We are book lovers. The written word is what we’re passionate about. We can spend hours upon hours upon hours discussing our favorite titles, under-appreciated authors, overrated novels, and what we love about writing our own stories.
If you love something as much as we love books, you have the ability to hate it with the same level of passion. Now, there are plenty of books we just don’t like. Not our thing, don’t read a certain genre, we’re not the intended audience, etc. But I’m not talking about those gray areas. Maybe it’s because I didn’t get much sleep last night and woke up a little cranky, but – let’s talk about books we loathe!
I think the first book I ever truly hated was Johnny Tremain. My 6th grade class had to read this in some sort of combination English and Social Studies lesson. Now, I’ve heard Johnny Tremain referred to as a classic and it even won the Newbery Award in 1944. To my 11-year-old mind, however, this was the most boring thing I ever had to read ever. And I read a lot! Maybe I should return to it with my mature, adult eyes, but whenever I think of this book, I can’t help remembering how much I wanted to throw it across the room and how much I hated my 6th grade teacher.
A novel that comes in as a close second on the hate-scale is another that I was “forced” to read in my youth. In A.P. English, we had to read Bartleby the Scrivener, which might have been the first time I wrote a mini-rejection letter in my head: “Dear Herman, I love the idea you’re going for here, but the execution is god awful. Sorry, I’ll pass.”
But, like I said, the story of Bartleby still intrigued me; I just “preferred not to” read it. It wasn’t until my teacher then suggested Billy Budd by Melville that I knew true hate, and it’s the reason I’ll never read Moby Dick. Two examples of an author’s long-winded, incredibly dull storytelling skills are all that I need, thank you. Sorry to any Melville fans; I’m sure there are things to admire about his sentence structure, style, and command of language. I just don’t see it. I ended up telling my teacher about three-quarters through that I just couldn’t finish. She seemed sympathetic to my cause and still gave me credit for reading it.
The reason these terrible-to-me books were read at such young ages is because after high school, people stopped forcing me to read things I might hate. In college I didn’t love everything I read, but I certainly didn’t hold any violent grudges toward them.
You tell me: what’s the one title you can’t barely think about without feeling enraged?
Sarah LaPolla 
I sure hope you guys have read something since high school.
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I agree – if teachers could assign fun books, or give choices so readers could at least pick the least horrible (in their opinion) maybe we'd have more readers.
I devoured books outside school but almost anything assigned I couldn't stand. (Partly on the sole basis I HAD to read it, though.)
My least favorite was Dickens anything. I think after suffering through Tale of Two Cities I learned to do Sparknotes for books I simply couldn't abide, and I didn't feel too horrible about it, either, since I knew I loved books and reading – just not THESE books.
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I despised George Orwell's 1984. I had to read it in high school and I got through it but I can't recall admiring a single sentence. Also Anne of Green Gables. I think she's one of the most irritating characters in literature.
I suspect she wasn't really an orphan. I think her parents took off to save their sanity.
That said, I did love LM Montgomery's Emily books. Maybe I was biased because like Emily, I was also a girl who wanted to be a writer.
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My sister gave me “Angela's Ashes”, and I just could not get into it – it was totally depressing (and I'm Irish!).
The poverty, alcoholism, unemployment and disease – hell, I can see that in my neighborhood!
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Most recent: Justin Cronin's “The Passage”–how you can take the vampire trend and make it as bleak yet boring as hell, well, I guess on some level it DOES take serious skill.
Back in college: Jack Kerouac's “On The Road”–may have been seminal to the aging beatnik who assigned it to my lit class, but I thought the characters were losers then, and I still think of them as losers now.
And BTW, my teenager daughter hates reading because of all the “classics” assigned in school–thank you, English teachers.
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I hated THE PEARL by John Steinbeck. I liked the theme of wealth corrupting innocence, but thought the execution ruined it completely. I had to write about my least favorite book for a writing class earlier this week, so I read the first page again and it still made me cringe, even years later.
