Books you were supposed to read but didn't

[Spindrift]

My teen daughter was talking about her reading assignment, Wuthering Heights, and how she just couldn't get into the book. I told her she had to persevere and just get through it. What I didn't tell her was that I avoided reading most of the assigned books in high school. I still passed by just listening to the discussions during class and skimming the books. Also a lot of the questions on the tests were usually phrased so that you could figure out what the teacher wanted.

I did read Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Great Gatsby and a probably some others.

The books that I remember not reading:
The Jungle
Red Pony
Across Five Aprils
Of Mice and Men
Old Man and the Sea
Ethan Frome - The absolute worst. I have yet to find anyone who actually liked this book.

Anybody else avoid their reading assignments?

[Marquis de Carabas]

I avoided reading The Hobbit in tenth grade, but that might not really count, as I had read it years before. Once was enough.

[zooterkin]

I didn't read Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders, which may partly explain why I didn't pass the English Literature 'O' level...

[Alt+F4]

Ethan Frome - The absolute worst. I have yet to find anyone who actually liked this book.

Anybody else avoid their reading assignments?

I couldn't agree more. Worst Book Ever. Sorry, if you're gonna kill yourself put a gun in your mouth, don't take a runaway sled!

Why is it that high school reading assignments in the U.S. always seem to involve novels/plays in which the plot is so depressing and/or the protagonist either goes crazy, kills themselves or others. For example: Catcher In The Rye, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Bell Jar, Angela's Ashes, Ordinary People and Jude the Obscure to name just a few.

Isn't being a teenager hard enough? Why no literature with happy endings?

[godless dave]

I was assigned Dickens's "Bleak House" for a college history class. I couldn't get past the first page.

[TobiasTheCommie]

I didn't read any books during college..

Or rather, read a lot of books, just none the teachers had assigned

Hell, after the first semester i didn't even buy them.

[Terry]

I didn't read "The Woman In White".

[Zep]

"The Warden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warden)", Anthony Trollope.


Aaaaaaarrgh! And we had to read it aloud in class too! Surely that was child-abuse??

[Doubt]

Death of a Salesman

Just to depressing.

[Whack01]

In college I remember choosing not to read Gargantua and Pantagruel, got through about a chapter couldn't stand it. Read the first & last paragraphs of subsequent chapters for a C on the exam. I remember pretty much nothing of it now for which I am grateful. I think I skimped on most of my shakespear as well, I can't stand most of his work.

eta: they didn't make me read more than a few books in high school. A midsummer nights dream or whatnot, mac beth and all quiet on the western front was about it. Or atleast nearly all I remember.

[fingersmith]

I have a slight twist on this, I did a talk on Catch 22 without reading it. The thing is the book wasn't assigned, we were allowed to choose the book, I can't remember why I didn't just do a book I'd already read! My brother had read it, so I talked to him about it, then did the talk, did some Q&As at the end (somehow) and got an average grade.
I did read it a few years later and loved it though.

[BPScooter]

I had a freshman seminar on biblical interpretation, great class that really dived into some things like Augustine's views of metaphor, etc. I was pretty familiar with a lot of the things like iconography of the characters by going to art museums, I knew some liturgy through music, but I was really lost since I hadn't really *read* the bible, whether "as literature" or "as holy writ." I was over my head there, and really wound up focusing on the particular assignments and must say that beyond those particular things, at that point I didn't read the Pentateuch or the Gospels broadly. Didn't read the book.

[Wildy]

I was more the opposite. I read all the books that I had to.

I read them all in the day we got them, so I had to suffer through listening to the same story again. The better ones I didn't mind because they were better, Lockie Leonard however was a nightmare.

I hated the book and because of that I fail to see how Tim Winton can win awards.

[hipparchia]

Uncle Tom's Cabin. Couldn't get past the first two chapters.

Then, in high school we learner world literature and of course studied War and Peace, Don Quixote, Dead Souls and other thick books. Just no time to read them. And Gogol's Dead Souls was sooo depressing...

The list may go quite far. Nobody should assign such literature to teenagers.

