What books (sure, plays, etc. too) did you actually LIKE from your assigned reading in school?

Were there books you actively HATED?

Were there ones you didn't read even though they were assigned? Did you sneak by with cliffnotes?

Did you ever go back and read ones that were assigned just for fun? Did your enjoyment increase because you weren't required to read them?

 

I'd exclude textbooks from the "hate" thing, here, though---they're great sources of information, and I found them useful to plow through, even in later years. (In my high school, we had to buy them, so we got to keep them.)
 

We had a choice of OLIVER TWIST or DAVID COPPERFIELD. Most people picked OLIVER (short) rather than DAVID (long). The OLIVER people had an horrendous test over it. Only two of us chose DAVID and ours was short and easy.

Anything that I liked that was an assigned book? Can't think of a single one. When I got to pick, I was much happier. I picked LORD JIM by Conrad and loved it. I picked QUO VADIS? by the polish writer and adored it. I read BRAVE NEW WORLD (it wasn't assigned reading in my day) and enjoyed it.
 

Otherwise, I liked all Shakespeare, that is, until I had a college lit prof who was convinced that her understanding/interpretation was the only right one.

I had a love/hate relationship with Gabriel Garcia Marquez. We read One Hundred Years of Solitude junior year of high school. It took me the whole of Christmas break to get through it and it pained me. However, a year and a half later, a test question on the AP English exam came up and offered One Hundred Years of Solitude as one of the possible sources for an essay reply. I remembered a ton from the book, much more than any of the other options available. I was relieved.

Meanwhile, I managed to dodge a lot of required reading that others seem to have read. My family moved twice in high school and I read some books 2-3 times, others none at all. Never read Moby Dick or Old Man and the Sea. I did read Metamorphasis, Kafka, blech! It was right around when Jeff Goldblum was in the Fly and that's all I could picture. Blech. There are others that I haven't read - To Kill a Mockingbird, Uncle Tom's Cabin, not even Huck Finn etc. Hmm, I think I must have missed out on mostly American Lit.

Catcher in the Rye was good, but awfully depressing.

Some teacher of mine did an existentialist phase and we read a lot of Camus and...blanking. Not exactly light and funny stuff either, come to think of it.

Honestly, I was always happy to read something for english/lit classes that wasn't depressing, dark, brooding, or just plain gross. LOL I am *so* high maintenance!

"Moby Dick" is one that got away---I never had to read it in school and I've resisted the temptation to pick it up. I have read and enjoyed other Melville works, particularly "Bartelby the Scrivener" and "Billy Budd"---but on my own. (Both were included in a fat American Lit. anthology, but neither were on the class reading lists.)

Shakespeare is something to see, preferably on stage, rather than read as text. It just doesn't play right if you're just reading it. Yet the plays are enormously entertaining, even in rank amateur performances.
 

What books (sure, plays, etc. too) did you actually LIKE from your assigned reading in school?
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Odyssey by Homer
- 1,001 Nights
- Anything Shakespeare

Were there books you actively HATED?
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau (boring!!!!!)

Were there ones you didn't read even though they were assigned? Did you sneak by with cliffnotes?
- Billy Budd by Herman Melville
- Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (too long... and I procrastinated too much to start =P)
- Forgot the title and author, but in the end, the main character drowns herself. I didn't get it.

Did you ever go back and read ones that were assigned just for fun?
- Anything Shakespeare
- The Great Gatsby

Did your enjoyment increase because you weren't required to read them?
- Ummm... sure... ;-)
 

Their Eyes Were Watching God (Had to read it in high school and college. Enjoyed it both times.)
Jane Eyre (College: 19th Century British Novels)
Sea Came in at Midnight (This was for college Senior English Colloquium)
Wise Children (College: Modern British Novel)
Crime and Punishment (high school AP English)

Disliked:

Ethan Frome (high school sophomore English)
Ulysses (Dear God, I HATED this book. Didn't mind Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but Ulysses made me hate the printed word for a while. Had to read it for Modern British Novel. All the other books in that class were good, but that one made me want to drop the class and rethink my major.)

And I sneaked by without reading:

Portrait of a Lady (I was rather embarassed when I got an A on that paper in 19th century American novels. I didn't read it because I'd had to go home for a funeral and couldn't catch up with all my work.)
Thosand Acres (It helped that the prof. was forced to teach it, and he hated the book too. He actually told everyone the end before anyone had a chance to finish it. Some girls were absolutedly heartbroken. I just cackled from the back of class. Was for Intro. English class.)

I've reread Austen, but I think my enjoyment was the same.

[This message has been edited by Hunter (edited April 01, 2007).]

[This message has been edited by Hunter (edited April 01, 2007).]
 

