skedaddle | 11 Sep 2018 8:47 a.m. PST |
Silas Marner was definitely bad. The horror of seventh grade english class. In college – it was Joyce's Portrait of an Young Artist followed by Crime and Punishment followed by Sons and Lovers. the misery of that trio still stays with me today. |
Huscarle | 11 Sep 2018 11:52 a.m. PST |
As part of my A-level English Lit, we studied the Gothic Novels of Castle of Otranto, Frankenstein, Dracula & Northanger Abbey. Castle of Otranto was fairly boring but Northanger Abbey by Jane bloody Austen, is without doubt the most tedious book that I have ever read. I've stayed clear of the rest of her novels since! |
20thmaine | 11 Sep 2018 2:59 p.m. PST |
Northanger Abbey by Jane bloody Austen, is without doubt the most tedious book that I have ever read. I've stayed clear of the rest of her novels since! It's probably her worst book – Sanditon isn't so great. Bit otherwise, Austen is a joy. |
irishserb | 11 Sep 2018 3:59 p.m. PST |
Walden by Thoreau nearly killed me, so when I got to take a lit class featuring science fiction, I jumped at the chance. We started with Brave New World, and it killed me. Made me appreciate Walden. Seriously. |
Parzival | 11 Sep 2018 9:17 p.m. PST |
Silas Marner, Across Five Aprils (never actually finished it), Great Expectations. And I *loathe* that monstrosity, The Lord of the Flies. Also, how dreadful and dreary is that slog of woeful prose, Ethan Frome? Hey, teachers, how about assigning something FUN and FUNNY to read? You know, maybe show kids that reading is actually an ENJOYABLE activity, not an exercise to be dreaded? |
Winston Smith | 11 Sep 2018 10:52 p.m. PST |
Back when the nuns were trying to recruit me for the priesthood, one gave me Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain. This doesn't qualify because 1. It wasn't mandatory 2. I never opened it. But I'm sure I would have been bored. |
JimSelzer | 14 Sep 2018 1:57 a.m. PST |
Romeo and Juliette or any other of Shakespeare's mangled attempt at prose still can't figure out what make him a great author he couldn't even master English. |
Parzival | 14 Sep 2018 9:12 a.m. PST |
There was also some dreadful turn-of-the-century "lot of women" book by a second-tier author beloved in the usual circles that my misanthropic American Lit prof forced on us. Blessedly, I've forgotten the title or the author, but it was the typical man-hating screed from an Edith Wharton-alike. The only other guy in the class and I found a connection over simply surviving the semester intact. (Honestly, outside of the loony misanthropy, the prof was decent enough; she loved a paper I wrote on a Robert Frost poem being an "anti-pastoral" (my term) and encouraged me to have it published. I didn't pursue that, scholarly effort not being my interest at the time. But she was very nice about it. Didn't help the class be anything but a labor of Hercules, or improve the reading selection…) |
x42brown | 15 Sep 2018 12:47 p.m. PST |
The only book I was forced to read at school was the Bible x42 |
7th Va Cavalry | 30 Oct 2018 8:30 a.m. PST |
Ditto on the Bible. Then again between beatings at catholic school literature was censored. |
Mooseworks8 | 05 Nov 2018 9:06 p.m. PST |
I grew up in Arkansas… 49th & proud in education. English text book full of short stories in my junior year. |
Please delete me | 06 Nov 2018 9:57 a.m. PST |
Across High School and University- Old Man and the sea Babbit Finnegan's Wake Great Gatsby Don Quixote Moby Dick Atlas Shrugged Catcher in the Rye |
Uesugi Kenshin | 06 Nov 2018 10:05 a.m. PST |
Billy Budd & Great Expectations. |
Winston Smith | 07 Nov 2018 4:01 p.m. PST |
The Plague, Camus. It succeeded in making Death meaningless, which I suppose was the point. The C S Lewis Perelandra trilogy. I had credits to burn my senior year in college so I thought I would take an English Lit course in Science Fiction. Hah! |