fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6633 ]

[ SECRET POST #6633 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6633 ⌋

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Notes:

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What were your favorite and least favorite things you were assigned to read in school?

Extra credit if you describe what you liked or hated about them!

Wuthering Heights was my favorite. I'd never read anything so trashy. It just kept getting more and more depraved. I wallowed in the dumpster fire of it all.

I zoned out on most of the poetry because I didn't want to have to learn the 10 gazillion mythological references it took to appreciate it.

OMG me too. Loved Wuthering Heights.

Favorite: How To Kill A Mockingbird, The Crucible, Lord of the Flies, and Animal Form.

Worst: Shakespeare (absolutely hate prose/poetry) and Charles Dickens (why do you take so long to get anywhere???).

My parents kept telling me that I’d like Charles Dickens when we got around to it, that it would be much better than the things I’d been suffering through.

And I HATED it. The prose style is just not my thing at all. And as you say, there’s quite a lot of prose to get to any bits of plot.

Shakespeare has to be watched rather than read. That's obviously the case for the plays, but also the poetry. When performed by someone only somewhat skillful, Shakespeare is great. But reading Shakespeare is somehow always so freaking tedious.

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-05 01:43 (UTC) - Expand

Best: everything Shakespeare, Everything Edgar Alan Poe, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Worst: All the stupid short stories because we rarely read long things. Also Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice.

As someone who has no patience for romance stories (healthy/happy or otherwise), Wuthering Heights was painful. I think Pride and Prejudice would have been worse.

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

philstar22 - 2025-03-05 01:36 (UTC) - Expand

I read Romeo and Juliet in school around the time an online fan forum I frequented went through a flame war that tore it asunder. My mind's eye cast the forum factions as the Montagues and Capulets and the show's two leads as Romeo and Juliet.

To this day it's probably my all-time favorite Shakespeare play.

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-05 01:45 (UTC) - Expand

One of the best was The Chrysalids - loved it as a kid, enjoyed it as an adult.

Can't remember a worst, though I do remember having to slog through some things. But most of the books that we read in middle/high school I remember as good and interesting in some way or another (some of them included 1984, Brave New World, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, tons of Shakespeare, Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird)

Least favorite: Catcher in the Rye. I felt like I was just waiting the entire time for something to happen, and it never did.

Favorite: Taming of the Shrew. As a bullheaded teenage girl with controlling parents and a dislike of my peers, Katherine was just the best.

Honorable mention: Moby Dick, because I found the characters interesting and I liked how they were all obviously gay for each other.

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-05 02:02 (UTC) - Expand

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-05 02:45 (UTC) - Expand

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-05 03:00 (UTC) - Expand

My absolute favorite was Shakespeare-- AP English teacher was also the drama coach and wanted us to love it, so in his class we'd read it out loud or watch filmed performances so that we could understand Shakespeare as it was meant to be experienced, like there is a REAL difference even in just reading it out loud to yourself and how you process the rhythm of it.

I'm also a tremendous fan of every short story that you read in high school only to get fucked up over for the rest of your life-- sophomore year it was The Yellow Wallpaper, junior year we read The Lady or the Tiger, senior year The Lottery...

I don't think there were any books I was assigned in high school that I didn't at least enjoy most of-- it seems like everyone else hated The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men or The Scarlet Letter, but I liked all of them!

Favorite: the Hobbit

Least: Great Expectations. It was so boring and pointless. Dickens had a dozen better books, why that one?

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-05 01:27 (UTC) - Expand

The worst: Kafka's Metamorphosis. I dislike Kafka's writing in general, but Metamorphosis is the worst of it all. I hated everything about it.

My favourite: Probably Romulus the Great, by Dürrenmatt. Or The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde. I love that style of absurdist comedy.

Worst was either Great Expectations or The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.

Great Expectations is Dickens at his worst. The Jilting of Granny Weatherall is one of those stream of consciousness short stories that I find kind of annoying anyway, but also we read that one multiple times that year because the English teacher was having some kind of a mental breakdown.

