Reading What book changed you? led me to think about the books that I was forced to read in school.
Which assigned books did you most loathe or love?
The ones that I detested were Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Ethan Frome, and My Antonia.
Something about all that heavy-handed sentimentality made me violently ill.
The ones I loved were Slaughterhouse Five, Catcher in the Rye (though most of my classmates didn’t care for it), and the Great Gatsby.
How about you guys?
-Outrider
I hated almost anything that my teachers assigned. I hated Old Man and the Sea, Of Mice and Men, Shakespearean plays and many others given me to read in school, be it during elementary, junior high, or high school.
I loved Watership Down, though. I read many other books that should have been on our reading list. Right now I can’t recall any but they should come to me.
Didn’t read them.
(I achieved heights of underachieving previously undreamed.)
Then I went through a classics phase.
Never thought I would enjoy Charles Dickens.
Couldn’t read Victor Hugo enough times.
But still won’t consider F. Scot.
Now, if only I could erase the memory of some books that I did read in school.
By the way, two books already mentioned in this thread were on the school board’s banned list.
Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. I ended up reading almost her entire backlist. I was never really into Greek plays such as Antigone or The Bacchae, but I wouldn’t say that I hated them …
I was always a voracious reader. I’d read 2 or 3 books a week of stuff that I liked. None of those stuff boring classics for me.
Thank god for crazy Ms Jastry, my high school freshman English teacher. The first book she assigned us was The Red Badge of Courage. It totally redefined the meaning of the word “classic” to me. Next she assigned a few Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft short stories. Wow! This stuff is good, I think to myself. Then she whammied us all with The Scarlet Letter.
Freshman college gave me The Pilgrim’s Progress. It may be a great allegorical story of man’s struggles with. . . I dunno. I finished it because I had to, but don’t ask me to remember it.
Yeah, I’m a potboiler type of girl.
I hated:
The Scarlet Letter
Pride and Predjudice
Summer of My German Soldier
The Perfect Storm
I Am The Cheese
The Outsiders
Weliend
Notes From the Underground
Don Quixote
Corregidora (one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read)
The Adventures of Huck Finn (2 classes the same semester!)
virtually all the Victorian and Romantic poems I was assigned to read
I Loved:
“The Yellow Wallpaper”
The Awakening ; “Desiree’s Baby”
Jane Eyre
The Kindred
The Giver
To Kill A Mocking Bird
One Flew Over The Cukoo’s Nest
Night
MacBeth
Diary of A Mad Man
The White Hotel (a college assignment, obviously)
Death of a Saleman (seriously, I like Miller)
Oleanna
Triffles
“A Good Man is Hard to Find”
most of the modern/post-modern poetry I was assigned to read
I hate, hate, hated Metamorphosis. I don’t care if it’s Franz Kafka’s masterpiece. I want a story with some semblance of plot, durnit! Metamorphosis’ plot was thinner than the book itself, which was thankfully short.
I enjoyed Animal Farm (Orson Welles), because I have an interest in the Russian Revolution.
I liked Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare had some very fine puns and jokes.
This semester we also got to read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis), which was already an absolute favorite of mine before it was assigned.
One thing that annoyed me was when I found out Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien) used to be part of the curriculum for our high school in the '70’s! Now that would have been excellent to read and discuss in class!
I liked Crime and Punishment, A Tale of Two Cities, Hamlet, Lord of the Flies, The Odyssey, There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom (I cry every time!), The Westing Game, Animal Farm, Maniac Magee, and The Once and Future King.
I hated Romeo and Juliet, Les Miserables (it seemed exactly like A Tale of Two Cities but worse), The Grapes of Wrath, some stupid book in 7th grade about a girl who lives in Manhattan and she shaves her unibrow with a razor and cuts her face up and has to wear sunglasses on the first day of school, Julius Caesar, 1984 (too hyped).
Ick…I hated it too.
