Literally any book that you now dislike due to school. This also applies to other literature styles as well.

Mine is The Hunger Games. I had to read it las year in school and it drove me insane. We started doing the novel study in early February and didn’t finish until May. I finished the book in less than two weeks, so I was pretty much just reading personal books all through English class for close to two months.

It’s not even like we had to analyze it super intensely. It was projects like ‘Make a playlist for a character of your choice’ and we had vocabulary tests every week, that were a joke. It was multiple choice for words like quest and forage. I know that English wasn’t everyone’s first language but come on.

I didn’t even like the book that much in the first place, so all of this was just adding to the misery.

  • just_dumb_luck@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I’ve always loved reading, but I remember being assigned Pride and Prejudice at age 14. I just plain didn’t get it. Like, I thought the first sentence was pompous, I didn’t realize it was supposed to be funny! So I decided I hated Jane Austen. When I was much older I re-read the book and it felt completely different.

    I don’t really blame my teacher, because I had friends in the class who loved the book. I simply wasn’t ready for it—some books need a certain amount of maturity or experience, which I didn’t have.

    • waterdragon-95@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Because we don’t teach anything that’s around classic literature. It’s a bit much to expect students to fully grasp or care what’s happening in such an old text when they’ve never been taught the actual background she’s writing about.

      • FurBabyAuntie@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        I’ve read a few of the classics–Sherlock Holmes, Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys…I read Call Of The Wild and The Jungle Book (by choice) in grade school because we had them at home and my attitude then was “Oh, here book…read book”, but I’ve never considered reading them again. Maybe I was looking for the words to I Wanna Be Like You and The Bare Necessities…

    • plobley@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      My first attempt at reading Pride and Prejudice was exactly the same! I think I was around 13/14 and my English teacher suggested I tried “the classics” as I was a keen reader. I couldn’t get through the first chapter as Mrs Bennett was so annoying. A couple of years later I watched the BBC adaptation and the penny dropped…I read it all the way through then and loved it!