I disliked with a passion having to read this book. It was so tedious to me!

I think the process of being made to read a book is often the problem, not the book itself. I read of mice and men and animal farm, before i was made to read them in school and really liked them and when i had to re-read them for class i found them ubnbearably boring.

Reading any book purely because a curriculum demands it is never a good way to treat literature.

Someone had to read extremely loud and incredibly close for school???

Lucky.

Meredeth wrote: "
I disliked with a passion having to read this book. It was so tedious to me!"

This is our county's Big Read this year. Guess who's taking a year off from participating?

*gasp* How can anyone not love P&P???

Do you guys really hate those wonderful books?

You people are crazy, i love these books. They are wonderful.

Who put Catcher in the Rye on this list? Own up! You really are very naughty. Go back and read it again. You WILL enjoy.

Svenne
I absolutely hated this book, but some the books on the list i really enjoyed. Like To Kill a Mockingbird and P&P. How could anyone hate those?

how in the world could anyone hate Wribger or To Kill a Mockingbird?

How could anybody hate The Giver?...

I'm Italian, so I had to put some books they force us to read in my country, maybe you don't know them...and you don't miss anything at that :)

I haven't read all of these, but English Lit was my favorite subject ever. These aren't all English Lit, though, so ANY class where I get to read a book and then write essays about what I just read is the best kind of class! I've read about half of these, and I loved them all! Especially in English class. I have to say I hated The Scarlet Letter at first, but not because it wasn't a good book. I just couldn't relate to Hester and thought she was crazy for staying in that place. After thinking about the book for days, I finally decided I did like it, after all.

When I was school-bullied teen I hated to read about "poor misunderstood" crap like teens in S E Hinton books and Clockwork orange.

Zlata's diary was so bad...even my teacher said that it was horrible.

Tomorrow, When the War Began

I hated reading the Brontë sisters. Bemoaning melodramatically about love is not something I like to waste time on. If I wanted to do that, I would read poorly written fanfiction. Jane EyreWuthering Heights

Samantha wrote: "You people are crazy, i love these books. They are wonderful."
True, now they are, but when you are made to read them at too young an age then the mere title brings back bad memories.

Sami wrote: "How could anybody hate The Giver?..."

Exactly

I did not hate Dubliners and The Quiet American but the reading process was painful and dull. I would rather watch Martha on TV than reading them again. =)

English was always my absolute favourite class, and reading is my favourite pasttime... but reading books for English class was always so brutal! Most of the books they make us read aren't that good, in my opinion. A few were ok, and some were great (Elie Wiesel's Night and Shelly's Frankenstein). Shakespeare was just the worst, although Macbeth and Hamlet were at least somewhat interesting.
Worst book ever? Heart of Darkness. Reading that was like pulling teeth for me...

Vampirella wrote: "Do you guys really hate those wonderful books?"

Not all of them, but a good number of them, yea. That is the thing about reader taste, what one likes, another may not. And I am sure the "being forced to read it," often left a bit of a trauma too. I know there are books that, had I not been forced, I may have at least appreciated. Having that trauma, there is no way in hell I am touching them again.

Jo wrote: "Who put Catcher in the Rye on this list? Own up! You really are very naughty. Go back and read it again. You WILL enjoy."

I did not put it, but I wish I had. Salinger owes me for the time I lost on that book. But hey, that is me. As librarians say, every book its reader, and every reader its book.

As others have said, I did enjoy English as a subject in school. Heck, I even got a degree in it later on. But, I do have some serious traumas from some books I was forced to read, whether it was not the right time, wrong book for me, lousy teacher, or lousy curriculum (hell, even the best teacher cannot fix things when curriculum mandates come down a pipe).

I did notice a few titles in Spanish, including one or two I was forced to read as well.

Killthepopular wrote: "I think the process of being made to read a book is often the problem, not the book itself. I read of mice and men and animal farm, before i was made to read them in school and really liked them an..."

I agree. I remember hating most of the required reading back in high school (with the exception of Dickens, Shakespeare, and Bronte). But not anymore. I love most of them now.

Sapphire wrote: "Killthepopular wrote: "I think the process of being made to read a book is often the problem, not the book itself. I read of mice and men and animal farm, before i was made to read them in school a..."

Yes! I'm a huge Shakespeare fan and it's one of my favorites, but being made to read Romeo and Juliet in class (already knowing the show backwards and forwards) almost ruined it for me.

On a similar note- I've read three Steinbeck books now. The Grapes of Wrath and The Pearl, which I first read for school, I absolutely hated. However, when I read Of Mice and Men on my own, I loved it. I wonder if it has to do with being forced to read them and having classmates who will constantly bash on whatever they're assigned.

Crime and Punishment was incredibly painful for my AP Lit class to read for one reason - the version we read was written in engrish and had multiple misspellings and badly translated phrases. The story was decent, the copy of the book itself was horrible.

Siddhartha? Lord of the flies? The Giver? Beowulf? This list is incorrect.

My beef with 1984 was the fact that my teacher freaking spoiled the book for the whole class. He actually played a short video on YouTube that walked the viewer through every event and every meaning behind the book. This was AP Lit class. What, you thought I couldn't handle the stupid message against oppressive regimes and how it could possibly infect Western nations? Oh my God, no.

A Brave New World is the better dystopian novel of the two, I find.

And people had to read War and Peace in school? I feel soooo bad for you people D: You could keep a fire going for two hours with a book that big!