Poll

Black Boy.

Tess of the d'Urbervills

"Old Man and the Sea" by Hemingway. ugh. awful.

I may be the only one on this, but I didn't like The Color Purple. I had to read it in High School, and when it showed up on a College reading list I dropped the class.

Only four of those were required reading for me (Gatsby, Beowolf, Flies, Mockingbird). I voted other. I hated Jane Eyre & The Grapes Of Wrath. I can't decide which was worse. Boring as hell...

On the other hand, my favorite required reads were Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Saint Maybe, The Great Gatsby, and Hamlet. Oh, and To Kill A Mockingbird and Ordinary People.

Moby Dick and Beowulf are neck and neck for me. I rarely truly dislike a book, but both of those were awful.

The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill A Mockingbird were my favorites (both reread many times since high school).

John Steinbeck... the journalist turned "author" has only written one book that I didn't think was TERRIBLE, and that was Canery Row... which was only o.k.

"Brooklyn y medio"
OMG is so boring.

Jane Eyre

Invisible Man or As I Lay Dying

I disliked Brave New World and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Hemingway

I absolutely hated having to read The Red Badge of Courage in high school. I love to read but that book bored me to sleep on multiple occasions that semester.

Silas Marner. Ugh

Kensuke's Kingdom. Oh, so very, very basic and acctually not very interesting.

Billy Budd, Herman Melville at his worst. So bad that we told our children we would not allow them to read it. If the school requires it, I'll be writing a Nasty Gram.

Pride and Prejudice

The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

I don't think Iever had to read the Pearl, but for years in a row I had to read Of mice and men, and then I did Grapes of wrath for extra credit....what a horrible book! I will never willingly read a Steinbeck again. Animal Farm was pretty bad for me too!

A Separate Peace. I must have been 15 and I read a lot of really bad fiction at the time and I still wrote a paper about how contrived and obvious all the literary devices were in this book. I don't really know if I'd feel the same way about it now.

The Last of the Mohicans ... although actually it was in middle school

Jane Eyre. We had to read it in British Lit, Women's Lit, Intro to Lit.... and on and on and on... to the point I never wanted to hear the name Jane ever again.

Vanity Fair The edition I had in college was full of footnotes (sometimes 20 to a page), all marked with asterisks, instead of numbers. It seemed to take forever to finish the book.

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

ewwwwwww Beowolf. >.< That book is looking at me from the bookshelf right now, mocking me.

Couldn't get past page 20 of The Scarlet Letter, but it wasn't a school read. My worst 'required reading' was Hardy's Tess of the Durbervilles. Never has reading a book felt so much like being smothered by a pair of passive, bovine heroine bosoms. I alternated between wanting to slap Tess, and wanting to slap TH for inflicting her on me. I believe my copy actually removes air from a room; accordingly, I keep it in a closet.

The Old Man And The Sea by Hemingway. Argh. It didn't help that my English teacher that year was completely batcrap crazy. He loved that damn book so much and all I remember is a guy sitting in a boat for a zillion years trying to catch a freakin fish... My teenage brain; Why!? Who cares!? Will someone please transfer me out of this class!!?

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Old man and the sea
Robinson Crusoe
La Regenta

Katie wrote: "Ken just reminded me of "The Tale of Two Cities." Man that sucked. "

Grrr...that's my favorite!

The Jungle was terrible and depressing. I never finished it

Oh my! One of my all time favorite books is "Great Expectations". I absolutely love Dickens! Guess I'm in the minority on this poll, ah well, to each their own.

I loved Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath", and read it twice, once for myself, and once a few years later when my daughter's English Honors class assigned it as "summer reading". I liked it better the second time around! "East of Eden" was excellent, also. "The Pearl" was a yawner, though, and that's the one I voted for in the poll.

Metamorphosis. Yuck!

Nope, nope just read someone else's comment and remembered The Old Man and the Sea. Throw me into the sea and let that giant fish eat my brains before you make me read that again.

I had to read A SIngle Shard and it was like...torture

Mine was "The Power and the Glory" by Graham Greene.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

Oh, the suffering.

I hated the Odyssey.

Julius Ceasar--did not like it at all--and I like Shakespeare. Also, I never really liked Catcher in the Rye-- couldn't really see what all the fuss was about.

I know I am a dork, but I either liked the books we read, or haven't read them.

Great Expectations. Just terrible.

La Morte D'Arthur by Malory. We had to read it for summer reading (AP English) and it was over 1000 pages long. I was infuriated that rather than spending my summer vacation reading what I wanted to read, I had to read that boring piece of $#!%

I loved wuthuring heights! but i think it's probably because I didn't read it at school and didn't have to make notes! :D Lol!

Of Mice and Men. The Great Gatsby would be second.

A tie between Jane Eyre and Of Mice and Men. I despise both, even after all these years I can't help but curl my lip in disgust. I still want back the hours of my life I spent reading about and then writing about these "great" works of fiction.

A Farewell to Arms was by far, hands down, my LEAST favorite book I ever had to read for school. And I had to read it twice--once, junior year of high school, and again, freshman year of college. If not for the second time, my answer probably would have been Othello.

Crime and Punishment. Hated it.

I should probably give it another go as an adult, but I have such vivid memories of hating it as a teen.

The Old Man and the Sea

Though I voted for Great Gatsby, it's close second would be Romeo and Juliet. Dont' get me wrong, its a great piece of work, but SOOOO depressing and overly dramatic. When you are a teenager reading about teenagers dieing for love, it makes you want to roll your eyes quite a bit.

The Grapes of Wrath. Thank goodness for Cliffs Notes!