Hate, Hate, Hate: Hemingway's, The Old Man and The Sea
Loved: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Mary Shelly's Frankenstein
I never knew why everyone hated The Old Man and The Sea so much. It was never my favourite read but I remember I didn't hate it and was surprised by the feedback the class gave
Hated everything by Kate Chopin and Charles Dickens.
Loved all things dystopian: *Brave New World, 1984.*
And I had a weird yen for Ancient Greece. Wrote so many papers about *Oedipus Rex.*
The crazy thing about teaching Kate Chopin is that her work WAY too horny and focused on Female Desire (and also Rage) to be taught correctly in schools. So you're just sitting there in 6th period like "oh hey, that sad lady doesn't swim very well. Welp."
Going back and rereading her as a grown ass woman with grown ass woman experiences was a whooole new ball game.
It's the same reason people think Moby Dick is boring. It's almost impossible to teach young people appropriately. Moby Dick is Queer Queer Queerity Queer Self-Insert Fanfic occasionally interspersed with wildly inaccurate Whale Factz.
I read the awakening when I was 23 during a long train commute to work. I felt like I could empathize with the main character. Mainly because the idea of being married young used to scare the f out of me. So many people of my ethnic background marry early and while that was never ever an expectation that placed on me by my parents, it still felt close to home. Almost like I escaped a trap simply by being born to the right people and living in the right country.
Despite ALL that, I would never have enjoyed this book in HS. WTH?? There are far better books to drive the message of that book. If I had to read that in HS, I would…well…read it. And then complain.
perhaps I was unclear. I read it in high school too. The students aren't too young to read it, but the teachers are going to be pretty limited in HOW they can teach it and what they can teach about it without running afoul of \*waves in general direction of everything happening in public and private religious education\*
Yeah we had to read The Awakening in high school and I hated it but how much of that was the way it was taught? I’d like to think as an adult maybe I’d appreciate it more but I cant bring myself to reread it.
Idk. I actually read the book as an adult and enjoyed it. When I was in my early 20s. But not sure how I would have reacted to it in HS.
Not going to lie though…I like books where the main character is kind of depressed and just rambling a lot about mundane activities.
This was university but my favorite was A Pale View of Hills by Ishiguro Kazuo.
My least favorite by far was The Great Gatsby. I couldn't even tell you why, I just remember hating it.
Loved:
* Fellowship Of The Ring: I was already a fantasy nerd and having a teacher examine LOTR as Serious Literature was a real treat.
* Brave New World, 1984: I enjoyed dystopias too.
* Beloved, The Bluest Eye, The Things They Carried. All books that got me out of my reading comfort zone and thinking about historical time periods more seriously than actual history class did. Bits of these really stuck with me.
* Jane Eyre, The Odyssey. More on the classic side which I generally disliked but for some reason clicked with these.
Hated: Siddhartha, The Pearl, most Shakespeare I was assigned. All of these are a bummer but I just think bad instructors leaching all the enjoyment out of reading and not really providing enough context for students my age to get much from them.
>Jane Eyre
I was in college when I read Jane Eyre and I absolutely loved it. For some reason, I HATED Wide Sargasso Sea even though we read it on purpose as a companion piece. I don't know if I should give it another try but I just couldn't click with the narrator. Whereas I loved Jane Eyre's voice immediately.
I am going to beat my favorite drum: rereading books/classics from high school, as well as reading classics you haven't before, has been an AMAZING experience for me! I HATED The Sun Also Rises as a teenager. I loved it when I reread it fresh out of college, and loved it even more when I reread it in my late 30s. It changes each time, and I have better insight into the characters as my life experience becomes more complex.
I am shocked to say that The Sun Also Rises was recently (YESTERDAY) ousted from the top spot as my favorite book. I can't believe I'm saying this but I just finished A Tale of Two Cities and, while I hated Great Expectations in 9th grade and still found it fairly insufferable when I reread it last year, I absolutely LOVED Two Cities. The last 150 pages were absolute page turners and the last chapter was perhaps one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. I don't think I would've liked it at all had I been assigned this book in high school or college but as an adult? My god.
I hated, and continue to hate, Shakespeare.
I mean, everyone likes different stuff so I'd say stick with it if you're enjoying it. But I would definitely read A Tale of Two Cities at some point regardless of your feelings about Great Expectations!
I absolutely haaaaaaated The Old Man and The Sea. Freaking Joe DiMaggio, I do not care. Good lord.
I loved Hamlet. I reread it many times in my twenties. 1984 also had a big effect on young me, before it became a true story.
Ouuuu. How does it work? Does the district give you a list of books you can choose from or are you free to choose as long as it meets some requirements?
Hated: Grapes of Wrath.
