/lit/ - Literature

Great Gatsby sucks. It's just a bunch of bored rich white folk doing nothing, and then half of them die.

>>1077901
Look, it was a puddle of water in a desert of shit.

I enjoyed it because I had almost literally nothing else. It may not have been the best, but I still liked it, and I'll always remember it fondly.

... Which is why I won't re-read it.

What I did was read it half asleep- I remembered most of the details in the book and got mostly 90+'s in my grades. On the other hand, some of the books we needed to read weren't too shabby after all.

I would have preferred if my teachers had assigned Jane Austen stuff because I like that kind of shit. Instead we had to read bullshit like 'The Tortilla Curtain' and 'How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.'

EMILY BRONTE. I remember now, I think that was the author I couldn't fucking stand.

Jesus christ it was so terrible. FUCK Wuthering Heights.

I got into this very discussion with my girlfriend, who teaches english. a lot of books are shoved down kids' throats because they are "classic literature" when really they are boring, difficult, and un-relatable. I just read The Hound of Baskervilles, recently, and the writing was decent, but the story crawled like a quadriplegic through mud. if Watson weren't such a friggin bro, I would have ditched that turd after 30 pages. and the ending was shit, too.

but, that discussion rages in high school English departments every day. what the fuck is Moby Dick for? or Beowulf? and while you are boring your students to death with opaque crap like that, you are ignoring modern classics, like The Kite Runner, or The Lovely Bones. and what does that tell students? that no book written after 1920 matters? that Literature is bullshit for dusty old libraries? no wonder that adult literacy has been dropping in this country. much as we all hate it, crap like Chuck Palanuik and Twilight are saving literacy, despite high school English's best efforts.

I have to say, tho, I loved Wuthering Heights to death. Heathcliff was a BASTARD

>>1077901
this bro is entirely right. the effort to dignify that pile of shit by ascribing value to these people's activities is just disgusting and stoopid

My favorite book that I read while in high school was a book that wasn't even assigned. It was Paul Fussell's "Wartime: Understanding and Behavior In the Second World War," which is an academic analysis of attitudes, platitudes and public sentiment towards the war, balanced by the realities for the soldiers. It really is a fucking fantastic book, and I can't recommend it highly enough for anyone interested in history or literature and especially how history and literature are affected by war.

I was going into the military when I was given it by my English teacher, and it changed my perception of everything. It's a fucking great read, and a sobering one.

>>1077931
>much as we all hate it, crap like Chuck Palanuik and Twilight are saving literacy
Debauching the written word is not saving it. Sorry. Palahniuk is okay though. To an extent.

I enjoyed all except:

Jane Eyre
Heart of Darkness
The Glass Menagerie

Everything else I enjoyed thoroughly.

I used to hate Shakespeare. I thought Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth were utter shit. so trite and ridiculous. Then I read Othello in college, and I really liked it! I wish my teachers had ditched the bullshit plays and given us the good stuff.

I actually read Wild Cards because it was in our school's library. There was a rape scene, and I was fucking stunned because this was a tiny goddamn school, like a 500-person private school, K through 12. There was a cow field behind the baseball field.

I also found A Stitch in Time and read that of my own volition. I don't remember its actual writing merits, but it was a cool book. I think there was other books I actually chose to read, but I've forgotten.

I read more books because in Elementary school we had library periods where we'd just go to the library and pick up books we thought looked cool than I ever did in High School because we had to.

>>1077945
it is getting people to read, tho. once people start with the crap, they will go looking for more. eventually they will bump into something actually good, even if only because some geek working at Barnes & Nobles suggests something to them.

this is what happened with Harry Potter. the kids section at the bookstore is fuckin massive because of all the kids who got turned on to reading through Harry Potter

I hated Heart of Darkness all six times I was assigned to read it.

>>1077947
OP here. I had to read all those too.

Didn't finish any of them.

I was bitter by the time we got to the decent stuff. I swear, if trends had continued I might have just stopped reading entirely out of spite. Through most of high school I think I almost stopped reading real books because I was so burnt out by the required reading.

A raisin in the sun

one of the most boring books ever and it had literally 0 effect on me as a reader. Maybe the play would have been more engaging. I can only hope.

>>1077924
This shit right here. Anyone who has received a public education in the past 5 to 10 years has to read such a deluge of politically correct shit that it becomes damn near impossible to enjoy reading. English teachers try so hard to have a "global" curriculum that they jam shitty novels by sub-standard black, Hispanic, woman etc. writers that they ruin English for 90% of the school population. Why they can't pick good books written by minorities (Invisible Man springs to mind) is beyond me.

>>1077954
I have a confession to make.

I read Twilight and it got me into reading.
oh god i can't believe i just said that

>>1077958
>>1077947
Why does everybody hate Heart of Darkness. Every person I've talked to that hates the book never gives me a good reason for why they disliked it. I read the whole thing in a day and absolutely loved it.

>>1077967
Fuck you. Virginia Woolf is /lit/'s goddess

I feel like somewhere along the way I somewhat lost interest in books in general.

