# You favorite and least favorite books you had to read in high school?



## rubber soul (Sep 14, 2010)

Favorites: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1984

Alright: The Things They Carried, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Wuthering Heights, There Are No Children Here

Worst: Frankenstein, anything Shakespeare (love watching his plays, especially the comedies, but reading? bleehhh)


----------



## Aqualung (Nov 21, 2009)

Favorite: Hard to choose because I liked so many science fiction books then. I'll pick "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury.
Least favorite was "Beowulf". Can't remember who wrote it. It's supposed to be a wonderful, timeless classic but grinding through it for a passing grade was misery. I don't even remember what it was about. Who knows, I might actually like it now but I'd rather rent the movie & move on.


----------



## Dao (Sep 13, 2013)

I enjoyed reading _A Midsummer Night's Dream_.

I absolutely loathed _The Great Gatsby_. I am convinced that despite the endless theorizing my teacher compelled my class to do there is no special symbolism hidden in that book and that it is in actuality just an oppressively bland story about people who have too much time on their hands.


----------



## Phobic (Dec 27, 2012)

Still not finished with high school, but... my freshman year teacher was fantastic and gave me more appreciation for things that I probably wouldn't have been big on previously.

Favorites:
_Much Ado About Nothing - _My teacher was great for this, and the humor got all the better. 

Least Favorite:
_Jane Eyre_ - Slow.


----------



## owlet (May 7, 2010)

I think in the UK college would be counted as part of highschool (16-18) so I'll include those.

Favourites:
Kit's Wilderness
Macbeth
The Great Gatsby
The Pardoner's Tale


Least favourite:
Silas Marner
The Kite Runner
Death of a Salesman
The Bloody Chamber

Lord of the Flies is kind of in the middle, because I couldn't stand most of the characters, but overall didn't hate it (and had a ton of fun writing an essay on it).


----------



## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

I loved Great Expectations, The Stranger (reread in college from a more mature perspective), The Metamorphosis, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Scarlet Letter and Madam Bovary. And of course the Bell Jar.


I hated Moby Dick and 1984. 

Off the curriculum, my favorite high school novel was Legion by William Peter Blatty.


----------



## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

Irondust said:


> I enjoyed reading _A Midsummer Night's Dream_.
> 
> I absolutely loathed _The Great Gatsby_. I am convinced that despite the endless theorizing my teacher compelled my class to do there is no special symbolism hidden in that book and that it is in actuality just an oppressively bland story about people who have too much time on their hands.


I still love the Great Gatsby, more alive for me at thirty than sixteen. Gatsby is poetry.

I am not a Shakespeare lover. As an English major in college I felt a special contempt for people who worshipped Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and the people who preferred Jane Eyre over Wuthering Heights.

Like secret wars of English majors.


----------



## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

Aqualung said:


> Favorite: Hard to choose because I liked so many science fiction books then. I'll pick "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury.
> Least favorite was "Beowulf". Can't remember who wrote it. It's supposed to be a wonderful, timeless classic but grinding through it for a passing grade was misery. I don't even remember what it was about. Who knows, I might actually like it now but I'd rather rent the movie & move on.


Beowulf makes me want to sleep, but I loved Canterbury Tales. I really hate ancient epics, The Iliad, The Odyssey, even as a child I resisted most of the Old Testament outside of Genesis, Psalms, The Book of Ruth and Song of Solomon.


----------



## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

JoanCrawford said:


> Agreed. Shakespeare seems more popular because of his weird language style than anything else. His work really doesn't have as much depth without it.


Thank you. I am so tired of people worshipping the classics. I almost wanted to be an English teacher just so I could say " a lot of modern language mimics Shakespeare's normalization of English, but he isn't the demigod people make him to be."

I love Hamlet and Macbeth is ok, but I don't especially care for Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet is AWFUL, and I think people who obsess over Jane Austen are annoying.

I used to ask people, ever heard of Henry Miller? Oh sorry if it's not pretentious enough for you I like F.Scott Fitzgerald and Tennessee Williams.


----------



## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

JoanCrawford said:


> I've never heard of that book! "Kravitz", that sounds Russain.


