ITT: the shittiest books you had to read for school

yeah, other user got it. They're struggling with their back to school essays and come here to lash out and kid themselves that they're beyond it

The real conspiracy is that they make you read shitty books in school because they want you to learn to hate reading.

People usually go in 3 stages with this book.

1. I can relate to Holden, therefore this is a good book.
2. I have ascended in maturity level beyond Holden, therefore it is a bad book.

I'm at number 3. I love this book.

Can't think of one I didn't like. Maybe The Book Thief.
But this book was actually written really well for the genre, being talking dog adventure.
It is a great example of pacing and illustrates how a protagonist with limitations must work around them.

Forgot pic

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1984
Animal farm

Pleb and retard tier books.

I had to attend a very liberal sjw college and in a reading course I had to read this book. It was about a Mexican immigrant family that moved into Delaware.

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This board is about 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times less cute without butterfly posting :3

why did you dislike that book op?

Does "relatable" really mean "directly comparable to myself right now"? I've always taken it in reference to characters who are drawn well enough to be universal, so even people from different backgrounds can understand their motivations. Like to pick a broad example, I'd call Luke Skywalker a stock Model A Relatable Hero even though there aren't a lot of moisture farmers in the movie's target demographic, because what's relatable about him is the standard "young upstart craving change and excitement" stuff. By that metric I think Holden is very relatable; one of the things the book does well is taking a specific character's specific teenage angst and making it understandable to everyone who has ever been an angsty teenager.

Most colleges have at least a dozen literature courses you could have chosen from, and most of them let you see the books on the curriculum before you enroll. So I don't have any sympathy for you in this.

what... what are you arguing?

Well the one I went to had one course that I had to take that was a requirement for me to take other courses. I would assume the other reading courses would just have other reading material that's just as retarded as the one I got or worse.

Ironically, they are acting like Holden

The Bean Trees and Ethan Frome

He's not arguing anything. user was literally asking a question about reliability and then gave his view on the matter.

Holden isn't relatable to just any angsty teenager. If you think that, you haven't read closely enough.

Angsty teenagers prototypically resent the authority of their parents, and want to break free of this authority and express themselves, to establish their identities.

Holden's problem is literally the opposite of this. His problem is that he has no parental authority to turn to with his problems, and they are too large to deal with on his own.

He's seen terrible things. His brother died. His schoolmate killed himself in front of him. He's had a rough go of it, and the entire novel is about his attempts to reach out to other people for reassurance.

However, he continually fails to do so, because everyone in his society thinks that he's just an "angsty teenager". They think that he wants power to express himself and control others, and they are continually baffled and suspicious of his attempts to divest himself of his responsibility. Power is the inverse of security-- in order to be reassured and comforted, you have to be in the dependent position on other people.

The typical growth story arc portrays the typical attitude of citizens in capitalism-- they are coddled and controlled from birth by parents and bosses, and want more than anything else to break free. Holdens arc is the inverse, but most people (including you) aren't empathetic enough to understand that.

Pursuant to my other comment, they're acting like the opposite of Holden. Holden doesn't feel oppressed by the weight of other people's expectations-- there is no one in a position to hold him to these. There's a reason he's failing all his classes.

The Scarlet Letter. Might be good now, but in school I hated and thought the prose sucked. Iirc the language was very antiquated and frustrating.

Another aspect is I hated school and doing assignments in English class as I read along with the book made it so I didn't feel like I could form my own relationship with it. This was true for most books I read in school. The work at every step of reading was more of a detriment than an enhancement to the experience

Both

This

I hated every book I read in high school and then when I read them again on my own after high school I loved most of them: Catcher in Rye, Gatsby, Stranger, Hamlet, Oedipus, etc. The few exceptions were Night by Elle Wiesel and Ta-Nehshi Coates Between the World and Me. The former was okay, but the latter was dreadful

The problem is that you shouldn't force people to read or analyze books in these bland academic manners that affirm the current establishment, but I think school all together is a drone and would much rather have educated myself.

I, Tituba by Maryse Condé. I'll never forget how bad that book was.
I went to a shitty state school so a good percentage of the books I read were shitty but we read them because the writer was black/women/etc.

the subtext of his incestuous romantic feelings for his little sister was a masterful writing decision. solid book

Everyone would have. School takes learning and makes it miserable
Unfortunately, if given the option, 90% of the population would choose not to learn shit

Books I read for school in high school
>The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn
>All Quiet On The Western Front
>The Catcher In The Rye
>Crime And Punishment
>Fahrenheit 451
>The Grapes Of Wrath
>Great Expectations
>The Great Gatsby
>Hamlet
>Invisible Man
>Life Of Pi
>Maus
>Night
>The Odyssey
>One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
>A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
>Pride And Prejudice
>Romeo & Juliet
>A Separate Peace
>Their Eyes Were Watching God
>Things Fall Apart
>1984
The only one I really hated at the time was Great Expectations

TKaM is great though. Especially the film

I tried reading this not long ago

But soon as he turned out to be a chad that went to clubs alone and hitted on girls I stopped reading

>and writing

This killed me

How did this inspire people to kill?

The character didn't kill anyone.
Its just about some asshole who hates everyone for being themself when hes a fucking retard cunt himself

Did you come up with this or did some other source influence you? It's a very interesting interpretation I have to keep in mind for my next reread.

brainlet schizoid NPC alert. it baffles me that people can miss the point that hard in such an easy to read book. it has to be because of character flaws in the reader

It was like Castaway but instead of a painted volleyball named Wilson he was stuck on the island with an old nigger.

