Your Most Hated Book from School

[lewelma]

My worst books was The Invisible Man by Ellison which I read at the age of 16.  I was such a poor reader, and younger, and clueless.  I kept expecting him to go invisible.  Like literally.  I completely missed the plot and themes.  It was just way way over my head. I heard a podcast recently reviewing the book, and it sounds like it was a good thing that it went over my head. Pretty tough themes it deals with. But it was pretty forward thinking for a very white, upper middle class, southern state, public school to pick this book 30 years after it was published. Just should have been for a university course.

 

Edited August 9, 2020 by lewelma

[lewelma]

I have a funny story about Heart of Darkness in 11th grade.  Back then I could not read well (didn't read until I was 12).  So I remember having this essay test, and one of the essay questions was to discuss the symbolism of the angles.  Well, I wrote this beautiful essay about the contorted angles of the skeleton limbs and how they symbolized the contorted relationships between the colonial powers and the local inhabitants. 

I was super embarrassed when I got the test back, and the teacher circled the word angle, because it was angel.  She even drew an angel, because I really didn't know that the word was angel.  And to top it all off, I had spelled angle as angel the whole way through my essay.  So the contorted angels of the skeleton limbs symbolized, etc.... She knew I could not spell or read, so she did give me a decent grade for being pretty creative with the symbolism of the angles.  🙂

[lewelma]

I read 1984 at 14 in 1984.  I had nightmares about the rat in a cage around his head trying to eat his way out.  Why oh why would you give that book to a 14 year old?  I think it was because it was actually 1984, so that thought that would be cool or something.

[lewelma]

Oh, and since I'm just writing to myself here in NZ when it is the middle of the night for you guys...

My biggest mistake for my older's reading was to give him Brave New World at age 13 on the suggestion of my dh. I hadn't previewed it because he recommended it.  DH actually thought it would be a good launching off point to discuss sex.  DS read it, but *definitely* did not want to discuss it.  ooops.  This is why *I* am the teacher, not my dh!

Edited August 9, 2020 by lewelma

[J-rap]

2 hours ago, square_25 said:

I got incredibly lucky, actually. I had to do literally nothing. I wound up reaching out to the authors' agent after finishing the translation. This agent was not a native English speaker and profoundly skeptical of the idea that I did a better job than the previous version. But he did promise me that he'd send the translation along to any publisher who was interested in re-publishing the book in English (it was then out of print.) A publisher did reach out to him, he sent it along, and they liked it 🙂. I did two more translations with them after that.  

Literary translation is definitely not work that pays well, by the way, lol! 

I'm always so awed by literary translation.  I took a course in Russian Lit in college, and I remember being so amazed that Pushkin could be translated into English and still sound beautiful.

[Matryoshka]

Just now, J-rap said:

I'm always so awed by literary translation.  I took a course in Russian Lit in college, and I remember being so amazed that Pushkin could be translated into English and still sound beautiful.

It is definitely an art...

[Matryoshka]

6 hours ago, Paige said:

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

Yeah, but I didn't call him a brat, I called him a prat. Brat's too endearing a term for him.  

prat

Basically someone who's a major idiot, or is delusional and dumb. Acts against logic and thinks hes self-righteous. AKA: Major dumbass

 

Edited August 9, 2020 by Matryoshka

[Shoeless]

15 hours ago, Lori D. said:

And while you're asking for books we adults hated in high school... you mentioned that you're putting together a reading list for your 12-year-old. Here are a few ideas that went over very well with my DSs at that age, or with my middle school Lit. & Writing co-op class students:

A Long Walk to Water (Park)
The Cay (Taylor)
Tuck Everlasting (Babbitt)
The Hobbit (Tolkien)
The Harry Potter series (Rowling)
The Giver (Lowry)
Call of the Wild (London)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
A Christmas Carol (Dickens)
All Creatures Great and Small (Herriot)
My Family and Other Animals (Durrell)

 

Thanks.  I have a few of those titles on my list for this year. 

