Books you had to read for school

I hear people complaining all the time that they had to read a book for school and they hated it. I agree that I didn't exactly love The Catcher in the Rye, and that analysing the hell out of books can drain them of some of their appeal sometimes, but they can't have been all that bad... So, what have been the best and the worst of those you read for school? Do you feel differently about them now?

Starting with the worst... This year my AH English class read two of Thomas Hardy's novels, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge. I was the only one to finish both out of the whopping class of three, and I put across such a good argument about their shoddyness that in the end we didn't have to study them in detail in class (we concentrated more on Shakespeare, poetry and our personal dissertations, thankfully). I hated them so much I reviewed them badly on here. :P I officially hate Thomas Hardy now.

The best... Well, this year has been good to me (apart from the above works) in that it gave me a lot more choice in what to read from what the Higher classes had. I enjoyed reading quite a lot of dystopian novels for my dissertation (focussing on The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell), but I was going to be reading them sometime this year even if I hadn't chose them to write about. A book that I was glad to be introduced to this year was Lanark by Alasdair Gray, a gem of Scottish writing.

Also, as it seems that Shakespeare is almost always taught each year (where I am at least), I would like to ask the opinion of this? I have actually learned to like the stories more than before and it is becoming progressively easier to read, though the language is still a little bit tricky for me. I do find that the "death speaches" do get a little odd though. If you are about to die, why shout "Oh, I am slain!"? :P

We've had some terrible and some fairly good ones. I took a massive dislike of anything Iain McEwan after reading Enduring Love and The Comfort of Strangers. Of Mice and Men was probably the best "novel" we did, but on the play side we didn't do too badly. Death of a Salesman and A View From the Bridge were both quite good and The Caretaker (Harold Pinter) was pure genius.

The older stuff was the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales - ok, but not great - Edward II (Christopher Marlowe), which again I can't remember much about and a load of Shakespeare stuff. Done pretty much every tragedy except for King Lear. Again, it's been long enough that I can't really remember much about them!

One of the best classes I ever took was called Investigating the Victorian Thriller. We read Frankenstein, Dracula, The Woman in White and Dicken's Bleak House.
I have to say that I really did not enjoy Frankenstein at all and was the only one in class to love Bleak House.

Had to read the Epic of Gilgamesh, and loved it, but by the time the teacher (for that English class) finished analyzing it, I hated it. Curiously enough I recently bought the book and I'm enjoying it :p

For that same English class, all students were required to do a research paper on the subject of our choice. Since I grew up surrounded by film people (dad was a film director and mom, producer), I chose to analyse the adaptations of A Clockwork Orange and The Great Gatsby. Both of these books, I hated by the time I finished writing my 50-page dissertation on them, although I started by loving both films and books at the start.


On another note, in high school, I remember having to study Chaucer for the British Literature class, and loved that one. During the study of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the school planned a medieval night where all students (and chaperons!) had to dress from that era, and even had to bring meals from medieval recipes. Having read Chaucer helped the students to actually have fun, and it made reading Chaucer certainly more interesting.

My English teacher in high school didn't believe in studying and analysing works, she would give us weekly vocabulary in encourage us to find those *strange* words (such as chutzpah and albeit) in whatever books we wanted. That was a fun class!

I never had to study Shakespeare strangely enough until I took the Shakespeare course in university. But in theater class in *high school* I was Juliet's nurse (whom no one wanted to do because of her long speech to Juliet), and everyone just hated Shakespeare because of the language problem... and I was the only who loved the challenge of that! I've loved Shakespeare ever since. But I'm not sure if studying him thoroughly would have had that impact on me.

The Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham was the book I absolutely detested. Actually the whole class did and complained about how terrible it was so the teacher rented the movie for us to watch which was pretty boring as well.

I remember reading Mandragora and that was the book we all made fun of (can't seem to find a link for that one). I don't remember why. It's been 10 years since I've been to school and I've blocked most of it out so my memory is very hazy...

The best books I read for school were actually the ones we were told to choose ourselves and then right an essay on. I never wrote the essays. Wasn't at school enough by the time essays were in the curriculum

The only novel I remember having to read at school was Animal Farm, which I quite liked. I had to some coursework around that, I think. I can't remember reading any other books, although I'm sure I did. For Shakespeare, I read Julius Caesar and Macbeth, both of which I really enjoyed (particularly Macbeth).

Oh yes, had to do some war poetry, too, which was better than I expected, though I don't usually go a bundle on poetry at all.

The short stories are never any good. I now have a strong dislike for Raymond Carver stories because we had to analyse it to pieces. *grumbles*

As for the poetry, it's been bad and good over the last two years. Some poets I hate now because of it, but I loved that we got to study Edwin Morgan this past year.

I had to read Penthouse letters. I can't remember it being an assignment

I hated The Diary of Anne Frank just not my type of book. i would much rather read somthing with a lot of action in it.

im on a vocational school, and durin summer they gave me "The burning Journals". i read it and liked it... u dont have to hate a book becouse is the school that gave it to you... some people read books for the fun of it and dont do nothing with wat they read... atleast u get graded on the book and not just read it and say that was a good book and then read another book and dont do nothng with wat u read....
i had never enjoyed reading books untill i read this summer and i kind of liked so i still read books to this day. i think ELA, (reading), is as fun as GYM class!

true...very true. at least you do get graded if you read it for school.

Well, I'm the sort of person that, if required to do so, will read books without complaint, although it might not mean that I will love it. Books that i have to read for school, and ended up liking, were 'Jane Eyre' and 'Tom Sawyer' but the latter didn't really count as I had already read it before I knew it was going to be part of school literature. As soon as we get assigned out literature books, I've finished it before others, so it gets kinda boring in class when we have to have time to read it. I've tried reading slowly, but i always end up speeding past again.

We also did Shakespeare 'Macbeth', which seems to be a very popular literature tool. There was also 'To Kill A Mockingbird', which was interesting. Sorry if I got any of the titles wrong! XD