This

[Anonymous No.4771836]

>>4771805
Jane Eyre ain't bad either.

[Anonymous No.4771842]

>>4758142
My junior year I was reading The Stranger in class one day and the teacher walked by an was shocked. She didn't think high schoolers would enjoy "that type of book"? *Huh?*

And your school was assigning it to juniors.

>My school sucked
>My school sucked
>My school sucked
>My school sucked
>My school sucked
>My school sucked

[Anonymous No.4771855]

>>4758763
>She gets addicted to drugs after doing LSD? What the fuck. How can you understand drugs so little.

Please, this board lionizes a book where the main character is "addicted" to weed. You don't actually have to know anything about what you're writing, anymore.

[Anonymous No.4771858]

Either Great Expectations or Heart of Darkness. It was such a relief when we got to 1984

[Anonymous No.4771863]

Tuesdays with Morrie

[Anonymous No.4771894]

>>4771863
Ontariofag here, this book was a pile of shit.

>muh lougherigs

[Anonymous No.4771897]

>>4771863
Correction this was the worst I had to read. So terrible I just tried to forget about. Thanks a lot fucker.

[Anonymous No.4771921]

>>4757566
I must be the only one who enjoyed it. The seemingly homosexual undertones were a bit off-putting, but I saw the slow pace and relatively uninteresting plot as aiding the whole wartime slice of life aspect when I was reading it. It wasn't the greatest book by any means, ut I enjoyed it overall.

[Anonymous No.4771937]

Ethan Frome. Wharton should've shoved her goddamn pickle dish into her comatose inducing brain.

[Anonymous No.4771947]

>>4761499
> I live in a Spanish-speaking country so I read a terrible and quite difficult translation of it.

they just shouldn't do that. Shakespeare makes little enough sense in English. The only way to really study Shakespeare is if you've already been taught English.

[Anonymous No.4771997]

>>4771827
romeo and juliet is romance, idiot
and also great

[Anonymous No.4772002]

>>4771997
wait, there's other shit besides tragedy and comedy? when did this happen

[Anonymous No.4772113]

Lord of the flies
Bullshit

[Anonymous No.4772166]

>>4771863
Fucking this shit right here. I read this in 10th grade and thought it to be utter bullshit while my teacher preached it as some kind of enlightening, life-altering novel for the ages.

>mfw my class was assigned to write an essay about the character's transition from the beginning of the novel to the conclusion.
>mfw when my essay was about Mitch Albom being a total douche throughout the entirety of the memoir.

[Anonymous No.4772211]

I was allowed to pick my own books to read in high school so none, but first year of collage I had to read the buddah of suburbia, jesus how dreadfully boring that shit was.

[Anonymous No.4772234]

>>4771863
Yep. Read it outside of school, but only because people promised me it was "life-altering"... hmmm no, no it wasn't, nope.

[Anonymous No.4772238]

The Alchemist.
It's self-help tier.

[Anonymous No.4772265]

>>4761672
That sounds awesome.

[qt (high) - im here to rec r8 (...) No.4772272]

>>4761672
>>4761672
is it weird that i want to read this now

[Anonymous No.4772519]

Lord of the Flies. At the time I didn't think much of it but looking back it had a pretty simplistic plot, and I didn't like any of the characters. Not my cup of tea.

[Anonymous No.4774035]

>>4761672
You made it sound so awesome with your description. It really isn't.

[Anonymous No.4774052]

>>4772238
winrar

Tess of the Derpervilles

[Anonymous No.4774055]

The Giver.

It was just embarrassing to read.

[Anonymous No.4774059]

Things Fall Apart was fucking awful.

[Anonymous No.4774064]

>>4774059
this. it seems like we have to lower our standards for african literature. there's nothing interesting about the prose, what was said, or what it meant. it was just boring.

[Anonymous No.4774069]

>>4774059
>>4774064
i never know whether you niggers are joking or not, i never see anybody posting in support but i honestly thought things fall apart is awesome
maybe because you get it assigned in school. most books that were assigned are reflexively hated

[Anonymous No.4774075]

I'd say it was pretty much all shit.

At least 85% of what we read was blatant white guilt garbage

>muh holocaust
>muh slavery
>muh native americans

I thought I just hated literature until 9th grade when we read Les Miserables

Don Quixote and Count of Monte Cristo changed my mind completely about books. I realized I had been reading politically motivated trash all along.