My favorite Russian novel is Eugene Onegin. It bridges the gap between Russian, English and French, and between prose and poetry, and between European Romanticism and Russian Realism.


----------



## Dao (Sep 13, 2013)

fourtines said:


> Beowulf makes me want to sleep, but I loved Canterbury Tales. I really hate ancient epics, The Iliad, The Odyssey, even as a child I resisted most of the Old Testament outside of Genesis, Psalms, The Book of Ruth and Song of Solomon.


I was incredibly excited when I visited Canterbury due in part to Chaucer. I was raised on ancient epics as my bedtimes stories, however, so they're always special to me. My dad never learned the typical princess stories so I got stories about the Argonauts instead.


----------



## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

Erudite Adventurer said:


> Praising the joys of solitude and the reflective life, or the evils of society and the virtues of Transcendentalism, weren't really my thing at the age of sixteen!


HAHA I loved Walt Whitman in college.

He was probably ISFJ.


----------



## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

Irondust said:


> I was incredibly excited when I visited Canterbury due in part to Chaucer. I was raised on ancient epics as my bedtimes stories, however, so they're always special to me. My dad never learned the typical princess stories so I got stories about the Argonauts instead.


My grandfather taught me to read from fairy tales. Real European fairy tales in a book without pictures. I still love horror movies and one of my great loves is Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, by the same dude who wrote Wicked (that was ok but didn't care for as much, I have read the ugly stepsister two or three times and own it).

I never liked Sci Fi, though papa also tried to show me Star Trek and Planet of the Apes.

I don't like epics or sci fi. I love fairy tales and fables and horror. I hated the Old Testament until I was old enough to understand they were examples of sinful people with strong faith.


----------



## Kayleyrae (Apr 11, 2014)

Favorite: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Least Favorite: Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Oh, I also really liked Tuesdays with Morrie.


----------



## Ninibear (Apr 19, 2014)

Favourite: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (fav. book of all time)
Least favourite: P.D. James' The Skull beneath the Skin


----------



## Laxgort (Apr 12, 2014)

·Favourite (Well, books I liked, I don't have any favourite now): 
The picture of Dorian Gray - Wilde (although I found it very INFP and I hate his narrative)
Crime -Welsh 
Tropic of Cancer - Miller 

 ·Least favourite:
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Süskind


----------



## UpClosePersonal (Apr 18, 2014)

I went to High School in the early 1970s. It's nice to see though that many of you read the same books.
I liked Great Expectations and there's an excellent film version made in the 1940s starring John Mills and has Obiwan Kenobi as Herbert Pocket.

I also enjoyed Call of the Wild by Jack London.
I've read The Great Gatsby a few times and don't mind reading it because it is easy narrative, but I fail to see any deeper meaning in it than just what it is. It was poorly received when first published and not until after Fitzgerald died did someone decide to hype it by reading all this meaning into it.

I read The Adventures of Huckberry Finn after visiting Mark Twain's house in Hartford, Ct. It remains one of my favorite books.
I just remember laughing out loud at parts of it. Twain's daughter preferred the Prince and the Pauper which is indeed another good one by him.

I want to try The Tropic of cancer by Miller but haven't found the time yet.

I agree with people who don't see the big deal with Shakespeare. But then, I never could appreciate poetry that delves into more obscure referencing of subjective takes on reality.

Stopping By Woods On a snowy Evening is about the heaviest I can handle.


----------



## aendern (Dec 28, 2013)

Favourite: _The Once and Future King_
Least Fav: _Catcher in the Rye_


generally liked:
Of Mice and Men
Pride and Prejudice (♥)
Brave New World
The Crucible ♥
A Separate Peace ♥
pretty much everything else.. I liked reading almost everything.

generally disliked:
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Pearl


----------



## Jetsune Lobos (Apr 23, 2012)

Really found myself disliking The Giver. Even in middle school, I was pretty much like: "This has probably been done a thousand different times, only almost always ten times better than this drawling hell."

I also imagined the entire novel in a sort of sepia tone inside my head. What's up with that?



Kavik said:


> Least Favorites:
> Shakespeare in general


Atta girl. Shakespeare destroyed what little self confidence I had in high school.


----------