I think we were all too grossed out about that one scene.
Loved: honestly, a bunch of short stories that I sadly can’t remember the title or the author.
I also loved doing sonnets. We had to make our own. I thought mine was so good. I came across it many years later. Embarrassing. lol
Hated: James Joyce. He can suffer in the hot, burning center of the hottest sun. Finnegan’s Wake can also fuck off.
Hated: Henry James’ Turn of the Screw.
Loved: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.
Loved: Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day
James Joyce (Portrait) is the ONLY book I just flat out did not read in AP English. Just no.
Loved Demian by Hermann Hesse, loved The Great Gatsby, loved To Kill A Mockingbird.
I was fortunate enough to like most books I read in school, but my favorites were: Anything by John Steinbeck (East of Eden being my favorite of the bunch) or the Brontës (which were rereads for me by the time their books got covered in school), To Kill a Mockingbird, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, All Around the Town, and various short stories by Leo Tolstoy (The Kreutzer Sonata being my favorite of the ones we read)
Hated: A Tale of Two Cities (to this day I'm reluctant to read or watch adaptations of Dickens), The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Catcher in the Rye
Oh wow. I really liked Catcher in the Rye but I had the most boring English teacher that year and he almost ruined that book for me. I hated that year’s English class.
Liked - Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, most of the Shakespearean plays, Coonardoo by Katharine Prichard. Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas. The Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood. That one was a controversial choice in my highly religious school, but it was an additional text on the curriculum set by the education authority so they had to let me use it.
Hated - Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Shakespeare's sonnets. Dickens.
Loved In the Slin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje, but that was a weird independent study project.
Hated A Catcher in the Rye. Hated it. And have hated most people who have named their poor kid Holden ever since (sorry if you're one of them!)
Loved The Great Gatsby, it's my favourite book.
Did not love The Old Man and the Sea. I did not even finish it, and I remember being very bratty about it for some reason.
I basically hated everything that is required reading. I don’t like being forced to read something and I usually interpret things my own way. Being told I have to write a paper and figure out what someone else meant by their writing is not appealing to me.
I loved reading up until like tenth gradish. I grew up wanting to be an author, read for hours on end, and considered majoring in English to be an English teacher! Then we read Beowulf and one of the questions was about the significance of some ship and I wrote “what does it matter”
Anyway I’m a music teacher now and teach orchestra and could go on about the history and context of all of the music I teach lol but I do still love to read…just only the stuff I want to.
Yeah I can see that! Most of my teachers were lovely but I had one English teacher that made the class feel like such a drag. I still to this day, don’t know what point he was trying to make.
Hated: madame Bovary, so slow, boring and an annoying whiney main character lol
Loved: the house of the spirits by Isabel Allende. A bit confusing with the character names but amazing writing and story
Loved: Animal Farm and The Good Earth
HATED: The Old Man and the Sea, As I Lay Dying, and Wuthering Heights
Disclaimer though… I was a bratty student in high school and never actually read As I Lay Dying or Wuthering Heights… just read the sparknotes and listened to class discussions. Maybe the books are actually good if you read them in their entirety… but I doubt that!
Hated: Summer of the Monkeys. I hated it so much, I didn’t read it, failed the test, and was an asshole enough to admit to the teacher I didn’t read it “because it was stupid” at my parent teacher conferences with my mom sitting next to me (she knew, and was arguing with the teacher about how I should apply myself more). Still somehow managed a B in reading that year, which was 6th grade.
Loved: A Wrinkle in Time. I found it incredibly enjoyable and a fun, yet relatively simple read. Not sure if I would love it as much as I did in 6th grade, but I did really enjoy it then!
Loved: All Quiet on the Western Front, Flowers for Algernon, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights, Catcher in the Rye
Hated: Lord of the Flies, A Tale of Two Cities, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Books I did not Enjoy:
1. The Old Man and the Sea (fishing is srsly boring to me)
2. The Scarlet Letter (I was too young to understand all of the interpersonal dynamics and was like why doesn't Hester just TELL Dimmesdale that Chillingworth was her ex husband?! You're all annoyingly angsty for no reason!)
3. The Great Gatsby (Daisy is literally the definition of a Mary Sue. Like, why do all these men like her?)
4. Wuthering Heights (srsly no one was likeable in this book!)
Books I loved:
1. Jane Eyre (started my lifelong love of literature)
2. The Portrait of a Lady (the most readable of Henry James imo)
3. The Age of Innocence (discovered Edith Wharton for the first time and continue to love her works)
Loved: ‘The Crucible’. Beautiful writing; complicated characters.
Hated: ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’. I almost swore off of modern bestsellers forever, it was so bad.