Haven't read a bad book since high school.

[Anonymous No.4774079]

>>4774064


i liked though the parts where he was doing his thing to get the biggest fucking yam pile in the village, mother fuckers.

[Anonymous No.4774082]

>>4774069
It was just a boring book that didn't really have a point except "bad stuff happened and then a guy killed himself".

[Anonymous No.4774085]

>>4774082
you can say something similar about any book

[Anonymous No.4775044]

The age of innocence. Holy fucking christ that must have been the worst book ever written.

[Anonymous No.4776333]

It's too hard to decide with all the vapid "young adult" trash schools force upon kids these days.

[Anonymous No.4776364]

Basically every book that isn't foreign, because I live in a shithole country that can't produce any good books at all

[Anonymous No.4776388]

>>4774055
Why? I kinda liked it.
Tho it was assigned in like 6th grade

[Anonymous No.4776415]

I never understood why people dislike A Separate Peace. It's certainly not a favorite of mine, but I thought it was reasonably well written and not stupid. I always thought it was just disliked by middle- and high-schoolers who either hate being forced to read novels or want more vampires.

[Anonymous No.4776443]

Like seriously the last third of this book seemed completely unrelated to the rest of it, it was just Ayn Rand popping out of the plot to spew her opinion.

At least it was only 100 pages though.

[Anonymous No.4776454]

>>4771863
>tfw you secretly enjoyed Tuesdays with Morrie

I guess I didn't have any analysis on it though, I just read it for fun and was done with it.

[Anonymous No.4776457]

>tfw didn't get assigned any novels in high school because english teachers didn't think we could handle them
>was in honors classes and they still though this
>only thing close that we read was the myth of sisyphus b/c my english teacher knew that i loved camus
you guys are lucky

[Anonymous No.4776461]

>>4757566

The Great Gatsby.

[Anonymous No.4776509]

>>4771797
Alright, motherfucker, what was wrong with To Kill a Mockingbird?

[Anonymous No.4776526]

>>4768237
>>4757566
I hated both of these in very different ways, I also wrote essays on why the books sucked and why I hated them, I got very good grades off my hate essays too.

[Anonymous No.4776556]

>>4776443
God, I'll admit Atlas Shrugged had some interesting points, and I haven't read Fountainhead, but I can easily say this was among the worst fucking books I have ever read.

I can't recall ever seeing anyone else strawman as hard as she does here.

[Anonymous No.4776578]

>>4776526
Summarize please.

[Anonymous No.4776597]

>>4776556
I quit Atlas Shrugged about 100 pages in. She should have just saved everyone some time and written a short essay titled "Socialists Are the Devil and Capitalists Are Perfect in Every Way"

[Anonymous No.4776631]

I passed my AP Lit class without ever reading a single thing that was assigned.

[Anonymous No.4776662]

>>4776631

samey here

I only got a C+ though, 5 on the exam though

[Anonymous No.4776685]

>>4757566

I remember my first day of college when the lad taking us around on the orientation told us we had to read this, which we could conveniently buy from the campus book store for $30. After pirating it I got about ~50 pages in before I realized it was pop culture trash that the school admin only got because it was on Oprah. This was an issue because all the Freshmen at my school were assigned a no-credit (but required) "Freshman lifestyle" class that focused around the "Hero's Journey" as presented in the book. As the semester wore on, we all also had to attend a $40 presentation by the author, which is when I realized that she was a hack that was only doing this now for the easy college freshman money. The worst part was, during the Q&A session some girl cried about how the book really effected her (which was funny, considering that the book was about a dumb bitch who gives up a career and a family to go be a dumb slut playing grabass in rural Oregon).

I probably shouldn't be so harsh on the book, because it made me realize that college is a sham and an industry. I later dropped out, got into a JC and got a job. Spoilered for blogshit

[Anonymous No.4776688]

>>4757566 (OP)

I remember my first day of college when the lad taking us around on the orientation told us we had to read this, which we could conveniently buy from the campus book store for $30. After pirating it I got about ~50 pages in before I realized it was pop culture trash that the school admin only got because it was on Oprah. This was an issue because all the Freshmen at my school were assigned a no-credit (but required) "Freshman lifestyle" class that focused around the "Hero's Journey" as presented in the book. As the semester wore on, we all also had to attend a $40 presentation by the author, which is when I realized that she was a hack that was only doing this now for the easy college freshman money. The worst part was, during the Q&A session some girl cried about how the book really effected her (which was funny, considering that the book was about a dumb bitch who gives up a career and a family to go be a dumb slut playing grabass in rural Oregon).