I used to be all fucking about books. Library time was my favorite time of the day. Even as into video games as I was, I still read through books like they were crack. All my time on the bus or free periods in class would be spent with the next book I'd picked up at the library, and sometimes at lunch I'd spend the period in the library reading. It was great. Lonely, but great.

And then I was forced through a gauntlet of Jane Austen/Emily Bronte tripe, laughable racial prejudice books considering there was maybe one black person in our entire fucking school, and other stuff from the 1800s that just all sounded the fucking same. No Jules Verne, ONE Poe poem, not even one of his morbid mysteries, nothing else worth mentioning. A few good books near the tail end, but by then I was just... Jaded, I guess. It hit me at a vulnerable point when video games were threatening to take the entirety of my attention. I guess I just broke out of my library habit. In retrospect, I really miss it. Man, I need to read more...

>>1077971
I'm talking more about books like "House on Mango Street" or "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent." There are certainly good female and minority writers, but however was in charge of the curriculum picked shitty books that every student hated. Now everyone hates to read.

>>1077949
Shakespeare was hilarious. I can't believe just how amazing his jokes were. He was crude and witty and to my greatest joy, some of them even work today. Like this little gem.

Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done?
Aaron: That which thou canst not undo.
Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother.

From Titus Andronicus

I didn't even know "horror" novels existed until I graduated high school.

That's fucking terrible.

MOMMAH MOMMAH MOMMAH MOMMAH
MUM MUM MUM MUM

>>1077976
because people in the social sciences don't know dick about assigning reading material

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, I shat a brick at the pro-communist ending. It was the coolest shit I'd ever read at fifteen.

Catcher in the Rhye. Hated it when I first read it, hated it when I studied it. Came back to it just after I finished High School and it all became clear and I fell in love with it.

Also enjoyed The Crucible and The Things They Carried while we did them in school. Most of the others I just found plain boring.

The problem is that people can be very tempermental with their reading, just like the music they listen to. Just like I can't sit and listen to music I just outright don't like, or don't find interesting, I can't read books that don't speak to me. If it doesn't catch my interest, if I can't relate to the characters, if the subject matter doesn't make any sense, I just can't get through it.

Forcing kids to read stuff they don't like ultimately can just cause them to be embittered against books in general. Ideally, they'd be able to choose amongst a list of books that include a diverse set of subjects and writers.

Not a book, but relevant. We had to read this story, Marigolds, in seventh grade. All I remember is the narrator talking about her loss of innocence after she destroyed her neighbor's marigolds. Everyone hated it, but that part always stuck with me. It made me think, so I liked it.

>>1077982
Same thing with Westerns for me. Though I've never actually picked one up yet, so don't know if they're any good or not.

really depends on your teacher

obviously, during the ages of 14-18 you're not going to grasp even 75% of every novel's literary themes, allegories, etc.

so, having an educated HS English teacher (rare as fuck, btw) explain to you the nuances of the novel can go a loooong way in your response to a novel. For example, having an intelligent person guide you through Candide at age 16 vs. solely reading it alone makes a huge difference.

i hated Great Gatsby at 15 because my teacher was a dumb bitch that couldnt even grasp it herself. then i read it again a year ago (age 22) and fucking loved it.

>>1077967
I liked the ideas that were in Invisible man, but I remember being insanely confused half the time I was reading it, mostly because I felt like I was missing some important imagery in something really simple, (like that bird scene where he gets shat on-completely went over my head until it was discussed in class).

I liked macbeth a lot, Hamlet was alright. Romeo and Juliet was shit tier. The only good thing about it was mercutio

>>1078021
strange, isn't it? i had to read the great gatsby for school when i was 15 and i didn't like it. now that i'm 22 i'm reading it again and enjoying it immensely.

ARE YOU ME IN THE FUTURE?

I've always enjoyed reading. The only thing I've ever actively hated was being forced to read Vonnegut. The guy pisses me off.

Hate List:
- Jane Eyre, a woman bitching about being handed things.
- How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent, generally terrible.
- Last of the Mohicians, poetically written book about walking and punching.
- Salem's Lot, Stephen King is the problem.
- Fight Club, s-h-i-t.
- The Giver, MOTHERFUCKER CAN SEE COLORS THE END.
- How to Kill a Mocking Bird, damn southerners are slow even in book form.

Enjoyed:
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- The Hobbit (Re-Read, but still counts)
- High Fidelity (I connect with Rob, as much of an asshole he is)
- Langston Hughes Poetry (Cheating, my teacher would read it aloud because he was a big Hughes fan)
- Into the Wild, better than the other shit.
- In Cold Blood (I love Capote)
- A Streetcar Named Desire
- Death of a Salesman
- Frankenstein

Great Gatsby sucks. And it is one of the greates American novels. I said all.

Why don't they teach Lolita in schools, seeing as it is the finest work in the English language?

>>1077901
Damn skippy. Not as bad as Catcher in the Rye but it was still a shitty book.

>>1077931

I think there can be a distinction made between literature that is truly a classic (Possessing a timeless quality which makes it highly relevant and engaging despite being read in a different period) and literature which is simply treated as classic because of the rarity of literature from that period. I like Beowulf but it's a classic in the latter - I can't say it's too different than any other heroic epics. Only reason we teach it is because it's the first real literature for the English people/language. I hate Catcher in the Rye but it's a classic in the former, and I guess students should continue to be taught it.