This sounds silly, but I only realized tonight that the reason I am having trouble putting together a reading list is because I have not sorted out exactly what I want to accomplish with literature this year. This is the first year that I feel like kiddo is mature enough to start having book discussions, rather than simple reading comprehension type questions. He's ready to cross over from "Tell me what happened" to "Tell me what you think about this and why". 

[Momto6inIN]

I read Heart of Darkness at the same time as oldest DS at the ripe old age of 42 and still didn't have any idea what was going on.

[Momto6inIN]

Just read Moby Dick for the first time this summer! It was actually very funny and perceptive in places, but Melville needed an editor even more than Dickens, IMO. I do not need to know that much about whale anatomy ever in my life.

[Farrar]

8 hours 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?

There’s a chapter about it in the book King Leopold’s Ghost that helped me appreciate it as a work of history as well as literature. I don’t think I’ll ever like it per se, but it isn’t as bad as I felt it was in high school.

[Wheres Toto]

9 hours ago, Farrar said:

 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.

This is my idea of a dream class!    I did take a SciFi Literature class in high school.  It was only one semester but it sounds like it was similar, since we all read different books other than a few short stories.  

A lot of what people hate, I liked.  Others I don't remember if I read them or not.  Some of the worst assigned reading I went through as quickly as possible while also reading other things so I don't remember much about them.  I do remember that Pilgrim's Progress was the most boring book ever, IMO.   Death Comes for the Archbishop was way too long.   I took 3 years of Honors Lit and one year of multi-course (which included that SciFi, Creative Writing and two required composition quarters), so did a ton of reading for school.  I just don't remember that much of it, especially not the stuff I hated.   

Oh and Ralph Waldo Emerson - "transparent eyeball" - from the Norton Anthology was pretty boring. 

[TomK]

10 hours 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 😉 . 

I've written a few novels, but translating novels is an artform unto itself, so my hat's off to you. That's pretty impressive.

After all, to do it right, it takes more than just switching out words. You have to make those words flow in a pleasing way, which is basically like rewriting the novel in some ways.

10 hours ago, square_25 said:

Literary translation is definitely not work that pays well, by the way, lol! 

That's kind of a shame, since I've always viewed it as being arguably more difficult than writing a novel outright.

Then again, I don't actually speak any other languages, so trying to translate just isn't a possibility, so that might color my perceptions a bit.

[TomK]

I guess the way to settle which is harder is to find someone who can do both and ask them, I suppose. 🤣

Either way, it's still pretty cool.

[Paige]

7 hours ago, Matryoshka said:

Yeah, but I didn't call him a brat, I called him a prat. Brat's too endearing a term for him.  

prat

Basically someone who's a major idiot, or is delusional and dumb. Acts against logic and thinks hes self-righteous. AKA: Major dumbass

 

I know, but I don’t see him as a prat. We have mental illness in our family and he’s so well written to portray the interior thinking of someone in the midst of a crisis, IMO. I have so much sympathy for him. 
 

He’s not a self righteous dumbass; he’s a young person in crisis spiraling out. It’s unfair to judge him as if he were ok. 

[Matryoshka]

20 minutes ago, Paige said:

I know, but I don’t see him as a prat. We have mental illness in our family and he’s so well written to portray the interior thinking of someone in the midst of a crisis, IMO. I have so much sympathy for him. 

He’s not a self righteous dumbass; he’s a young person in crisis spiraling out. It’s unfair to judge him as if he were ok. 

Lol, well, I haven't looked at the book since I read it at about 13 or 14. I don't think I had the maturity to think of him that way. And I couldn't take all the swearing. At the time the book felt like a string of expletives to me, and I felt like I needed a brain wash after reading it. I felt violated. So much hate for that book...

Speaking of sweet little innocent me, I was really horrified by a scene in Ragtime. I can't remember anything about the plot or characters in that book, just that one scene... I was shocked they'd assigned us that book. Guess it's a good thing for me we didn't get any Toni Morrison assigned.... 

