The books you hated!

[TheWritingGroup]

My school's teaching of Shakespeare is a mystery to me, now that I'm an adult. It's as if they tried to teach about Steven Spielberg by reading his scripts. Why would you do that?

-Billie

 

[Kumquatqueen]

She wrote a book full of whimsy. Steam trains from Platform 9.75 and a magical boarding school that channelled Enid Blyton, and it became an accidental best seller. Undone by her own success, she wrote a series of increasingly bloated sequels that relied on magical MacGuffins to extricate her from her own convolutions. Meanwhile she’s retelling ‘Three Get Into Trouble’ again, and again, and again …
I had to read them all to my children. Twice. (I have older and younger children. And of course we have all the films.) Even when they were younger they started to pick holes in the plotting.
That said, I think we have the Boy Who Lived and the magisterial films of the Lord Of The Rings to thank for the greater acceptability of fantasy today.

The first three books are solid kids' fiction, aimed at 7-10 year olds and managing to merge together all the tropes of kidfic - magic, boarding school, food, magic creatures, a Chosen One, in a marketable way not done since Enid Blyton did all those separately (for non-Brits, in 1980 a kids section in a bookshop would be 75% Blyton, 25% everything else). Jill Murphy's Worst Witch was too simplistic (but a good kids TV series resulted), Diana Wynne Jones too complex; Rowling got the mix just right.

Unfortunately she got the idea after the third one and the next one took forever, that the books should grow up with the fans, which seemed to mean more double crossing, spies, death, and love (sex), and getting longer and more despairing. And her editors went along with it, because they were raking it in and just wanted her to finish the series.

The first three films were excellent too. And I've been dragged to HP Studios three times and enjoyed myself each time. But then they get bloated and more importantly, try to be more meaningful and significant than they should be. There just isn't that foundation of planning to make it work. Out of all the kids I know, they all read the books or watch the films up to no.5, then mostly don't bother with the last ones, certainly not more than once. They're left not really caring what happens.

Partly they all know who wins, but also the last 3 films are boring as hell. Go fetch the McGuffins. They're worse than the Sword of Shannara, Something Else of Shannara, and Yet Another Fucking Thing of Shannara, as I dubbed the first trilogy, last time I was stuck for a fortnight sans internet...

The Fantastic Beasts film was quite fun, particularly the beasts. Then the sequel forgot to put the beasts in and was a mess of 'Nazis are bad and magic Nazis would be worse', which I only finished watching because I was on a plane. And all the under 13s I knew just weren't interested in the third one. Some adults I know enjoyed the spectacle of Cursed Child, but all the kids said it looked nice but totally contradicted all the books.

Give it another decade and I bet HP will be one of those many series where the first 1-3 remain famous but only collectors seek out the others. And Warner Studios will expand into a wider bunch of films and How They Were Made.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm chagrined at all the Shakespeare hate! Shakespeare was NOT the equivalent of James Cameron. Cameron is a very skilled maker of popular movies. Emmerich makes profitable shlock. Shakespeare was one of the most gifted and accomplished-- maybe THE most accomplished--dramatists AND poets in the history of the English language. He is widely regarded as being at the pinnacle of those two arts. Nobody would say that about Cameron or Emmerich.

 

[WhiteTailDarkTip]

They're worse than the Sword of Shannara, Something Else of Shannara, and Yet Another Fucking Thing of Shannara, as I dubbed the first trilogy, last time I was stuck for a fortnight sans internet...

Absolutely with you on Terry Brooks. According to Wikipedia he's up to 33 books, not including grapic novels et al. I thought Sword of Shanarra was tripe the first time I read it. Mind you, not far behind was the first(!) miserable Thomas Covenant trilogy. Between them they put me off fantasy for years

 

[HordHolm]

I'm chagrined at all the Shakespeare hate! Shakespeare was NOT the equivalent of James Cameron. Cameron is a very skilled maker of popular movies. Emmerich makes profitable shlock. Shakespeare was one of the most gifted and accomplished-- maybe THE most accomplished--dramatists AND poets in the history of the English language. He is widely regarded as being at the pinnacle of those two arts. Nobody would say that about Cameron or Emmerich.