I fucking loved Frankenstein. I forget when I read it seriously and when I just cheated past reading it (Once in 12th grade and once in Sophomore College), but the time I did sit down and actually read it it was the one classic which I felt undeniably deserves to be held up onto a pedestal.

In 10th grade I tried to read that Existentialist "French guy with the Algerian prisoner" short story and I really hated it. Teacher was a bitch but it was also just way too fucking heavy a topic for 10th grade; that or I hate philosophy.

Second part of post

>>1077924
>>1077967

God yes. I'm just glad I don't remember much beyond a blur of all that bullshit we had to read. Only one you need for white/black relations is To Kill a Mockingbird.

Favorite books I read in High School and Middle School were of my own volition, albeit as a result of something in school. Fallen Angels in 7th grade despite them trying to censor me from it (Either they just warned me about it, or they asked my mom and she told them to quit being leetle babies), and Dune in 10th grade. I did like my World Literature Course in 12th grade because it was legitimate cosmopolitan literature rather than political correct bullshit. Read a brief part of the Mahabharata with Arunja and Krishna, bits of the Quran, and a great book written in secret by a Saudi Princess: asshole brother throws her dog out the car window, sister presumably gets surprise buttsecks by her older husband, sister tattles on brother and gets his ass beaten brutally by the Mullahs/their father for having pornography, manuvers to escape Saudi Arabia with her kids when her once chill husband goes wahhabi.

>>1078117
Beacuse reading Nabokov in the HURR DURR America is out of question.

Does anyone else think Kafka is a fucking windbag?

Cram:
>The Stone Angel by Margret Lawrence
>The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
>The Castle by Franz Kafka
>Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
>King Lear by William Shakespeare
>Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
>Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Enjoy:
>To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
>The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
>1984 by George Orwell
>The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
>A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

>>1078126
>Catcher in the Rye
>Bad

>>1078157

Said it on /co/, will say it again.

There's a reason Salinger captured the smarmy, smug jackass nature of teenagehood so well, where one thinks themselves the enlightened one amongst a sea of phony sheeple.

He never grew out of that stage.

>>1078157

>>1078195

That's not what the book was about, at all. Just because the character is a smarmy teenager doesn't mean you're supposed to sympathize with his point of view.

This.
This fucking book.
In the EIGHTH GRADE.

Who assigns a thirteen year old this shit? I didn't even know what Existentialism was for fuck's sake. Think I made it about half way through before just giving up and taking the D (bs'd my way through report).
Looking back I now know it's because the teacher had a doctorate in lit but was stuck teaching Jr. High. Glad I moved the next year or might have gotten Don Quixote or some shit.

>>1078382

>Middle School
>7th Grade
>THE OUTSIDERS
>Well this is okay I guess. The names are shit and the dialogue is awful.. but whatever
>Move to a new area for 8th Grade
>Have to read it again
>Go to highschool
>Freshman year
>THE OUTSIDERS
>Move after my sophomore year
>Junior English at a new school
>THE OUTSIDERS

I'm 5 years removed from my last reading of the outsiders, I hope to never see it that book ever again

>>1078346
>Who assigns a thirteen year old this shit?

I hate it when teachers assign works that require greater cognitive development to appreciate than the class has achieved. because then these kids grow up hating these brilliant authors when they just didn't understand them.

middle school kids are better off reading Steinbeck. I doubt even teenagers could miss his allusions and metaphors.

>>1078478
I had a similar experience with A Raisin in The Sun.

Read it at least 4 times in a 10-year period.

>>1078478
I had this experience with "Prufrock" from junior year of high school until mid way through college. seriously. every. single. semester.

I still like it though. maybe because it's only a poem and not an entire novel.

I FUCKING HATE OF MICE AND MEN. WORST FUCKING BOOK I'VE EVER READ!

that being said I still enjoy Lord of the Flies to this very day

>>1078521
and "Hills Like White Elephants"

and I still like that one too.

>>1078527
FUNNY, I'M PRETTY MUCH THE OTHER WAY AROUND. BUT I WOULDN'T SAY I 'HATED' LORD OF THE FLIES.

>>1078098
>How to Kill a Mocking Bird
>How to

My sophomore year I took honors English and got stuck with Rain of Gold while all the other regular classes read The Count of Monte Cristo. I read Monte Cristo in middle school and it's been one of my favorites ever since, so that didn't help any good feelings I might have had towards Rain of Gold. But then I actually read it. I get the cultural significance bit, but all I could think was how disgusting most of it was and how much more valuable Monte Cristo would have been. Meanwhile, all of my friends in the regular classes couldn't stand Monte Cristo....

I also seemed to be the only one in my classes who enjoyed Grendel and Camus' The Stranger. I remember liking The Great Gatsby, but I've forgotten a lot of it since.

Never been fond of Shakespeare. We read Julius Caesar, Othello and Midsummer Nights Dream, but eh. Couldn't stand Scarlet Letter. Never finished Frankenstein, Metamorphosis or Heart of Darkness for some reason. Ironically I love Kafka.

