He’s just going to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race. Pretty basic, really.
Add me as another one who didn’t like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I didn’t get it either, and thought it was a big waste of time.
Surprisingly, given that I’d heard so many people tell me how terrible and boring it was, I liked Moby-Dick. Maybe not the long treatise on whaling that Melville stuck into the middle of it, but the rest was pretty good.
Never really got into Shakespeare. The poetic language never did anything for me, so most of his plays we had to read were a slog.
If I can mention one book that I absolutely hated that wasn’t in high school, but in a novel writing certificate program I did a few years ago at Stanford, it’s Beloved. I know that’s probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but I absolutely despised the book, to the point where I ended up having to read the Cliff Notes just so I could get past that part of the class.
Oddly, for the same class, I loved The Goldfinch. People were complaining because it was so long, but I found it fascinating.
Ditto! The Grand Inquisitor chapter surrounded by hundreds of boring pages featuring characters all of whom had three names, all of them the same.
“Welcome, Dmitri Dmitrivitch.”
“Same to you Alexei Alexiovitch.”
On the plus side it save me hundreds of hours in my life by making me never want to read another long Russian novel. Right up to Cancer Ward.
Even worse was "“Look Homeward Angel” by Thomas Wolfe featuring people I didn’t care about in a place I didn’t care about doing things I didn’t care about.
Something of Jake’s didn’t.
I read it long after high school, and it inspired me to write a parody for my column with Jake and Lady Brett loading Windows. And drinking every drink in the books (there are a lot) all in about 100 words.
Huh, unlike the rest of you, i really liked heart of darkness. It was scary and depressing and incredibly beautifully written. I bought a book of Conrad’s collected works after reading that, although i don’t think i ever finished it.
Summary of that book: Teenage boys are real jerks to each other. Who would have thought?
We did that snoozefest my sophomore year. Junior year was The Scarlet Letter. That book was so boring I resorted to coasting through by using CliffsNotes.
I liked it too, but I read it during a college philosophy class on existential literature, with a teacher I loved, so I imagine that informed the experience. I think it had a lot of important things to say, especially about the colonization of so-called “savages."
Also, that professor was from Boston but schooled at Oxford and wore ridiculous sweaters, and every time I think of that book I hear his Bostonian but somehow stuffy accent as he said, " The horrah, the horrah.”
I wouldn’t have thought I could hate any book in high school more than The Catcher in the Rye. And then I had to read As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner. I didn’t think I could hate any other book that much. Then I had to read Sanctuary (another Faulkner) in college.
I’m no fan of Rabbit, Run either.
Worst. Anne of Withering Green Heights and Gables. Pretty sure I’m conflating two, possibly three hated books. Also sure I got an ‘F’ for those book reports - copying random stuff from the book jacket blurbs will do that.
I was a voracious reader of histories though.
I like it too, but it pales beside the actual horror of colonial Congo. It’s kinda like a book about the motor pool at Auschwitz.
Most of mine have been mentioned, namely Silas Marner, Ethan Frome, and worst of all, Wuthering Heights. I never would have passed the test on Wuthering Heights if it hadn’t been for Cliffs Notes. The Bronte sisters were immediately placed on my permanently-banned list for books to read.
Oddly, I thought The Scarlet Letter was OK when I had to read it in high school, but then I reread it in my 30s thinking that I would appreciate it more as an adult. Instead, I found it very boring and ridiculous.
I found The Sound and the Fury tough going. That was one I definitely needed Cliff Notes to figure out what was going on.
Jane Eyre seems to be the only one of their novels anyone talks about anymore, though you might occasionally hear Villette mentioned at certain dinner parties.
As much as I hated reading certain books in English class, I would have hated them even more if I’d had to do assignments like yours.
I fortunately didn’t have to read A Separate Peace,but the kids who did universally despised it.
I liked most of what we read, but hated Heart of Darkness and anything by Wm. Faulkner.
I agree with you. Heart of Darkness is one of my favorites.
Wow.
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Really. I only discovered Ursula K. Le Guin a few years ago and read a few of her books, including “The Left Hand Of Darkness”, and found them interesting and intriguing, definitely food for thought, especially given the time in which they were written. I would have loved to have already encountered her in school, but these assignments would have taken all the fun out of it, and I probably never would have touched any of her books again.
Most of the books we had to read in high school were good or very good, none were detestable, most reflected the personality of the teacher. I’m sure I would have much more insight if I reread some of them now. Some of them were not things I would have chosen to read - particularly The Stone Angel and Goodbye Mister Chips. Some would be worth rereading - the major Shakespeares, A Handmaid’s Tale, Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, Something Wicked This Way Comes…
I’m not sure whether 17 yo me would’ve liked these assignments or not, but you were at least getting to read somebody who could write. I went to her high school and we never got assigned any LeGuin.