Your Most Hated Book from School

[J-rap]

13 minutes ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

I feel like Dickens needed an editor with a shorter attention span and Dickens himself some anti-depressants- or possibly even cocaine- and things would have been much better. 
 

But I liked Rikki Tikki Tavi and I read Janet Evanovich when I get depressed so I am hardly a literary critic. 😂

It's a good thing people like different things -- it gives so many other people opportunities to do what they love to do!

[73349]

Dickens was indeed published serially and paid by the word, and it shows. There's a sense of humor under there that's quite a bit like Twain's. And I also thought Moby-Dick was funny at times.

I thought of another novelist whose works I hate, John Updike, but I didn't encounter him until college. How can you stand to write books about characters like these? He must've hate-written every last page, smirking about how much readers would hate Rabbit.

[Little Green Leaves]

17 minutes ago, J-rap said:

You're right... finally remembered a book I didn't like!  Flowers for Algernon!  😄   I love almost all of Dickens (all-time favorite author), but didn't like Great Expectations at all.  I liked Tale of Two Cities, but it did feel very different from his others.

I also liked Tale of Two Cities better than Great Expectations. But I kind of lump them together in my mind, because I think of them both as his most heavy-handed, paint-with-a-broad-brush books. Most of the time Dickens is so funny and energetic -- his descriptions are so quirky and kind of astonishing, and it feels like he's playing, even when he's writing about the most serious issues. I don't remember feeling that much in Great Expectations or Tale of Two Cities. 

Hm, now I want to go and read them again.

 

[Matryoshka]

4 minutes ago, annegables said:

What? Did no one have to read The Good Earth?  Or am I the only one to despise that book? 

I quite liked it, but again, didn't read it until I was an adult.  There really are a good number of books that are better appreciated with more life experience.  But then the books about teen whiners aren't necessarily great either, lol...

Quote

Some of my school book hate comes from the inane projects that we had to do in conjunction with them. We read Island of the Blue Dolphins in 6th grade and spent untold amounts of time making dioramas. A few years ago, my kids and I listened to the audio version and we all loved it! It is a really interesting book that was ruined with asinine craft projects. 

I hate stuff like craft projects to go with books.  I quite purposefully avoided the whole Lapbook craze.  Just.... WHY.   If a kid is independently inspired to draw or otherwise do something crafty related to a book, good on 'em.  But I don't see how assigning stuff like that is anything but busywork.

[Matryoshka]

3 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I mean... to be fair, are his contemporaries much less wordy?? 

Serializiation in the papers - explains all that 19th century wordiness.  The French writers of the era were equally great offenders....

Wanna bet that whole sewer episode in Les Miz is because Hugo had writer's block and was stalling?

[annegables]

3 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

I quite liked it, but again, didn't read it until I was an adult.  There really are a good number of books that are better appreciated with more life experience.  But then the books about teen whiners aren't necessarily great either, lol...

I wonder if we/schools do this because there is a feeling of, "if kids dont read this now, they will never read it", which is probably true for many people, but I dont know if it is doing anyone any favors. Especially when there has been precious little lead-up to prepare students for reading these books. And then what many students encounter in class are random quizzes about stupid details to ensure the kid real the book and not the Cliff Notes. I am so thankful that I can just have lit conversations with my kids and not have to quiz them on what time was on the clock on Miss Haversham's wall (yes, I still remember this question from Great Expectations). 

[Matryoshka]

2 minutes ago, annegables said:

I wonder if we/schools do this because there is a feeling of, "if kids dont read this now, they will never read it", which is probably true for many people, but I dont know if it is doing anyone any favors. Especially when there has been precious little lead-up to prepare students for reading these books. And then what many students encounter in class are random quizzes about stupid details to ensure the kid real the book and not the Cliff Notes. I am so thankful that I can just have lit conversations with my kids and not have to quiz them on what time was on the clock on Miss Haversham's wall (yes, I still remember this question from Great Expectations). 