But yeah, the only thing that really stands out negatively to me is Rain of Gold. Almost all of the class had something bad to say about it when we finished.

Also, I was assigned Slaughterhouse Five for English 1BH in college up until a week or two before class started when it was switched out for some other book. I read it anyways and ended up falling in love with Vonnegut's writing. Severely disappointed that didn't live to be a part of that class.

this is my english 2 honors reading list
at least one book per term

ya jels?

>>1078578
>Achebe - Things Fall Apart

never read it, but that fucking book came up all the time in quiz bowl packets

>>1078584
I've heard a lot of bad things about that book but if that's true then I'll probably end up reading that one. I haven't been sure about that Asia and Africa section since none of the books really seem appealing.

It seems to be my experience that a lot of the "Great Novels" seem to be about a whole bunch of people doing absolutely nothing, and taking for-fucking-ever to do it. I didn't read most, if any, of the assigned books in high school. Doesn't mean I didn't read; I read like crazy. Just not the stuff we were assigned to.

And then senior year, we had an English elective class called simply "Science Fiction"... Best class ever.

No books were ever crammed down my throat.
I never had to read a lot anyway, but in my last two years of high school our teacher gave us these really interesting literature assignments on certain subjects, e.g. censorship.
She would recommend some books but we got to choose ourselves, and the recommendations were usually pretty good too, as she had good taste.

Mother fucking HOLES. Fucking assigned shittiness trying to be interesting and edgy, fuck I don't even know. Also, Flowers for Algernon. Fuck that shit. I don't want my main characters to have mental issues, I want them to be badasses or pussies who go through tough times and come out badasses, like Frodo. Not fucking aspies.

All this utter shit, I would have killed for some Victorian stuff

Then BAM Year 9 hit me like a train. Animal Farm, then 1984, and then Midsummer Night's Dream. Win. I actually came because the change was shocking from pure modern shit to old literary gold. Then we read some more Shakespeare the next year after some utter shit and then I got to read solid Lovecraft for a month and a half for 'inspiration' for writing a Gothic horror story (My teacher had no idea that was more sci-fi than gothic). Also, we read the Raven one week. I started to love Poe to bits. We read some Dickens, it was shit but I waded through it anyway because then we got to read A View from the Bridge, which was surprisingly good.

Also, there was some OK Sherlock Holmes stuff but nothing special

I fucking hate it when teachers set new books that are supposed to be edgy or thought-provoking. Fuck. You want to provoke thought? SET BRAVE NEW WORLD

Also, my school library has Mein Kampf, the Commie manifesto and the Little Red Book but not Atlas Shrugged. Lol.

was forced to read shit like romeo and juliet and emma for years. then come final year we read hamlet, frankenstein and a memoir/biography on a great man.

1984 was the book that made me enjoy reading, and I was forced to read it at the last middle school year.

After reading the first three paragraphs of The Joy Luck Club I never read a book for school ever again.

>>1078932
I had to read this book as well. Well, it was assigned to us but I never read it. Sparknotes plus trading favors with friends to get me caught up before tests and shit.

In my final year of High School, we had very little time left in the final semester, and all of us had to read animal farm (I'm from Europe, English is my 2nd language) (also because it's short), it was the first and last book I had to read for school that I didn't hate furiously.

>>1078578

Hell yes I jelly.
I've heard good things about The Life of Pi, my mum and sister and everyone else who read it has recommended it to me. Unfortunately I've sucked at reading recently and have a reading list like six feet long to get through, when I find the time.
(Ironically I could probably read about a book a day during the time I spend on this damn site.)

I think the teacher makes a huge difference to the books you read at school. I loved Lord of the Flies and Romeo and Juliet, because the teacher made it so much damn fun. We were set Pride and Prejudice to read before the school year and then we went back through it in class, explaining and discussing everything. I found it really goddamn hard to get through the first time, but once we'd gone over it in class I actually regarded it with fondness. Again, I hold the teacher fully responsible, she was awesome.

Oppositely, I hated war poetry - probably because it was taught by a different teacher.

This still stands out as one of my favorites, despite the negative attention the book gets.

sorry to bump this old thread, I just had to get this off my chest.
The Awakening was about a selfish rich broad who suddenly realized she never wanted to have kids or be married to the guy she married in the first place. So she kills herself

Its not a story of a woman driven to the edge by her oppressive husband and a society that thinks she should take his abuse and like it. The husband is barely even shown in the story, he just seems like your average oblivious guy of the era.
Its just a woman who decides that if she can't have every pissant thing she wants she's gonna pitch the tantrum to end all tantrums and kill herself.

Moral of the story: live a life of luxury without any wants, then decide its not enough? kill yourself.
good advice.

>>1078346
Somehow I find the image of a 13 year old kid trying to read Notes from Underground absolutely hilarious.

captcha: It's fismen

>story of a young Victorian woman coming of age

seems like every novel my mother reads

I Claudius, Lolita, and Catch 22 were all required reading.

Greatest English class ever.

>>1080047
Oh dear, what godawful school did you go to?

>>1080051
>godawful

Nope.

>>1080051

I liked everything that was assigned at my school. Even most of the poetry was awesome. I love reading.

