Poll

"Just don't take any classes where you have to read Beowulf" - why didn't I listen to Alvy?

'A Kestrel for a Knave', so I had to choose 'other'.

If I had read 'The Catcher in the Rye' at school I wouldn't be here to vote because I would never have picked up another book ever again. Awful book, you poor, poor 7.6%.

July's People by Nadine Gordimer. Shudders.

red badge of courage&oliver twist
but to be honest.
i didnt read a single required book all the way through during the 8 years of middle&high school.

Great Expectations---and I actually read it TWICE.
The Jungle also---I was expecting an aweseome, gruesome story about slaughterhouses, and it started out that way, but then it went on and on and on and on and on and on.

Sir Ivanhoe. I never made it past the first page and still got a 'C' on the test. go figure.

I've never read any of those listed except Animal Farm and I loved that book.

Joby by Stan Barstow.

Death be not Proud and The Jungle..both made me want to poke my eyes out. I cringe when students tell me that is what they will be reading...

Johathan Livingston Seagull - I could not believe that a college course would require such pap.

I hate The Scarlet Letter more than any book I've ever read, apart from the Twilight series.

I read it of my own accord and then found out we had to study it senior year. Thank goodness we're also studying A Tale of Two Cities and Jane Eyre or I might have died on spot. At least I have those two to look forward to.

Wuthering Heights is a close second for required reading.

Great Expectations...absolutely dreadful

My least favorite reading in High School/college was The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway. I find Hemmingway's writing to be dull and boring in general, and this book was particularly dull and boring to me.

Taronga!!! Grr.
I think just the fact that I had to write a 1000word essay on it and two other things destroyed my liking for the book!

Probably a tie between The Old Man and the Sea and Phèdre by Racine, in the original French.

Across Five Aprils

Death of a Salesman, ugh.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I cannot stand The Heart of Darkness. I got about half way through it and could go NO FURTHER.

Great Expectations. I didn't mind A Tale of Two Cities nearly as much. Great Expectations was so bad I couldn't finish it. And I finish almost every book I read.

The Good Earth was my least favorite.

I quite like The Great Gatsby, but Lord of the Flies was scary. Duh, I know, that's the way it's meant to be.

Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux - I even tried to "cheat" and watch the movie instead of reading the book.... and fell asleep during that. Hated it.

Boy, I hated hated hated A Separate Peace, but at least it was fast. I also hate Great freakin' Expectations. Ugh. But Heart of Darkness was my least favorite. Oh, except maybe Silas Marner.

The Good Earth. Pearl Buck's writing is absolutely horrible, and she won the freaking Nobel Prize?
And don't even get me started on the racist and imperialist undertones.
Billy Budd was pretty bad too, but I read that one on my own (because I am a geek).
Actually, I enjoyed on some level (or at least understand the significance of) all of the books listed. Except Heart of Darkness--haven't read that one yet.

I would like to add that "The Outsiders" b S.E.Hilton is one of my all time favourite books.

The Assistant by Bernard Malmud. I actually had to type his last name into the search engine, because I had mentally blotted out his first name and the title of the book. I forced myself to read it in twenty-page intervals and to this day, can't remember a damn thing about it, except what a chore it was to read it.

A Separate Peace.

Izzy wrote: "I would like to add that "The Outsiders" b S.E.Hilton is one of my all time favourite books."

Mine too!

The House on Mango Street I enjoy my Required Reading. I haven't read a book I didn't thoroughly enjoy, except The House on Mango Street. I absolutely hated it. It even made me angry, because it was so bad. I can't even begin to name a more pointless (to me, I'm sure someone somewhere can find a point amongst all that rambling) book.

To the Lighthouse. Although it's a good thing nobody actually assigned Ulysses, or that would have given it a run for its money.

'Tis pity she's a whore (by J. Ford)... i don't know what they were thinking when they picked that! Lord of the Flies and All Quiet on the Western Front were THE BEST tho.

Not sure, though I remember disliking Père Goriot a lot.

Lord of the Flies. I don't care what reviewers say about it being a classic and "protraying true human nature". It was gross and it sucked. The End.

Heart of Darkness and The Scarlet Letter are by far the worst books of all time. Darkness, Darkness, Darkness...Geez

Silas Mariner was BAD (so I never finished it)

As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. I hated it in high school, but strangely have grown to appreciate it more now as an adult.

THE EGOIST by George Meredith

The Pigman

For me it was: Hiob by Joseph Roth.

For some reason in high school I just couldn't get into reading Giants in the Earth by Ole Edvart Rolvaag. Who knows how I would relate to it being 25 years older! Maybe I'll give it a shot in 2010! Some sort of New Year's resolution to read at least five books next year that I really couldn't get into as a teenager. See if it makes a difference now!

Ethan Frome. Ack!!!

Dhympna wrote: "Waiting for Godot."

The bastard has yet to be punctual.

The Pearl, only because The Old Man and the Sea wasn't on there. Fricking Hemingway.

My favorite 'assigned' book of all time was "100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Book was incredible; one of the best I ever read, the best book I ever read being DUNE. For the poll I picked "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. What an amazing tale of madness it was!

The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Too long and too wordy. Not fun at all.

Old Man and the Sea
Tale of Two Cities

those books were very, very boring.
i didn't even bother finishing them.
i just used sparknotes..

I also hated anything by Dickens....Great Expectations, come on EFFIN SHOOT ME!!!

I clicked other for Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I wish Pride and Prejudice and Zombies had been written when I was a senior in High School.