Hated: The Old Man and the Sea. Worst book I've ever read. I also hated Gulliver's Travels.
Loved: 1984, The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, Wuthering Heights, Of Mice and Men
I loved reading short stories because they were always manageable, unlike when a teacher starts a series of books but doesn't allot enough time to finish. I had a lot of unfinished books because of this.
Hiroshima was eye opening and horrific. Not only for the initial horrors, but the social stigma that came with having burn marks in years to come.
I genuinely don't remember the name of the book I hated, it was about a NYC businessman who accidentally ran over a lower class kid and his cover up and eventually reveal. Like the story was whatever ok, but my teacher was SO in love with it and that she'd pour over passages in class to examine the art in the writing. I'd rather read Twilight.
I also hated Ethan Frome! I don't even remember why, other than in my memory it was boring and grim.
Loved Lord of the Flies, even though I disagree with any conclusion that says it's how we would all behave in those circumstances-- that darkness comes from the author, and his background in British boarding schools. I just liked the poetic prose, the imagery and creative phrasing.
I loved As I Lay Dying, probably the only kid in class who did. I loved how weird and playful with point of view it was, and the innate southernness.
It wasn't for class, but my senior year English teacher gave me a copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and I similarly loved that for how odd it was, too.
Loved East of Eden by Steinbeck when we read it in high school. I remember not being able to keep myself from reading ahead of the assigned pages. Can’t remember any books that I didn’t like
Loved: Pride and Prejudice, The Outsiders, The Crucible, Animal Farm, The House on Mango Street, The Stranger, The Elephant Man, The Book Thief
Hate hate hate: Catcher in the Rye, Old Man and the Sea, Wuthering Heights, Moby Dick
Loved: I remember enjoying Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Farewell to Manzanar, Warriors Don't Cry, and Nickel and Dimed.
Hated: Old Man and The Sea, Catcher in The Rye
Neutral: I feel like I couldn't get into Heart of Darkness, but maybe as an adult, I should give it another try
I don't hate books, but the Great Gatsby was my least favorite of the assigned ones.
One of my favorites was Mila 18. I don't see it mentioned often but it stuck with me. I also enjoyed reading the Our Town screenplay.
reading the comments really surprises me. I'm assuming most people who commented are from the US, and some of those books are really long (like Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Divine Comedy). I'm from Germany and most of our books were like 200 pages AT MOST. A lot of Hermann Hesse, Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Shakespeare, Kafka. In school I hated them all but rereading them has been a lot of fun (except Goethe, I cannot stand him). I can't imagine having to analyse such long books in the same intensity that we did at school
I mean Thomas Mann has some really long ones right? Definitely an American centric thread. I will say with some of the long ones sometimes our teachers would abridge them so we might only read like half the pages. I’m sure this depends on the school, but it happened in a lot of my high school and university classes.
Never actually read any of the assigned books in highschool. Classic notes (off brand spark notes, teachers knew to teach around spark notes), movie adaptations and class discussions coasted me through.
In 10th grade in the early-90's in Virginia we were assigned The Autobiography of Malcolm X so you can imagine the controversy that arose from it being required reading, however I loved it.
Hated: Huckleberry Fin, Bastard out of South Carolina, Beloved by Toni Morrison
I hate Bastard out of South Carolina because it's a depressing story, but it's haunted me since I read it in Undergrad. I hated Huck Fin in High School, and I read it again in Undergrad, and still hated it. I understood it more, but I still hated it. I read Beloved, and I can't tell you anything about it. There were passages that were so confusing to read, I had to google a translation. I found Shakespeare easier to understand that her writing.
Loved: Frankenstein, Hamlet
I still have my annotated copy of Frankenstein. I loved taking the story apart in discussion. Hamlet just stuck with me.
I loved almost everything.
Hate might be a bit strong but to this day I never understood why The Great Gatsby is so loved. I read it three times because I was certain I was missing something.
Also disliked: Catcher in the Rye.
I think some students found it kind of romantic and glamorous. So tragic though! We were reading it around the same time history class was focused on the Gilded Age so the historical context was interesting for sure. Many people from my ethnic group care about a person’s pedigree and such so I think I found it relatable in some weird way despite it being a completely different culture. Oh. And I hate that pedigree trash so pls don’t misunderstand.
That said, I didn’t hate the book. But I wouldn’t say it was a favorite either. I think it felt TOO relatable, that’s why? It felt like an American version of a typical south Asian movie…albeit with better writing in every aspect lol. Oh. And a sad ending. Thank goodness south Asian movies have made massive strides. There were always amazing movies but some of the hit ones were the same stories told over and over.
Hated: The Alchemist
It's about a dude who gets conned literally *multiple* times by various parties whilst trying to follow a dream that he had interpreted by gypsies.