Skimmed through most of the compulsory Bulgarian writers as well. The list may be too long...but had I read all those, I doubt my mushy, wooish teenage brain could retain much.

[Damien Evans]

Ah, well I remember NOT reading Platos Republic...

[brodski]

I decided not to read any Satre, but when I got to the bookshop they didn't have any- so I had to not read Derrida instead.

[Darat]

Great Expectations - mind you that was helped by the teacher after the class getting through the first few pages also deciding she couldn't stand re-reading it so we swapped to The Lord of the Flies.

[aggle-rithm]

Of Human Bondage. It's not that I didn't like it. I was just indifferent, since I never got around to reading it.

I was taking Speed Reading at the time, so I tried to read a few chapters that way. My comprehension was limited to mostly the page numbers. Running out of time, I read the Cliff notes, then gave an oral summary in class.

The teacher could tell. He asked me if I recalled a small detail of the book, something that was significant but unlikely to appear in the Cliff notes. I hemmed and hawed until he asked, "Did you READ the book?" I lied. He obviously didn't believe me, but shrugged and went on.

Not my proudest moment.

[soetkin]

De komst van Joachim Stiller by Hubert Lampo, a flemish writer. Gave up when I realised I'd read the first page half a dozen times and still didn't get what was going on.

My teen daughter was talking about her reading assignment, Wuthering Heights, and how she just couldn't get into the book.
I don't blame her, although I love the rest of the Brontë books, I hated that one. I read it once and put it away somewhere where I won't have to look at it again.

[madurobob]

Typee. I had already slogged through Billy Budd and decided I didn't much like Melville. Cliffs Notes was a much better read.

[Worm]

Similar to Wildy, I read everything I was supposed to, and often more. I was an avid client for our local library's reading list which included most of the classics, plus picking stuff up from my parents, like Asimov, Heinlein, Tolkein, Dickens etc.

I have a vivid memory of not really paying attention in class while they were discussing 'Unrealiable Memoirs' by Clive James, because I had already read it about 4 times. The teacher then picked on me at the end to answer all the set questions becuase he saw that I wasn't involved. Naturally, I got all the answers right. </smug>

I didn't read 'Love in the Time of Cholera' for a long time becauase I thought I would hate it - but I absolutley loved it when I did. Same with 'The Trial'. Both those books came up at a Book Group I started online purely as a way of forcing me to read books that I wouldn't normally pick up.

I've more likely failed at reading books that I just keep meaning to read, but never quite get around to, or never finish for one reason or another. I've tried to get through the Ghormenghast series a few times and never quite succeeded, the same with Thomas Covenant. The World According to Garp is permanently in my 'must read' pile (which consists of half a bookcase) as is A Town Like Alice and Les Miserables.

[malbui]

I've always been a voracious reader and I read everything I could lay my hands on when I was growing up, but for some odd reason* I simply could not make it through Kipling's "Kim", which was one of the three texts we had for English Lit O Level (the others were Richard 3 and the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales). I was fortunate, though, in that at that time you could get through the exam by answering all the context questions - there was no requirement to write any essays. And so some good general knowledge about Indian history and some specialist knowledge about the military hardware of that period came to my rescue.





* Possibly because it was turgid dross

[Soapy Sam]

I liked Kim, but I like most of Kipling's stories.
I have yet to get more than half way through anything by Dickens and that was achieved only by tying myself to the desk. I finally ate the book. It was that or my leg. I think it was Copperfield. Something tasteless anyway.

[Fitter]

Wuthering Heights. Ironically I got the highest mark in the class on the exam.

[lofgoernost]

Due to some interruptions during middle school I didn't end up reading many of the books listed in this thread until I was done with college. Pathetically, movie adaptations and a closetful of musty Classics Illustrated helped me to get by.

[Wowbagger]

All of them. I do not ever recall ever reading any of the books I was supposed to, in any class, what-so-ever!

And, yes, I usually passed the tests, anyway.

I never liked getting books crammed down my throat.