Waiting for Godot was God Tier (pun not intended, but whatever), and both Death of a Salesman and The Wild Duck managed to surpass my expectations.
But my favorite compulsory book will always be School at the Frontier.

to kill a mockingbird

i had already read it but the teacher went about it the totally fucking wrong way. she had no lessons on what we thought about racism, or what the real struggle in the book was; it was all, "why did atticus say this to scout?" everyday. when we'd answer her, should wouldn't lead in to an in-depth explanation according to her morals, or ask for ours, we would just go on to the next question.

she basically taught it like you would a math book and i wanted to fucking shoot her. i didn't read a page.

Pretty much my curriculum was 'here's why whitey's the devil - you should feel guilty' for four years. I wasn't amused.

>>1080127
To add, we skipped almost every part of classic/noteworthy literature to read obscure contemporary shit in a pseudo-affirmative action by author.

I somewhat liked The Scarlet Letter. I only disliked it because of how shitty the tests the teacher gave us were. Ten question tests every few chapters that were literally nothing but questions like, "What was the last word of the third paragraph on page 121?" or, "What color dress was the background character on page 8 wearing?" and no, these were not open book.

I also despised The Giver.

I liked Frankenstein pretty well. The Crucible was good. I was never forced to read To Kill a Mockingbird, odd, considering I live in Alabama. I read it of my own volition in junior high and loved it. Half of my junior English class had to read it and hated it.

>>1080136
>Ten question tests every few chapters that were literally nothing but questions like, "What was the last word of the third paragraph on page 121?" or, "What color dress was the background character on page 8 wearing?

I'd like to stab every single high school english teacher who gives quizzes like these.

I never really read much in high school since the internet had notes on all the classics and I was too busy with vidya games but the only book I can remember truly loving from high school was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Like Water for Chocolate

All I remember is the scene where some Mexican girl cries into a cake then everyone eats it at a party and projectile vomits for half an hour. Then she gets abducted by a beaner on a horse named Pedro while she's taking a shower and they kiss and the house burns down.

Fuck Hispanic Heritage Month

bump bitches

never die

>>1080201
I have nothing to contribute but captcha
"mexcues Mixed"

>>1081798
>implying raisin cookies aren't fucking delicious

they made me read animal farm in 7th grade,

"oh cool a bunch of animals tweakin"

CONGRATS OP! You are unlike 99.999999999% of us who only read 1984 just this year as an assignment and thought it was just excellent! As a rebel, you deserve a prize. You can have any book you want so long as it is 48 pages long and written by George Orwell and it needs to take 7 months to read! You've just been awarded the I Am A 13 year Old American Public School Faggot Who Now Thinks They Have a Valid Opinion On Literature award! Join us. It was 48 fucking pages!

When I was assigned books I just read the first few chapters and a few of the final chapters.

It worked well, surprisingly.

>>1083765
does somebody need a binky?

>>1083776
Ah, a demonstration of American intelligence. Good luck with that job at Oldsmobile!

>>1083778
GEORGE ORWELL SO FUCKING AWSOME! 68 pages of pure OMG CHOCOLATE RATION!

books i hated: all of the steinbeck crap shoved down my throat, the great gatsby, catcher in the rye, and romeo and juliet.
books i loved: cat on a hot tin roof, works of edgar allan poe, and a rose for emily (it was my introduction to faulkner, i felt kinship)

>>1083780
orwell is a good writer, among a vast majority of good writers. you should try breathing exercises.

I hated reading literature in high school, almost as much as I hated that my school required you to have three english credits to graduate but only required two science credits (my HS was three years long). Needless to say I enjoyed science more as I felt it was more fair (if you know the material and can problem solve you get an A, but for english you need to know the material AND appeal to the graders emotions to get a good grade). I would still hated literature with a passion if it was not for me reading "Sperm Wars" (bio teacher recommended it to me) and "Malcolm X's Autobiography" (Dad recommended to me because he thought I acted like Malcolm X) during the winter term of my grade 12 year.

>>1083794
I should add that the hay that almost broke the horse's back for me was one assignment during HS. You had to make piece of art inspired by a native american poem. The poem I chose was about how a native girl was losing her culture through the school system's lack of focus on native american culture. The art I made was a marionette of a native girl with rulers as the wooden handles (to represent that the school was controlling her actions). I got a C and the comments that I misunderstood the poet's idea. When I asked the teacher about it, she said that the poem was actually about how native people are able to learn about other cultures and how we can all learn how to learn from each other. That was the moment I finally realized that English=opinions, and cursed that I still had take another year of it in high school and had to take a course of it in university.

>>1083819
fucking know your plight. i have created my own interpretations of what i thought a book meant, and was graded poorly for it, there were very few teachers that i had who actually believed in the idea that literature was supposed to induce creative thought...

>>1077958
You should fucking die in a fire. Heart of Darkness is brilliant. Fuck you.

I hated everything except The Kite Runner. Khaled Hosseini's one of the few non-genre writers I enjoy.

I live in Australia, and you would not believe the bullshit we got to read in English class.
It was either Aboriginal fiction, sports books, or just watching movies and doing half-assed assignments on them.
I remember having to do an analysis on Mr. Bean when I was 19.