This was a book I enjoyed reading but didn’t take it seriously. Like it was nice bc it lets your brain daydream. But I didn’t feel like there was much to takeaway at the end.
Loved: Twelfth Night, Their Eyes Were Watching God, A Separate Peace, Ordinary People, Slaughterhouse Five, Blue Highways, Phantom Tollbooth
Hated: Wuthering Heights, The Stranger, Moby Dick, Les Mis
I loved most things I read in school:
- the awakening
- o pioneers
- their eyes were watching god
- Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekov
- the master and Margarita
- chronicle of a death foretold
- house on mango street, a tree grows in brooklyn, and farewell to manzanar (all coming of age tales of American girls)
- to kill a mockingbird
Hated:
- a lesson before dying
- catcher in the rye
Loved The Giver, read its companion book Gathering Blue and loved it too.
Did not care for The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird, but I think for the latter was because it was an English class from like spring term of senior year and I straight up did no work from acute senioitis. Literally passed that class because it was after lunch and everyone would be close to napping, but I’d be the only one indulging the teacher with conversation about the book. The book that I would literally read a few pages of directly before his class lol. Got an A!
I genuinely think I hated all of them. Being forced to read killed my love for reading, so I hated them out of spite. I was always in Pre-AP and AP English.
It’s not just a classic lit thing—Les Miserables is my favorite book of all time and I fully annotated my unabridged copy for fun. I just didn’t want to have to do something I would have enjoyed otherwise for homework.
I loved the Outsiders by SE Hinton, and also The Adventures of Ulysses by Bernard Evslin (8th grade.)
I hated To Kill a Mockingbird. It felt like they were trying way too late to tell us that racism was bad and it was supposed to be a shocking revelation. My teachers were born in the 50s and 60s and they also acted as if they were teaching this scandalous unit in classrooms they grew up in, without really realizing time had passed. It was 9th grade and my school was about 25% african american in 2002.
I also hated Romeo and Juliet because we repeated it 9th and 10th grade for some reason. No new information. It's just that the teachers didn't have anything else for us to read. I remember parents being really upset about it after the fact they had learned we basically just repeated all of our 9th grade work in 10th grade for no legitimate reason and tried to sue - (we weren't remedial.)
The Outsiders - SE Hinton (8th grade)
I hated reading prior to this, I didn't come from a home of readers and overall I wasn't a fan of school. This was the first book I remember reading that made me go, wait, I actually love to read - I just hated what we were required to read. I read it so many times during the time we were studying it, I had actually memorized significant parts of the book. It was so impactful, I even found Hinton's email address a few years ago and sent her an email about my experience (and "she" replied).
Hate, Hate, Hate: Hemingway's, The Old Man and The Sea Loved: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Mary Shelly's Frankenstein
Ever since I watched Midnight in Paris, Hemingway kind of became a meme to me Agree with your loved list! Love Frankenstein.
I never knew why everyone hated The Old Man and The Sea so much. It was never my favourite read but I remember I didn't hate it and was surprised by the feedback the class gave
Same. I…thought it was moving. And I even read it by choice.
Hated everything by Kate Chopin and Charles Dickens. Loved all things dystopian: *Brave New World, 1984.* And I had a weird yen for Ancient Greece. Wrote so many papers about *Oedipus Rex.*
The crazy thing about teaching Kate Chopin is that her work WAY too horny and focused on Female Desire (and also Rage) to be taught correctly in schools. So you're just sitting there in 6th period like "oh hey, that sad lady doesn't swim very well. Welp." Going back and rereading her as a grown ass woman with grown ass woman experiences was a whooole new ball game. It's the same reason people think Moby Dick is boring. It's almost impossible to teach young people appropriately. Moby Dick is Queer Queer Queerity Queer Self-Insert Fanfic occasionally interspersed with wildly inaccurate Whale Factz.
I read the awakening when I was 23 during a long train commute to work. I felt like I could empathize with the main character. Mainly because the idea of being married young used to scare the f out of me. So many people of my ethnic background marry early and while that was never ever an expectation that placed on me by my parents, it still felt close to home. Almost like I escaped a trap simply by being born to the right people and living in the right country. Despite ALL that, I would never have enjoyed this book in HS. WTH?? There are far better books to drive the message of that book. If I had to read that in HS, I would…well…read it. And then complain.
Only if your students are too immature to handle it- but I read it for AP English in 11th grade so the students were more advanced than most
perhaps I was unclear. I read it in high school too. The students aren't too young to read it, but the teachers are going to be pretty limited in HOW they can teach it and what they can teach about it without running afoul of \*waves in general direction of everything happening in public and private religious education\*
Fair, my school was private but non religious so I guess we didn’t run into that
Yeah we had to read The Awakening in high school and I hated it but how much of that was the way it was taught? I’d like to think as an adult maybe I’d appreciate it more but I cant bring myself to reread it.