I probably shouldn't be so harsh on the book, because it made me realize that college is a sham and an industry. I later dropped out, got into a JC and got a job, but only after taking out $10,000 in student loans Spoilered for blogshit

[Anonymous No.4777214]

>>4776415
dumb plot, shallow one dimensional characters, it's stupid, and I hated it.

[Anonymous No.4777216]

Just about done with it, here's the list:
The Kite Runner
Life of Pi
Oranges Are the Only Fruit
Jane Eyre (currently slogging through)

Supposedly The Alchemist was terrible but I dodged that and chose to read The Odyssey for the class instead -- okay, i didn't actually read it, but i was still pretty immature at the time.

Brave New World and To the Lighthouse were decent but very underwhelming, while the best surprises have come this year, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Beloved. Thought I was going to hate both, honestly.

[Anonymous No.4779100]

La Vie au Max
1984

[Anonymous No.4779122]

>>4768237
>I no longer care about real people's experiences because a book about them was poorly written

holy shit anon, you're a dickwad

[Anonymous No.4779125]

>>4758163
>>4757566
>>4758713
>>4760956
>>4761468
>>4768898
>>4774055
I liked all of these books, especially Invisible Man and Wuthering Heights. When I was in high school, I fucking loved reading. The only books I remember actively disliking in high school were Journey to the Center of the Earth and Tuesdays with Morrie.

[Anonymous No.4779133]

>>4776443
You had to read Anthem in high school?

[Anonymous No.4779171]

>>4757570
>The outsiders
Damn, we read that at the end of 6th grade, right before Animal Farm. And Ender's Game? What the fuck kind of shitty high school did you go to?

>>4758142
Not bad, I same here.
>Great Expectations
>A Farewell to Arms
>As I Lay Dying
>Jane Eyre
>Frankenstein (meh)
>Heart of Darkness
>The Metamorphosis
>A Mad Man's Diary
>Les Mis
>The Bridge of San Luis Rey
>Myth of Sisyphus and were "encouraged" to read The Stranger out of class

I actually enjoyed our reading list, well with one exception....pic related. We actually read this shit my senior year and my teacher was reluctant to let us read it, but he felt it may be relevant for the AP exam. I didn't like it one bit.

[Anonymous No.4779236]

>>4779171
The Kite Runner isn't pretentious

I just hate how Western readers decipt the 'Aryan' of the book having Blue eyes and blone hair when thats not what the writer is on about
Hes simply talking about Pashtuns and Iranians /N.Indians

>Tfw a large majority of the West doesnt know what an Aryan is

It makes me cringe so hard

[Anonymous No.4779261]

>>4776443
Seconded, my instructor had the nerve to compare this book to 1984.

[Anonymous No.4779284]

>>4779236
>The Kite Runner isn't pretentious
Are you fucking kidding me? Have you read it? I swear, every fucking chapter ends with some tryhard, pretentious bullshit to try to make Hoessini seem way deeper than he is. Not to mention the fact that he could have accomplished the same effect in about 200 pages less. I'm not talking about the "Aryans," and I don't remember ever hearing anyone talking about some sort of blue eyed blonde haired Aryan, when we discussed it in class, it was pretty specifically talking about Pashtuns, Hazara, etc.


But the fact that certain people think the Aryan had blonde hair and blue and that it bothers you so much seems to indicate that the whole book went completely over your head. You know that's not very important, r-right?

[Anonymous No.4779305]

The chosen
Gatsby- a bunch of delusional rich fucks kill eachother

[Anonymous No.4779307]

>>4779284
Yeah, I got the message and all but I don't think its pretentious

Maybe the part where he goes to rescue the kid and its inevitable ending but the rest wasn't bad

>when we discussed it in class, it was pretty specifically talking about Pashtuns, Hazara
I notice lots of people who read it think the big bad bully was an 'Aryan' and I don't know why they do this

[Stan No.4779317]

The Awakening.
>marry man for his money
>surprise surprise it's a loveless marriage
>get fed up with living in the lap of luxury
>abandon your children who you didn't love anyway
>use your husband's money to buy shitty apartment
>kill yourself
What an inspiring story of female empowerment.