But of those I did like, here's the list:

-- "The Tell-Tale Heart"
-- Alas, Babylon
-- Macbeth
-- To Kill a Mockingbird
-- The Great Gatsby
-- Beowulf

In college, I read almost every book assigned -- if I didn't, it was because of time, not taste -- and I liked almost everything I read.
 

1. Catcher in the Rye - boring, pedantic, plotless, and frankly Holden Caulfield needed a good thumping. I understand its significance to American Literature, but it bored me and still does. 'Course, I do reread it every so often. I think the appeal was to readers who lived in the period it was written in, where social freedoms were more restricted and youth needed an outlet to express their respressed feelings. I dunno.

2. Things Fall Apart - This is a teriffic read. The first African novel, it captures the life of an African before European colonialism, and expresses its repercussions quite nicely. If you have the opportunity, pick it up.

Jayson Merryfield
 

A few others I can't remember. Thats about it.

Peace~
 

I Loved:
-The Visit-macabre humor by a German playwright that I can't remember my favorite assigned reading ever
-Hamlet- I loved anything Shakespeare (Except Romeo and Juliet, I loved Paris, loathed the fact that he died)
-Things Fall Apart
-Chronicle of a Death Fortold -Marquez vivid imagry even though it was translated
-To Kill a Mocking Bird
-From third grade -The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler (sp) I haven't read that one in a while

I disliked most of my reads for school, but one stood out far byond the rest:
-Wuthering Heights- if anyone could explain that book I would greatly appreciate it, because I never got that one. I read it four times in an attempt to understand it and was still completely and totally lost. (Needless to say I failed the reading quiz on that one)
 

Well, you can look at it several ways (at least). It's a story about a great passion that lasted beyond death, or it's a story about how damaging and abusive co-dependent relationships can be, or it's a story about how treating people unfairly can cause pain and misery down through the generations--what goes around comes around, and so on and so on.

A gypsy boy is taken in by a well-to-do land-owner, a Mr. Earnshaw, and given the name of Heathcliff. He grows up to love the land-owner's daughter, Catherine Earnshaw. She loves him, as well, but she is aware of the differences in their stations and allows herself to be wooed by Edgar Linton, the son of a neighbor, who can offer her a life of ease and luxury. When Catherine chooses Edgar, Heathcliff runs away from the household where he has been little more than a slave to Catherine's brother, Earnshaw Jr., the heir to the land (a man who is only interested in wasting his inheritance on drink and gambling). Heathcliff comes back as a tall, dark, and mysterious man with a gentleman's ways and money, but only revenge in his heart.

He takes advantage of Earnshaw Jr.'s weaknesses and wins the house and land away by being a better cheater at cards, then he encourages the man to drink himself to death, putting his son, Hareton, under the control of Heathcliff who makes a slave out of him.

He takes revenge on Catherine, whom he still loves, by marrying her sister-in-law, Miss Linton, and making everyone miserable (including himself, though he seems to enjoy it).

Catherine dies after giving birth to a daughter also named Catherine, and I think Heathcliff's wife dies after giving birth to a son. Heathcliff manipulates things so that Catherine's daughter thinks she is in love with Heathcliff's son and marries him, thereby giving Heathcliff eventual control of the Linton land as well (when her father, Edgar, dies of grief). When Heathcliff's son dies also, the younger Catherine is stuck in her father-in-law's home.

All this time, Heathcliff has mourned and been haunted by his Catherine, and he finally goes out into a storm looking for her ghost and dies. The story ends with hope for the younger Catherine and the no-longer-a-slave Hareton, whom Catherine is teaching to read. So maybe the chain of passion and revenge can be broken after all.
 

I never read the book. Now I feel I don't have to.

[This message has been edited by arriki (edited June 07, 2007).]

[This message has been edited by arriki (edited June 07, 2007).]
 

WUTHERING HEIGHTS is basically a frame novel with the story starting when a stranger comes to the house (if I remember correctly he's lost on the moors in the same terrible storm that Heathcliff goes out and dies in, and he has to presume upon the hospitality--such as it is--of the house for the night). The story is told to him by the servant woman who has been at the house the whole time.

I would recommend you read it because it's wonderfully written, even though you know the story now.
 

Everybody loved Sherlock Holmes, and the August Derleth Holmes pastiche.

In college, I hated Troilus and Cressida -- until the teacher read some of it aloud. Then I got it. I hated Spencer, still can't read him. Loved Dante's Inferno, still can't get into the other two parts.

Nobody should read Anna Karinina unless they have been married. After you've been married, you'll love it.

 

But, after being married, will you have the time?

Some assigned books I liked from High School:
Green Mansions
Wuthering Heights
Lord of the Rings (though I'd already read it twice)
The Martian Chronicles
Candide
Lord of the Flies
Gulliver's Travels

Some books I hated:
Great Expectations
Don Quixote (in English translation. I loved it in Spanish)
Catcher in the Rye
House of the Seven Gables
Our Town