Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Silas Marner by George Eliot. I had to read it for my sophomore year in high school. I honestly did not care for the selected works that my teacher chose that year. I did enjoy reading Jack London's works while I was conducting research for a paper that she required.
It sounds cliche to say "War and Peace" but I've had it for 20+ years and never finished the thing. But I have a couple dozen books I never finished, mostly on medieval European or pre-Columbian Western history.
Most mind-numbing book I've actually finished was Faulkner's "The Bear", required reading in HS. That book made me appreciate Hemingway a lot :-)
OMG, there are so many. How can I limit it to one?
The majority of my high school literature required reading list was excruciatingly boring. I couldn't even put them down since I had papers to write about them, or had to participate in class discussions about them. It was total torture getting through these "masterpieces."
I think I may have been especially traumatized by these, since they came to mind right away:
Ulysses
Finnegan's Wake
Moby Dick
Billy Budd
Le Morte d'Arthur
Ivanhoe
Don Quixote
To the Lighthouse
Maybe because I was in my teens, but "Metamorphosis" bored and frankly annoyed the heck out of me. It was required reading for my HS lit class. Most recent that comes to mind "The Colored Sisters Came To Town" by Jacqueline Guidry. I tried really hard to stick with it, but it was a painfully boring read that was going nowhere glad I skipped to the end which turned out to be even more fulfilling.
Abba Eban by Abba Eban. I had such high hopes for this book but it was the most boring book I ever read. I guess I was expecting something similar to Moshe Dayan's biography.
And there lies the difference between a politician and a military man. Eban was in awe of himself and the same cannot be said about Dayan.
OMG, there are so many. How can I limit it to one?
The majority of my high school literature required reading list was excruciatingly boring. I couldn't even put them down since I had papers to write about them, or had to participate in class discussions about them. It was total torture getting through these "masterpieces."
I think I may have been especially traumatized by these, since they came to mind right away:
Ulysses
Finnegan's Wake
Moby Dick
Billy Budd
Le Morte d'Arthur
Ivanhoe
Don Quixote
To the Lighthouse
You were seriously assigned Finnegans Wake in high school? I thought that 99.9% of everyone found that completely incomprehensible. (Unless you've had a few shots of bushmills, that is. )
I've been on a Dean Koontz kick lately and every story I read I feel would make a great movie.
Um, did you miss the title of this thread?
Most of you have mentioned "classic lit," so I will just mention a more recent "literary" novel that I've seen on a lot of you-absolutely-must-read-this-book lists (which I find stunning): Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. So many people raved about it that I tried to get into it, but I was bored out of my mind.
BTW, I had the same reaction to The Hunger Games. EVERYONE I knew who had read it went on and on and on about how amazing it was, so I got it for my Kindle and was bored silly. I couldn't care less about any of the characters and just gave up after a couple of chapters.
But maybe I am the exception when it comes to those 2 books?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
)
