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I don’t own a cat, but this is basically the face I made while reading these tales!
I was one of those bookish kids who loved English class and could find something enjoyable, or at least relatable, about almost every piece of literature we were assigned. I’d even read as many sections of our textbook that weren’t assigned as I could because I loved discovering new authors, poems, and stories.
These are the handful of exceptions to that rule. I still dislike these books and authors to this day…although your mileage may vary!
1. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
This bored me due to the slow pacing as well as a setting (a boarding school for wealthy and often terribly emotionally neglected children) that I couldn’t relate to in any way despite honestly trying my best. My family was warm and loving but generally tight on funds for anything other than the basic necessities in life, so the idea of being sent away to an expensive boarding school and not seeing my parents for 9+ months of the year was just as unthinkable as sending one’s child to the moon. Honestly, reading about a moon colony would have been more relatable to me than this!
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I hated everything about this book: the glorification of wealth, the selfish, vain characters who valued money and social status over anything else, the bizarre indifference Daisy and her husband whose name I can’t remember felt towards their own child, the way the wealthy characters threw lavish parties and wasted money while the poor people in their communities suffered terribly, and more.
As an adult, I realize that at least some of these passages were meant to be criticisms of the pursuit of wealth and power above all else, and it might come across to me differently if I’d read it when I was older than 16. But being exposed to it at that age, and after growing up in a family whose values were the opposite of the ones these characters held, disgusted me and I have never felt the urge to reread it or check out more of Fitzgerald’s work in general.
3. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Technically, this was a long poem from the 1700s we were assigned to read in one of my university courses, but I think it’s close enough to count. It was about an old sailor who kills a harmless albatross that helped their ship escape from an ice jam. I was furious with this sailor for not only killing an animal he wasn’t planning to eat but also for killing one that had just helped him. It was a senseless and cruel decision. Honestly, I rooted for the antagonists for the rest of this poem instead of for the sailor. That’s how mad I was at him.
I always read ahead in the textbooks, too! I often did the exercises in them. I used to love sitting in my bedroom doing English homework that hadn’t even been assigned. As you can imagine I was super cool and popular 😂
That’s awesome.
” Honestly, I rooted for the antagonists for the rest of this poem instead of for the sailor”
Isn’t that what Coleridge intended, more or less? I once tried to memorise it in my teens, just as an exercise in memory, and although I only got about a third memorised, I was left the clear impression that the sailor was the villain
It could be. Maybe I missed that.
I don’t know that any teenager is emotionally ready for Gatsby. I didn’t see it as a celebration, but rather an appraisal of how empty these people’s lives were.
Good point.
I was bad about reading ahead in my textbooks, too.
Of these, I’ve only read The Great Gatsby, and I agree with your take on it. I ought to try and reread it as an adult.
Let me know what you think of it if you do!
It’s cool you also read ahead in your textbooks.
I haven’t read the first and third ones, but you know my thoughts on the second one. I’m not sure I could read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner now that I know what happens. Thanks for visiting my blog today.
You’re welcome. 🙂
Coleridge shared your feelings! The whole “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was about how he was punished for shooting the innocent albatross.
I got that far, but I didn’t get very far through “The Great Gatsby” in high school, either. I’d been told that it was about how empty the pursuit of wealth turned out to be for him. “So why do I have to sit through all those words about it?”
I like the way you think, Priscilla.
I don’t remember what I thought about Gatsby when I read it for school, but I remember hating Great Expectations when I read it. It just felt way too bleak and pointless.
Yes, that book was a slog! The poor characters.
I think my whole English III class hated Heart of Darkness. I will reread it one day and give it another chance.
Haha! My class had similar reactions to it.
My phone made wrong corrections, which drives me crazy. I was trying to say that those books I mentioned were very “rapey “. But since im here again id like to also mention how depressing “The Grapes of Wrath” was …the ending particularly…where she breastfeeds a grown man. Come on…I was 17.
Good to know.
Yeah, that ending was pretty dark.