That probably is the feeling.  Although I agree that I'm not sure that the way they're doing it is the answer.  The stupid questions don't seem to avoid huge numbers using Cliff or Spark notes... I know I was one of two kids in my high school class who actually read Great Expectations rather than the Cliff Notes... and I never paid any attention to the time on the clock! 😂

[73349]

I suspect that it's partly self-fulfilling; people who read a book in high school because they had to and didn't like it because they were so young won't often go back and give it another try... "I already read that and hated it," "I don't like books like that."

[annegables]

4 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

That probably is the feeling.  Although I agree that I'm not sure that the way they're doing it is the answer.  The stupid questions don't seem to avoid huge numbers using Cliff or Spark notes... I know I was one of two kids in my high school class who actually read Great Expectations rather than the Cliff Notes... and I never paid any attention to the time on the clock! 😂

There are some books I am convinced I would have been better served by had I read the Cliffs Notes on. 

[annegables]

2 minutes ago, whitehawk said:

I suspect that it's partly self-fulfilling; people who read a book in high school because they had to and didn't like it because they were so young won't often go back and give it another try... "I already read that and hated it," "I don't like books like that."

This was me. I spent 17 years after high school reading only non-fiction science and math, with a cosy mystery sprinkled in for variety. I didnt read literature (and I really dislike modern lit) because of how much I disliked it all in high school. And I have the benefit of LOVING Jane Austen books. I just always had in my mind that the book would drag on for ages, I wouldnt understand it or see any symbolism, and I would spend the whole time feeling dumb and depressed (the depressed part bc so many of those books are depressing).

I started another thread on this, but basically, I came to realize that I have an advanced vocabulary, and that most classics are under 400 pages, so it just wont take obnoxious amounts of time to read a book. Plus, because I am an adult, I can decide to stop reading a book that I truly cannot stand. 

[Shoeless]

1 hour ago, Little Green Leaves said:

I loved Moby Dick, surprised to find so many people didn't! Why? 

I hated Flowers for Algernon. And A Separate Peace. I wasn't wild about Red Badge of Courage but I wouldn't mind rereading it now. I love Dickens but the ones we read for school (Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities) aren't my favorites. 

 

 

Oh, I liked those! I mean, they were kind of sad, but I didn't find them torturous. They were assigned for my 6th grade English class, and surprisingly, most of the class thought they were ok. We also read The Hound of the Baskervilles, but no one liked that, lol. Reviews were mixed on Great Expectations that year, lol. 

 

[TomK]

36 minutes ago, annegables said:

Some of my school book hate comes from the inane projects that we had to do in conjunction with them. We read Island of the Blue Dolphins in 6th grade and spent untold amounts of time making dioramas. A few years ago, my kids and I listened to the audio version and we all loved it! It is a really interesting book that was ruined with asinine craft projects. 

 

That'll do it. I mean, I loved Island of the Blue Dolphins, but all I had to do was read the book at my own pace, which I did.

I think I had to do a book report on it, but once I actually read it, that was easy.

21 minutes ago, annegables said:

I wonder if we/schools do this because there is a feeling of, "if kids dont read this now, they will never read it", which is probably true for many people, but I dont know if it is doing anyone any favors. Especially when there has been precious little lead-up to prepare students for reading these books. And then what many students encounter in class are random quizzes about stupid details to ensure the kid real the book and not the Cliff Notes. I am so thankful that I can just have lit conversations with my kids and not have to quiz them on what time was on the clock on Miss Haversham's wall (yes, I still remember this question from Great Expectations). 

That's probably part of it. That and the idea that kids Have To Read This (TM) that many English teachers seem to have. They're convinced that they have to make people read "good" literature and they don't really know how to teach people to enjoy that literature.

That's especially bad when you've got a dyslexic/ADHD kid that can read just fine, but hates it because of the effort it takes. At that point, it would be better to teach him/her to just love reading and move on from there. Unfortunately, there's a certain snobbishness I've seen among some English teachers where they think certain books aren't worthy, so they push the ones who they deem worthy instead...and in the process, destroy the possibility that those students might someday read them.

I mean, sure, there are books that are probably worth reading in school. But maybe temper them by including them in books the student might actually like?