[Anonymous No.4779336]

>>4779307
>Maybe the part where he goes to rescue the kid and its inevitable ending but the rest wasn't bad
I agree, in fact I don't think any of it it really "bad," just unimpressive and, to use a platitude at this point, very "tryhard." You could kind of tell just by talking about it in class too, the teacher wasn't crazy about it, the smarter kids didn't care for it much, and then you get the couple of kids who read shit like Hunger Games who really liked it. I definitely think it's better than Hunger Games, but I don't think it was on an AP level reading list.

>I notice lots of people who read it think the big bad bully was an "Aryan" and I don't know why they do this.
Well, and obviously I can only speak to my experience, my class never said anything about him being Aryan to my memory (and I keep bring up class because that's the only time I ever discussed this book) but I have the book on my shelf in my dorm, maybe I'll look into it later. Do you remember the character's name?

[Anonymous No.4779347]

>>4779317
It was the only way to escape man

[Anonymous No.4779350]

>>4779305
>focusing on plot and not writing style, themes, etc.
I'll bet your teachers loved you....

[Anonymous No.4779353]

>>4779336
Yeah, It's nothing literatry great but its a nice story
I don't know why its read in Schools though
Something like Persepolis or Animal Farm I can understand but not TKR

> Do you remember the character's name?
He was the one who butt raped the MC's friend
Assef

[Anonymous No.4779363]

>>4779350
We didn't focus on small shit like that

[Anonymous No.4779371]

>>4779363
Haha, yea ok.

>>4779353
I'm not sure if I'd say "nice story," but yes, definitely an interesting one (the plot was actually one of the few things I did like about it). And I can see Animal Farm, but we read that in sixth grade, I feel like you're kind of insulting high schoolers if you ask them to read it.

[Anonymous No.4779378]

>>4779350
Good themes can't save a bad story

[Anonymous No.4779383]

All over creation

[Anonymous No.4779384]

>>4779378
Not true.

"What is 'The Bible' for 500, Bill!"

[Anonymous No.4779388]

>>4779371
There are still high schoolers who don't understand what AF is even based off

[Anonymous No.4779397]

>>4779388
>There are still high schoolers who don't understand what AF is even based off
Whaaaaaa? We got the whole Bolshevik Revolution shit shoved down our throats early in Middle School, do people really go through life THAT clueless?

[Anonymous No.4779408]

>>4779397
Yes

[Anonymous No.4779418]

>>4779397
Yes I have seen it in the youth of the present day and I weep

[Anonymous No.4779422]

>>4779408
>>4779418
But....but....come on m8, I am the present day youth. How do we fix it?

[Anonymous No.4779429]

>>4779422
With those Dubs

>We change the eduational doctrine

[Anonymous No.4779433]

>>4779422
HAHHAHAHAHHA we're fucked anon. People are either pure retards or worse -- commies. The jews have won.

[Anonymous No.4779434]

>>4779422
Theres a reason Wittgenstien disliked going through and tugging education

[Anonymous No.4779443]

>>4779429
Ok, but I don't think we're headed in a very good direction. Where do we get more teachers like this?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/

>>4779433
Nice dubs, but I used to dabble in communism, just for a bit. Junior year was weird.

>>4779434
So, private education for all?

[Anonymous No.4779451]

>>4779443
A lot of systemal education is pre-determined and largley a batch production leacture
Letting loose of impecible Government control and leaving teaching down to teachers would be a start

>>4779443
>So, private education for all?
Its an option

Hell, even smaller classrooms and more concentrated motives towards those who want to learn

[Anonymous No.4779689]

>>4779397
Even worse is when they think that Animal Farm is a pro-capitalist book.

[Anonymous No.4779697]

>>4779451
>Letting loose of impecible Government control and leaving teaching down to teachers would be a start

God no, do you even realize how stupid a lot of teachers in America are?

You would literally have science teachers preaching Genesis and English teachers assigning Divergent and 50 Shades of Grey if you let this happen.

What we need to do is just look at other countries that have systems that work and copy whatever the fuck they're doing.

[Anonymous No.4779865]

holy shit I've never read anything so inane in my fucking life, i'd rather read excerpts from /pol/ or some tumblr fag's manifesto on how all men need to die.

>tl;dr book says adapt
no fucking shit, that's intuitive as fuck. fuck i hate this book.

[Anonymous No.4779914]

>>4757570
>hating on Ender's Game
you motherfucker

[Anonymous No.4779972]

>>4779689
What the hell, how do they construe it that much?