Ethan Frome - The absolute worst. I have yet to find anyone who actually liked this book. No kidding! Even if you did't read it, the classroom discussion was often painful enough. One groan after another, from pickle dish, all the way to sled ride. Gaaaahhh!!! It still hurts just thinking about it.

(Incidentally, it was also probably Liam Neeson's worst movie.)

[TobiasTheCommie]

never heard of ethan frome... seems like i should be happy

[JWideman]

I actually got yelled at for reading the books before they were assigned.

[Rrose Selavy]

In my UK Roman Catholic Secondary School, the English teacher once gave me his own copy of "The Power & The Glory" by Grahame Greene. Which, given the controversy which involved the Vatican trying to get the author to change it , was possibly a brave gesture. The teacher may not have been a RC himself for all I know. I must admit I didn't find the book very interesting and didn't finish it before returning it.

As for official assignments, we all started Gerald Durrel's "My Family & Other Animals" which seemed engaging which we took turns reading out in class till the broken English of one of the characters with repeated "Them's Bastards" proved too riskily "authentic" to continue further for 11/12 year olds- and we quickly dropped that to study another set text.

[Lucky]

I didn't read Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders, which may partly explain why I didn't pass the English Literature 'O' level...
I didn't read "The Woman In White".
Of Human Bondage. It's not that I didn't like it. I was just indifferent, since I never got around to reading it.
It's never too late.

These are three wonderful books that I adored as a teenager, and still love. They are the finest works of three of my favourite authors. I almost envy anyone who has yet to discover these books and these writers.

The Woodlanders, as well as being a fascinating story, character study and social polemic, is (as Hardy intended) a poignant reminder of what we have lost by becoming disconnected from the land and the labour that support our existence.

The Woman In White is an utterly riveting thriller, brilliantly successful at depicting atmosphere and incident and creating a fictional world that's almost impossible to tear yourself away from once you get into it.

Of Human Bondage is a very fine 'coming of age' story, and a great work of literature – a neglected masterpiece (would need to be Russian to have the recognition it deserves).

[Vigilanty]

I think the only book I did read in high school was Fahrenheit 451. It was pretty short afterall. ;) I got through AP english just fine by listening to lectures. Always did bad on those pop quizzes though. LOL

[Geek Goddess]

Great Expectations - mind you that was helped by the teacher after the class getting through the first few pages also deciding she couldn't stand re-reading it so we swapped to The Lord of the Flies.

I read everything assigned, plus. In the class literature books, which had mostly short stories or excerpts from novels, I would read everything within the first few weeks of school. However, I could NOT make myself read Great Expectations in my junior high school year. I just could not get into it, and I had read Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist. I bought the Cliff Notes and got through just fine using those. I ran into my English teacher a few years later and confessed my sin :) . She said "don't you feel better having got that off your chest?" and laughed.

I also had to read Racine's Phedre in college, and hated it. I was assigned to write a paper contrasting light and dark imagery (IIRC) and got my first and only "B" on a paper I wrote. To be fair, I took all four semesters of English required for my chemistry degree at the same time, to get it over with, so was a bit put out to be writing about crap I hated.

[Beanbag]

Nobody reads The Scarlet Letter because they want to. The only reason it hangs around is because English teachers keep assigning it. I just buffaloed my way through that section of the class. Just because it's old doesn't make it good literature.

I also find it funny that people think Shakespeare was a great author. No, he's a playwright, not an author. Forcing people to READ one of his plays is about the same as tapping out the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner in morse code, or seeing Swan Lake performed by the Green Bay Packers. Plays were written to be performed and seen by an audience, not read. Keep the material to the medium for which it is intended.

Beanbag

[balrog666]

Somebody should start a "Books You Had to Read and Wish You Hadn't!" thread.

[grits]

I could not read The Scarlet Letter as a freshman in high school. I just kept wondering what lesson I was meant to have learned in middle school to prepare me for Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's been 15 years and I still don't think I'm ready.

[TX50]

Well, in senior school, English (and Latin and Greek) were about the only
things I was any good at so I read everything set and a whole lot more.