[Matryoshka]

1 hour ago, importswim said:

🤪 DS's reading list for this year is:

Billy Budd

Red Badge of Courage

The Old Man and the Sea

and The Scarlet Letter

As well as a few other works! LOL! Maybe I'll let him get on here and complain with you all at the end of the year... 😂🤣

 

If you want something shorter by Melville, at least give the poor boy Bartleby the Scrivener instead of the horrifyingly dreadful Billy Budd...  😉

Edited August 8, 2020 by Matryoshka

[Garga]

I haaaated Catcher in the Rye as a teen, but I re-read it as an adult and actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

I have always been an avid reader and read everything assigned to me in school (and hundreds more not assigned), and the only book I simply Could Not Read was The Old Man and the Sea.  I had excellent grades in my English class that year, so I just took the hit in failing the test on The Old Man and the Sea and still managed to keep my  A.  

[Matryoshka]

1 minute ago, WendyAndMilo said:

I think the only books I read in high school from y'alls lists are Great Expectations, The Scarlet Letter, and Tom Sawyer.  This is what happens when you are "homeschooled" in a house with no real books.  But you better believe I had every Reader's Digest from the previous 20 years memorized. 

I love real books.

Oh, man, that's rough.

I used to read a ton of Reader's Digest when we were at my grandmother's house because it was what was lying around   Read all the humor and so.much. "Drama in Real Life".  Also Reader's Digest Condensed Books - I read the RDCB version of Jaws...

"It was what was lying around" is my excuse for much questionable reading of my younger years, including Flowers in the Attic (and a sequel) and two John Grisham books...

[Violet Crown]

All right, if anybody wants to know why Billy Budd really shouldn't be taught in high school -- or, alternatively, if you want to read it as an adult -- re-read it now (it's shorter than you remember), and immediately read Jean Genet's Querelle of Brest. (Genet wrote Querelle shortly after someone gave him a copy of BB.) Genet picked out the underlying themes of BB very accurately, in my opinion.

[Sneezyone]

Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Waiting for Godot.

[Matryoshka]

4 minutes ago, Violet Crown said:

All right, if anybody wants to know why Billy Budd really shouldn't be taught in high school -- or, alternatively, if you want to read it as an adult -- re-read it now (it's shorter than you remember), and immediately read Jean Genet's Querelle of Brest. (Genet wrote Querelle shortly after someone gave him a copy of BB.) Genet picked out the underlying themes of BB very accurately, in my opinion.

Okay, in case I'm not yet ready to revisit that circle of hell, but am curious... could you sum up the underlying themes?  (I'm guessing my teacher attempted to enlighten us, but I seem to have blanked those memories out in some kind of post-trauma fugue... 😏)

Having had such a grand time with M-D, I am fully ready to admit that I really missed something with BB, but gah, what horrible memories!

[Little Green Leaves]

8 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

Okay, in case I'm not yet ready to revisit that circle of hell, but am curious... could you sum up the underlying themes?  (I'm guessing my teacher attempted to enlighten us, but I seem to have blanked those memories out in some kind of post-trauma fugue... 😏)

Having had such a grand time with M-D, I am fully ready to admit that I really missed something with BB, but gah, what horrible memories!

I haven't read BB but since Violet Crown is talking about Genet, I'm assuming that there are themes of male love in the book...

There are in Moby Dick too. All those cozy scenes of Ishmael and Queequeg curled up together in bed, chatting...

I remember liking Melville's White Jacket, if you're looking for something else by him. 

[Matryoshka]

2 minutes ago, Little Green Leaves said:

I haven't read BB but since Violet Crown is talking about Genet, I'm assuming that there are themes of male love in the book...

There are in Moby Dick too. All those cozy scenes of Ishmael and Queequeg curled up together in bed, chatting...

I remember liking Melville's White Jacket, if you're looking for something else by him. 

Well, I do remember reading that Melville had a huge man-crush on Hawthorne... and that Hawthorne got a bit sick of his hanging about...