[Anonymous No.4780118]

Without a doubt the worst was Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. To this day, it's the only book I've ever fallen asleep trying to read. I mean for fuck's sake, there was an entire chapter devoted to describing the contents of a drawer. In the end, the teacher didn't even bother testing us on it since not a single student actually finished the damn thing.

[Anonymous No.4780141]

Either Atlas Shrugged or The Talisman.
>inb4 muh Stephan King
I love his stories I just can't stand his writing style. Its soooo boring

[Anonymous No.4780538]

>>4757566
This. Taught by a die-hard feminist.
I win. Top lel.

[Anonymous No.4780657]

"Their Eyes Were Watching God" was awful.

[Anonymous No.4780783]

>>4780657
Why?

[Anonymous No.4780830]

>>4780141
>atlas shrugged
I don't believe you, no school is that cruel.

[Anonymous No.4780843]

>>4761047
>You're just latching on to the it's-popular-let's-hate-it bandwagon. I haven't watched the movie and don't intend to. The fact that the populace suddenly like EG does not have any bearing on how good or bad EG is as a book/series. Into logic.

I've never seen a more popular ad hominem. It's also a great measure of how insecure someone is in their taste.

[Anonymous No.4782289]

>>4758565
that's the WORST book you've ever read? I bet you dislike Knut Hamsun too huh?

[Anonymous No.4782388]

Germanfag reporting in. Most of the stuff we had to read was pretty awful (exceptions include Faust, Kafka and Dürrenmatt).

Goethe - Götz von Berlichingen
Kleist - Michael Kohlhaas
Droste-Hülshoff - The Jew's Beech

But most of all, pic related - it's about the daily life of some retarded dude, and it's politically correct to a cringeworthy extent. We also read it in our German class for some reason, even though the original is French.

[Anonymous No.4782459]

I guess The Kite Runner. I don't remember particularly disliking it, but I seem to remember thinking the second half of the book wasn't great and there was nothing special about the prose.

I read The Outsiders in grade 9, but I liked it when I read it then. Maybe it's secretly a terrible book and I was just in grade 9? Who knows.

[Anonymous No.4782542]

[Anonymous No.4782578]

>>4782459
I liked the Outsiders when I read it as well. It was probably around year 9 or 10.

[Anonymous No.4782625]

>>4765494
Why so offended by P&P? It's light and fun.

[Anonymous No.4784976]

This book is literally worse than Atlas Shrugged in its heavy-handed euphoric denunciation of TEH EVIL CHRISTIAN PATRIARCHY. Naturally it's become fap material for every gender studies professor ever...

Despite being, y'know, Ayn Rand tier dystopian lit with no intellectual depth whatsoever beyond "WAAAH WERE OPPRESSED, LOOK WHAT RONALD REAGAN AND PAT ROBERTSON WILL IMPOSE ON THE WORLD COME 2000!!!"

[Anonymous No.4785101]

>>4784976
You're a moron, buddy.

[Anonymous No.4785107]

fuck this catcher in the rye copycat bullshit

[Anonymous No.4785122]

This.
Hardly AP material. It's not even worthy of honors classes.

[Anonymous No.4785125]

>>4785101
Buttblasted feminist detected

[Anonymous No.4785126]

>ctrl-f Their Eyes Were Watching God
>one found

>>4780657
This. Nigger speak doesn't make your book interesting.

[Anonymous No.4785132]

Also Holes was fucking shit. I wasn't really assigned it but the teachers pushed that shit on everybody so everyone ended up reading it at some point. I quit half way, it was so fucking boring. Not just plot wise, but the whole idea of it.

[Anonymous No.4785135]

>>4785132
Misread OP, this was actually in elementary school.

[Anonymous No.4785146]

>>4761657
>being insensitive to my anti-polytheistic beliefs
>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.4785149]

>>4758737
>black chick
>good grades
Top lel, also all I can think of is that movie with Antonio Banderas and the scene with the doll thing getting reluctantly fucked.

[Anonymous No.4785153]

The lack of assigned novels in high school was really the worst part. Abridged Great Expectations, Beloved, Beowulf, Of Mice and Men, and a handful of Shakespeare plays were the only extended works I recall being assigned--huzzah for rural American high school.

