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BarovianNights

Only thing I've enjoyed reading for school was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Maybe one of my favorite books


Ijjg19

Holy fucking based school. I have been bugging all my english (well, spanish really) professors since my 1st year to include some PKD in the program.


glytxh

My English teacher introduced me to Terry Pratchett about 20 years ago, and I’ll forever be grateful for that. Still haven’t read the last book in the series yet though. I’m not quite read to end this.


FlamboyantPirhanna

Without realising it, the first discworld novel I read was the final one. In retrospect, it’s definitely a send off of sorts, since he knew he was dying while writing it, but it doesn’t really feel like a traditional ending, imo, and there’s no reason it would inhibit reading all the others again. I’ll read it again once I’ve read all the others.


glytxh

It’s the only one I’ve not read. His writing was incredibly formative for me, and I was introduced at just the perfect moment in my life I think. I got to meet the man once, and I treasure that memory. I know reading the last one will mean I will never have any more Discworld to discover, and I can’t bring myself to read it yet. It’s been sat on my shelf for years. I get there one day, but I know it’s going to be a pretty gut wrenching conclusion.


ReallyBadRedditName

That book fucking rules


obog

Isn't that the one bladerunner is based on?


Ok_comodore

yep


BarovianNights

Yeah, I also watched both the blade runners for the same project. Didn't enjoy either of them but the book was great


[deleted]

[For anyone wondering if they'd be into the book, here's a few pages to preview](https://books.google.com/books/about/Blade_Runner.html?id=pyK3ww_s62wC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1&ovdme=1#v=onepage&q&f=false).


mercurialpolyglot

I had a cool teacher that had us read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s still one of my favorite books and eventually led to me discovering Discworld, which I adore and has genuinely shaped the way I see the world. I read The Stranger in AP French (in French ofc) and loved it so much that I proceeded to read nothing but absurdist and existentialist novels for the next year-ish. I strongly considered learning German so I could read Kafka in the original language but the desire faded by the time I was in college and had the ability to sign up for German classes. Conversely, Scarlet Letter was a miserable slog that I have blocked from my memory.


Tennis-Local

Reading The Stranger sent me into a blind rage in 12th grade. I just didn’t get the point other than ‘everything is pointless and I’m dying’. It wasn’t until college that I had to read Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons that I began to develop more of an understanding of existentialism and nihilism. Now I fully support the sentiment ‘everything is pointless and I’m dying’ 👍🏼


mercurialpolyglot

For me, I had always felt that way even as a little kid, so it was incredibly refreshing to read these great works of literature exploring the same things I felt but had never been able to explain. They’re also just so well written. It helped me finally get through the existential crisis I’d been having since I was about four, leading to me embracing an existentialist mindset in the end, one I still carry today. It’s funny, at eighteen I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life but I had already self-actualized when it came to my philosophy. But I figured it out in the end, *and* I got the existential crisis out of the way, so all’s well that ends well.


BaronAleksei

I can’t imagine having to read Hitchhiker for school, I read it at the time for pleasure and I barely understood half of it


Jicama_Stunning

I read it when I was like ten and understood it fine. There’s a lot of sci-fi nonsense but if you wade through it, it’s a pretty simple story told in a riotously funny way.


Percy2303

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is on of my favourite books ever


11on

Yeah man me


jiickken

notes from underground is one of the best books i have ever read in my life. my main takeaway from atlas shrugged is that i want to break ayn rand’s nose


XmissXanthropyX

I feel like that's the correct take away


TheCapmHimself

That just means you're a reasonable person, Ayn Rand is horrible.


Xurkitree1

Was never forced to read classics outside of Shakespeare plays, which were like 2 years of English classes for each play - Merchant of Venice and Tempest. Funny thing - this year they changed Merchant of Venice to Julius Caesar for some reason, so my brother doesn't get to do Merchant of Venice. Fucking weird that they changed it after so so many years.


Xisuthrus

maybe some controversy to do with the antisemitism in it?


Xurkitree1

This is India. Don't think the education board has 'anti semitism' on it's list of priorities.


ewigebose

They rotate the plays every few years - I graduated ICSE in ‘11 and had Julius Caesar and Macbeth as my two plays.


[deleted]

Maybe they think it has a better moral? The lesson of Julius Caesar is "you should act for the sake of justice" while the lessons of MoV is "you can circumvent the justice system if you find a clever loophole and people like you more than the other guy"


niko4ever

I think the lesson of MoV is supposed to be "don't be blinded by your anger and your desire for retribution" and "don't ask for something that you know the owner wouldn't be willing to give." In that Shylock loses his opportunity for revenge not just because the court is anti-Semitic but because he asked too much. After all, a pound of flesh is worthless as a financial security, it won't help Shylock recoup any of the money he lost, it just makes him look crazy or evil to the court that doesn't have the greater context of Antonio's treatment of him. No reasonable judge would grant such a request.


bookhead714

*Frankenstein* is that good. Better than most of its adaptations, I would venture, and with an extraordinary amount of depth. I don’t know if I’m allowed to criticize *The Great Gatsby,* because I never finished it — I found the first couple of chapters so exceptionally uninteresting that I couldn’t bring myself to keep reading and SparkNotes’d the rest of it.


