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.
Can I point out the sexism in my 6th grade English (I think) class? The entire class was offered two books to choose from to read: Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, and Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt.
The latter was 312 pages with small print, a thick book by 6th grade standards, and kind of depressing. Hatchet was 180 some pages, large print, easy chapters.
All boys chose one, all girls chose the other. I was the only boy to choose Homecoming because I wanted to feel like an adult reading such a book. (Big mistake. I was bored after the first chapter and was miserable.)
School consistently made me feel like I had to pick the harder path—that’s on me, I’m sure. But this example carried through other choices in my schooling.
Later, as an adult and free from social anxieties 😂 I decided to read Hatchet because these two books were so ingrained in my memory. The book was a breeze to read, I instantly had regrets, no wonder every boy got away with an easy A.