[Matryoshka]

1 minute ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

The best decision I ever made for my reading life was dropping out of AP English after my Junior year. No one knows how to suck the enjoyment out of life like the College Board, lol. 

This was my dd's argument against taking AP English.  She ended up taking the CLEP cold and getting out of two semesters of English comp that way instead, no pain!

[pitterpatter]

Across Five Aprils; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; To Kill a Mocking Bird; Animal Farm. I'm not sure I liked any. Lol. In high school, we got to pick from a list. I liked those more.

[Paige]

I liked almost everything. Didn't like: Gone with the Wind, Don Quixote, Sister Carrie, and Swiss Family Robinson. I also couldn't finish Villette as an adult. The only one I actually finished of those was Swiss Family Robinson. The others I picked up as a choice from a list and discarded fairly quickly. I tried to read Gone With the Wind several times and could never get past the first quarter. I almost never quit a book, so those stand out as aberrations to me.

I loved Catcher in the Rye; yes Holden Caulfield is a brat.

Moby Dick- I read as an adult and I'm glad I waited. It took me a long time to slog through, but I grew to appreciate it. I see it as a view into madness and the author is taking you along for the ride by driving you mad as well!

 

[EmilyGF]

3 hours ago, annegables said:

What? Did no one have to read The Good Earth?  Or am I the only one to despise that book? 

Catcher in the Rye. Unreliable narrator, which was not explained to us. 

Any "dead dog" book. 

Some of my school book hate comes from the inane projects that we had to do in conjunction with them. We read Island of the Blue Dolphins in 6th grade and spent untold amounts of time making dioramas. A few years ago, my kids and I listened to the audio version and we all loved it! It is a really interesting book that was ruined with asinine craft projects. 

Some books I enjoyed, like 1984, but school ruined them because we had to do lit analysis (in advanced English classes) with obnoxious kids who didnt take anything seriously. So those of use who wanted to discuss the book were afraid to speak up for fear of being teased or snarky comments made. I learned not to speak up in AP lit classes. 

I picked that up at a church rummage sale in 6th grade and read it on my own for fun. I loved it.

[sweet2ndchance]

Hands down, The Scarlet Letter. I flat refuse to subject any of my kids to that book. "Hester's truth is not Dimsdales' truth" was so etched into my brain by my 11th grade English teacher that I still repeat them immediately upon hearing the name of that wretched book decades later.

I had a hard time getting into My Antonia and Jane Eyre but I didn't hate them in the end.

I actually liked Great Expectations, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath and Cyrano de Bergerac.

The Lottery, The Necklace, The Cask of Amontillado, The Death of a Salesman and Moby Dick were memorable but not favorites. I know we read Antigone, The Old Man and The Sea, parts of Dante's Inferno, Animal Farm, Paradise Lost, several Shakespeare plays and I think Flowers for Algernon but I don't remember anything about them really.

I remember reading The Outsiders in eighth grade but all I remember about it is that I didn't much care for it. lol

[Sk8ermaiden]

I love most books. Lord of the Flies was torture. I also disliked Walden by Thoreau. 

[Momto6inIN]

Catcher in the Rye and The Dubliners. Ack!

I loved To Kill A Mockingbird, although it improves with maturity. Also A Tale of Two Cities, although I agree Dickens needed a good editor.

I liked Lord of the Flies in high school, but couldn't make myself finish it as an adult. Same with Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 and Brave New World. Those 4 did not improve with maturity.

7 hours ago, Mom2mthj said:

Madame Bovary and Candide - my semester of French lit did not inspire me to read it again ever in my life.  The Russian literature was better, but I was not mature enough for Anna Karenina especially cramming it in over Christmas vacation.  I have been meaning to read that again.

my high school AP Physics text - not worth the paper it was written on and it was written on a lot of paper.  Poor trees...

Do re-read Anna Karenina but make sure it's the transkation by Pevear. It was so much better the 2nd time as an adult than it was in high school! 