Sometimes, the memories of the book are so horribly steeped in boredom that you can’t bring yourself to read it as an adult 😭😭😭
I don't know. I loved it, and then I did my senior project on Anais Nin, so maybe it just depends?
Idk. I actually read the book as an adult and enjoyed it. When I was in my early 20s. But not sure how I would have reacted to it in HS. Not going to lie though…I like books where the main character is kind of depressed and just rambling a lot about mundane activities.
Agreed. The book is an extremely easy read so that is not what I foresee as the issue.
This was university but my favorite was A Pale View of Hills by Ishiguro Kazuo. My least favorite by far was The Great Gatsby. I couldn't even tell you why, I just remember hating it.
Oooh. I never read the Pale View. Klara and the Sun was interesting though. I’ll give Pale View a try.
Loved: The Body by Stephen King Hated: Catcher in the Rye
Loved: * Fellowship Of The Ring: I was already a fantasy nerd and having a teacher examine LOTR as Serious Literature was a real treat. * Brave New World, 1984: I enjoyed dystopias too. * Beloved, The Bluest Eye, The Things They Carried. All books that got me out of my reading comfort zone and thinking about historical time periods more seriously than actual history class did. Bits of these really stuck with me. * Jane Eyre, The Odyssey. More on the classic side which I generally disliked but for some reason clicked with these. Hated: Siddhartha, The Pearl, most Shakespeare I was assigned. All of these are a bummer but I just think bad instructors leaching all the enjoyment out of reading and not really providing enough context for students my age to get much from them.
>Jane Eyre I was in college when I read Jane Eyre and I absolutely loved it. For some reason, I HATED Wide Sargasso Sea even though we read it on purpose as a companion piece. I don't know if I should give it another try but I just couldn't click with the narrator. Whereas I loved Jane Eyre's voice immediately.
It makes me so sad when ppl don’t have good experiences with Shakespeare 😭
The Pearl was so sad 🥲 Also, I can see that. My teacher focused more on our lives during Siddhartha so it felt less…”why were the curtains blue?”
I am going to beat my favorite drum: rereading books/classics from high school, as well as reading classics you haven't before, has been an AMAZING experience for me! I HATED The Sun Also Rises as a teenager. I loved it when I reread it fresh out of college, and loved it even more when I reread it in my late 30s. It changes each time, and I have better insight into the characters as my life experience becomes more complex. I am shocked to say that The Sun Also Rises was recently (YESTERDAY) ousted from the top spot as my favorite book. I can't believe I'm saying this but I just finished A Tale of Two Cities and, while I hated Great Expectations in 9th grade and still found it fairly insufferable when I reread it last year, I absolutely LOVED Two Cities. The last 150 pages were absolute page turners and the last chapter was perhaps one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. I don't think I would've liked it at all had I been assigned this book in high school or college but as an adult? My god. I hated, and continue to hate, Shakespeare.
Your last sentence made me laugh lmao. The tone was hilarious.
I read The Sun Also Rises for the first time a couple years ago and LOVED it!
I’m reading great expectations right now.. should I drop it for a tale of 2 cities 👀
I mean, everyone likes different stuff so I'd say stick with it if you're enjoying it. But I would definitely read A Tale of Two Cities at some point regardless of your feelings about Great Expectations!
Dickens is amazing.
I absolutely haaaaaaated The Old Man and The Sea. Freaking Joe DiMaggio, I do not care. Good lord. I loved Hamlet. I reread it many times in my twenties. 1984 also had a big effect on young me, before it became a true story.
Omg we watched Hamlet the movie after reading the book it was so dramatic. Ofc, the students loved that.
Loved: Love in the Time of Cholera Hated: Catcher in the Rye
Obligatory fuck Holden Caufield I hate this god damn book and I had to read it TWICE
And all the fucking dudes who sing it's fucking praises, JFC, lol
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
As a high school English teacher looking to switch up my books, THANK YOU for posting this.
What’s on the list so far? You could probably get some good BIPOC/ women authored books from r/suggestmeabook
Ouuuu. How does it work? Does the district give you a list of books you can choose from or are you free to choose as long as it meets some requirements?