[Violet Crown]

11 hours ago, Farrar said:

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.

+1000. I've been banging this drum for years. You don't have to look too far back to see that high school students and undergraduates used to be assigned more representative (and longer) works by the same writers. But now the standard novels have usually been replaced by novellas or even short stories, which are often less representative, as well as less accessible to young readers.
Moby Dick --> Billy Budd
David Copperfield --> A Christmas Carol
The Portrait of a Lady --> The Turn of the Screw
The Grapes of Wrath --> Of Mice and Men
Lord Jim --> Heart of Darkness
A Farewell to Arms --> The Old Man and the Sea
The Brothers Karamazov --> Notes From the Underground
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man --> (selections from) Dubliners

11 hours ago, square_25 said:

This is one of the few books I couldn't get through -- I didn't finish it. But it was partially the fake Russian for me... I couldn't hack it, lol.

But it's not fake Russian, it's corrupted "nadsat" Russian. Russian terms have been introduced into colloquial English on the 1984-theory that changing the young people's language will influence their minds. But contrary to Orwell's theory, the Soviet propaganda fails for the same reason English cultural indoctrination fails, and Alex and his droogies win: they appropriate, corrupt, and pervert both the culturally worthwhile and the ersatz that the various political and social powers-that-be hope will conform the next generation to a preferred ideology. 
 

Edited August 9, 2020 by Violet Crown
semicolon abuse

[Little Green Leaves]

1 hour ago, Paige said:

I know, but I don’t see him as a prat. We have mental illness in our family and he’s so well written to portray the interior thinking of someone in the midst of a crisis, IMO. I have so much sympathy for him. 
 

He’s not a self righteous dumbass; he’s a young person in crisis spiraling out. It’s unfair to judge him as if he were ok. 

I agree with this. I liked Catcher in the Rye, although I read it on my own, and I was very young, maybe 11 or 12. I don't know if it would hold up now. And I definitely got sick of Salinger's books about the Glass family.

I did have to do it in school later, which was much less fun. We read it in the 9th grade and almost everyone in my class hated poor Holden. "Why didn't he just buckle down and do his homework?" was how most of our discussions went. Maybe it's not the right book to read in school. I have to say, I still don't get why the book makes people so aggravated. Is it because of the money and class? because other than that, Holden is obviously a troubled, lonely kid who feels powerless in the world, and I don't understand why people find him so frustrating.

Edited August 9, 2020 by Little Green Leaves

[Garga]

Is this the place to respond with what we thought we’d like to read with our kids, but then hated?

For my son’s American Lit class, I assigned Huckleberry Finn without reading it ahead of time. I was sure I’d love it.

I haaaaated it. We made our way through it, and I didn’t tell my son how much I hated it. But I hated it.  He didn’t seem to care about the book either way, so I’m glad for that.

The only part I liked was when Huckleberry ended up at some sort of pot luck somewhere.  No one brought store-bought macaroni salad or bags of chip and dip.  Everything was fresh food: people brought things like apples and homemade bread. I think it was the first time I really thought about how poorly we eat nowadays compared to the past. 

Otherwise, I just didn’t like anything about the book. 

Edited August 9, 2020 by Garga

[Wheres Toto]

2 hours ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

I don't know what it was about my high school, but we had to read so much Steinbeck. Grapes of Wrath, The Pearl, of Mice and Men, and I'm pretty sure there was one with a dog. In my high school brain all the = was DEPRESSING. (ETA- We also had to watch all the movies if there was one for any of the books which only made it worse.) 

And then yes. Candide. That was when I learned syphilis makes your nose falll off and thought I hated the book at age 15, perhaps is subconsciously changed my career choice. And we read a bunch of Swift too. 

I remember reading the Crucible what seems liked a million times in high school too, but felt lucky in comparison to the kids in the classes that were made to read The Fountainhead. That book looked like you could kill someone with it. 

