# Worst Author Taught In Public School?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-author-taught-in-public-school/46770>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [December 21, 2000, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-author-taught-in-public-school/46770 "2000-12-21T22:30:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 6

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**Author:** ![FallenAngel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@FallenAngel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FallenAngel)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2000, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-author-taught-in-public-school/46770/101 "2000-12-28T23:50:27Z")

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Steinbeck, Melville, Dickens and Hawthorne all engender equal amounts of desire to spew here.

Thomas Hardy, however, wins the projectile toss contest hands down.

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**Author:** ![ASD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c68b51/32.png) [@ASD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASD)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2000, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-author-taught-in-public-school/46770/102 "2000-12-29T00:54:44Z")

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Hated Melville. Never actually had to read Moby Dick, we had to read “The Confidence Man: His Masquerade”. It was one of the first books I just couldn’t get through. And I love to read, anything and everything.

Read excerpts of Walden in 9th grade and it was ok. Then I had to read “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”. Ugh–it was painful. 60 pages on describing fish.

I suppose I was cheating, those were both in my frehshman year of college. I actually liked virtually everything I was assigned in high school.

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