I’m surprised at the number of people who hated Heart of Darkness. That’s one that I’ve actually reread several times, voluntarily. It also contains a couple of my favorite lines. “The horror, the horror,” is a wonderful all-occasion response. “Exterminate all the brutes” can also be trotted out often, when discussing, for example, the Bush administration.
Now, if you want some Conrad that will confuse the daylights out of you, try The Secret Agent, which is not told chronologically. Good luck figuring out what’s going on the first time you read it!
Jesus christ, (Pardon my french) but I hated The Pearl so much. I though Steinbeck was so pretentious and full of hot air, I made it a point to avoid Steinbeck at all costs, I still get a headache thinking of that book.
It tried so hard to be relevant to teenage life that reading it made me embarassed for Mr. Salinger. If it had been less about Being an Angstful Teenager and more about actual teenagers, it would have been much better.
The only one that I ever hurled across the room was A Natural History of the Senses. I had to read it for a non-science majors class on sensory biology. The prof did a really good just with the discussions on it, but I really really disliked the book.
Tarzan, really? I loved Catcher in the Rye, loved it. Hell, all my crazy gifted student oversexed friends loved it. I lent that books to so many people that the cover was starting to wear down, I still have that old funked up dirty copy of it somewhere too i bet.
I never had to read them for class, but I second what everyone has said about Frankenstein and Heart of Darkness. Frankenstein is tediousness at its worst. It goes on and on and on about pointless details that just don’t matter in the end. You could EASILY edit the book down to about half its original size and be left with a decent story. I tried to read Heart of Darkness and by GOD, I just can’t get through a paragraph. ANd I mean now, as a 30 year old, not when I was a teenager.
Most of the stuff I actually had to read in school was pretty good. However, as a high school senior I had to read Goethe's Faust. Its not that it was not interesting. It was just over my head at the time. I personally also am not a big fan of the Iliad and the Oddysey either. Similar to Frankenstein. All I remember is them going on for pages about "ANd then we had a feast with chicken and OX and wine and bread and then the entertain came and..." As George Costanza would say, they needed to yada, yada, yada about half that stuff.
I have read Catcher in the Rye and found it to be a very good book, but I think it may not be as ground breaking or original as it probably was 50 years ago.
Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence. It was one of the books that we had to read in school because it was written by a Canadian.
Canadian’s have written many fine novels, IMHO Stone Angel is not one of them.
And I forgot Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises, what a bunch of crappy crap crap. We’re a bunch of disaffected Americans wandering around Europe drinking and whining. At least the hippies had decent clothes and music.
I pretty much read good books in school. To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Outsiders and a lot of Poe. I loved them all.
That said, I love Dickens. By the 10th grade I had read just about everything already on my own. Then for 10th grade Lit, we had to read Great Expectations. I was looking forward to reading it.
I hated it. With a passion. The only assigned reading in high school or college that I did not finish. Ick.
Ah wow, I’m surprised and delighted to see the great number of people denouncing Great Expectations. We had to read that in my sr year…I read the first quarter of it before I decided that I valued my time more than that…as a result I got a 50% on the test. Personally, I think that was a pretty good return on my investment. I read 25% of the book and got 50% of the test right…
The other literary louse that we had to read was The Mayor of Casterbridge. I actually did read the majority of this book, but I did skip over some sections. It just wasn’t my thing, so I don’t reserve for it the same circle of hell that I keep for Great Expectations. In case you haven’t read it yet and don’t want to know what happens, I’ll spoiler this:
The thing that got me was the introduction to the book that said something about the main character being a man of honor. Man of honor?! He gets loaded and sells his wife and infant!!!
I would have to say Incident at Hawk’s Hill stands out in my memory.
Everyone in my high school had to read it (in fact, my friend had it assigned in two different classes) and everyone had to write another chapter.
The story is about a kid raised by a badger. At the end, he is rescued by his parents who also take the badger in. The badger gets shot by a neighbor. End of story. Write what happens next.
If it weren’t for my friend’s chapter about Li Ching, Kung Fu Badger, that story would be worthless.
Lady Ice and Call Me Frank
All right !!! Death to “Great Expectations”. You’ve probably read my post so I think you’ll agree I had a very harrowing experience with that loathsome literature. Geez, my teacher was quite the sadist to turn that into a first term 2-month project.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Good lord that was a piece of crap. And her short stories “The Story of an Hour,” and “The Storm.” Just awful. She should have stayed in the dustbin of history.
I get this right now. I’m rereading The King Must Die, a book that, I had always supposed, was probably brilliant but went over my head because I was stupid and young.
Well, either I’ve gotten stupider and younger over the years or this book is even worse than I thought. Why am I even reading this again?
I was an English major. This may take a while. Some of these have been said but they bear repeating.
The Awakening: Kate Chopin. Please stop narrating. Please? The Scarlet Letter: Hawthorne I have never met anyone who liked this book. No one. The Pearl: Steinbeck. The most bleak and depressing piece of tripe I’ve ever forced myself to finish. If not for a fantastic teacher who made Of Mice and Men come alive it would have turned me off Steinbeck forever. The Catcher in the Rye Salinger. Goes against everything I think books are for. Unlikable people doing unlikable things for no discernable reason. Lord of the Flies Goldman. Like so many things I think this is badly taught and has potential but teachers need to listen and write this down: It is not a representation of society. Why? Because there are NO WOMEN on the island and women make up over 50% of society. The Glass Bead Game author forgotten. Just. . . huh? So incomprehensible my eyes bled.
There’s more, I’m sure of it, but I’m tired and blanking. It got better in college, I could pick what classes I took and carefully chose ones with material I found interesting. But it drives me crazy that our school system manages to produce so many people that dislike reading or find it a chore because their reading lists are out of date. I love books and it makes me sad to think there are people out that who can’t find the pleasure in curling up with a cup of tea and a good novel.
I always feel compelled to post in threads like these, in case someone reads that a book is bad and decides not to read it based on that.
Crime and Punishment is one of the best books ever written.
Perhaps a better title would be “books that you hated reading”, rather than “worst books”, because it isn’t fair to judge a book based on the circumstances in which you read it.
As for Catcher in the Rye, I know people always get defensive when someone suggests they didn’t “get” a book, but despite that I suggest reading some other Salinger. Reading Franny and Zooey, for example, will make it more clear. Actually, Catcher is my least favorite of his books, although it’s style was very influential.