Then I switched out from AP in 12th and you know what we got to read: Jurassic Park and The Joy Luck Club. There were others, but it was soooooo much easier again and began to love reading again. It make me laugh honestly at what they had us read when. Some of those books are so pointless at some ages- I honestly don't understand why they shove some things into high school. Like who seriously needs to read some of that in high school- and they'd do more to make it more likely people would read more difficult books AFTER high school if they didn't make everyone in high school hate most of the those books. I would guess 10% of the classes like it, but probably 90% didn't. We just had to do it for the AP exam. And so continues my hatred for the College Boards. 

Lord of the Flies- yes we had to to do same thing. They beat that book into the ground. 

And also the one about the hunters in the trees killed by the boars I always for get the name of. Dangerous Game or something. As Andrew Kern would refer to it- they killed the puppy with the level of analyzation they made us do on these books. 

I laughed as I listened to a podcast with Kate DiCamillio recently. She said something about going to talk at a school and the teacher said "we're going to talk about the themes of this book," and Kate said she thought "THEMES?!?" What THEMES?" She didn't write with themes in mind. She talks about writing behind your back. I really appreciated that. I wonder how many authors really like their books to be beaten and dissected into oblivion until the student studying them hates it. Just let us read the freaking book. 

The Most Dangerous Game.  I actually really like that story but I also liked Lord of the Flies and Island of Dr. Moreau.   My son is doing a lit program right now that includes The Most Dangerous Game.

17 hours 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. 

My daughter just said that should be on a t shirt

[Lori D.]

9 hours ago, MissLemon said:

...This sounds silly, but I only realized tonight that the reason I am having trouble putting together a reading list is because I have not sorted out exactly what I want to accomplish with literature this year. This is the first year that I feel like kiddo is mature enough to start having book discussions, rather than simple reading comprehension type questions. He's ready to cross over from "Tell me what happened" to "Tell me what you think about this and why". 

Not silly at all. 😄 Somewhere in the middle school years is when a student is ready to start digging deeper into a work. But that's a big leap in thinking and takes time and also needs some teaching support to transition into that. From homeschooling my own DSs, as well as from teaching Lit. & Comp at my homeschool co-op classes for grades 7-12, I've come to see that there are a lot of components to moving from narration to analysis. 😉 

Do you have some "tools" to help you guys make that transition? Because it's really hard for most kids to suddenly go from narration of plot ("tell me what happened") to analysis -- seeing something bigger or deeper in the work that they have a thought about ("Tell me what you think about this"), AND then to back up that thought/argument/opinion/claim with reasons/support ("...and why you think this").

That's where it is useful to learn about some literary devices and how they "work" or show up in literature -- that gives you some "tools" with which to dig. Literary devices are things like conflict, foreshadowing, symbolism, imagery, irony, suspense, simile & metaphor, repetition, mood (atmosphere), point of view, etc.

It's also useful to learn about some literature topics, especially a few that provide insight to the specific work being read. That might be things like:
- literature genre and the conventions of a genre (and how the particular work you're reading fits in/is different from other works in that genre)
- "the hero's journey" cycle or the "coming of age" theme, and how that is playing out in the literature you're reading
- background info about the author and their times and what influenced them (and see how that shows up as important ideas or backdrop in the book)

Also, many students are very reticent about this type of literature discussion, and it's helpful to guide discussion or help them think through with guided questions. (It wasn't until about 10th/11th grade that my DSs would volunteer more than grunts and monosyllabic responses to literature, without that guidance -- and we started back in 7th grade. 😂 )

For all of those reasons, when homeschooling our DSs, I found it helpful to use excerpts from individual lit. guides for helpful literature topic info, and discussion question ideas to help us springboard into digging deeper into the work. We also used Lightning Lit. 7 and Lighting Lit. 8 in grades 7 and 8 as a very gentle, beginning literary analysis program.

