What books do you dislike?

[Brown.Eyed.Girl]

Going off the rereading thread, I hated reading The Scarlet Letter in high school. I had to read it again in college and hated it even more. In fact, about 50% of the books I had to read in Honors and AP English in high school I didn''t like - maybe it was just the way they were taught

 

[monarch64]

Catcher in the Rye. It seems to be one of those you either love or hate. I don''t remember hating many books, I was probably more indifferent than any other emotion as far as disliking them.

BEG, I think assigned reading material garners the most hatred. Being forced to read something and having your GPA depend on your paper or whatever about it is so different than reading for pleasure. I don''t think I read a single thing in college for pleasure because reading essentially became a chore to me (which is totally out of character), especially when the phrase "critical thinking" was shoved down my throat constantly.

 

[Shoopy]

I really am not a fan of overly emotional books or romance novels. I''m reading 19 minutes right now as part of a book club and I hate it. It''s a good book but just way too many emotions going on. I had to put it down.

 

[upgrade]

Don''t shoot me... I hated the Lord of the Rings. Just couldn''t get into the books enough to finish the series.

I''ve been trying to read the Outlander series too, because I keep hearing people rave about it but I''m about a quarter of the way through the first book and I keep putting it down to read other things. Does it get better? Because so far, I''m not sold!

 

[MichelleCarmen]

It would take me hours to list them all. . .but Catcher in the Rye was one I also hated. I don''t remember it to well, but it seemed like the character constantly complained and it drove me nuts. Maybe I''m remembering it wrong?

I also HATED the last of the Lord of the Ring series, Return of the King. It took me SIX months to get through it!

Only read it b/c my husband loved it. The movies are great, though, but the book, I felt was too masculine to me. I like girly stuff.

Another was The Time Traveler''s Wife. The characters were one dimensional and I kept mixing up who''s "voice" was being read.

Other duds: Economics 101 and Financial Accounting 205.

 

[Haven]

To Kill a Mockingbird

Monnie--I totally agree with you that assigned reading material can garner hatred. I think we (the school system) often teach students to hate reading. It''s tragic.

 

[katamari]

As a gross overstatement, I would say that I dislike fiction. There are, of course, many novels I have enjoyed and even love, so what I really mean by that is I far prefer reading non-fiction to fiction.

As far as specific genres of fiction, I most strongly dislike coming-of-age romance and period/historical. For non-fiction, biographies and punditry are general dislikes.

ETA: Just caught on that this is perhaps title-specific and not genre-specific, so I will add that I LOATHED Freakenomics--and generally any watered down academic pulp trying to pass itself off as "smart". I also hated Ulysses (hate might also be light here), On the Road, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

 

[MichelleCarmen]

Date: 1/4/2010 12:33:29 PM
Author: upgrade
Don''t shoot me... I hated the Lord of the Rings. Just couldn''t get into the books enough to finish the series.

I''ve been trying to read the Outlander series too, because I keep hearing people rave about it but I''m about a quarter of the way through the first book and I keep putting it down to read other things. Does it get better? Because so far, I''m not sold!

I HATED Outlander! I read the first book and was sickened by it. I don''t even recall the character''s names, but do remember how the guy treated her terribly and she felt like she should go along with it as it was womens'' duties to do so back then.

 

[princesss]

Date: 1/4/2010 12:33:29 PM
Author: upgrade
Don''t shoot me... I hated the Lord of the Rings. Just couldn''t get into the books enough to finish the series.

I''ve been trying to read the Outlander series too, because I keep hearing people rave about it but I''m about a quarter of the way through the first book and I keep putting it down to read other things. Does it get better? Because so far, I''m not sold!

For me Outlander picked up between page 200 and 250 - after that, I couldn''t put it down!


I hated The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck is too heavy-handed and white hat/black hat for me. I loved the last 6 pages thought - all the subtlety I wanted ran and hid at the back of the book!

 

[monarch64]

Date: 1/4/2010 12:35:33 PM
Author: Haven
To Kill a Mockingbird

Monnie--I totally agree with you that assigned reading material can garner hatred. I think we (the school system) often teach students to hate reading. It's tragic.

It is tragic, Haven. I think one of the mistakes made by educators is in making the assigned books/authors seem like nothing more than a list of requirements necessary to achieve the goal of a final grade. A better approach, in my opinion, is less "let's whip through this list and make sure you've been exposed to everything on it" and more "let's learn to appreciate certain authors and their offerings and explore what they mean to our society and why we should or should not be appreciative."

 

[radiantquest]

I never really read the books that were required in school. I may have read enough to not fail the test on them, but I have no idea what they were about. There has never been a book that I totally hated. If I didn''t like it from the get go I just put it down. I never plowed through and then hated it.

