# Books you had read in high school that you absolutely hated **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [September 4, 2025, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732 "2025-09-04T01:34:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/141 "2025-09-06T02:03:35Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > In the original Middle English, or in a modern translation? (And, if the latter, _which_ translation you read might have made a difference.) Uh, no. This was public school. Nowhere near such an advanced setting. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/142 "2025-09-06T02:11:14Z")
I think science fiction is a specific sunset of fantasy. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/143 "2025-09-06T04:30:14Z")
_Huckleberry Finn_. I am sure I would have a differing viewpoint today, but as a 15, 16yo, I absolutely **hated** the various dialects Twain used. I remember complaining to my teacher that it was dumb to spell “going” seven different ways. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/144 "2025-09-06T06:27:09Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > Bradbury wrote in many genres, some cross-genre, some fantasy, some science fiction, some that blurred the lines - and even detective fiction. But I would consider the Martian chronicles (soft) sci-fi. They could see the atomic war on Earth from Mars with their naked eyes? The stories were published in the second tier magazines which didn’t care all that much about science - and I’m not singling Bradbury out. I love both books, make no mistake about that. And some of his best stuff was apparent sf that veered into fantasy and horror, like “The Veldt.” I watched all of The Ray Bradbury Theater, which has the conceit of placing his office in the Bradbury Building in LA. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/145 "2025-09-06T11:11:40Z")
That’s interesting. I read Huckleberry Finn as an adult, and i assume i noticed the dialects at the time, but I’m sure i never noticed how many ways he spelled any one word. I hadn’t even remembered that he used nonstandard spelling at all. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/146 "2025-09-06T13:31:21Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > I remember complaining to my teacher that it was dumb to spell “going” seven different ways. Did you see Twain’s “I meant to do that” note? > [@](#): > > EXPLANATORY > > In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary “Pike County” dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. > > I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. > > THE AUTHOR. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/147 "2025-09-06T13:41:24Z")
Twain also uses “eye dialect,” where spoken words are misspelled for an “uneducated” look, but the misspellings would be pronounced the same as the correctly spelled words anyway. (E.g. “sivilized.”) Unlike many examples, there’s a legitimate basis to do this in _Huckleberry Finn_: we’re reading the text Huckleberry ostensibly wrote. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/148 "2025-09-06T15:23:00Z")
Yes, I understood this when I was _fifteen_, I still didn’t like it. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/149 "2025-09-06T15:57:23Z")
I generally didn’t like serialized novels. Most of Charles Dickens were published originally in that form. It leads to elaborate descriptions of people and locations. Every word counts when it’s submitted to a weekly or monthly publication. I liked _A Tale of Two Cities_ but it was a chore reading so much verbiage. It’s 2025 and not 1859. There’s a lot more entertainment competing for my leisure time. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/150 "2025-09-06T17:10:23Z")
The Last of the Mohicans. I remember that we read it. I remember I did not like. I remember nothing else. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/151 "2025-09-06T18:33:11Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I liked _A Tale of Two Cities_ but it was a chore reading so much verbiage. It’s 2025 and not 1859. There’s a lot more entertainment competing for my leisure time. I read _Bleak House,_ but I was motivated, as I was doing it for an editor certification, and I’m not sure I would have made it through otherwise. But it was good. Which kinda sums up how I feel about Dickens. “Hey this is good…I have to read _how much_ now?” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/152 "2025-09-06T23:11:20Z")
Am I the only one who liked the Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English? It’s not actually all that foreign, and it has a lovely musical sound to it. Now, I’m not sure that I’d want to read them entirely in that way, but a side-by-side version is good. Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote The drocht of Marche hath perced to the roote And bathyd evry vein in swich liquor Of which virtu engendr’d is the fleur … Possibly related, but I also acclimate very quickly to writing in dialect, like Twain’s. ---
**Author:** ![LVBoPeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/858c86/32.png) [@LVBoPeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LVBoPeep)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2025, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/153 "2025-09-06T23:21:48Z")
I remembered liking it for the antiquity of it and the language. It’s one of the few works I can remember reading in high school. I only had one good English teacher in the four years; the rest seemed to focus more on grammar and less on reading. Though I read it much later than high school (and possibly would have hated it if I had not read it later), I loved _Great Expectations._ The problem with that novel is that it starts great with the marshes and the convict, then slogs around until you get about 70% through it. I just remember putting it down around that point, when things start to come together, and thinking what a masterpiece it was. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2025, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/154 "2025-09-07T00:09:10Z")
We read both Beowulf and Chaucer in the original old to middle English in grade seven. I liked both. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2025, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/155 "2025-09-07T00:37:11Z")
I didn’t encounter Chaucer until I was a junior in college, by which time I had plenty of experience with early modern English and making the leap to Middle English was easy, but yeah, it loses a lot in translation – much of the wordplay, the sly little ambiguities, Chaucer’s characteristic trick of repeating a word and riffing off of its full range of meanings and connotations. I let my students use a line-by-line modern English translation if they really need it, but I definitely want them to have the Middle English text in front of their eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2025, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/156 "2025-09-07T01:13:45Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > We read both Beowulf and Chaucer in the original old to middle English in grade seven. I liked both. OK, Chaucer, a modern English-speaker can read, with difficulty. But Beowulf is probably closer to German or Dutch than modern English. You can look at it, and see some of the sort of structure he used, but not really read it. And I don’t remember anything at all about Great Expectations, beyond that I read it in my early teens and that I enjoyed it. But that was one I read on my own, not because I was required to. I went on a bit of Dickens kick after starring in A Christmas Carol in 7th grade. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2025, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/157 "2025-09-07T02:18:18Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > I think that there are many books in the HS curriculum that are excellent books, but which teenagers don’t have the life experience to understand them. It wasn’t a book, but my high school senior honors English class had to read Swift’s _A Modest Proposal_, and everyone - literally everyone - in the class hated it and thought it was vile and disgusting. I’m talking about the best and the brightest of the senior class here. Sure, some of us were stronger in math and science, others were stronger in language and history, but all of us had been A or B students in English throughout high school. But no one in the group got Swiftian satire at that level. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2025, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/158 "2025-09-07T02:34:52Z")
I never studied Middle English, but I love reading Chaucer in a facing page edition. ETA: Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Good stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2025, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/159 "2025-09-07T03:19:56Z")
You can read Beowulf with enough patience, explanations and footnotes. The reading was combined with lessons on Old and Middle English. Chaucer is easier but the same applies. For Beowulf, we had to learn some vocabulary and old vowel pronunciations. Plus a few new letters from the Old Germanic alphabet like thorn, eth and wyn. It isn’t _that_ hard - our whole class of somewhat gifted thirteen year olds did it. We had a brilliant teacher who had a lot of freedom from having to teach the standard curriculum. It gets easier after learning the theory behind the language. > **[Beowulf Full Text - List of Words and Phrases not in General Use - Owl Eyes](https://www.owleyes.org/text/beowulf/read/list-of-words-and-phrases-not-in-general-use#root-2)** > > Read expert analysis on Beowulf List of Words and Phrases not in General Use at Owl Eyes ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2025, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732/160 "2025-09-07T14:07:26Z")
Not high school, when our son was in 5th grade his class read Fever 1792 and he absolutely hated it. I think the teacher was impressed by how well he way able to articulate why. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-had-read-in-high-school-that-you-absolutely-hated/1022732.md?page=9)