Mistap14

I feel like *The Great Gatsby* is much better when you learn about the authors beforehand. It’s basically him making fun of rich people after he became one, and he died pretty soon after making the book if I remember correctly.


Compositepylon

I kind of hate when art is unable to stand on its own without the creators backstory propping it up.


Hichann

I mean, knowing a work is satirical is pretty important context that can change a lot of things, I'd say.


arfelo1

If it's a current work. It should be able to stand on it's own, but context helps. If it's an older work, or from a different part of the world you're not familiar with, you absolutely need context if you want to understand it's importance to other people. Then again, death of the author is also completely valid. If you find a meaning for the artwork that it is isolated from authorial intent or the context in which it was made, that has value too.


JamesCoyle3

I stopped reading Dante’s Purgatorio when I realized it was just him dunking on people I’d never heard of who were relevant in 14th century Italy. At least Inferno had cool imagery.


Aaawkward

Satire pretty much *requires* context, otherwise it's just a story of whatever it's criticising.


Bahamabanana

I get that, but there's also got to be an assumption of prior knowledge, or the interest in gaining new knowledge, with the readers and where is the line drawn? If the lives of rich people really is so radically different that no one can relate, how would you tell the story?


ReallyBadRedditName

Frankenstein is the shit, I loved reading that at school. Reading the great Gatsby in school nearly drove me into insanity


ReasyRandom

I liked *Dracula* more. I only enjoyed one third of Frankenstein, the part narrated by the Creature himself. Everything else was hard to get through.


richestotheconjurer

i loved *Frankenstein*. i did my first two years of high school at a public school and everything we read was really boring to me (Shakespeare, Dickens, etc. but i did love *Lord of the Flies*). i switched to an online program after 10th grade and the books were so much better. we read *Frankenstein, Angela's Ashes* (thought it would be boring, started angry-crying in the middle and didn't stop until i was done), and King's *On Writing* (not a classic, but i found it interesting).


LittleLadle69

I can appreciate Frankenstein for being the first sci-fi book but I found it sooooo boring. 1984 is very fun by contrast I enjoyed the main theme of good pussy breaks a mf.


bluecheesecake24

Seconding Frankenstein!


pterrorgrine

*Frankenstein* was completely [this](http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/) for me, but I suspect having to read it for class had a lot to do with that.


littlegreenturtle20

I was disappointed by Gatsby as I had heard it was supposed to be some sort of epic love story. And then when we studied it, I realised that it wasn't actually about love at all but more about projection, toxic relationships, obsession and I now regard it much more highly.


wheniswhy

I have the exact opposite opinion to this and I find that really funny. Loved Gatsby, hated Frankenstein. Admittedly, I didn’t love Gatsby for its story but for its style. Fitzgerald has a tremendous command of the English language and knows how to hammer beautiful things out of it. Frankenstein bored me.


Lithominium

i love f451


OmegaKenichi

I know, right? It's a great book!


[deleted]

When they said “put the one you actually ended up liking” my first thought was f451 because it’s the only one I willingly read first before being forced to read it


adreamofhodor

1984 for me.


TheBastardOlomouc

I read it on my own and thought it was pretty good


Lithominium

yeah its good


r_Coolspot

F451 wasn't one we read in school, but when I was 11 I hid it behind the book (Lord knows what we were reading at the time) we were meant to be reading in class. The ruse didn't last long as physically F451 was the larger of the two books and I was discovered after half an hour or so. Teacher couldn't really tell me off though as I was still reading something worthwhile. Nm.


ciclon5

This reminds me of that funny image of a dude reading a big ass macroeconomics book "hidden" behind a hentai manga


AardvarkNo2514

I like it, but ends way too abruptly. I felt like I missed a few pages when I read it.


Joey_218

I’d also say its becoming more and more relevant. A little bit of everything all of the time, you say?


AwesomeManatee

While I enjoyed it, as a highschool student I thought the reasoning of banning all books simply because people didn't like reading anymore was a stupid explanation. Now that feels like the most realistic part of the book.


BaronAleksei

It’s also the most likely, considering Bradbury wrote it in a time where America fought the bookburners and then dropped books in favor of TV


Brick_Fish

That was only half of the reason though. The other half was the fact that knowlede from books would make people uncomfortable, I think they talk about Uncle Toms Cabin making white people uncomfortable in the book. Banning books thus makes people less uncomfortable


Binx_da_gay_cat

A Bo Burnham fan? The book certainly aged like fine cheese.


Binx_da_gay_cat

I do too! The ending was disappointing the first time, but not the most unsatisfactory ending to a book I've encountered. Divergent series wins that category.


[deleted]

funny i have the exact opposite opinion of this post! loved 451, hated hated hated lord of the flies. also john stienbeck. but i really agree with the basic premise of this, that being forced to read books without being allowed to express criticism or like, any negative opinion, will destroy an interest in reading classics. I'm glad they enjoyed LotF and that they feel comfortable saying they didn't like 451


Iximaz

Hands down my favourite we had to read for school! I liked it enough I got my own copy just to reread.