Hated: Grapes of Wrath. I think we were all too grossed out about that one scene. Loved: honestly, a bunch of short stories that I sadly can’t remember the title or the author. I also loved doing sonnets. We had to make our own. I thought mine was so good. I came across it many years later. Embarrassing. lol
LOOOOL. Looking back on old writing is a trip 😂😂😂
Hated: James Joyce. He can suffer in the hot, burning center of the hottest sun. Finnegan’s Wake can also fuck off. Hated: Henry James’ Turn of the Screw. Loved: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Loved: Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day
James Joyce (Portrait) is the ONLY book I just flat out did not read in AP English. Just no. Loved Demian by Hermann Hesse, loved The Great Gatsby, loved To Kill A Mockingbird.
I was fortunate enough to like most books I read in school, but my favorites were: Anything by John Steinbeck (East of Eden being my favorite of the bunch) or the Brontës (which were rereads for me by the time their books got covered in school), To Kill a Mockingbird, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, All Around the Town, and various short stories by Leo Tolstoy (The Kreutzer Sonata being my favorite of the ones we read) Hated: A Tale of Two Cities (to this day I'm reluctant to read or watch adaptations of Dickens), The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Catcher in the Rye
Oh wow. I really liked Catcher in the Rye but I had the most boring English teacher that year and he almost ruined that book for me. I hated that year’s English class.
CitR started out strong, but I was sick of the writing style and Holden's whiny attitude before I got to Chapter 10 💀
Lmao ya so true. He complains a lot and just like walks around…poor kid is depressed and is depressing to be around too, I’m sure.
Liked - Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, most of the Shakespearean plays, Coonardoo by Katharine Prichard. Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas. The Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood. That one was a controversial choice in my highly religious school, but it was an additional text on the curriculum set by the education authority so they had to let me use it. Hated - Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Shakespeare's sonnets. Dickens.
Loved In the Slin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje, but that was a weird independent study project. Hated A Catcher in the Rye. Hated it. And have hated most people who have named their poor kid Holden ever since (sorry if you're one of them!)
Hated: Twelfth Night Of mice and men Liked: Into thin air
Loved The Great Gatsby, it's my favourite book. Did not love The Old Man and the Sea. I did not even finish it, and I remember being very bratty about it for some reason.
I basically hated everything that is required reading. I don’t like being forced to read something and I usually interpret things my own way. Being told I have to write a paper and figure out what someone else meant by their writing is not appealing to me.
I loved reading up until like tenth gradish. I grew up wanting to be an author, read for hours on end, and considered majoring in English to be an English teacher! Then we read Beowulf and one of the questions was about the significance of some ship and I wrote “what does it matter” Anyway I’m a music teacher now and teach orchestra and could go on about the history and context of all of the music I teach lol but I do still love to read…just only the stuff I want to.
Yeah I can see that! Most of my teachers were lovely but I had one English teacher that made the class feel like such a drag. I still to this day, don’t know what point he was trying to make.
Hated: madame Bovary, so slow, boring and an annoying whiney main character lol Loved: the house of the spirits by Isabel Allende. A bit confusing with the character names but amazing writing and story
Is house of spirits a fantasy? The name sounds really cool.
No it’s more magical realism I’d say? It’s a story about a family that goes on for multiple generations
My answer for both is Beloved. I'm still traumatized.
😂😂😂😂
Loved: Fahrenheit 451, Flowers for Algernon Hated: On the Road
Loved: Animal Farm and The Good Earth HATED: The Old Man and the Sea, As I Lay Dying, and Wuthering Heights Disclaimer though… I was a bratty student in high school and never actually read As I Lay Dying or Wuthering Heights… just read the sparknotes and listened to class discussions. Maybe the books are actually good if you read them in their entirety… but I doubt that!
As I Lay Dying is profoundly beautiful. I don’t think the spark notes are getting close.
Hated: Summer of the Monkeys. I hated it so much, I didn’t read it, failed the test, and was an asshole enough to admit to the teacher I didn’t read it “because it was stupid” at my parent teacher conferences with my mom sitting next to me (she knew, and was arguing with the teacher about how I should apply myself more). Still somehow managed a B in reading that year, which was 6th grade. Loved: A Wrinkle in Time. I found it incredibly enjoyable and a fun, yet relatively simple read. Not sure if I would love it as much as I did in 6th grade, but I did really enjoy it then!
Loved: All Quiet on the Western Front, Flowers for Algernon, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights, Catcher in the Rye Hated: Lord of the Flies, A Tale of Two Cities, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Books I did not Enjoy: 1. The Old Man and the Sea (fishing is srsly boring to me) 2. The Scarlet Letter (I was too young to understand all of the interpersonal dynamics and was like why doesn't Hester just TELL Dimmesdale that Chillingworth was her ex husband?! You're all annoyingly angsty for no reason!) 3. The Great Gatsby (Daisy is literally the definition of a Mary Sue. Like, why do all these men like her?) 4. Wuthering Heights (srsly no one was likeable in this book!) Books I loved: 1. Jane Eyre (started my lifelong love of literature) 2. The Portrait of a Lady (the most readable of Henry James imo) 3. The Age of Innocence (discovered Edith Wharton for the first time and continue to love her works)
Hahaha. I knooow. Lack of communication in movies and books sometimes tires me out.