[importswim]

4 hours ago, Matryoshka said:

If you want something shorter by Melville, at least give the poor boy Bartleby the Scrivener instead of the horrifyingly dreadful Billy Budd...  😉

If it were up to me, I would! He's doing a co-op and that's on the discussion list. 😂

[Violet Crown]

3 hours ago, Little Green Leaves said:

themes of male love

Delicately put.

[J-rap]

5 hours ago, whitehawk said:

Dickens was indeed published serially and paid by the word, and it shows. There's a sense of humor under there that's quite a bit like Twain's. And I also thought Moby-Dick was funny at times.

I thought of another novelist whose works I hate, John Updike, but I didn't encounter him until college. How can you stand to write books about characters like these? He must've hate-written every last page, smirking about how much readers would hate Rabbit.

Really?  How interesting!  And I believe it -- He must have some of the longest sentences in the world!  (But I still love them.  :)) 

[importswim]

2 hours ago, square_25 said:

Aww, I really liked To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Me too. I HATED it in high school when forced to read it.

 I re-read it when Go Set a Watchman came out and then subsequently read that novel as well. I loved them both so much (GSAW because it challenges the readers pre-conceived notions of Atticus Finch and makes for thoughtful introspection, IMO).

[J-rap]

5 hours ago, annegables said:

What? Did no one have to read The Good Earth?  Or am I the only one to despise that book? 

Catcher in the Rye. Unreliable narrator, which was not explained to us. 

Any "dead dog" book. 

Some of my school book hate comes from the inane projects that we had to do in conjunction with them. We read Island of the Blue Dolphins in 6th grade and spent untold amounts of time making dioramas. A few years ago, my kids and I listened to the audio version and we all loved it! It is a really interesting book that was ruined with asinine craft projects. 

Some books I enjoyed, like 1984, but school ruined them because we had to do lit analysis (in advanced English classes) with obnoxious kids who didnt take anything seriously. So those of use who wanted to discuss the book were afraid to speak up for fear of being teased or snarky comments made. I learned not to speak up in AP lit classes. 

I always wished I had read that one, so finally read it a few years ago.  I read the first half and loved it, so started recommending it to others.  Then ended up not liking the second half at all.

[Matryoshka]

1 minute ago, square_25 said:

You know, I'm realizing I avoided hating a lot of books by ignoring the instructions the teachers gave us, lol. They'd assign a chapter for each week, and I'd read the whole darn book as soon as I got it. I did badly on a few quizzes as a result (the factoids in Chapter 10 had long since escaped my brain by the time the class sluggishly got there), but I also had a genuinely good experience with the books... 

I don't think we ever got assigned books by the chapter?  If we did, I completely ignored the instructions...

[Matryoshka]

19 minutes ago, square_25 said:

DH really preferred that translation as well! I read it in Russian as an adult and enjoyed it. 

Russian is a language I wish I could read in the original. Lots of good lit, and it seems a lot of subtleties get lost in translation. ..

[Shoeless]

21 minutes ago, Violet Crown said:

Delicately put.

 

Billy Budd came up on a 6th grade reading list, and I thought "You have GOT to be kidding me".  We're pretty open and matter of fact about many things in life, but I am not going down that path with a 6th grader. 

[Farrar]

Heart of Darkness. Hands down. Everyone at my high school spent a solid term on that book in 12th grade. Super overanalyzed. You were required to write a major research paper comparing it to another great British novel of your choice. And zero historical context given. Like, I remember the teacher telling us everything in the book was exaggerated and metaphorical. Um, not true, which I only know NOW.

Billy Budd and Candide are runner's up. But... I made my own kids read Candide. I'm evil.

[Farrar]

Some of these mentioned, I actually like. A Separate Peace was good. I had to read it for an 8th grade advanced readers class. It was a funny class. The teacher just chatted with you and then made you - like, you as an individual! - read certain books. And then she'd check in with you about them. What'd you think? No other assignments. If you showed up to class and... spent it reading, you got an A. I can't remember anything else she made me read. But that was pretty good.

I appreciate Lord of the Flies, Scarlet Letter, and some of the others even if they're not my personal taste.

No one ever made me read Catcher in the Rye, so I won't go there. 