>>1084096
>19
Sorry, that should be 14.

>>1084096
?

>>1084096
I lol'd @ Mr. Bean.

>>1084096
crikey

>>1084096

hmm, at my school we got all the 'standard' school reading.

dracula
1984
brave new world
etc

i didnt mind it.

I went to a French Canadian school, so we read rubbish like 'Les Filles du Roi' and 'La Quête d'Alexandre'. If you've never heard of these, I envy you.

Also, Shakespeare is ONLY enjoyable outside of school. Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth have all been ruined for me.

>>1084096
>Aboriginal fiction
like 'walkabout'?
we read that in the UK, was pretty good.

>>1086874
is it anything like the Babylon 5 episode of the same name?

>>1086889
no not at all
Babylon 5 is great though. Kosh is da man.

I was pulled out of school in the fourth grade and homeschooled instead. I didn't do any of the work and I got to choose whatever books I wanted to read when I wanted to read them.

hm. So many to rage at.

A Separate Peace
Jane Eyre
Things Fall Apart
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The Last of the Mohicans (because he can't write worth shit)
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Wuthering Heights
...and many more

I did enjoy such gems as To Kill a Mocking Bird, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice.

Then there were others like As I Lay Dying, which was interesting, but the timeframe we had to read was fucking ridiculous because you CAN'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND THAT BOOK. Not the first time, at least. And Moby-Dick was just boring. Good, but dull.

Being British, English Lit was a little different. Whereas most of you all apparently had to endure wave after wave of White Guilt-inducing drivel, I had to make do with a number of "Young Adult" fiction, usually with some message (bullying is wrong!) and always with god-awful covers. the only exception to this was Dick King Smith's The Crowstarver (and I'm pretty sure that was just one of the books we had to read to give ourselves something to do).

The only serious piece of literature we had to read at my first school was Great Expectations, and I was the only person in our class who wanted to actually read it all the way through. Needless to say, we watched a BBC adaptation.

Hamlet, we had a Shakespearean professor come in and discuss the reading with us. Also 1984, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Anthem.

>>1087235
I read books like 1984 and Watership Down, but only because I wanted to (I actually started reading comic books more and more, probably because most of the books I had to read were so dull. But I read stuff like Knightfall and Will Eisner's work as a result, so not too bad).

Aside from the books, we had to read depressing poetry written by modern poets like Chinuah Achebe and a bunch of other poets so damn boring I can't even be bothered to find out their names with Google.

When I got to 6th form, I was so relieved to actually be doing real, honest-to-God literature. Unfortunately, our teacher for Lower 6th had other plans.

This book. This fucking book. We tried to like it. Hell, we tried to READ it. But it was so damn pretentious, so smug, so WEIRD. And it didn't help that our teacher loved the book so much and that she didn't understand why we didn't get the deep undertones of these boring, petty people and some stupid made-up name for an actual mental condition.

We had to do make-up classes next year to make up for our poor grades (yes, the whole class got bad grades) and surprise, surprise, we only got good marks when we had a good teacher who actually wanted us to understand what we thought of it, as opposed to what she thought of it.

English after that was followed by stuff that didn't suck - The Glass Menagerie, Measure For Measure, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Songs of Innocence and Experience.

In all honesty, if it weren't for my last two English teachers, I'd probably have stopped reading almost altogher.

>>1080201
Mexifag here. Like water for chocolate is a glorified book here. I don't really like the author's stories.

Another glorified book between students in my country is Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Fuck, I really hated it.

>>1080201
>>1087267
I just read the synopsis of that book on Wikipedia.

The fuck?

>>1087235
>Needless to say, we watched a BBC adaptation.
I hope this isn't a negative comment because BBC adaptations are generally amazingly good.

>>1077914
Why does everyone on 4chan make a huge point to let everyone know that they put minimal effort/never paid attention whilst in education but still somehow managed to get above average grades?

Also, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck...entry level essay material, needless to say loved this book and still adore it.

>>1087294
No no, it's just... I actually wanted to read the whole book.

>>1087340
Because it's public school. And this is possible with thanks to sites like Sparknotes.

>>1087340
4chan is filled with above average intelligence slackers.

I remember in my sophomore year having to choose between Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. I chose the former, read one chapter when I got home and threw the book under my bed. I never picked it up after and it's been in my bedroom ever since. I think I may have just ignored it because I hated my english teacher at the time, but I really don't feel like picking it up again.

Senior year I took Shakespeare instead of English so I could get an easy A and avoid being pushed into another AP class, and turns out his stuff was pretty good. Wasn't too big on As You Like It, but I loved Richard III, Hamlet, Midsummer and Much Ado About Nothing.

>>1087391
Thanks for plugging sparknotes, I had completely forgotten about that website... >>1087399
4chan is filled with liars, i.e. slackers who like other people to think they are intelligent.

>>1079312
>I've heard good things about The Life of Pi, my mum and sister and everyone else who read it has recommended it to me.

I really disliked that book.

Just offering a single contrary opinion amount your veritable sea of recommendations.

>finish reading whole thread
Jesus Christ, what age are you guys?