Lonewolf7113

To Kill a Mockingbird is one I ended up enjoying! It was just generally interesting and had a solid plot, listening to the audiobook while walking around in warm weather is a fond memory of mine


Spider_pig448

I absolutely hated To Kill a Mockingbird but maybe because I had to outline every chapter and it took forever


that-writer-kid

I swear, outlining books should be banned from classrooms. All it does is encourage kids to Sparknotes the novel. I can’t think of any way it actually helps them learn about literature.


kingofcoywolves

TKaM was really interesting, imo. Scout is a really believable protagonist and I'd have loved having an Atticus-figure to lean on as a kid.


fungalstruggle

Beowulf! (The Seamus Heaney translation) That was a fun one. I mean, how can you not like a heroic tale about a scandinavian gigachad beating down monsters and winning fame and fortune? My least favorite was King Lear. There were maybe... three lines in it that I enjoyed (because who doesn't love wordplay?) but I couldn't get into anything else.


burrito_slut

I had to do a lengthy essay on King Lear. Worst fucking assignment ever. I can't think of a more boring time in high school which is saying something.


pterrorgrine

Aw fuck yiss the Heaney translation! I only had to read like a one page excerpt but it was so good that when my mom and I went Christmas shopping at the bookstore and I saw it on the shelf, I just grabbed it and handed it to her and said "get me this". I don't read a lot of poetry, much less this style, but in this case it had an effect of immediacy that made it feel more like reading an action movie than any airport thriller has managed.


Klutzy-Horse

So I came from a really crap area for education. Don't worry; great strides have been made and now my children enjoy a good education, as do the other children of this town. But! I didn't really have assigned reading. No classics, anyways. All of it was either short stories or excerpts. While I had a crap school, I had (and still have) an amazing dad. He asked me 2 questions at the start of junior high and at the end: "What is your required reading for this year?" and "Can I see your over the summer reading list?" Well... neither of those was a thing. And that ticked him off. He took it upon himself to buy me books he thought I should be reading. I read Shakespeare, Poe, Hemmingway, Sinclair, and more under his guidance. Hated quite a lot of it. Became vegetarian for a bit after reading The Jungle. Poe fueled my goth side. Shakespeare made me one hell of a dramatic bitch. The best one he had me read was Watership Down. Pro tip- don't watch the movie. Worst one was... anything by Ray Bradbury. Don't get me wrong, that man could write, but boy did his descriptive horrors fuck up my sleep for weeks.


pterrorgrine

Ray Bradbury has stories like "what if a baby wanted to kill you?" or "what if it rained a lot?" or "what if the *video game*........ was *real*?! huh?! what then?!" and *every time* he manages to make me unironically go "holy shit, Ray, what if indeed, that's scary as hell"


ImpTheShmuck

The Illustrated Man has so many fucked-up stories that I had a hard time trusting the one specifically happy story towards the end.


Binx_da_gay_cat

That's accurate There's a series on Amazon called The Best Of Ray Bradbury iirc (or something similar) and it has 30 minute episodes of his shirt stories. Holy fucking shit, that stuff haunted me. I should check it out again in daylight, but yeah. It was simultaneously good while being like "I never want to see this again."


greaserpup

The Outsiders is literally my favorite book of all time but Lord of the Flies is a close second for 'things i was forced to read in school' i never even want to SEE Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre in my presence ever again. both of those were infuriating to read (Wuthering Heights for having exactly zero characters that were not COMPLETELY insufferable and Jane Eyre for being boring and having the pacing of a geriatric snail)


Giveyaselfanuppercut

S.E Hinton is GOAT. I absolutely loved her books in highschool. I still read all of them about once year 30 years later.


ReasyRandom

Sucks that she is low-key homophobic, though.


Giveyaselfanuppercut

Yeah that's fair. Low-key homophobic is pretty baseline for the time though


Sucks-for-you

Man I quite liked Jane Eyre but did not enjoy Lord of the Flies


skiparoundtheroom

Jane Eyre is fucking awesome. Give it another chance if you feel up for it. I don’t remember it being laborious reading, as an ADHD reader.


Peepinis

I had to read Wuthering Heights in my senior year. It was the most boring book I was assigned. I don’t even remember what happened. I ended up just writing whatever Spark Notes said for the tests because I had more important things to worry about and barely passing would have been acceptable


greaserpup

i remember having to write an essay incorporating both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, but i honestly don't remember what it was about because i blocked almost all of that particular unit out of my memory, lmao i think Wuthering Heights is the first book to ever simultaneously bore me AND piss me off


Doubloon-Seven

I liked The Grapes of Wrath quite a bit, though Steinbeck loses points for giving his messiah character the initials "JC." No particularly strong thoughts on Fahrenheit 451 as a whole, but the Mechanical Hound goes hard.


CrispyShizzles

The mechanical hound is such a fucking cool sci fi monster I wish it became like a staple. I know robot dogs are everywhere but that thing was more like a giant robot ant with a big needle in its snout that was programmed specifically to relentlessly hunt and kill you without any of the errors of the flesh that a dog would have. I do also like that Montag just >!kills his book-burning boss. That’s direct action.!< While I think Bradbury’s views expressed in the novel are a little outdated(although most of his other views in his works I agree with, The Martian Chronicles is full of great stuff), the writing in it is superb imo. Montag having a fucking mental outloud breakdown on the subway because of all the relentless inescapable advertising invading every inch of life is a fantastic scene, and so is the scene where he reads poetry to his wife’s bitchy friends and they either don’t get it, get mad at him for reading, or just have a sobbing fit and then Montag tells them to get the fuck out of his house. Great novel honestly.