I can't believe y'all all hate Dickens so much though. Dickens is hilarious. BalletBoy and I read Oliver Twist together this year and we both loved it (I hadn't read it since I was a kid myself). He chose to write his big literary paper about it this year. He wrote about how Dickens uses humor in the book to mess with you as the reader. As in, he makes you laugh because he's using hyperbole or understatement or basically being snarky... and you, the reader, are like, haha... oh, wait, does he mean me? Am I supporting this agenda of abuse of orphans? Oh, look, another joke, let's focus on that. He did a great job with it.

[Farrar]

7 minutes ago, square_25 said:

I've never read Billy Budd. What's wrong with it? 

Everything.

[Farrar]

A bit more seriously... Billy Budd is over the top moralistic with super over the top villain and a super over the top dopey, handsome, not very bright goody two-shoes. I can't really remember the specifics... but I remember it was not subtle at all. I think I spent the entire novella rolling my eyes.

[ktgrok]

13 hours ago, Selkie said:

Not so much a clunker, but just really awful - Where the Red Fern Grows. I think our entire class hated that book. Our teacher made us read it out loud, and everyone was sobbing.

I am traumatized by that book. Like, I will fight you before I read it or assign it to my children. I think it is likely a form of child abuse to give that book to kids to read!  No dead dog books in my house! (Sounder, Old Yeller, The Yearling, etc)

9 hours ago, Terabith said:

I read 1984 seventeen times between sixth and ninth grades.  I think in retrospect it was to prepare me for 2020.  

Ugh, I read that book a few years ago.....not a good thing to read in modern times. Depressing as heck when some of it seems to be a bit too accurate. 

7 hours ago, Little Green Leaves said:

I loved Moby Dick, surprised to find so many people didn't! Why? 

I hated Flowers for Algernon. And A Separate Peace. I wasn't wild about Red Badge of Courage but I wouldn't mind rereading it now. I love Dickens but the ones we read for school (Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities) aren't my favorites. 

 

Oh! I really liked A Separate Peace! I still have my copy somewhere I think. 

2 hours ago, Sk8ermaiden said:

I love most books. Lord of the Flies was torture. I also disliked Walden by Thoreau. 

Hated Walden! But mostly because once I found out he was living at home with mommy and then just going out to camp on Emerson's land now and then, I considered him a big fake. 

43 minutes ago, square_25 said:

You know, I'm realizing I avoided hating a lot of books by ignoring the instructions the teachers gave us, lol. They'd assign a chapter for each week, and I'd read the whole darn book as soon as I got it. I did badly on a few quizzes as a result (the factoids in Chapter 10 had long since escaped my brain by the time the class sluggishly got there), but I also had a genuinely good experience with the books... 

Same. 

[ktgrok]

Oh, my least favorite book was/is A Clockwork Orange. 

Only time I flat out did not read an assigned novel. I could NOT understand the dialect, it was creepy, and just..no. I finally gave up and rented the movie (from Blockbuster!) and then STILL didn't understand a darned thing. I watched the whole movie, and had NO idea what happened in it. 

Mind you , I was reading Shakespeare for fun in elementary school, and understood it fine, but for whatever reason my brain did NOT understand A Clockwork Orange. At all. 

Oh, and I didn't like The Hobbit either, but I think I tried to read it in like, 3rd grade, so probably wasn't ready for it, lol. Or maybe it was the sam dialect issue. 

Edited August 9, 2020 by Ktgrok

[Farrar]

In my opinion, Billy Budd is read not because it's Melville's best work (obviously that's Moby Dick, which I also don't like, but at least it's got more going on than Billy Budd). It's just Melville's shorter work. Thus... better for school students. I mean, a few books on this thread fill that too.

Students rarely read The Grapes of Wrath... they're more likely to be assigned Of Mice and Men (which I personally thought was interesting).

Students rarely read much of Enlightenment works... they're more likely to be assigned Candide.

And several other classics here are also more short than beloved. I'm guilty of this too. It's like, well, we can only do so much. So teachers are more likely to assign Gatsby, Mice and Men, Candide, Billy Budd, Heart of Darkness, Separate Peace, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, Call of the Wild... because they're all well under 300 pages. Several are less than 200.