However, when I was much younger I, let's say, "skimmed" much of the set
reading material and read other stuff instead. I recall not reading "Tom's
Midnight Garden" (indeed eventually throwing the book into the harbour),
something called "Master of Morgana" (I vaguely recall that it had something
to do with Scotland but it didn't have any claymores and battles and stuff in
it so I kinda tuned it out) and some corny garbage set in stone-age times
about a cave-boy and a wolf (I recall being quizzed on it in class and
successfully guessing the plot on the fly; "errr...then he...ran away from
the hunters ...and...then..he ...errr...he encountered the giant wolf...
and...ummmm...he killed it and saved the tribe...?")

[Kestrel]

I could not read The Scarlet Letter as a freshman in high school. I just kept wondering what lesson I was meant to have learned in middle school to prepare me for Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's been 15 years and I still don't think I'm ready.

Reading Nathaniel Hawthorne lets you appreciate how dreadful American novels were before Samuel Clemens.

[Gregory]

I could not read The Scarlet Letter as a freshman in high school. I just kept wondering what lesson I was meant to have learned in middle school to prepare me for Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's been 15 years and I still don't think I'm ready.

I almost read The Scarlet Letter. I mean, I probably read at least half of it before my resolve broke. Those were hours of my life that I will never get back.

[DemolitionDave]

At the age of 48 I just read "Lord of the Rings" I bought it for $5 at a book fair and I literally couldn't put it down.

[BPScooter]

Hmm... some Brits and almost all Americans never read Mark Twain. "Huckleberry Finn" is really worth reading. Many American kids were forced to read this awful stuff way back in the day. The author made a great career as public speaker. He is really quite good, look at his white suit and such.

[hipparchia]

Nobody reads The Scarlet Letter because they want to.

There's your exception. I read the book and enjoyed it. Right after I finished Moby-Dick.

I could not finish Wuthering Heights though. And nothing by Dickens.

I am struggling with Billy Budd. Seems like too much whiskey addled Melville's brain to produce this tortuous later work...

[Geek Goddess]

Hmm... some Brits and almost all Americans never read Mark Twain. "Huckleberry Finn" is really worth reading. Many American kids were forced to read this awful stuff way back in the day. The author made a great career as public speaker. He is really quite good, look at his white suit and such.
Seriously? He was really the first truly American author, IMO. I've most of his works.

[canadarocks]

I thought this was so funny, because I did exactly that in college (not reading the books, just listening to the discussion). Oddly enough, the assigned book I remember doing this to is Wuthering Heights. (Heathcliff and Symbolism???)

[Nankay]

ahem..I really liked Ethan Fromme AND Great Expectations.:boxedin:

However, Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor...hmmm not so much. Skipped most of it and relied on class discussion.

[Spindrift]

Hmm... some Brits and almost all Americans never read Mark Twain. "Huckleberry Finn" is really worth reading. Many American kids were forced to read this awful stuff way back in the day. The author made a great career as public speaker. He is really quite good, look at his white suit and such.

Huckleberry Finn is still required in many US high schools and I know they often also read some of his short stories as well as Tom Sawyer.

[Wildy]

I have one to add to the list:

Der Kaffee ist undefinierbar by Wolfgang Borchert.

And that is only because I can't find a copy of it.

[BPScooter]

Sorry folks, I omitted the big Wink :-) on my comments about Mark Twain. This "awful" stuff is among the best out there. I thought my creeping irony or sarcasm or whatever would come across.

If I had a desert island, I'd want the big fat Mark Twain book (the one with Kurt Vonnegut preface) and a set of Beethoven collected symphonies. I'd probably be able to keep busy mentally for a long time.

But really when I was younger and required to read/listen and appreciate such things for class, I may have only very infrequently sought the easy way and may have occasionally not read or listened to the required things, for the teacher, and tried to get through the grade barrier on sheer guts and faking.

[Aitch]

I'm the sort of person who can't help reading, but at school could never get more than a few pages into:
Lorna Doone - RD Blackmore
Kidnapped - RL Stevenson

Everything else I managed to read quite happily, but those two...