I was assigned the book in high school. I really wanted to like it, but finishing it was just torturous.
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Last of the Mohicans. Am I spelling that right? You know what, I don't freaking care.
LAHST UF TEH MOHEEKENS.
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I hated the Scarlet Letter, though I've contemplated going back to see if it's really as bad as I remember.
The worst book, I think, was The Lexus and The Olive Tree. I think it's the only required book I've ever left unfinished. The entire class hated it and the teacher just kept yelling at us that we weren't experienced enough to appreciate it. I remember wondering why she would even assign it then.
@Janice Haha, I have the same problem with my kindle. I finished a book recently with a cliff hanger ending and my first reaction was to throw it against a wall. I realized it wasn't throwable and chucked pillows instead. Someone needs to manufacture abusable ereaders.
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“A Reliable Wife,” was one I read this year after hearing many good things about it. It was one of the most truly awful books I've ever encountered. I thought the writing was terrible.
Also, I finally broke down and read “Twilight” during my vacation this summer. Everyone kept telling me how wonderful it was, and how I was going to be addicted to the series after I started. I promise I tried to read it with an open mind, but there was just so much swooning, and bright toothy smiles, and vampire nonsense…I just couldn't get into it. I didn't read past the first book in the series.
In high school, I hated “The Great Gatsby” with a passion, but I think I'd like it now that I'm older and I can better understand the story. Might try that one again sometime.
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One of my younger cousins was taking a college lit class and was having trouble with her assigned book and she asked me to help her out. I thought, “Sure, I love books!”
The book was Red Rover by James Fenimore Cooper.
I think I've blocked out the plot, I was that mind-numbed by this book. Something to do with the sea, maybe there's pirates or a storm, I dunno. But I was sorta obligated to finish it to help her and to be all, “Look, reading is…er…*forces the word out* fun.”
I can still remember driving to the library to return it – I was literally giggling, I was so happy to be rid of it.
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The book I hated was Pride and Prejudice, because I hated the teacher and I told her so before I walked out of her class – that was a bad, bad day for me.
But after watching the BBC miniseries – the one where Colin Firth dives into the lake – I reread the book and loved it.
There was one book I threw at the wall not so long ago, but I can't remember its name, it was that bad I’ve erased it from my memory.;) I have to be careful throwing books now; my Kindle can't take too much abuse.
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I think I may be weird in my reading tastes. I loved MOBY DICK and BILLY BUDD (especially the religious symbolism in Billy Budd – that was my first time encountering it, in high school, and I still remember the delight I felt at discovering symbolism that went far beyond the actual words). I loved THE SCARLET LETTER and THE GRAPES OF WRATH. In high school and college, John Steinbeck was one of my favorite authors. I loved all these books because of the messages they communicated.
What do I hate? TWILIGHT and all the books in that series! I love that you understand the passion, both positive and negative, that writers have toward books. I think you hit on something very important with this. We feel very passionate about reading, so we both love and hate certain books. I always feel like I should apologize for hating the TWILIGHT books as much as I do. Not only do I detest the poor writing in the TWILIGHT series, the underlying messages in those books drive me crazy. I’ve told myself I should read the entire series because it’s so popular, but I’ve only been able to bring myself to read one of those novels every so often, and I always hate the entire experience of it. There are so many modern books like that, it makes me feel like screaming. It seems to me that these types of books involve mature themes written at third grade reading level with really poor or lame messages.
There are also many modern books that I absolutely love: TINKERS by Paul Harding, FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen (which I’m presently reading), THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE by Aimee Bender, THE POISONWOOD BIBLE by Barbara Kingsolver, and lots more.
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American Psycho………….BORING!! But I always finish a book. Awful repetition. One can certainly convey materialism and irony without CONSTANTLY repeating the same kind of thing over, and over, and over, every two pages. Good concept, bad execution.
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The Sound and the Fury. Absolutely unreadable but it somehow became a classic.
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