Probably because theyre tired or it’s just high school where most don’t care.
That’s how most people feel when they read and don’t stumble. I personally read good in my head but aloud I tend to stumble over myself. I can’t follow scripts too well without minor adlibbing.
(timestamped)
Have you heard of No Fear Shakespeare? (They’re available as physical books as well.) I had a hard time “getting into” Shakespeare before I found out about it; now I can’t get enough!
I would suggest this may actually be why they’re great–people are weird and irrational, and the Bard understood them like no one else.
This is very true. There are a lot of great movie adaptations of his plays, too. (Kenneth Branaugh’s ones like Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, and Hamlet are probably good places for newbies to start.)
To each his own, I guess, but I found it to be a pretty eventful book. They’re aren’t many exciting action scenes or plot twists (ok, I guess there is a pretty big plot twist), but there are sooo many great characters. Also worth noting is that like most of Dickens’ works, it was published as a serial, a few chapters at a time. It wasn’t necessarily intended to be read quickly, or to “flow” the way most good novels do. Kind of like how watching one episode of a tv show a week can be great, but, depending on the show, binging can become a pain.
A Separate Peace. I’m reading it right now, and man is it ever “the bee’s knees.” It’s about this junior in a private school during World War II who pushes his best friend off of a tree on purpose while they’re jumping into the river, maiming him and ruining his sports career forever. Loss of fun.
Yo and Tiche is here! Good to see you still alive!
lord of teh flies
Can I just say how much I hate the scarlet letter I was stuck reading the intro portion over and over again because of how boring it was. It got to the point where I had to buy the audiobook and listen to it all the way through.
hippity hopitty, sorry RRR this topic is my property.
Really? I read it a few summers ago, and thought it was pretty good. To each their own, I guess.
I don’t think I’ve really read any bad books for school (or bad books in general), but some of them have been incredibly sad.
Right now I don’t remember any bad book, mainly because even if the book was decent just having to read it ruined it. Only a few were actually bad. The main thing that ruins a book you have to read in school is being forced to do it and I hate being forced to do stuff, just like working in the garden: if I start on my own i enjoy it, if you tell me I HAVE to do it it becomes a pain.
The fact that I was forced to read a book most of the time meant I wouldn’t read it because it became homework. Reading is supposed to be “fun” and sometimes make you think but if you are forced to remember every single frickin’ detail of the dang book it just becomes a chore and you have to remember what that side character did on page 15 instead of the message of the book
I forgot the book but some poetry; I f ing despise poetry in every form. I don’t care about some dude writing about flowers or whatever season.
I remember really not enjoying reading anything besides the fantasy books I got from my library when I was younger, but nowadays I can’t think of anything I explicitly didn’t enjoy for any reason other than that it was for school. Now I really wish I could just read books for school.
why lol. Just because some poetry is bad doesn’t mean you should make that generalization.
I think part of that was having to learn it like it’s actually important to know. I’ve said it before here but so much you learn in school is completely worthless outside of school. For me that lesson part was like my sign language; I hated it. Absolutely hated learning it.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.“Forward the Light Brigade!”
Was there not a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered:
Theirs not to make reply
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.Cannon to the right of them,
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered
Plunged into the battery-smoke
Right through the lines they broke
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre-stroke
Shattered and sundered.
They rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.Cannon to the right of them,
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
Though they had fought so well
Came through the doors of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them
Left of six hundredWhen can their glory fade?
O, the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade!
Noble six hundred!
Personally I rather really enjoyed the poetry I did at school. Certainly found the War Poetry module more useful than any of the modules on war that were done in history. It’s about the human side of things rather than dates and locations.
Let me preface this by saying: I didn’t mind doing most of the mandatory reading in school.
However, there’s one niche little book that is so utterly horrible on every level that the title of “classic” only applies in the sense of it being a monumental negative example. The “The Room” of literature.
The name of this atrocity is Ingrid Babendererde. Don’t bother checking it out. I don’t know if it’s even available in anything other than german, it certainly wouldn’t be deserving of any localization attempt.
Just know that this one is so badly paced and boring that people argue it might be intentional to make the reader not want to read it.