Ideas for resources:
- Figuratively Speaking: Using Classic Literature to Teach 40 Literary Terms -- short lesson for each literary device; explains the device, shows an example from an excerpt from literature, then has a few activities for practicing the device
- "Figuratively Speaking paired with short stories" -- past WTM thread with links to poetry and short story ideas for each of the 40 literary devices covered in Figuratively Speaking
- Glencoe Literature Library -- free guides with background info on author/times; discussion questions; graphic organizers for working with ideas
- Garlic Press Discovering Literature -- (also at Rainbow Resource) meaty guides with background info; literature topic info; literary element info; discussion questions
- How to Read Literature Like a Professor for Kids

[Matryoshka]

13 minutes ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

YES. You know who he makes me think of? That swimmer kid from Stanford who did unspeakable things and then wanted (and got) a pity party from the judge. Cry me a freaking river. 

Yep.  And to answer the previous poster about "is it about class and privilege"?  Maybe not 100%, but yeah.  Rich white boy problems.  Somebody kidnap him and have him work on the docks or picking cotton.

[annegables]

12 hours ago, lewelma said:

My worst books was The Invisible Man by Ellison which I read at the age of 16.  I was such a poor reader, and younger, and clueless.  I kept expecting him to go invisible.  Like literally.  I completely missed the plot and themes.  It was just way way over my head. I heard a podcast recently reviewing the book, and it sounds like it was a good thing that it went over my head. Pretty tough themes it deals with. But it was pretty forward thinking for a very white, upper middle class, southern state, public school to pick this book 30 years after it was published. Just should have been for a university course.

 

I taught myself to read the newspaper at 4yo. I am a very literal reader, but am slowly trying to remedy that now. All that to say, I had this exact experience as you, except I read it at 15. I remember vividly both knowing that the main character was black but also thinking somehow that he was literally invisible. I also thought that the scarlet letter stood for her middle initial because I knew her name was Hester (A?) Prymm. 🙄

[annegables]

3 hours ago, Paige said:

I know, but I don’t see him as a prat. We have mental illness in our family and he’s so well written to portray the interior thinking of someone in the midst of a crisis, IMO. I have so much sympathy for him. 
 

He’s not a self righteous dumbass; he’s a young person in crisis spiraling out. It’s unfair to judge him as if he were ok. 

That may be, but none of this was explained to me when I read the book in an advanced lit class. We were just set loose to flounder on very limited (and in my case, privileged) life experience, and all I took away from it that Caulfield was a miserable person. I was not taught about unreliable narrators. I feel like it was taught to me as being about an obnoxious loser.

[Little Green Leaves]

11 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

Yep.  And to answer the previous poster about "is it about class and privilege"?  Maybe not 100%, but yeah.  Rich white boy problems.  Somebody kidnap him and have him work on the docks or picking cotton.

But what if someone posted something on this board like,

My 16 year old is having so much trouble in school. He's very bright and articulate, he loves to read, and he writes well, but he just isn't interested in his studies. He can't make friends with the other kids, he distrusts authority, and he is always talking about hypocrisy. The only person he seems to really love is his little sister. And to make things worse, he's now run away from school and spent the night in the park!

...wouldn't we be sympathetic, and help the poster see the good in their son?

I haven't read the book in YEARS so I really can't remember anything unspeakable that Holden did to other people. Yeah, I see being angry at his money and general advantages, but we read an awful lot of books about characters with white privilege. Nobody is up in arms about Darcy after reading Pride and Prejudice : ) 

[annegables]

6 minutes ago, Little Green Leaves said:

But what if someone posted something on this board like,

My 16 year old is having so much trouble in school. He's very bright and articulate, he loves to read, and he writes well, but he just isn't interested in his studies. He can't make friends with the other kids, he distrusts authority, and he is always talking about hypocrisy. The only person he seems to really love is his little sister. And to make things worse, he's now run away from school and spent the night in the park!

...wouldn't we be sympathetic, and help the poster see the good in their son?