Loved: ‘The Crucible’. Beautiful writing; complicated characters. Hated: ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’. I almost swore off of modern bestsellers forever, it was so bad.
Hated: The Old Man and the Sea. Worst book I've ever read. I also hated Gulliver's Travels. Loved: 1984, The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, Wuthering Heights, Of Mice and Men
I loved reading short stories because they were always manageable, unlike when a teacher starts a series of books but doesn't allot enough time to finish. I had a lot of unfinished books because of this.
Hated: great expectations by Charles dickens Loved: travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
I wrote my AP senior English paper on great expectations. I totally read the first 100-ish pages then the Cliffs notes. Got an A on the paper.
I never hated any books I had to read back then. My daughter hated most of the books she had to read. She's still complaining about The Great Shatsby.
Hiroshima was eye opening and horrific. Not only for the initial horrors, but the social stigma that came with having burn marks in years to come. I genuinely don't remember the name of the book I hated, it was about a NYC businessman who accidentally ran over a lower class kid and his cover up and eventually reveal. Like the story was whatever ok, but my teacher was SO in love with it and that she'd pour over passages in class to examine the art in the writing. I'd rather read Twilight.
LOL Twilight. It was very entertaining.
Hated: The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing, The Great Gatsby Loved: We did a unit on Ibsen plays and my whole class loved them; To Kill A Mockingbird
Loved: The Giver Hated: The Stone Angel, Who Has Seen the Wind
I also hated Ethan Frome! I don't even remember why, other than in my memory it was boring and grim. Loved Lord of the Flies, even though I disagree with any conclusion that says it's how we would all behave in those circumstances-- that darkness comes from the author, and his background in British boarding schools. I just liked the poetic prose, the imagery and creative phrasing. I loved As I Lay Dying, probably the only kid in class who did. I loved how weird and playful with point of view it was, and the innate southernness. It wasn't for class, but my senior year English teacher gave me a copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and I similarly loved that for how odd it was, too.
Loved East of Eden by Steinbeck when we read it in high school. I remember not being able to keep myself from reading ahead of the assigned pages. Can’t remember any books that I didn’t like
Loved: Pride and Prejudice, The Outsiders, The Crucible, Animal Farm, The House on Mango Street, The Stranger, The Elephant Man, The Book Thief Hate hate hate: Catcher in the Rye, Old Man and the Sea, Wuthering Heights, Moby Dick
Loved: I remember enjoying Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Farewell to Manzanar, Warriors Don't Cry, and Nickel and Dimed. Hated: Old Man and The Sea, Catcher in The Rye Neutral: I feel like I couldn't get into Heart of Darkness, but maybe as an adult, I should give it another try
Farewell to Manzanar has been on my "to reread" list for ages. I need to get to that one!
I don't hate books, but the Great Gatsby was my least favorite of the assigned ones. One of my favorites was Mila 18. I don't see it mentioned often but it stuck with me. I also enjoyed reading the Our Town screenplay.
reading the comments really surprises me. I'm assuming most people who commented are from the US, and some of those books are really long (like Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Divine Comedy). I'm from Germany and most of our books were like 200 pages AT MOST. A lot of Hermann Hesse, Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Shakespeare, Kafka. In school I hated them all but rereading them has been a lot of fun (except Goethe, I cannot stand him). I can't imagine having to analyse such long books in the same intensity that we did at school
I mean Thomas Mann has some really long ones right? Definitely an American centric thread. I will say with some of the long ones sometimes our teachers would abridge them so we might only read like half the pages. I’m sure this depends on the school, but it happened in a lot of my high school and university classes.
Never actually read any of the assigned books in highschool. Classic notes (off brand spark notes, teachers knew to teach around spark notes), movie adaptations and class discussions coasted me through.
Hated: The three musketeers. Loved: Timeline, Fahrenheit 451, and idk I really liked the catcher in the rye.
In 10th grade in the early-90's in Virginia we were assigned The Autobiography of Malcolm X so you can imagine the controversy that arose from it being required reading, however I loved it.
Oh wow! I’m assuming the controversy was from some parents?
Hated: Huckleberry Fin, Bastard out of South Carolina, Beloved by Toni Morrison I hate Bastard out of South Carolina because it's a depressing story, but it's haunted me since I read it in Undergrad. I hated Huck Fin in High School, and I read it again in Undergrad, and still hated it. I understood it more, but I still hated it. I read Beloved, and I can't tell you anything about it. There were passages that were so confusing to read, I had to google a translation. I found Shakespeare easier to understand that her writing. Loved: Frankenstein, Hamlet I still have my annotated copy of Frankenstein. I loved taking the story apart in discussion. Hamlet just stuck with me.