[Anonymous No.4785189]

I went to Catholic school so must of the teachers so we read mostly classics. The obvious exception was the trimester sophomore year where we read strictly African and African american literature. The Worst were Song of Solomon and black boy. Nobody could say anything bad about the books because about a third of the school was black

[Anonymous No.4786032]

>>4785189
>Catholic school
>third of the school was black
Huh? I went to a private Catholic school and we had about 8 black kids out of the 600. I don't intend to sound racist, but how exactly did they all afford it? I don't mean to say that black people are not capable of higher incomes, but demographically speaking, they can't usually afford such expensive education.

Wait, do you live in a low-income area with like mission type schools?

[Anonymous No.4786445]

>>4757566
Matilda

[Anonymous No.4786489]

Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

[Anonymous No.4786703]

Don't Hurt Laurie!

Her mom beat the fuck out of her. It was 4th grade. wtf -- she knocks her into the toilet and her tooth falls out

[Anonymous No.4786971]

>>4776364

What country?

[Anonymous No.4786972]

>>4757566
Either this or the one where the kid gets molested during the Holocaust.

Or was it the Armenien Genocide?

[Anonymous No.4786977]

>>4785132

The first was solid for what it was.

[Anonymous No.4786979]

It's rather telling that the most popular thread on /lit/ is a highschool reading thread.

This implies that either most everyone is still in highschool, and/or the only reading anyone on /lit/ has ever done has been in highschool.

Pathetic losers, all of you.

[Anonymous No.4787129]

>>4786032
Depends on the area, I also went to a private cath school with about 1/5 blacks and another 1/5 spics. Most of them were attending for free on financial aid.

[Anonymous No.4787135]

>>4786979
Maybe it's because education is a sensitive topic and many people think high schools are robbing students of the education they deserve.

[Anonymous No.4787139]

>>4786979

Everyone was in high school...

[Anonymous No.4787377]

Lord of the Flies.

It's boring as fuck. Hated it.

[Anonymous No.4788666]

What books should be assigned to a grade school class, middle school class, and High School class? Id imagine something really accessible and likable that the majority of the class wont hate and hopefully the class can take something from it. Why is there a selected pool of books that that every school in the US picks to assign to students anyway?

[Anonymous No.4788754]

>>4779865
The fuck is this?

[Anonymous No.4788755]

Whatever that book JFK claims to have written is. Can't remember the name.

[Anonymous No.4788764]

A Prayer for Owen Meany. G-d fucking DAMN. Couldn't force myself any more past the one-third/halfway point. I was appalled to see all the rave reviews this book got, too.

[Anonymous No.4789141]

I swear this book was written on the slight chance that George Bush would pull a Billy Madison and try to complete the third grade and would have to astound his teachers with a book report tailored just to his intellect and background. What a piece of shit. I lost intelligence as I read this.

[Anonymous No.4789231]

>>4785122
>duplicate file exists here
lel

[Anonymous No.4789254]

>>4788764

>G-d

were on 4chan bro you don't need to censor out things

[Anonymous No.4789270]

>>4758531
I did this. I wouldn't say its completely disgusting but it definitely doesn't have much to warrant it as such a constantly analysed classic.

[The cats No.4789272]

>>4789254
Shylocks don't type god. He is likely being ironic, though.

[Anonymous No.4790250]

>>4761431
Well, I saw 3 person reading it in the subway after the movie was annonced.

Talked to two of them, once being inebriated (lel)

[Anonymous No.4790256]

>>4779100
Wow.

Effectivement, ça sent les anées 80, rien qu'au titre.

Lisons un résumé pris aléatoirement sur le fabuleux Interweb

[Anonymous No.4790271]

>>4786445
Fuck you a thousand times, and not tenderly. How old were you?

[Anonymous No.4791231]

>>4758478
this.

[Anonymous No.4791551]

[Anonymous No.4792429]

The Bluest Eye.

Like, I understand that they want diversity of background for their literature, and that Toni Morrison is a well-known contemporary author, and that the experience of minorities in America is a topic you should expect in high school English, but, holy shit, could they really not think of an analogous book that was less awful? Give us Invisible Man, or if it has to be Morrison, then Beloved. Or give us Their Eyes Were Watching God, but for some reason high schools don't seem to have picked that up, despite their current obsession with multiculturalism and the fact that it's probably the best book by an African-American author.

[Anonymous No.4792444]

>>4792429
>>4780657
>>4785126

[Anonymous No.4792540]

>>4779236
>>Tfw a large majority of the West doesnt know what an Aryan is

Blame Hitler.