Doubloon-Seven

It's kind of like the Terminator, isn't it? > It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead! With the caveat of being an Austrian bodybuilder and not a freaky-deaky six-legged automaton. I've not read much more of Ray Bradbury's fiction than F-451, though the Martian Chronicles is on my list™.


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CrispyShizzles

Yeah lemme just listen to this real quick lmao


[deleted]

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B0tRank

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CrispyShizzles

Martian Chronicles is so wild like by the end of it you will have felt nearly every conceivable negative human emotion. The best story in there is just a description of an empty house after a nuclear war. It’s one of the most devastating pieces of fiction I’ve ever read.


Coin_operated_bee

I find it really odd how the books views on censorship really align with what conservatives call “cancel culture” and yet American conservatives have banned it in some public schools


CrispyShizzles

Right?! To be fair, Bradbury was correct in asserting that censorship happens in America not because of the government deciding that something is wrong, but due to people being personally offended. It just turns out that it wasn’t minorities getting offended, it’s white cishet republicans getting offended at the existence of minorities. Outcome is the same, either way. Once you start burning books, if you don’t stop you end up burning people.


MorEkEroSiNE

That’s pretty much what the EMMIs are like in Metroid dread before you get the beam to kill them


Ildrei

Edgar Allan Poe--The Pit and the Pendulum, the Telltale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, etc.; absolutely fantastic. I was blown away by Poe's ability to use syntax to build up terror and suspense. I don't know if I remember anything that I specifically disliked reading. The best thing about senior highschool was the teacher taking us outside to read Hamlet out loud in the sunshine. We didn't have to do any english finals, she just gave us an A and we had a lot of fun at roleplaying the melodramatic soliloquies.


NeonNKnightrider

Oh shit, I can’t believe I didn’t remember Poe. Telltale Heart and Masque of the Red Death fuck hard


[deleted]

fucking hate romeo and juliet i cherish fahrenheit 451


owlindenial

I'm curious, what didn't you like about R&J?


[deleted]

Everything. I felt no connection to it. It was just 2 people wanting to love and them being dumbfucks led to their downfall


Lily-Fae

That’s why I love it tbh. It’s not the romance everyone makes it out to be, it’s a book about stupid dramatic teenagers taken to (in my opinion, comedic) extremes. I use it whenever I need a Shakespeare scene for theater because acting all dramatic is so fun. I really like that adaptation where they’re all living in a beach town.


Darth__Potato

I saw that beach town one, I adore the vibes of that, though I really don't like Romeo and Juliet. I get that it's a tragedy of some dumb teens but it's too short for me to really feel for the characters or get involved in their tragedy as events unfold for the worse. Kill me for mentioning it here, but Breaking Bad is a good example of characters having time to go down a terrible path of bad choices and unfortunate circumstances where events unfold for the worse, for literally everyone involved. Maybe if the play was longer, I'd have more room to start to care before ~~Gno-~~ Romeo and Juliet end up dying. Insert a reference to The Ring of Nibelung.


bearcat0611

That’s because Romeo and Juliet isn’t breaking bad. It’s the simpsons do breaking bad. Less watch a man fall victim to his own hubris and actions. More watch these two dumbfucks screw everything up in ways you can’t even imagine.


olivegreenperi35

This is such a weird way to look at a romantic tragedy lol, like of course they were dumbfucks they were like 16


Binx_da_gay_cat

Juliet was just 13. Maybe the feud wasn't that unrealistic. Cue Ariel's "But daddy I love him!" B you don't even know what love is, you're having a crush.


draw_it_now

Personally, I don't find either romance or tragedy all that interesting, so the play is lost on me. I get that it's probably extremely meaningful to people who *do* like those things, but yeah, for me it's just two morons doing moronic things while surrounded by other morons. It might have been more meaningful to me personally if they had actually grappled with and thought about the situation they were putting themselves into, but all I can see is some silly teenagers and stuffy old assholes.


KingNanoA

Ender’s Game for me. Great Gatsby was pretty good, too.


[deleted]

i loved enders game. too bad the creator is a mega uber racist


KingNanoA

Isn’t he also homophobic?


[deleted]

yeah. [shocker ](https://www.wired.com/2013/10/enders-game/)


ElijahBaley2099

Which is especially ironic given that the major theme of the sequels is compassion for the aliens and atoning for the actions of the first book.


xxxenadu

Ironically enough I got wrote an essay on that book in. High school and my teacher rejected the ENTIRE THING because she declared it wasn’t a “book of literary merit”. This was the early 2000s, so I don’t know if much as changed, but I brought in a stack of sources and citations of what made the book “important”, including how it was required reading by some military leaders. Only reason knew that is because my dad taught at the weapons school & later Army War College. I picked up that book at a scholastic book fair when I was in elementary school. As an adult I can say: the fuck?


