Jump to content

What are books that you have had to read for school that you absolutely hate?


JoeG

Recommended Posts

The Sand Child by Tahar Ben Jelloun. Absolutely hated it. Despised it. Loathed it. Yet it was the easiest to work with regarding commentaries and essays. Oh, cosmic irony, how I hate thee.

I second this to the very ends of the earth, though perhaps not for the same reasons if you had no problems with commentaries and essays. (This actually interests me. Care to elaborate?) The only thing I'd managed to glean from the entire text was that the main character brought sexually confused to a whole new level. I cycled between incomprehension, boredom and revulsion for the majority of the book.

Apparently however, the original version (written in French) is much better in terms of...well, everything, so perhaps a bad choice of translator?

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I hated Moby D ick. It is such a boring book, every time I tried to read it I fell asleep. I know that it has a deep meaning and I like the concept of the book, but it has this something that makes me hate it. I don't want to know anything about whales anymore.

Crime and punishment wasn't that bad, but it is just excessively long.

Edited by Sofi315
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

It has to be The Stranger by Albert Camus.... :angrymob:

Seriously?? This was by far my favorite book and I must have read it more than three times. Not to mention that Camus is an absolute genius.

Yea I have to agree with Jirashimosu. At first I was skeptical but then after analysing it and all, it is really cool and so profound! :)

But if that's your opinion, I respect that.

Books I hated....too many to count! But some are:

-Stupeurs et Tremblements by Amélie Nothomb

-Le Comte de Monte Cristo (the Count of Monte Cristo in eng)

-L'Odyssé

-Le Petit Prince (back when I was in 7th grade...disliked it!)

Link to post
Share on other sites

In junior high, I had to read Cheaper By the Dozen. I swear, this book was like listening to a helicopter parent kvell about how awesome and nostalgic their family was, except it never stops, and you are required to listen. I'm sure you know the kind of person I'm talking about. When you approach them with a question or just start making small talk, they just have to bring up some silly story from their childhood or family that's probably been retold so many times that it bears no resemblance to what actually happened. If it's not that, then they show you stupid baby pictures of their adult children and insist upon you how cute they are.

Furthermore, at the time I had two very irrational fears: The first one was that someone would anesthetize or drug me against my will. The second one was going to the dentist. There is a scene in the book when a doctor accidentally performs a tonsillectomy (which required anesthesia) on the wrong child. To my 7th-grade brain, this was my worst nightmare and I was shaking about it for weeks, and almost tore out the pages where it happened to that nobody else would have to be subjected to it. Come to think of it, the whole book should have been committed to the furnace. To be fair to the teacher, though, it was probably the highest reading level the other kids could handle. (It was not a school known for academic achievement.)

In 9th grade I had to read Romeo and Juliet. I think some of Shakespeare's stuff, like the play Julius Caesar that we're reading now, are pretty smart. But Romeo and Juliet is just one of his lazier works. I found myself wanting Romeo and Juliet to kill themselves at the end because I was sick of reading their emo poetry about how much they love each other even though they only met at a party one night. Remember when Kim Kardashian got married (for the money and attention, no doubt) and then divorced her husband shortly after? Romeo and Juliet don't even approach that level of intelligence. At least Kim had her plan thought out in advance.

Edited by Wykked Wytch
Link to post
Share on other sites

I liked "The Odyssey" for its story and at times I found the verse to be quite beautiful. However, that poetic verse was also my downfall on all the tests I took on it.

In 9th grade we read another horribad Shakespeare play: Much Ado About Nothing. Then we watched a movie adaptation of the play, where Don John was played by Keanu Reeves. He completely butchered the verse. Everyone in class agreed that the whole thing was rather ridiculous. The funniest part was at the end of the movie, when Don John was apprehended, and someone in the class shouted out, "No more Hot Topic clothes for you, young man!" We could have read King Lear or Macbeth or something but nooooooooo. We had to watch what was basically the Elizabethan equivalent of a clichéd romantic comedy.

Edited by Wykked Wytch
Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...