Best porns§§§
http://tinyurl.com/3xc5vhz/

>>1087478
18

u mad or just jelly?

Why does everyone here hate Cather in the Rye and Kafka? The trial and Cather is the best books I have read so far at least.
Before i get all the hate, I really need to step up my reading. Planing on reading Ulysses and Lord of the Flies in a not so distant future.

As of now we have to do a big assainment, and I will read Out stealing horses (already read that one) and Imot kunsten. A quite new norwegian novel. Lets see how that goes :D

Hated:
Scarlet Letter- omg shit's so boring and tries way tooooo hard. Basically all the American romantic stuff sucked dick.
The Joy-Luck Club- Why the fuck would anyone care?
Basically the majority of reading from freshman-junior year sucked enormously.

Loved: Basically everything from Senior year. Had a utopian/dystopian themed unit with Brave New World, Island of the Flies, and 1984. Also had Picture of Dorian Grey and Heart of Darkness. Zomg so good.
Old Man and the Sea

>>1087499
Why would I be either?

I just got the impression that I had stepped into a mid-eighties catholic boy school for a moment or two.

I'm from western MA.

Every year it was another slavery book, or another holocaust book.

This never changed, and now my peers and I don't care much at all about those massive periods in history. Oh well.

out of all of the books we had to read in school (which included Fahrenheit 451 which i really liked), i think the worst was the old man and the sea. i fucking hated that boring book! there wasn't even an exciting plot! 80 pages of a man sitting on a boat all for nothing at the end.

the book still makes me rage whenever i think aboutl

>>1087584
I can understand how one could feel that way. The book only pissed me off inasmuch as the teacher constantly was comparing the Old Man to Christ. "I don't give a fuck what Hemingway wanted or what you think."

>>1078578
this was me btw

>>1087586
yeah, my teacher kept insisting that there was some deep, hidden meaning in every word in that book and that hemmingway was a genius for writing that.

>Goethe
>Faust 1
"Oh well this isn't too bad. Pretty good actually".
>Faust 2: Electric Boogaloo
"wat"
>Sorrows of Young Wherter
"CRAWWWWWWWWLING IN MY SKIIIIINNNNNNNNN"

>Plenzdorf:
>The new Sorrows of Young W
"Better than what's made after"
>Bertolt Brecht
>Life of Galileo
"Fuck yes, you are the best book ever"

>Charles Webb
>The Graduate
"HURPADURPDIALOUGE"

>>1087399

Funny, my teachers (and my mom) always nagged me about how intelligent I was and how I could get good grades with minimal effort which meant that I could achieve so much if I just applied myself and worked hard. I never did. Why bother getting excellent grades if good works? Honor roll? That's for dorks and aspies.
Go ahead, hate me all you want but that's how shit works. The only grades that truly matter are the ones you get in college.

>>1087622

I hate people like that. Not even printed word has a secret meaning or is an allegory/critic to our society. Jesus fuck, the ones who piss me off the most are those idiots who insist that Lord of The Rings is an allegory to WWII or some other, even weirder shit, when Tolkien himself claimed he actually hated allegories.

>>1087586

Hemingway directly references the crucifixion

>>1087893

The South Park episode "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs" illustrates that quite well. I actually loved that episode, even if you don't like SP you should see that episode (assuming you enjoy liturature and controversy around it because, you know, this is /lit/)

A Separate Peace.
Fucking blows.

>>1087886
same here. i usually settled for honor roll, though, just because my parents were all tough grade wise.

>>1087930

Someone like me would NEVER, EVER be in the honor roll. People would often either see me as a cool loyal friend or that massive douchebag who, being underage, just got drunk with his asshole friends with a bottle of vodka and often bullies that autistic kid.

>>1087970
eh, i'm the nerd who has a bunch of friends in the popular crowd. so it really doesn't matter if i got honor roll. everyone knows i'm smart anyway, so it's not a surprise

I'm portuguese so I had to read Blimunda and Baltazar by Saramago just because he got a nobel prize. I didn't care for it. The plot was good I guess but Saramago had a tedious writing style. Too bad he's dead now. I mean really, first the guy talks about how the king is kind of a douche and only fucks the queen to knock her up then he's talking about some fucking monks doing boring monk stuff. My favorite part was how he described the fact that bed bugs were a royal pain in the ass even for the king and queen.

>>1087977

Isn't he honor roll just an excuse for idiots to beat you up and steal stuff from you?

>>1087970

Also some teachers hated me and I used to rub in their faces the fact that even though they hate me and think I'm a fucking psycho I was the best in their class. Oh boy it's the greatest feeling in the world.

>>1088005
not really, at least not where i go to school. most people just don't care either way. plus, because it's obvious that i really wouldn't do to well in a fight, my friends have already stated that they would help me if i ever got into a fight.

>>1088005

Where do you live that people care so much about the honour roll?

>>1088015

They don't. I just said I got good grades and was seen as an intelligent kid through most of my school years but was NEVER honor roll material.

>>1088021

>Someone like me would NEVER, EVER be in the honor roll.
>an excuse for idiots to beat you up and steal stuff from you?

That's what you call not caring?