[Condessa]

The Lord of the Flies.  Worst book ever!  My teacher made us write lengthy papers about human nature using examples from Lord of the Flies as evidence to support our conclusions.  A work of fiction from the mind of a man suffering from PTSD, yeah, that’s where one should look for evidence about human nature.  Ugh!

Also, Catcher in the Rye was also torturous.  But nothing can top Lord of the Flies.

Edited August 9, 2020 by Michelle Conde

[Matryoshka]

24 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Yes, the different language structure makes things hard. (Do you know I've translated a few books?) 

Cool! I've wondered sometimes if I should try my hand at translation,  but I have no idea how one would go about getting into that...

[Matryoshka]

4 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Uhm, I bought a copy of a translated Russian book that I had loved in Russian for my then-boyfriend, tried reading it, was disgusted, and had the hubris to think I could do better. 

It got published after many, many revisions more than 5 years later. (I could not, in fact, do better at first, and I was no longer with the same boyfriend!) I'm technically an "acclaimed translator," according to some book blurbs 😉 . 

Wow! 

[Shoeless]

37 minutes ago, Farrar said:

Heart of Darkness. Hands down. Everyone at my high school spent a solid term on that book in 12th grade. Super overanalyzed. You were required to write a major research paper comparing it to another great British novel of your choice. And zero historical context given. Like, I remember the teacher telling us everything in the book was exaggerated and metaphorical. Um, not true, which I only know NOW.

Billy Budd and Candide are runner's up. But... I made my own kids read Candide. I'm evil.

 

I read Heart of Darkness 5 times between high school and college. Five times! FIVE! I can't say I hated that book, but I sure was tired of it. 

[Shoeless]

27 minutes ago, Ktgrok said:

Oh, my least favorite book was/is A Clockwork Orange. 

Only time I flat out did not read an assigned novel. I could NOT understand the dialect, it was creepy, and just..no. I finally gave up and rented the movie (from Blockbuster!) and then STILL didn't understand a darned thing. I watched the whole movie, and had NO idea what happened in it. 

Mind you , I was reading Shakespeare for fun in elementary school, and understood it fine, but for whatever reason my brain did NOT understand A Clockwork Orange. At all. 

Oh, and I didn't like The Hobbit either, but I think I tried to read it in like, 3rd grade, so probably wasn't ready for it, lol. Or maybe it was the sam dialect issue. 

 

I never understood the buzz about A Clockwork Orange, either. I saw the movie in college and walked out thinking it must be one of those "You had to be there when it first came out" kind of things. 

[theelfqueen]

The things I was required to read in Russian taught me humility and that I was NOT fluent. (And I am DEFINITELY not fluent now....) But a goat at Tolstoy's house tried to eat my clothes. So that's something. 

Edited August 9, 2020 by theelfqueen

[annegables]

1 hour ago, Farrar said:

Heart of Darkness. Hands down. Everyone at my high school spent a solid term on that book in 12th grade. Super overanalyzed. You were required to write a major research paper comparing it to another great British novel of your choice. And zero historical context given. Like, I remember the teacher telling us everything in the book was exaggerated and metaphorical. Um, not true, which I only know NOW.

Billy Budd and Candide are runner's up. But... I made my own kids read Candide. I'm evil.

I need to re-read Heart of Darkness. I hated it in school because it was just so depressing. But I think I would appreciate it literarily at this stage in life. If I can read Flannery O'Conner and enjoy it, I can certainly read Heart of Darkness, right?

[Matryoshka]

4 minutes ago, annegables said:

I need to re-read Heart of Darkness. I hated it in school because it was just so depressing. But I think I would appreciate it literarily at this stage in life. If I can read Flannery O'Conner and enjoy it, I can certainly read Heart of Darkness, right?

I haven't ever read Heart of Darkness,  but the nonfiction book King Leopold's Ghost is really good and gives the facts and historical context around what's in that book (the book is mentioned, along with some of the historical events and people that inspired it).