[quote]
I enjoyed Animal Farm (Orson Welles), because I have an interest in the Russian Revolution.
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Animal Farm was written by George Orwell.
I simply must learn to preview…
I have to second “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Very good story. I also enjoyed “The Birthmark” by Hawthorne.
I didn’t like James Joyce’s “Araby” though. I also couldn’t get into “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston.
As far as poetry went though, I greatly prefered the romantic works.
I loved Watership Down too. And Animal Farm. And To Kill a Mockingbird. And Handmaid’s Tale by Atwood, love her.
I HATED Heart of Darkness. Conrad can kiss my lily white ass, I’ll show you the horror.
And I couldn’t get into The House of Seven Gables, yawn.
The ones I really disliked were Return of the Native and Northanger Abbey.
Best ones were probably To Kill a Mockingbird, The Bean Trees and Pride and Prejudice.
Enjoyed:*
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Flowers for Algernon
Great Expectations
MacBeth
Hamlet
As I Lay Dying*
Disliked:*
Henry IV
Romeo and Juliet
Scarlet Letter
A Separate Peace
Antigone
Beloved*
D’oh! I even did a quick search on Google to make sure I’d gotten the author right! I fell victim to a common misconception, apparently. Bleh. Thanks.
While we’re at it, I also enjoyed To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Stranger by Albert Camus was so eerie in its blandness that it’s just a neat book.
I couldn’t get Tale of Two Cities, unfortunately. The plot is interesting, I suppose, but I can’t get into Dickens’ style of writing. The biggest reason I enjoyed it was that it provided a basis for a lot of jokes in Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I. 
I, too, hated Heart of Darkness. In fact, let’s just say I hated Conrad. And guess which author I got randomly assigned when we had to do a major project in that particular class? Whee, Conrad!
Loved The Once and Future King, which I had already read a couple of years before it was assigned in one of my lit classes. Also loved The Neverending Story, assigned for a class on fairy tales (taught by the same guy)-- nowhere near as easy as some of the folks in it thought it would be, and probably one of the best classes I ever took.
Uck, count me in as hating Heart of Darkness and The Scarlet Letter. I also disliked the Oedipus trilogy, not for the writing, but for the general plot. It has been a while, but IIRC the Gods dealt Oedipus an unavoidable fate, and when he met that fate, the Gods punished him for it. Was I the only one who found this infuriating?!
I enjoyed reading, among many other things, Black Boy and Native Son. I often got well ahead of the assigned chapters because I couldn’t put them down. Someone mentioned Kindred – are you referring to the one by Octavia Butler? If so, I also loved that book. It wasn’t assigned but I did it for a book report in middle school, and continue to read it every so often. And my first semester of college we were assigned this absolutely wonderful African book, but sadly I can’t remember what it was called or who wrote it. Hmm, I’m sensing a trend here. 
Another Conrad hater checking in…
Back in high school,being on the honors program meant you were assigned three books minimum to read over the summer break.
So I had to read Heart of Darkness while on vacation…arrggghhhh.
I loved Animal Farm,Beloved,the Oedipus Trilogy,the Divine Comedy…
and still reread them to this day.
Hated:
Beloved
Dante’s Inferno
Most Shakespeare
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Wuthering Heights
A Separate Peace
Beowulf
All The Kings Men
The Crucible
Loved:
Something Wicked This Way Comes
A Prayer For Owen Meany
The Scarlet Letter
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Frankenstein
Huck Finn… most Twain
Gatsby
Romeo and Juliet
The Giver
Anne Frank
Animal Farm
Most Poe
Liked:
Watership Down
Animal Farm
To Kill A Mockingbird
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Most of the short stories
Hated:
All the Dickens
Ethan Frome
The Great Gatsby
The Scarlet Letter (actually, in my end-of-quarter essay on that book, I wrote four scathing pages about how Nathaniel Hawthorne managed to screw up one of the best and most interesting premises in the world by writing the dryest piece of dreck I’d read to date)