One book that I wish I would have read in school was Anne Frank''s diary. I have been thinking of reading it now. How was that one? I know it is monumental in the story it tells, but was the book any good?

 

[stephbolt]

Date: 1/4/2010 12:33:29 PM
Author: upgrade
Don''t shoot me... I hated the Lord of the Rings. Just couldn''t get into the books enough to finish the series.

I''ve been trying to read the Outlander series too, because I keep hearing people rave about it but I''m about a quarter of the way through the first book and I keep putting it down to read other things. Does it get better? Because so far, I''m not sold!

Me too. I brought the trilogy on a vacation about 8 years ago and was frantically searching for ANYTHING else to read after one day of trying to slog through it.

 

[Brown.Eyed.Girl]

Monnie, UGH "critical thinking"! I hated that phrase. I also didn''t like Catcher in the Rye. There were a few that I liked...Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe sp?), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Tom Stoppard) but it was few and far betwee. Didn''t like Catcher in the Rye, didn''t like A Separate Peace, didn''t like Heart of Darkness. It seems like a lot of classic books were ruined by high school English

Fiery, I''m not big into romance novels either.

Upgrade, I love The Hobbit but I don''t actually like LOTR either. Though I do like the movies! It might the only instance where I like the movies but dislike the books. And I''m about a couple chapters into Outlander and haven''t gone back to it.

MC - yes! He CONSTANTLY complained! He had that cynical, I''m so old thing going on and I thought it was rather ridiculous since he was supposed to be, what? 16?

Haven - I agree. I actually loved my English class and my teachers, enough to become an English major, but somehow didn''t like most of the books we read. On the other hand, I LOVED my English classes in college and really liked most of the assigned reading (of course, I got to choose half the classes, which made a big difference).

Katamari - I haven''t read Ulysses but I''m not a big fan of Joyce due to the fact that I really disliked Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (another assigned reading)

Um...after responding, I know it seems like I dislike a lot of books, but I really DO love reading!

 

[princesss]

Katamari, I hated Tess, too. Oh, and Edith Hamilton''s Mythology.

 

[iluvcarats]

I had a hard time getting through The Road. It was well written, but so depressing, and although it is fiction the possibility of it becoming reality was too much for me.

 

[Brown.Eyed.Girl]

Princesss - really? I might have to go back and give it another go. I feel fortunate that I missed freshman Honors English and never had to read The Grapes of Wrath. I''ve never met a person yet who has liked it.

Monnie - Totally agree. When the educator makes it seem like a chore to teach/get through the list, it''s hard for the students to really get into it.

Radiant - BF did the same thing. [] It was a matter of personal pride with me that I made myself read every page of every book. Yes, I do have a touch of OCD, lol.

Steph - aww oh no! I made myself get through it after the Hobbit but it was a chore.

I do have to add that one of the books I really liked from high school was Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse.

 

[elrohwen]

I hated "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini. I read it with a book club at work and all of the other women were swooning over how well the female characters were written, how brave they were, etc. I just thought all of the characters were totally flat and seemed to be written by a man who had no idea what women are really thinking. There just wasn't any character development. I thought it was really awful writing for what could have been an extremely interesting story about a very interesting part of the world (and it still was interesting to read just for the historical perspective). I had been excited to read "The Kite Runner", but after hating Hosseini's second book I still haven't been able to to bring myself to read his first.

ETA: I recently finished "Pillars of the Earth" after so many people on PS recommended it, but it just didn't do it for me. The historical parts were extremely interesting, and the plot itself wasn't bad, I just found the writing to be off-putting. I definitely wouldn't say I hated it, I just didn't like it as much as I had hoped from reading reviews. Maybe my expectations were too high

 

[Haven]

Date: 1/4/2010 12:50:35 PM
Author: Brown.Eyed.Girl
Haven - I agree. I actually loved my English class and my teachers, enough to become an English major, but somehow didn''t like most of the books we read. On the other hand, I LOVED my English classes in college and really liked most of the assigned reading (of course, I got to choose half the classes, which made a big difference).

It''s funny because I really hated my English classes in high school despite the fact that I LOVED reading. I adored nearly every single English class I took in college, though. I think it was because my HS classes focused on the minute, unimportant details of the texts, while my college classes focused on using the texts as a foundation for discussing larger ideas.

 

[Haven]

Date: 1/4/2010 12:51:49 PM
Author: iluvcarats
I had a hard time getting through The Road. It was well written, but so depressing, and although it is fiction the possibility of it becoming reality was too much for me.

I had the same experience. It took me a couple of tries to really get into it. I think it''s a good book, but so very depressing.