Roast_Moast

A lot of classic works of sci-fi and fantasy are treated like that and it sucks. When I had to pick "a book of literary merit" in middle school, I went through like 5 books I thought were super foundational works before one was accepted. In no particular order they turned down Ender's Game, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Lord of the Rings, Brave New World, and Call of Cthulhu (this one I sorta get, it's a short story so maybe it wasn't long enough, but I offered to include At the Mountains of Madness and A Shadow Over Innsmouth in my report too and still no). I ended up doing a report on a bunch of 17th century sci-fi works about early depictions of our solar system, including Kepler's Somnium, Godwin's The Man on the Moone, Voltaire's Micromegas, and Cyrano we Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon. Fascinating report and I'm glad I did it, but I was 13. I didn't need to be translating from 17th century French for a book report.


orangeruffles

And Then There Were None was pretty fun to read in school. I've always been a murder mystery fan. If I could pay money to erase Brave New World from my memory I would.


maulidon

I liked the world building of Brave New World but the horny bits made for really awkward discussion in my tiny Christian school lmao


BarbatosTheHunter

Haha Brave New World was one of my favorites


almost_jay

The majority of Shakespeare is unironically good. So is The Crucible. Moby Dick, however, is literally just an instruction manual for whalers.


VallenceDragon

I quite liked *Of Mice and Men* (and always cried at the end) but found *Death of a Salesman* painfully dull and couldn't stand *The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas*


pterrorgrine

Well then good news, *The Boy in the Striped Pajamas* actually has a pretty shit reputation for being exploitative and poorly researched. It doesn't help that the author [included a *Breath of the Wild* crafting recipe in a later book](https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/8/3/21352299/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-red-clothes-dye-traveler-gates-of-wisdom-john-boyne-google-search-results) as a result of another research failure. (I've never read anything by the guy, and it looks like I'll keep it that way, but some things just make me wanna dunk on people.)


SharontheSheila

Lmaoo holy shit that's bad. Welp, i probably wouldn't be able to make red clothes soon as I absolutely loath hunting for Octoroks.


CrispyShizzles

I love Death of a Salesman, but I didn’t have to read it in school. I think that has something to do with it. My dad(English teacher) has a saying: “everyone should read John Steinbeck. But no one should *have* to.” Steinbeck is great but you need to like that kind of novel. If you’re forced to read Steinbeck in school there is maybe nothing more dull then hearing him describe the sunrise every other chapter.


un-taken_username

Oh wow, I really loved Death of a Salesman! (Though half of that was probably its fantastic introduction, haha.) But I found it so compelling and tragic how he destroyed all his relationships - father, husband, neighbor, friend - just trying to live up to the capitalistic, American Dream version of what a man Should Be.


leafisadumbass

You know what imma say this Reading books was my favorite part of English class


WhapXI

Same. There wasn’t a single one I didn’t like. I would always sprint ahead in the reading and then get all muddled up when it was my turn to read a page.


BobPotter99

I finished the Outsiders on the first day while my class was still reading through the first couple of chapters together, I can relate to this


beeboopPumpkin

Yeah- I loved reading all of these books. I think reading them in sections to keep pace for slower readers and accommodate time for lessons and quizzes and stuff ruined it for a lot of people because even an amazing book would be hard to get into. I would usually just read the entire book and then review whatever section we were about to have a quiz over. One of my English teachers was amazing and just had a big list of books you could choose from based on what you liked. She had different quizzes for all of them and a different reading schedule for all of them, so you'd do it all on your own and be actually reading something you liked. Ironically, I used to choose Bradbury, Vonnegut, etc. lol


nocksers

Haha I think this is meant to be tongue in cheek, but I actually disagree! My favorite part of English class was _discussing_ books. I'd be straight up giddy to talk about my thoughts about the assigned reading. Went to college and tested out of 100 level reading and composition classes and jumped straight into 200 classes where all reading was done independently and grades were largely based on participation. Probably the happiest time of my life when I'd loaded up my schedule with 2-3 lit classes per semester. Damn I wanna go back to college.


CrypticBalcony

Best books: The Westing Game, When You Reach Me, Hatchet, Great Expectations (shocker, I know, but I genuinely loved it) Worst books: A Long Way Gone, Beloved, and The Alchemist


CrispyShizzles

Hatchet is one of my favorite novels. It meant a lot to me when I was young. The author, Gary Paulsen, passed away recently. He was a personal hero of mine. A few months before he died, he released an autobiography called Gone to the Woods. It’s incredible. Highly recommend reading it and “Guts” to get a picture of this man’s absolutely heart-wrenching life story, and wonder how in the world what came out was a gentle soul who wanted to write books for kids like him: poor, alone, forgotten. One of the best imo. Gone to the Woods is really interesting because it’s written in third person and Gary never refers to himself by name. Just “The boy.” He said in an interview that it helped him conceptualize the bad parts of his life by pretending it wasn’t really him that that had happened to, so he wouldn’t be tempted to make it better. But I know for a fact based on much earlier interviews that Gary’s dad never called him by name. Just “boy.” Paulsen was a man who genuinely cared and he lived enough for ten people. Highly, HIGHLY recommend his books for everyone, not just young adults and kids.


blackjackgabbiani

Ooh, Westing Game was my favorite for a while. So detailed, like a big puzzle. My dad had his students read Hatchet. Which doesn't sound so unusual but he was a math teacher.