I haven't read the book in YEARS so I really can't remember anything unspeakable that Holden did to other people. Yeah, I see being angry at his money and general advantages, but we read an awful lot of books about characters with white privilege. Nobody is up in arms about Darcy after reading Pride and Prejudice : ) 

I just finished the Close Reads podcast about Frankenstein. They talked a lot about the inconsistencies of Victor Frankenstein and his narration. A reader asked the question about how they could figure that out, bc the reader just took everything at face value. The commentators (mainly Josh Gibbs and Karen Swallow Prior) said something that should seem obvious, but was revelatory to me. With first person narrators, treat the narrator as you would someone coming to you in person and telling you a story. If their story seems inconsistent, start looking deeper. Did for clues about the motives, etc.

I cannot believe I am admitting this, but I have never once treated narrators like that. It has never occurred to me.

As to the bolded, Darcy is up in arms about Darcy after the failed proposal. That is the crux of his second proposal😂

[Paige]

27 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

Yep.  And to answer the previous poster about "is it about class and privilege"?  Maybe not 100%, but yeah.  Rich white boy problems.  Somebody kidnap him and have him work on the docks or picking cotton.

Omg, no. That is like saying the solution to mental illness is hard work, trying, and discipline. Put Holden Caulfield on the docks and he’s going to drown himself in the sea. 
 

I’m sorry you all had poor teachers, but he’s profoundly ill. It’s not a story about rich boy problems but mental illness. He’s not like the sociopath at Stanford at all and is particularly non exploitive. His dream is to catch kids before they fall and turn out like himself.

 

 

[Matryoshka]

14 minutes ago, Little Green Leaves said:

But what if someone posted something on this board like,

My 16 year old is having so much trouble in school. He's very bright and articulate, he loves to read, and he writes well, but he just isn't interested in his studies. He can't make friends with the other kids, he distrusts authority, and he is always talking about hypocrisy. The only person he seems to really love is his little sister. And to make things worse, he's now run away from school and spent the night in the park!

...wouldn't we be sympathetic, and help the poster see the good in their son?

I haven't read the book in YEARS so I really can't remember anything unspeakable that Holden did to other people. Yeah, I see being angry at his money and general advantages, but we read an awful lot of books about characters with white privilege. Nobody is up in arms about Darcy after reading Pride and Prejudice : ) 

Darcy isn't an insufferable whiner, he's just uptight, lol.  I just read The Sorrows of Young Werther.  Now there is an 18th century Holden...  

There was a poster on here long ago whose teen was acting out, and she did literally send him to work on the docks.  I have a friend IRL whose kid was as you describe minus a sibling, and he was sent to a nature boot camp for a year (he really was headed down a bad path and this likely saved his life).  Sometimes young men need a physical challenge to overcome their existential angst and put things into perspective.  If your kid has no challenges or obstacles in his life and all he can do is be in insufferable twerp, a good dose of reality might be just what is needed.  Something to get them out of their self-obsessed head and see that the world is larger than themselves, and that they can be a positive influence on it.  Telling them 'poor you' only feeds their maladjusted psyches.  See Stanford swimmer dude (no, I don't remember Holden doing anything horrible.  But what was Stanford swimmer dude like before he got to that level?  Likely self-obsessed whiner who thought the world owed him everything even though he already had it all...)

[Matryoshka]

11 minutes ago, Paige said:

Omg, no. That is like saying the solution to mental illness is hard work, trying, and discipline. Put Holden Caulfield on the docks and he’s going to drown himself in the sea. 
I’m sorry you all had poor teachers, but he’s profoundly ill. It’s not a story about rich boy problems but mental illness. He’s not like the sociopath at Stanford at all and is particularly non exploitive. His dream is to catch kids before they fall and turn out like himself.

I likely missed some subtleties - I was too overwhelmed by the string of swear words.  I literally thought in expletives for days after reading that book.  It was quite disturbing and I felt like I needed an exorcism.  I was angry with the school for putting all that in my head.