 

[monarch64]

Gah! I forgot about hating James Joyce (anything). *Blech*streamofconsciousness*Blech*

 

[elrohwen]

Date: 1/4/2010 12:35:33 PM
Author: Haven
To Kill a Mockingbird

Monnie--I totally agree with you that assigned reading material can garner hatred. I think we (the school system) often teach students to hate reading. It''s tragic.

I agree. As someone who actually loves Charles Dickens, I''m usually horrified by how it''s taught in school. They seem to pick the least relateable books for teens (I can think of at least 2 Dickens books that would''ve been better choices than Great Expectations, as much as I like that book now) by a particular author. There is also very little focus on how to appreciate a certain author and it seems to be mostly about how to get through a book and remember a few key plot points to pass a test.

I will say that my high school focused far far more on less-known international modern authors, because we had the IB and not AP program. I thought this was fantastic as the books were easier to relate to and many students actually liked them and got a lot out of them. When we read the "classics" I think most students didn''t even finish the books. For a Catholic school, we were exposed to some pretty mature topics (one was about a prostitute in Egypt who enjoyed it, one was about two cellmates - one was gay and they ended up sleeping together).

 

[princesss]

Date: 1/4/2010 12:54:01 PM
Author: Brown.Eyed.Girl
Princesss - really? I might have to go back and give it another go. I feel fortunate that I missed freshman Honors English and never had to read The Grapes of Wrath. I''ve never met a person yet who has liked it.

Ummmm....I didn''t really read it. I read up until the turtle chapter (a CHAPTER? Really, Steinbeck? A freaking chapter?????), then read the last 6 pages.

I must have been a pain in the butt, though, because all of my classmates knew I didn''t read the book, but I''d follow the discussion in class, open the book to a random page, find a sentence, and say something about how that sentence related to the discussion we were having. Without fail, the teacher would say, "I hope you all got that point down in your notes...." Steinbeck is, as I said before, so heavy handed that you can honestly do this with just about any sentence in the book.

But don''t tell anybody I said that!

 

[elrohwen]

BEG, I adore Steinbeck (enough that he is one of my fav authors), and even I don''t like "Grapes of Wrath" very much. Lol.

RadiantQuest, I always feel like a bad person for this, but I do not like Anne Frank''s diary. It''s an important work for it''s historical significance, but I found it hard to get through the sometimes whiney and rather immature diary of a young girl. It''s good to read once, but not something I''d re-read. Just my opinion of it.

 

[ts44]

Date: 1/4/2010 12:58:34 PM
Author: monarch64
Gah! I forgot about hating James Joyce (anything). *Blech*streamofconsciousness*Blech*

How about Faulkner? As I Lay Dying? I wanted to die reading the book. Even my high school honors english teacher hated it. We did it as fast as we could and moved on.

Tennesee Williams - loved Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when I saw it performed, HATED reading it. Hated Glass Menagerie. Hated it all.

Second vote for not liking Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck in general, too melancholy, too heavy for me.

Classic American Lit in general is not my friend apparently!

 

[somethingshiny]

To Kill a Mockingbird
Fahrenheit 451
War and Peace (never ever even came close to finishing it)

 

[Hest88]

I remember My Antonia being the absolute most boring book we had to read in high school. Oh, and I didn''t like The Member of the Wedding either.

 

[elrohwen]

Date: 1/4/2010 1:12:21 PM
Author: ts44

Tennesee Williams - loved Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when I saw it performed, HATED reading it. Hated Glass Menagerie. Hated it all.

As much as I love going to the theater, I totally agree that reading plays is awful. They''re just not meant to be read! The dialogue is usually sparse and of course there''s no description of how the characters are feeling or acting.

 

[dragonfly411]

Ivanhoe is now the bane of my existence. It''s like trudging through tar. But I will finish.

I didn''t like All Quiet on the Western Front

 

[elrohwen]

Oo, I thought of something else - Russian literature in general. I read a lot of classics and I always want to like Russian literature, but I just can''t get into it and I don''t like the style it''s written in. Part of me thinks it''s because I''m reading a translation and maybe if I could read it in the original Russian I would like it more.

 

[packrat]

I know there are books I disliked so I just quit reading them-but I can''t remember what they were. Most of the ones listed here, like Catcher in the Rye, I''ve never read. Wait, one book I didn''t care for was Catch 22..I just couldn''t get into it and had to keep calling the library to let me keep it longer b/c I''d go days w/out picking it up. I finally just skipped to the end and took it back.

Sometimes I think I have to be in a certain frame of mind to read certain things.

I had a good English teacher in HS-but I think we only had him for 1 year-maybe 2. Even w/the required reading, he made it fun and interesting so that even the kids who hated to read, and would rather chew off their own arm than talk about a book, contributed in class and seemed to enjoy the books more so than they would have otherwise.