Off the top of my head,
The Breakable Vow - Basically, we were forced to read this book about dating violence Sophomore year and it sucked balls. I understand the purpose of trying to educate kids about this, but the book was a waste of time and it had no literary value at all. It was a Lifetime movie in book form. And the worst part was that all the kids who usually hate English and don't want to read anything were all over this book, because apparently it takes useless bull**** to get kids interested in reading.
I also remember having to do something similar Freshman year. We had to read the autobiography of some guy who grew up in the ghetto and persevered and went on to do something or other. All I know is that the book felt like it was written by a 15-year-old. I think there were spelling mistakes.
And of course, Pride and Prejudice. What a load of garbage. Some terrible, pretentious romance about some rich people who like to dance and socialize and obsess over manners. And then some chick falls in love with a guy. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anyone considers Jane Austen to be serious literature. This is a ****ing AP class I'm in. I can't see what the importance or depth of this book is. The only thing Jane Austen can be credited with is inventing the sappy romantic comedy, a distinction that's basically comparable to saying you invented herpes.
And Mark Twain agrees with me:
"Whenever I take up "Pride and Prejudice" or "Sense and Sensibility," I feel like a barkeeper entering the Kingdom of Heaven. I mean, I feel as he would probably feel, would almost certainly feel. I am quite sure I know what his sensations would be -- and his private comments. He would be certain to curl his lip, as those ultra-good Presbyterians went filing self-complacently along."
"Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."
"To me his prose is unreadable--like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death."
"I haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
I thought we could take this both ways.
For me, I think it is probably Metamorphisis by Franz Kafka.
I actually read the Metamorphosis in our text book this year even though it was never assigned.
I liked it.
i hated most Dickens and Shakespeare in high school
They are just way too touted and over praised too much.
I did take a college level Shakespeare class, it somewhat helped, but the teacher was an idiot, she said 'umm' "ahh' or 'uhh" 197 times in 25 min. She made us retell 7 stories in one flowing narrative, it was terrible, god awful even.
I just haven't been able to get back into Shakespeare since
We're reading Hamlet right now. But we're reading along with a recording of it with Kenneth Brannagh and Judy Dench.
I think Shakespeare is overrated but he was damn good with words.
Like in the scene in Act II we read today:
POLONIUS
"Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity;
And pity 'tis 'tis true: a foolish figure;
But farewell it, for I will use no art.
Mad let us grant him, then: and now remains
That we find out the cause of this effect,
Or rather say, the cause of this defect,
For this effect defective comes by cause:
Thus it remains, and the remainder thus. Perpend."
Now I know where Jesse Jackson got his rhyming schtick from.
Anti-Semite.
The Catcher in the Rye.
Yep.
I liked it.
I found Lord of the Flies to be overrated, but I really hated
A Separate Peace.
I also thought Lord of the Flies was alright, though everyone else hated it.
We had to read A Separate Peace over the summer before Sophomore year. It was just horribly forgettable.
Oh yeah, Romeo And Juliet was a stinker. How people still regard it as one of the greatest love stories of all time is insane to me. Shakespeare In Love is a much better love story than what it's paying homage too, and Jim and Pam from The Office millions of times better still.
Romeo And Juliet only works if you think of it as a satire of shallow, dramatic, fake teenage infatuation-love. I actually wrote my essay on it about that. Do Romeo and Juliet even have one conversation in the entire play?! Not counting descriptions of how badly they want to swim in each other's eye and stuff, of course. It's not love.
Yeah, I remember feeling so vindicated about this when my awesome English teacher last year pointed it out in class.
I've been saying it for ages.
