Horrible Books You Read/had to read 4 school From When You Were Younger

[Winger]

@EmperorDuckie

I wasn’t terribly fond of The Horse and His Boy

I lived and died by that book.

[EmperorDuckie]

Didn’t say I hated it, just wasn’t terribly fond of it compared to the others in the series

[Winger]

That’s fair. I think the only Narnia book I would say I dislike is Prince Caspian, because of the weird pacing.

[TheCobaltCorsair]

The only book that I couldn’t stand was The Old Man and the Sea. It was quite repetitive, since the Old Man’s dialogue pretty much consisted of “I wish the boy was here”, “I must eat the tuna”, and “I want to kill the moon” (wow, that guy was crazy…). There just wasn’t anything I found interesting about that book…

[N01InParticular]

@EmperorDuckie

I wasn’t terribly fond of The Horse and His Boy

Bruh. That book is good.

[EmperorDuckie]

@N01InParticular

Bruh. That book is good.

It wasn’t my favorite but I didn’t hate it

[Tarkur]

So their was this horrid book we had to read during the last term of gymnasium(Swedish equivalent of high school) for swedish classes, god I hated this book it was way to philosophical and weird, which made the book a drag to read.

For those of you who wants to know what its about here is a short plot synopsis(spoilers obviously:

So there is this doctor who had a terrible childhood growing up he got pick on and bullie in school, his first love fell of a cliff and died. In other words this guy was very traumatized, cynical and depressed. Now he would normaly take walks along the town during the evening and sometimes he would pass the priest on his way over a bridge. Now the doctor hated this priest for several reasons but also because he kinda had a thing for the priest wife, whom he had as a patient… Now the priest wasn’t the best person either plus there is some suggestions of domestic abuse in that relation ship. The wife is also way younger than the priest. Now after sometime this doctor starts to plot a means to get rid of the priest as the wife and doctor becomes closer. 3 quarters in to the story the doctor poisons the priest wine at a bar with arsenic and kills the priest. Realizing what he has done the doctor runs away and becomes a recluse. Paranoia kicks in and he considers taking his own life due to his guilt, he stops seeing the wife as she stops attending her appointments and the doctor continues to get worse. The book then ends with the doctor walking past the wives house one last time leaving a letter in her mail box explaining what he did and why he did it. He doesn’t ever kill himself but the ending leaves it ambigious to what he might have done afterwards.

Final thoughts: I kinda hate this book, while the story isn’t bad it is very noticeable that it was written in the 1800s, further more all the metaphors and philosophical questions made by the main character makes the book more cryptic and devoid of clarity than a Faber post. The ending is also highly unsatisfactory as it ends just as a new potenial story ark could arise making it a cliffhanger on par with the legend reborn. If that wasn’t all the main character while tragic is highly unlikeable and comes of like the priest a bit grossly.

Anyway I hope you never have to read this piece of media be glad I suffered for you.

[Winger]

I’m going to read both Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov this year. Dostoevsky if you don’t know. Wish me luck.

[TichePotato]

Just catching up on this thread.

@DarkMaestro

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.

One of the assigned books in the United Kingdom is Of Mice and Men. It’s one of the books that was memed to death during the time in which we read it; we’d make a game of who’d get a copy with “George kills Lenny” written in the front, but is a book I’ve since come to quite appreciate.

@CMO

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).

Catcher in the Rye was one of the books that was in my English classroom but I didn’t study, and so inevitably read out of sheer boredom due to finishing the assigned book far, far in advance of my classmates. And Holden being a miserable and entitled brat? Yup. It’s a coming of age story; one I’ve appreciated more in retrospect given how I’ve gone through a similar time in my life.

I want to draw attention again to this post.

@GX_05

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

This is an accurate summation of most of the books in this thread. I had/have a much lower opinion of a lot of the books I read in school because, by the time we’d finished with them, I’d have read it six~ times in a very short span of time, and analysed it to death. Few things kill interest in English Literature as much as English Literature classes in school.

[DuneToa]

The few books I’ve hated were either a) something for school or b) strange short stories where I was given no context, not even the author’s name. Case in point: The Lottery, by Ursula K. LeGuin. I read a pirated version of that, since it was the link my teacher gave us, and I nearly threw up at the ending. Like, WTF, why?! Why are you killing a completely innocent person as the exact last event in your story?! What does this have to do with an 8th grade kid?
(Though I did enjoy reading her story The Machine Stops later that year. Probably due it being less of a horror story.)

But yes. Charlotte Mason’s website needs to provide more context for what they provide for students to read. Also, never read her book Ourselves. It the most complete piece of moralizing garbage I have ever, ever, EVER read. Trust someone who had to make a written narration of a chapter attempting to teach certain health advice from the position of a ridiculously Puritanical viewpoint. That chapter never addressed the issue and only made it worse, since it brought in a ton of crap that was utterly and totally unrelated. The entire book was also written in that enraging tone of voice that one associates with the phrase, “Now, children…” said in the voice of a nasty babysitter or teacher who tries to get you to do stuff only a two-year-old enjoys. In a spoiled British accent, (No offense to the British, mind you).

[WaterGafna]

(So you understand this, I will explain how schools work where I live. In my country we have rather interesting school system.

Everyone goes to Basic School. There are Middle Schools for various professions, and Gymnasium, which is not specialized, but focuses on everything. High Schools are the highest form of education, where graduates of a Gymnasium can go to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, and various other complicated professions. (Correction: Some professions have both a Middle School and High School. I forgot to say that.))

I had two particularly bad cases of this. They were not books exactly, but rather two short stories. When I went to Basic School we mostly read from textbooks that had short texts and excerpts. There was a different textbook of this type for each grade. (There are nine grades in Basic School.) At least two of the short texts were utterly abysmal.

First was from first grade, and was about a man using three wishes. First wish was to summon sausage. His wife was angry, and to spite her, he fused the sausage to his nose. In third wish, he reversed other two wishes. It was extremely stupid.

Second was from third grade. It was about the wicked witch from Hansel and Gretel having a(n equally wicked) husband and building ice cream house instead of gingerbread house, to better lure modern day children. I am not making things up. Worse, it was the first story in the textbook, and so made a really bad impression of the book’s quality.

Fortunately the later textbooks got better, at least slightly.

While we read actual books for reader’s diary, we could chose what we read, so there was no problem with that, just with the textbooks. I wrote about an Agatha Christie novel for reader’s diary, in the third or maybe second grade (I am not entirely sure) (Correction: I knew it was early in school, but couldn’t remember what grade it was and wrote first grade, because I did not think about it. In first grade, we were learning to read and write. I personally knew to read and write before then, but rest of pupils did not, so it could not possibly been in first grade.

Nonsense is now repaired. I will attempt to revise my posts more thoroughly before posting, so I do not look like I have memory and expressive skill of a goldfish. I hope this is final revision of this post and I worded it correctly this time. I do not want to appear like the sausage-man fusion.)

I currently do not study at a school and haven’t for long time, so I don’t have to read texts I dislike. (I completed the Basic School, which is mandatory. Then I was accepted to a Gymnasium since I was smart, but had to leave after one year of study for mental health reasons. I am unable to have a job for same reasons.)

[DuneToa]

After those stories, I’m surprised that the textbook writers still have jobs.