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Catcher is so funny. One of the few novels that can make me laugh out loud on almost every page. It's not an amazing novel, but it's so enjoyable to read. Like a good TV comedy.

Imagine writing a book so perfect it includes a metaphor about rereading the book a thousand times

Well said.

I think it's an amazing novel... almost everything I've read by Salinger is amazing.

Nani?

What happened to butterfly? She dead?

In middle school we read a book which was about 5th graders teleporting to a different place in Europe in a different time period, think the magic school bus but history-based. In one chapter the bully kid got to meet motherfucking Hitler- and the best part was that when he came back he asked the teacher who "the man screaming about the jews" was, because apparently he had never heard of Hitler before.

Wow does seriously someone rates something based on just the characters?, not the most important thing that its the theme that the author tried to express. Such brainlets

This

I had to read "Their Eyes Were Watching God" in the 12th grade and hated it. I also wasn't a fan of
Fahrenheit 451 when I read it, but that might have just been because I was in 8th grade, but I got the impression that it was just the author describing how great he is and how important his job is by building a dystopia where there are no books.

TKaM

It wasn't THAT bad

Probably something by Michael morpurgo that isn’t kensuke’s kingdom, that one was ok
We had to read a load of his in primary school and so much felt dreary
In terms of middle/high school stuff I enjoyed basically all of it, although I guess I hated Romeo and Juliet because of the title characters for a long time but not so much anymore

I’m struggling to think of any shit books I read in school. There was far too much emphasis on Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry but she has a good ones like this.

>Warming Her Pearls

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
bids me wear them, warm them, until evening
when I'll brush her hair. At six, I place them
round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk
or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself
whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering
each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.

She's beautiful. I dream about her
in my attic bed; picture her dancing
with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent
beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.

I dust her shoulders with a rabbit's foot,
watch the soft blush seep through her skin
like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass
my red lips part as though I want to speak.

Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see
her every movement in my head.... Undressing,
taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching
for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way

she always does.... And I lie here awake,
knowing the pearls are cooling even now
in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night
I feel their absence and I burn.

I remembered one of my middle school teachers reading that book. All I remember about it was that the old nigger dies at one point and then the boy grows up to become a pilot and then visits the island he was stuck on with him to see his grave. Also I think the little boy went partially blind at one point from staring at the sun too long like a retard.

Also I thought the name of the book was really stupid when I was a kid. Kids kept calling the book "the gay" which made me think the old nigger and the little boy were in some sort of sexual relationship.

The only one I remember disliking was the Scarlet Letter. I think Of Mice and Men is good but I probably wouldn't read it again

Possibly the reason I didn’t hate any books in school is that I would just read them straight away rather than hearing them read out in class in monotone voices.

Had to read As I Lay Dying. Hated it.
I'm trying to finish tSatF but I just can't enjoy his prose. I just want it to be over so I can pick up another book without never having finished this one.

Hey, Gatsby is cool as fuck. I can understand why one could hate TkaM, but it's pretty good.

Everyone I've ever met who hates Catcher is a dumb w*man performatively opinionated against the book because they've been brain poisoned by their gal-pals into thinking that ignorantly turning your nose up at art makes you "cultured"

Or douchey men who only care about getting laid and shun virtue

bruh how were you assigned all that shit throughout high school

A Raisin in the Sun and Beloved

They’re actually not shitty books. You just think they are because you associate them with school, which you do not like. You are a slave to the educational institution’s role for you, whose script you follow to a tee: the rebellious student.

If Stoner was on the curriculum, you would learn to hate it too.

1984

Not him but I loathed every second of school besides English and History. Reading offered respite from the shitty moments. I don’t understand how a keen reader could come out hating good books, even if the teacher was an arse you could surely look past that?

I’I’ve been wanting to re-read Cal by Bernard MacLaverty for a while, that was on the syllabus when I was 14.

Four years of English, two being AP Lang and Lit. It doesn't really seem like that much, I was thinking I forgot a few honestly

>tfw you are from small country and the majority of your mandatory high school reading was from national authors instead of world famous
They all fucking sucked, it's like making team of 10 olympic athletes and 10 best local athletes and think there will be any competition between them. And then for some reason watching the local team sucking constantly; well you could at least root for local athletes but reading local writers that were just peasants lucky enough to not be illiterate was waste of time. Over time you just get a very good idea of how poor is your national cultural heritage and hate all those famous peons with passion. Let's wonder why do our kids think the literature sucks, it's because you made them read crap.

lol fucking brainlets

Not him but that doesn't strike me as outlandish for 4 years of highschool. Even in an undemanding environment, about 5 books a year doesn't seem that much, particularly since those books are rather short and simple.

>1 book between september and november
>1 book in december including holydays pus the first half of january
>1 book between the second half of january and the first half of march
>1 book between the first half of march and april
>1 shorter book in june

Repeat every year, have an two extra book on the last year to prepare for the national exam. Done.

>read life of pi
>literally threw my book at the wall in anger at the ending
i would've liked it if it wasn't that gay "le figment of le imagination" shit

In my class (a second year honors course, not nearly the level of discussion of future APs) no one aside from a group of five of us or so really "got" Life Of Pi. My teacher led a Socratic seminar and most of the time was spent between students debating whether or not the story "really happened". It's a fairly heavy book (thematically) for fifteen year old kids I suppose, but no one was particularly willing to go into depth about religion/God