Take my word for it that every minute of these just about 200 pages is the most boring slog I have ever experienced and will ever experience, to the point where it feels several times longer than some of the 1000+ page journeys I’ve had.
Keep in mind this comes from someone who likes books, even the ones considered boring that we might have been forced to read in school.
And know. Just know that if there ever was a book deserving of the title “the worst”, deserving of flames, of never having existed at all, know that that books name is Ingrid Babendererde: Reifeprüfung 1953.
Hoooo boy there are two books that are cemented in my mind as the worst books I’ve read when I was in school. They are The Giver and The Red Pony.
The Giver has a neat premise of someone being chosen to be granted knowledge that society has forgotten and coming to realize how broken and controlled their lives are. Very much an Allegory of the Cave scenario. But in execution, it’s kinda… bad? and creepy? Like the way the protagonist (young boy) gets the knowledge/memories is that an old man… touches his shirtless body? 
And then this all leads to the protag and his younger sister escaping their society to live their own lives, but it’s implied they die in a snowstorm. Which, is kinda anti-climatic? Idk, book’s weird and I didn’t much care for it.
The Red Pony… the Red Pony I loathe. And it’s not entirely due to the book either.
Here’s the scenario- My teacher was a fanatic about John Steinbeck (the author). SO fanatical in fact that she had a whole section of the classroom wall dedicated to how much we “love” Steinbeck. And then forced us to write why we like Steinbeck on heart-shaped notes and put then onto that monument of s̶i̶n̶s̶ mockery. And after reading that turd of a novel, I was very unenthusiastic about dishing out compliments. I admit; I’m not a fan of Americana-style literature; but literally the book is a waste of time. Boy gets a Red Pony 
, it gets sick and dies. Wow. They get a white horse, mexican dude comes and is like “I want to go away from here, over the mountains.” or something. Steals the horse and leaves. That’s that. There’s a black horse somewhere but nothing really happens to it so whateves. There’s a section of book where- surprise!- there is no titular horse, but I don’t remember anything about so it’s probably not important.
There is nothing to gain from reading this book. The characters are garbage, the namesake of the book is only in the first quarter before getting killed off and never addressed again. Steinbeck can describe the ~scenery~ but location dressing does not maketh a good story.
That is wierd, i mean really wierd. Soounds like an obsession to me
yeah that’s pretty strange
Honestly I would have taken that as a challenge to write the most sickeningly nice, perfect love note of an obviously fake compliment and see if she could tell it was a complete lie.
Life of Pi. Absolute ■■■■■■■ waste of time. I actually think it made me dumber. The plot is boring, Pi is a gullible moron, and the message of the novel is incredibly bad advice. I actively hate Yann Martel as a person for the immense suffering his pathetic excuse for a book put me through in high school. I couldn’t even finish the bloody thing. I always finish my academic readings. It’s that ■■■■■■■ bad. Obama called this book “an elegant proof of God.” I can only take it as proof that God actively hates us and wants to punish us with pretentious novels by tactless authors.
EDIT: Honorary mention, The Scarlet Letter. Oh my god. I get the idea but the dialogue is SO badly written, everyone sounds like a Victorian robot. Even the 6 year old! No child that age uses that many words!
JANE EYRE.
That book is utterly boring. And mind you, I’ve read Eric Foner history books front to back before.
Jane Eyre is a very boring book and the romance the title character partakes in with Mr. Rochester appears very creepy and toxic in my eyes. Gothic themes aside, it’s also just a slog to get through, and it feels like nothing happens in the second part of the book.
While technically well-written, I absolutely despised Catcher in the Rye. Holden is such a miserable, pos, entitled brat throughout the whole thing that I contemplated throwing out the whole book (bearing in mind too this is the school’s copy of the book).
And while I didn’t mind reading it at the time, in hindsight you couldn’t get me to read Anthem again if you had a gun to my head.
I haven’t had much required reading as I was homeschooled, but I wasn’t terribly fond of The Horse and His Boy, which was kind of an anthology for narnia. Really enjoyed a few classics such as red badge of courage, great gatsby, and to kill a mockingbird