What Books Do You Dislike?

[ayemea]

I dislike 'the graduate'. We had to read it in school and I thought it was so boring. Well, it isn't my genre at all. At least it was easy to read.
All in all I dislike nearly every book we have to read for classes.

[Constance963]

And sorry to all the Walden readers but I detested that book. I had to write a critical paper on it in English my junior year of high school and couldn't even get through it. It the only other book besides Moby Dick that I read the Cliff's notes for because I couldn't finish it...but still got an A on my paper!!!!!

My English teacher was usually drunk and we used to joke that he stood at the top of his stairs, threw our papers down it and whoever landed at the top got an A and whoever was at the bottom got an F and the rest were graded accordingly as to where they fell in between....

[ayemea]

And we always thought, the teachers were using dice...

[hegel1066]

Almost anything by Thomas Pynchon
"A Flag for Sunrise" by Robert Stone
Dickens (or at least too much of him in a short period of time)
Anything by Don Delillo
Most things by John Barth
Most things by John Banville.

All of these are supposedly "world-class" writers who have won numerous national and international prizes for the work in fiction. Maybe there's something wrong with me...

-John (hegel1066)

[charliespeaks]

I think anything you have to write a critical report on looks bad for a while thereafter. I hated catcher in the rye for a while b/c i had to do a paper on it.. it has since truly grown on me though.

I'm about to become very unpopular...

I hated on the road by jack kerouac.

I found it boring and nearly impossible to get into. I read the whole thing and truly felt like I'd just wasted 3 days of my book reading for nothing.

[amielou]

As an English teacher, I have to defend us a little. We have to teach things we hate sometimes. Someone else decided it was important somewhere above us on the ladder of authority. We just can't say we hate it and expect students to take it seriously, so we pretend!

[ayemea]

Well, I know that it's not the fault of the teachers that we have to read that books. But that doesn't change the fact that I dislike them. I mean... why can't the higher authorities try to find books that most of the students would like to read? I can just speak for me, but I would be more attentive in lessons if we read a book I like.

[Constance963]

I guess the whole point is to get teenagers to read books they wouldn't normally give a second glance to. I have to admit I never would have picked up Crime and Punishment as a 16 year old but I ended up loving it. I will admit that school curriculum really did open my mind to new kinds of novels.

[annaisabella]

Rosshalde by Herman Hesse. It was a heavy, dragging book. I think Hesse failed in this one. It seemed like he was new in the world of writing

[Grim]

Most contemporary fiction of the type you can find rows of at Coles or even the local drug store.

Any fiction about war, or mysteries about whores.

The Harlequin romances, and the dime store freelances.