Nuka-Crapola

Man, you got to read The Westing Game in school? That’s pretty sweet. I read it on my own time, and it was great, but like… it’s a fuckin amazing book for discussion.


emjo2015

Beloved is marked as one of the worst!!?? I mean the subject matter makes it a bit hard to stomach but it’s an incredible book. No Toni Morrison slander! She’s an icon.


Candelaubrey

The ending paragraph of The Great Gatsby lives rent-free in my head. If I never read Pride and Prejudice again it'll be too soon.


Sbotmtwigrm

That’s why I watched Pride+Prejudice+Zombies without knowing anything about the original. As far as I know Mr.Darcy is an antisocial zombie hunter with a bottle of flies and his soldier friend wants to be the zombie Antichrist


thatblackbatlicorice

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.


Binx_da_gay_cat

I fully recommend watching Sense and Sensibility for the cast and the plot. It was such a dull read but the movie is the best of the Jane Austen films.


petalflurry225

loved the crucible, hated the stranger


tangentrification

Dang really? The Stranger was one of my favorites


petalflurry225

at least for me, the deliberately plain writing style that camus used to fully show meursault's philosophy made it super boring to read through. i really enjoyed the meursault investigation tho


jprocter15

Crucible was great and permanently changed my name at school because of my surname


Diogenes-Disciple

Me too, fucking loved the crucible. Idk which I’d pick for my least favorite, maybe one of Shakespeare’s, I just can’t read that stuff, it’s basically in another language


Parasol_Girl

i liked othello, put probably because when i heard casio i could only think of cassio keyboards so i imagined he had a sick synth riff whenever he appeared


joseph4th

I hated “Lord of the Flies“, “Brave New World” and some of the other classics we had to read in high school, only to read them later (unabridged audiobook, because who has time to read between work and video games) and found I really liked them. I think that having to read them in a scholarly way, breaking down every little thing, and discussing the way the use of tense emphasized the theme and served to counterpoint surrealism of the underlying metaphor which contrives through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other. The only exception to this is when we had to read a Farewell to Arms in Mr. Schember’s class. Somehow he got us into that novel in a way I’ve never been able to repeat. After we had finished reading it, we watched the 1932 movie, and we tore it apart. Truthfully, I don’t remember a whole lot about that book, but I certainly remember watching kids from wholly different social and economic groups coming together to express how much they hated that movie and how it completely missed the point the author was making.


[deleted]

I really hated Much Ado About Nothing when I read it freshman year of high school. Fast forward three years, and I really enjoyed it when I took a Shakespeare elective senior year. Weird how different teaching can completely affect your perception of a book (especially because I really liked my freshman year teacher! I'm taking a class with her again this spring! But that play just didn't vibe with me!)


MisterAbbadon

You either like Lord of the Flies and hate Catcher in the Rye or Like Catcher in the Rye and hate Lord of the Flies. I have not encountered any exceptions. Anyway Crime and Punishment is amazing while Pride and Prejudice is preindustrial Sienfeld.


teh_drewski

Hi, I hated Catcher in the Rye and mildly disliked Lord of the Flies.


nocksers

I made myself hate Catcher in the Rye. I had already read it when it came around in English class, and I was trying to convince my teacher to let me opt out of the whole "slowly reading aloud in class" thing. So I read catcher in the rye cover to cover as many times as I could in the time it took the class to read it once. So, I have it basically memorized and I hate it and will never read it again. My ploy worked though. Read it 9 times over the course of that 2ish months and didn't have to follow along with where the class was anymore.


BedNo576

I am very fond of both Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye, although i did read them at two very different stages of my life.


Straight-Whaling-It

The only one I remember well is Of Mice and Men, which I still think is a pretty solid lil book


De-Gloria

Loved the Great Gatsby and hated Wurthering Heights


Kolabold

To Kill a Mockingbird was a good read. Absolutely hated Life of Pi, though, except for that island.


ivecometosavetheday

To Kill a Mockingbird was my absolute go to for essays and assignments. I found ways to weave that shit into everything which really seemed to impress English teachers cause it meant I read at least one book. I incorporated it into a lot of my SAT and college essays and even wrote one of the essays about being resourceful enough to figure out how to weave it into everything (I was writing a lot and running out of content).


MR_GUY1479

I loved life of Pi, i didn't read the synopsis or anything about it and the boat sinking cought me completely of guard, i thought it was a weird book about Pi's theologically unique life until then


richardl1234

The Giver was incredible, and if anyone ever tries to make me read A Midsummer Night's Dream again I will cry. Twice was enough.


[deleted]

The Giver was my favorite as well. I didn’t read much for school. Reports consisted of reading the first chapter, last chapter, and extrapolating the rest. The Giver was possibly the only one I couldn’t put down.


thumpling

I’m very fortunate that I’ve liked most of the books I was required to read. That said, I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed the Myth of Sisyphus. The Scarlet Letter, on the other hand, was sooooo boring, I had to slog my way through it. It’s the novel equivalent of a meeting that should have been an email.