I liked Hamlet and Frankenstein and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

I remember loving Lord of the Flies. I loved survival stories so it having a sort of "Hatchet, but More People" was a good (if a bit misleading) hook. I was also dealing with my mental health slipping away from me and dealing with being perpetually bullied, so there ended up being a lot I could relate to... for better or worse.

I was never assigned Animal Farm, but I finally read it a few years ago and wish it had been in my curriculum back then. Or any Orwell, really. But considering where I live, it was all probably banned.

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-05 02:18 (UTC) - Expand

I'll just mention one that no one else has: I loved doing Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. We basically acted it out and had a great time.

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-05 02:21 (UTC) - Expand

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-05 02:35 (UTC) - Expand

I was homeschooled so I got to read what I wanted*. When I got to community college though I made the mistake of thinking I should be an English major. I had to read The Metamorphosis in three different classes (with just enough time between each class that I forgot enough that I did have to reread). I HATE that book, god almighty.

Favorite assignment: Northanger Abbey. For some reason I'd given myself this idea that I wasn't capable of reading Austen, and that novela was so lovely.

*Now I think about it, my the closest my mother (a sophisticated woman with higher education) came to assigning reading was begging me to read her favorites: Gone With the Wind and Valley of the Dolls. Loved the former, hated the latter.

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-05 02:25 (UTC) - Expand

My fav. was Cue for Treason. I read it several times while we slowly worked our way through it in school and then I bought my own copy of it specifically because I loved it so much.

Alias Grace was my least fav. The plotline is actually right up my alley, I love murder mysteries, but it turns out Margaret Atwood's writing style just does not work for me on any level. I hated it. I hated Handmaid's Tale when I tried at a few years ago on my own too. Her plots are good it's just her writing style and I don't jive.

Worst was Orwell’s 1984, because I thought it was stupid. I’m humbled to see it happening in real time now, but in HS it just frustrated me. Heart of Darkness horrified me, but my history teacher used it to teach about colonialism.

Best were the Shakespeare plays, because my English teachers loved to have us perform in class and then discuss what each scene meant if it happened today. We had so many fabulous discussions throughout the four years of HS.

Favorites: The Chosen by Chaim Potok, Julius Caesar, Persepolis

Brazilian here. My favorite was "A Single Shard" by Linda Sue Park, I still have the book too. I remember reading it in one sitting, and I wasn't a kid that read much. Maybe I thought the main character was relatable, and the unfamiliar setting interesting. (Maybe I should give a re-read, just for nostalgia.)

The worst was a Brazilian book called "A órbita dos caracóis", I don't remember much about it, but I do remember hating it and not being able to finish the book and failing the test on it. To this day I'm not much into urban settings, so I assume it was me hating it for being boring.

Favorite: Things They Carried and The Good Earth hit me pretty hard. Julius Caesar is a blast.

Least Favorite: Things Fall Apart, like, the main character is such a pos and he's so cruel that I don't enjoy the story but there's not enough detail that I feel like I'm learning about a new culture. There must be something to it by my 17 year old ass missed it. We also read Plato's The Republic and I HATED it but I think that was half because the formatting was so terrible. I could never tell who was supposed to be talking. It was a miserable experience.

I actually made a secret about this just this last weekend.

But.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie lives rent free in my head, we were made to read it in school (and watch the movie too) and that is one creepy book.

Favorite: Heart of Darkness, Grapes of Wrath, and Things Fall Apart. I think just a combination of the writing/prose/imagery and the twists to the plot keeping me invested the whole time.

Least favorite: By far the short story "All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury. Didn't help that I somehow managed to get assigned to read it three times(!) at three different schools. The beginning lines are burned in my mind and I LOATHE them.

Re: School-assigned reading: the best and the worst

(Anonymous) - 2025-03-05 15:01 (UTC) - Expand

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