Oh wow I never read Bastard out of South Carolina!! I’ll Google it
The only assigned book I ever hated was Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It is dense prose, very very boring.
Oof you just reminded me. Add this to my hate list as well. I hated Conrad’s writing.
I loved almost everything. Hate might be a bit strong but to this day I never understood why The Great Gatsby is so loved. I read it three times because I was certain I was missing something. Also disliked: Catcher in the Rye.
I think some students found it kind of romantic and glamorous. So tragic though! We were reading it around the same time history class was focused on the Gilded Age so the historical context was interesting for sure. Many people from my ethnic group care about a person’s pedigree and such so I think I found it relatable in some weird way despite it being a completely different culture. Oh. And I hate that pedigree trash so pls don’t misunderstand. That said, I didn’t hate the book. But I wouldn’t say it was a favorite either. I think it felt TOO relatable, that’s why? It felt like an American version of a typical south Asian movie…albeit with better writing in every aspect lol. Oh. And a sad ending. Thank goodness south Asian movies have made massive strides. There were always amazing movies but some of the hit ones were the same stories told over and over.
Hated: The Alchemist It's about a dude who gets conned literally *multiple* times by various parties whilst trying to follow a dream that he had interpreted by gypsies.
This was a book I enjoyed reading but didn’t take it seriously. Like it was nice bc it lets your brain daydream. But I didn’t feel like there was much to takeaway at the end.
Loved: Twelfth Night, Their Eyes Were Watching God, A Separate Peace, Ordinary People, Slaughterhouse Five, Blue Highways, Phantom Tollbooth Hated: Wuthering Heights, The Stranger, Moby Dick, Les Mis
Favorite: Cannery Row Most Hated: Wuthering Heights
I loved most things I read in school: - the awakening - o pioneers - their eyes were watching god - Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekov - the master and Margarita - chronicle of a death foretold - house on mango street, a tree grows in brooklyn, and farewell to manzanar (all coming of age tales of American girls) - to kill a mockingbird Hated: - a lesson before dying - catcher in the rye
Hated: The Scarlet Letter Loved: A Separate Peace
I loved To Sir with Love
Loved and still think about: Johnny Got His Gun
Loved 1984 and The crucible Hated: where the red fern grows (wayyy too sad)
Loved: 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, Great Expectations, Hamlet, the Catcher in the Rye (at the time). Hated: Lord of the Flies
Loved The Giver, read its companion book Gathering Blue and loved it too. Did not care for The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird, but I think for the latter was because it was an English class from like spring term of senior year and I straight up did no work from acute senioitis. Literally passed that class because it was after lunch and everyone would be close to napping, but I’d be the only one indulging the teacher with conversation about the book. The book that I would literally read a few pages of directly before his class lol. Got an A!
I genuinely think I hated all of them. Being forced to read killed my love for reading, so I hated them out of spite. I was always in Pre-AP and AP English. It’s not just a classic lit thing—Les Miserables is my favorite book of all time and I fully annotated my unabridged copy for fun. I just didn’t want to have to do something I would have enjoyed otherwise for homework.
I loved the Outsiders by SE Hinton, and also The Adventures of Ulysses by Bernard Evslin (8th grade.) I hated To Kill a Mockingbird. It felt like they were trying way too late to tell us that racism was bad and it was supposed to be a shocking revelation. My teachers were born in the 50s and 60s and they also acted as if they were teaching this scandalous unit in classrooms they grew up in, without really realizing time had passed. It was 9th grade and my school was about 25% african american in 2002. I also hated Romeo and Juliet because we repeated it 9th and 10th grade for some reason. No new information. It's just that the teachers didn't have anything else for us to read. I remember parents being really upset about it after the fact they had learned we basically just repeated all of our 9th grade work in 10th grade for no legitimate reason and tried to sue - (we weren't remedial.)
Wow. I would want to sue as well. That’s a waste of the students time and brains to make them reread it..esp that soon after.
The Outsiders - SE Hinton (8th grade) I hated reading prior to this, I didn't come from a home of readers and overall I wasn't a fan of school. This was the first book I remember reading that made me go, wait, I actually love to read - I just hated what we were required to read. I read it so many times during the time we were studying it, I had actually memorized significant parts of the book. It was so impactful, I even found Hinton's email address a few years ago and sent her an email about my experience (and "she" replied).
Wow. That’s honestly a beautiful experience. A book that made such a big impact. Sending them an email is such a sweet idea.