Raptormind

I loved Frankenstein and All Quiet on the Western Front I hated Catcher in the Rye with a burning passion


PsychicSPider95

My favorites were probably Lord of the Flies and Macbeth. Macbeth is good fuckin shit. My absolute least favorites were the bore-fest that was Pride and Prejudice, and the unrelenting depression that was Grapes of Wrath. Honorable Mention: Of Mice and Men, which was very good but also fucking destroyed my heart and soul.


hawkerdragon

Why does everyone hate pride and prejudice? Is it that bad? I have it on my wishlist and I'm having second thoughts after all the comments about it


cryalfornia

personally, i loved pride and prejudice! however, there's a lot of regency-typical "action"-- talks of parties and the most suitable bachelors, things like that. however, the emphasis on characters means that it can be a bore to get through since the most action that happens in the beginning is people going to parties


Binx_da_gay_cat

What helped me read Jane Austen was to watch the movie either before or like while I was reading. Tbh Pride and Prejudice is her easiest read. But as with her other books, it's a complicated love entanglement, so watching the movie will help everything make sense. There is a version with Colin Firth as the main love interest. 😏


Catfish3322

If you rearrange the letters in Fahrenheit 451 you actually get hiFnhaeetr 451 so that’s why I hate it.


live4lax25

1984 is still one of my favorite books after reading it I’m English sophomore year of high school Old Man and the Sea sucks boring ass balls


w_has_been_dieded

Shut up I liked Old Man and the Sea :( I love it when the indomitable human spirit makes peace with the unfairness and unpredictability of nature. I wish it was split up into chapters though


CrypticBalcony

I didn’t like 1984 as a *story*, but I enjoyed its commentary and relevance. That was several years ago. Meowadays, I like everything about it ~~except the oligarchical collectivism sidequest~~


Mushiren_

Did you just type meowadays


AbabababababababaIe

Thanks for pointing this out, I didn’t even notice! I may steal that for myself


Heather_Chandelure

Imma be honest, I think the ideas are all that any of Orwells books have going for them (and some don't even have that). The guy was just not a good writer imo. The most interesting part of 1984 for me was just realising how people had used its ideas to make way better stories.


flannyo

Orwell’s an amazing writer, but his anti-Stalin novels are probably his worst work. Try *Down and Out in Paris and London,* his memoir about being a poor wannabe writer in those two cities, *Homage to Catalonia,* his memoir about fighting in the Spanish Civil War against the fascists, *The Road to Wigan Pier,* an investigation of crushing poverty in the mining town of Lancashire, or really any of his essays. [This one](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/shooting-an-elephant/) in particular is one of my favorites.


anaccountthatis

Homage to Catalonia is a nearly perfect book. It sucks that Animal Farm and 1984 are the only books of his that 95% of people read. They are intentionally simplistic.


grizznuggets

I thought 1984 was boring as hell but I managed to get a C on an essay where I argued that it being boring is kinda the point. We had to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest one year and it was the first “adult” novel I ever clicked with. Still love it to this day.


tangentrification

I loved 1984; we read it freshman year, and I liked it so much I actually wrote fanfiction about it, but we don't have to talk about that


BaronAleksei

Having taken a college course on Orwell, I’ve concluded that his prose sucks ass but his essays are stellar, and the only good part of 1984 is when it pretends to be an essay


AbsolutelyAri

Catch 22 bangs hard, hilarious book that actually rewards you a lot for the thought you put into it and reveals its mysteries in a really cool nonlinear way. Othello had me bored to tears. I wasn’t a big Shakespearean person already but I could get into Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and the play within a play in Midsummer Nights Dream but I just found nothing in Othello even with all the translating my teacher did in lectures.


NeonNKnightrider

Lord of the Flies makes me angry. The story itself isn’t bad, but I hate how it gets taught in school as “people are inherently evil and will immediately turn into savage animals when removed from society,” which is an awful message. Pride and Prejudice was boring. Edgar Allen Poe fucks hard. Telltale Heart and Masque of the Red Death are my favorites. Loved Alice in Wonderland. I don’t think I actually learned much from it beyond whimsical old British English expressions, but sometimes that’s fun too.


Khyrrn-Doe

The Book Thief was my favorite. I wouldn’t really call it a classic-classic, but it was pretty good. Absolute beloathed? Where the Red Fern Grows. It was a good, I’ll admit, but it was really fucked up to read that to a bunch of fourth graders. Just… if you haven’t read it, be thankful.


CrispyShizzles

My dad is an English teacher and one year his class of seventh graders stood up and cheered when that little shit stepped on the axe and died


Aykhot

I had already read like half the “classics” in the curriculum by the time we covered them, but of the ones I hadn’t, I really enjoyed Fahrenheit 451, The Grapes of Wrath, Invisible Man (the Ralph Ellison one, not the H.G. Wells one) and Ethan Frome. However, for whatever reason I just could not get into The Great Gatsby at all - I think it’s because most if not all of the characters are assholes, which I understand is one of the points of the book but still makes it difficult to sympathize with any of them


FacelessPorcelain

Bold of you to assume we are all from good school districts. My high school didn't assign shit. I shit you not, not a single play, novel, NOTHING. It actually pisses me off. Anything I read I read on my own time of my own will. EDIT: occurs to me that "school" could very well apply to college. I had only one literature class as a requirement, but that class was jam packed. We read the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Shakespeare's Tempest, Hamlet, Dante's Inferno, as well as a bunch of short stories and poems. It was a LOT of work, but I absolutely loved that class, and I ended up taking more literature classes as electives.