Man there's some hate and bad teachers in here. Out of curiosity, did ANYONE read 'Heart of Darkness" in high school and actually like it? I keep considering it for my curriculum but I don't know if it'd actually reach my students.

>>1088021

Honor roll is for compulsive overachievers.

All the people I knew in Honor Roll courses seemed ot have some downright psychological NEED to be better then everyone else. I knew one girl who argued, honestly, that it as possible to be "perfect" in all things, and strongly implied that was her goal in all things. I tried to explain how that was bullshit. She didn't believe a word.

Girl creeped me right the hell out.

>>1088032
You don't have to be an obsessive teacher's pet to be an honor roll student. I got my A's, slept in almost every class daily, and got my magical valedictorian plaque mostly unknown by the administrators. No big deal.

>>1088024

what?

>>1088032
but it's not really over-achieving at all. you just need to make sure you don't go below a b-, at least in my school. and getting b's and above is pretty damn easy.

>>1088052

"Someone like me" implies that being/not being on the honor roll is actually an important indicator for identity, as does it being "an excuse for idiots to beat you up and steal stuff from you"--honour roll people are an identifiable group in this case.

Here all kinds of people were on the honour roll, from coke dealers to that silent Asian girl who sits in the back and never wears makeup, and nobody would think about beating or stealing from the people on it because they actually don't give a shit.

Goodnight Mister Tom - Enjoyed it, couldn't find much to discuss about it in class though.
To Kill A Mockingbird - Hated the pace and characters, although the teacher made interesting discussions about it and avoided the obvious questions.
Secret Life of Bees - Piece of fucking chick-lit trash, trust our twat of a woman teacher to pick this. She also used Stricty Ballroom as our film study later on...
The Merchant of Venica - Premium load of bollocks, hate everything about it.
Macbeth - Not really my cuppa; despised discussing it (durr explain the significance of blood on Macbeth's hands), but loved reading it aloud in class.

I hate that I was assigned To Kill A Mockingbird in 8th grade. There is was no way I could grasp it at all. Still haven't re-read it.

>>1088061

well actually I don't think it's an important indicator of identity, it's just that I was as smart as the honor roll students and teacher's pets but I was seen as a thug, just that.

>>1087886
I was really bad about that, especially in english classes that required MLA essays. I actually wound up failing by one point in one of them just because I thought I was such a terrible writer. But the teacher I had after asked me why I didn't have any motivation to do the work because we were also required to write daily journal entries and he loved reading mine.

Then again I really hated the high school I went to, I wasn't bullied or anything but I just didn't want to stand out or be memorable to it. People shat bricks when they saw my SAT scores.

>hadn't read Mythology before high school

No wonder OP didn't appreciate the classics.

I good reason to teach Beowulf is because it's pretty straight forward. Man fights huge troll, then same man fights dragon.

I remember when it was taught in my High School. The teacher made us read it in the classroom, aloud. Sounds kinda hokey and gradeschool, but it worked. It made sure the kids understood it, too.

When we got to the bit about Beowulf ripping off Grendel's arm and the description of all the blood and gore that poured out the faces of every guy in the room lit up, and every girl's face went wooden.

One guy breathlessly uttered "Why haven't they made a MOVIE of this yet?"

And yes, it's annoying that he thought he needed a movie to enjoy it, but the point is he read Beowulf and he thought it was awesome. How easy is it for a teacher to get that reaction?

A good reason to teach Beowulf is because it's pretty straight forward. Man fights huge troll, then same man fights dragon. True, the beauty of the poem is in some of the middle stuff, but a teacher takes what they can get when appealing to high school students. If the action draws them in, maybe they'll appreciate the nuance without realizing it.

I remember when it was taught in my High School. The teacher made us read it in the classroom, aloud. Sounds kinda hokey and gradeschool, but it worked. It made sure the kids understood it, too.

When we got to the bit about Beowulf ripping off Grendel's arm and the description of all the blood and gore that poured out the faces of every guy in the room lit up, and every girl's face went wooden.

One guy breathlessly uttered "Why haven't they made a MOVIE of this yet?"

And yes, it's annoying that he thought he needed a movie to enjoy it, but the point is he read Beowulf and he thought it was awesome. How easy is it for a teacher to get that reaction?

>>1088531
My high school english teacher would bring our classes down to the school auditorium to read on the stage. He'd also show film versions of the books after we finished them, but if they were really bad (like Scarlet Letter and Australian Macbeth) he'd just show his favorite parts. I thought it was weird he wasn't the AP teacher because he was so smart and got along very well with all the students, but apparently the principle had a vendetta against him for some stuff that almost got into the school paper.

>>1088121
Strictly ballroom is an amazing film
I don't see how much analasys one could get out of it though it's true...

Oh lord, how I hated all of the Steinbeck I had to read, namely Of Mice and Men. I don't care what anyone says, he is the single WORST author on the face of the Earth. His only novel worth reading is East of Eden, and it's barely worth it to begin with.

I absolutely fell in love with Lord of the Flies, the Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Beloved.

.....retards who think Gatsby sucks. Read it again people, it's America, it's your life, your mother and father's lives, rich, poor, everything is held within it's pages. It is who we are and why we're all doomed.

>>1079340
I hated this book.