Books you had to read for school that you loved/hated

[Katherine]

My teacher told me to read sicence fiction books and I HATED them!!



My teacher also read my class Peter and the Starcatchers and I had to go buy it and the second one.

[hpfanfiction]

We had to read and analyse To Kill a Mockingbird in yr 9 and I really enjoyed it. Other school books I enjoyed were Pride and Prejudice, The Handmaid's Tale, Looking for Alibrandi and Tomorrow when the War Began (although I'd already read the last 2 before we did them at school). I really hated Anna's Story, Thunderwith and The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum.

[Byakuya San]

I loved And Then There Were None...though I suppose that was to be expected from an Agatha Christie geek like myself. On the other hand, I hated The Giver, though it seems like quite a few people on this forum actually liked it.

[Robin]

I adore The Scarlet Pimpernel and Jane Eyre. I HATED A Seperate Peace and Silas Marner. I'm still mad at my 10th grade English teacher---once I was in 12th grade (way past her class) she had the class read Phantom of the Opera, my favorite book EVER. >>;

[Pickles]

On the other hand, I hated The Giver, though it seems like quite a few people on this forum actually liked it.

The Giver makes me cry every time I read it, so I don't read it often.
I hated the following: Ivanhoe (talk about long, detailed, and boring for a 7th grader summer reading), The Scarlett Letter (we did WAY too much analysis of it), Lord of the Flies (why on earth did they make us read that? yuck...), pretty much everything I had to read in 7th grade, because at least one main character died in them, and several others scattered throughout. I think the number one thing that made me hate books was the extent to which my teachers forced us to analyze them.
I LOVED Les Miserables, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (yes, we read it in 6th grade), Secret Garden (6th grade again), and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Fortunately, I didn't have to read Pride and Prejudice as a school book, which I think made me love it even more - no papers on it, and no analysis, etc.

[MarchingDuck]

I didnt like To Kill A Mockingbird. Somehow I dont ever think I will. I'll admit its well written and very historically important, but I just couldnt get into it.

I did, however love The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies and The Catcher in the Rye. I also liked I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Actually the Great Gatsby is my favorite book, ever.

[Ange]

Let's see what I remember...I actually didn't like reading Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." A Tale of Two Cities was pretty long, but I liked it. Lord of the Flies was creepy. I loved Jane Eyre, but hated The Awakening. I wasn't a fan of "A Separate Peace" either. A Lesson Before Dying was a pretty good read, but we over-analyzed it. The Scarlet Letter was a classic. Some of my other favorites were To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, and Slaughterhouse-Five.

The Giver actually made me really sad, as did Across Five Aprils.

I know I read many more that I liked...just hard to remember them all.

[draconis]

It seems To Kill A Mockingbird is a really popular choice for schools. In my younger years we had to do Charlotte's Web, Friedrich and A Wrinkle In Time. Later we moved on to Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice and TKaM, as well as The Inspector Calls, which is more of a play script, really. I dropped literature as a subject, so I no longer had any compulsory reading books after that. I disliked quite a few initially, especially the latter two, but they rather grow on you. Particularly since you have to pick through them and annotate the whole book.

[Zilary]

LOVED: Rebecca, The Secret Garden, Pride and Prejudice, Candide, Life of Pi, Romeo and Juliet, Phantom of the Opera (in French!!), Le Petit Prince, Huckleberry Fin, Taming of the Shrew

HATED: Crime and Punishment, Metamorphesis, Heart of Darkness, Tess d'Urbervilles

That's all I can think of for now...everything else was in between (like To Kill a Mockingbird) or I just didn't remember them because I sparknoted a lot.

[Mongrel]

I liked Hamlet, sort of. I'm the only one in my class who liked Jane Eyre, though, and what I read of Canterbury Tales(in updated English, thankfully). Now that I've found out Fahrenheit 451 was about television and not government, I like it a lot more. Oh, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was quite fun, especially since we read it right after Hamlet.
Everything I read in 9th grade was horribly bleh for me, except for Great Expectations. Let's see, there was A Tale of Two Cities(yes, let's make 14 year olds read Dickens over the summer without any help from their teachers), Romeo and Juliet, and Lord of the Flies(not terrible, but they killed every character I liked). The rest I appear to have forgotten.
My 11th grade year(which was all US literature) was a lot like that too. Judging from our required reading that year, Americans have never written anything even remotely enjoyable in our entire history. The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, The Old Man and The Sea(violent hatred for this one--I threw it across the room when I finished)...I don't want to remember any more.

[Ange]

HATED: Crime and Punishment, Metamorphesis, Heart of Darkness, Tess d'Urbervilles

Oh yeah, I had to read Heart of Darkness too...twice (once in high school, once in college). Let's just say I liked the movie Apocalypse Now much better.

And almost forgot...I'm not the only one who read A Prayer for Owen Meany, am I? That book was great!

[Robin]

I LOVED Les Miserables

I am sooooo jealous you got to read that for class.

[Paul]

HATED:[/b] Crime and Punishment

Wow. They made you read that for school? Christ, are they sadists by any chance? Unless you're actually going to read it at your own pace and time, it'd be so daunting, personally, I think it's too long and drawn out for studying at school.. I mean, really. It gets really slow at some places.

I had to read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, which I liked and An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley which I thought was a bit mundane really. We also had to read and analyse hundreds of poems at school. Some were good, but I disliked a lot of them.

[jellyoflight]

Blood Brothers!

[Matrinka]

The Scarlet Letter opened a portal to a previously unknown realm of loathing and repulsion.

On the plus side, I adored the Outsiders, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Vampire Lestat (read in a Catholic school, no less).