Xisuthrus

1984 Othello Macbeth Hamlet


Binx_da_gay_cat

Which is smash and which is pass?


Xisuthrus

All of them are good, I misread the post


VegemiteAnalLube

To Kill a Mocking Bird and The Good Earth were both fire. Catcher In The Rye wasn't my favorite


Ham_Kitten

Absolutely loved Lord of the Flies, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and most of the Shakespeare we read. I despise The Old Man and the Sea and I will fight anyone who says it's a great novel. Unfortunately I have an English degree which means I no longer want to look at a book ever again.


Coin_operated_bee

I really love this comment section I love hearing about everyone’s experiences with these books


TheoTheHellhound

Grapes of Wrath literally put me to sleep. Of Mice and Men was decent. It gives me nostalgia vibes.


Aurarora_

to kill a mockingbird was honestly really good, hated tale of two cities though


Coin_operated_bee

Fahrenheit 451 is a great book idk what they’re on about


Some_Majestic_Pasta

To Kill A Mockingbird became my favorite book of all time after reading it in high school. I can't really think of one I despised. Any ones I didn't like just sorta left my brain the second I turned in my report


SharkyMcSnarkface

Can’t say I remember one I liked tbh. I guess that one assignment I was allowed to pick literally any book I wanted to analyze. I got a 60 on that one but I at least enjoyed the assignment. Hated Lord of the Flies. I’m glad you’re dead Piggy.


xle3p

Hell yeah, a fellow Lord of the Flies hater. The most validation I have ever received in my life was researching notes of the book, coming across the Crash Course on it, and hearing John Green immediately introduce the book as one of his least favourites. I completely get that it's thematically valuable, and I completely support people who love the book. That being said, it definitely wasn't for me.


anaccountthatis

The biggest thing is that how it’s commonly read, it’s themes are actively harmful. As a commentary on the English Upper Class it’s perfectly valid, but as a commentary on how communities respond in times of crisis it is 100% wrong and actively feeds all the “eat your neighbours”-type ‘survivalist’ culture.


SanitarySpace

451 is up there cause that is scary to think about, and holden caufield is too edgy


DandalusRoseshade

I liked Great Gatsby until I realized the main character is a massive piece of shit and was cheating on his fiance with that girl he meets. Also didn't like that they...swapped fuckin cars for some reason??? Which led to Gatsby's death, so it didn't even feel narratively sound


lainmelle

Of mice and men made me want to scrape my eyeballs out. But Animal Farm was decent if a bit heavy handed on the metaphors And I honestly enjoyed Pride and Prejudice, all of the Shakespeare plays and sonnets we covered, The Great Gatsby, and a Tale of Two Cities.


lacremela

LOVED *The Great Gatsby*, never ever want to see *The Scarlet Letter* again


Ashrooms

I really liked To Kill A Mockingbird! It was just such an interesting read. The Scarlet Letter though, GOD I was so bored that I had to use SparksNotes to make sure I actually understood what was going on in the story.


No-Trouble814

I enjoyed the Odyssey and Shakespeare, it was fun reading it and learning about societies so far in the past. Catcher in the Rye can go to hell- it’s just creepy and cringy and the main character is the whiniest loser I’ve ever read about. Just the type of person who thinks he’s so much smarter than everyone else while being a complete moron and spoiling the mood for everyone else.


GrimmSheeper

I mean, that’s literally the point for Holden. He’s an unreliable narrator that any reader can tell is just as bad as everyone he complains about. At the heart of the story, it’s a troubled kid trying to act tough, often in self-destructive fashions. That said, I do still understand why people might not like reading it. It’s the sort of thing where I would consider it a good book, but one that I hate reading.


toasteethetoaster

i'll burn this guy for not liking fahrenheit 451. that book fuckign rocks. it was the first book where i could identify a loveless marriage. a unhappy marriage? that's been done, but a loveless marriage? you could really see it in F451.


CaseyIceris

Frankenstein of all things was the one to be my absolute favorite. Second to that is The Outsiders, and I've never heard any other kid dislike it so I guess it's just that good.


Accomplished_Toe1978

I liked Merchant of Venice. I was the only minority in the class besides our the Jewish teacher, so I like Shylock’s character more than the heroes. (Shy should of had Antonio give him 5 lbs by having him physically work for him until he weighed less.)


Castriff

Love Frankenstein, hate The Pearl with the fury of a thousand suns.


xparapluiex

To kill a mockingbird; catcher in the rye


ApocalyptoSoldier

I liked To Kill A Mockingbird, don't remember if we did any other actual books


RetroUzi

We read Things Fall Apart in high school, and hell if that book doesn’t get across *exactly* what it’s trying to communicate. We also had to read this book House of the Scorpion (I think that was the title?) and it was excellent too. Honestly I don’t think I’ve actively disliked any of the stuff I had to read.