I don't think there's much Shakespeare hate going on here... it's more like disappointment at the way it was taught to us as teenagers, thrown in at the deep end and expected to a) understand language which is about as close to being a different language as one can get without it actually being one and, b) having something which is a live art form put in front of us as a dry text, without the life that performance gives it. I mean, think of your favourite film, the most enjoyable one you've ever seen, now instead of showing that to a dear friend, instead just give them 90 pages of script and tell them they have to appreciate its genius or they just don't know culture. It's not going to work, but that's the way Shakespeare (and to be fair, it isn't only him, either, but with him the language is an extra stumbling block) is presented to 13/14 year olds. Honestly, I think its a miracle any of them come away with any actual appreciate of the man...

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Shakespeare was one of the most gifted and accomplished-- maybe THE most accomplished--dramatists AND poets in the history of the English language.

Petruchio
Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting —
In his tail.

Katherina
In his tongue.

Petruchio
Whose tongue?

Katherina
Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell.

Petruchio
What, with my tongue in your tail! Nay, come again,
Good Kate, I am a gentleman.

The man was a genius, pure and simple.

 

[cole4258]

To be honest I have never read a book that I hated. Some are much better than others but none hated. It’s all about how the author draws you into the story. Various authors have different techniques but that is what makes a good read for me.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't think there's much Shakespeare hate going on here... it's more like disappointment at the way it was taught to us as teenagers, thrown in at the deep end and expected to a) understand language which is about as close to being a different language as one can get without it actually being one and, b) having something which is a live art form put in front of us as a dry text, without the life that performance gives it. I mean, think of your favourite film, the most enjoyable one you've ever seen, now instead of showing that to a dear friend, instead just give them 90 pages of script and tell them they have to appreciate its genius or they just don't know culture. It's not going to work, but that's the way Shakespeare (and to be fair, it isn't only him, either, but with him the language is an extra stumbling block) is presented to 13/14 year olds. Honestly, I think its a miracle any of them come away with any actual appreciate of the man...

A problem with the way "Great Books" are taught (as well as "Great Art" and "Great Music") is that right off the bat you are made to feel that you're supposed to look at these things in a completely different way from the way you look at and read and listen to the stuff you really like on a day to day basis. And nothing could be further from the truth. Shakespeare is supposed to be fun. There's slapstick humor, dirty jokes, selfishness, lecherousness, nastiness, ambition, but also nobility and decency and greatness. It's a hard thing for a high school teacher to get across to a bunch of teenagers who've never read him and think they're being asked to read a different language. I think it's even harder now because attention spans are shorter than ever.

 

[HordHolm]

A problem with the way "Great Books" are taught (as well as "Great Art" and "Great Music") is that right off the bat you are made to feel that you're supposed to look at these things in a completely different way from the way you look at and read and listen to the stuff you really like on a day to day basis. And nothing could be further from the truth. Shakespeare is supposed to be fun. There's slapstick humor, dirty jokes, selfishness, lecherousness, nastiness, ambition, but also nobility and decency and greatness. It's a hard thing for a high school teacher to get across to a bunch of teenagers who've never read him and think they're being asked to read a different language. I think it's even harder now because attention spans are shorter than ever.

I agree, and that's why I think teachers have it arse-about-tit (and I'm a teacher, too, so I have some sympathy). Show it to them first, and then put the text in front of them.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

A problem with the way "Great Books" are taught (as well as "Great Art" and "Great Music") is that right off the bat you are made to feel that you're supposed to look at these things in a completely different way from the way you look at and read and listen to the stuff you really like on a day to day basis. And nothing could be further from the truth. Shakespeare is supposed to be fun. There's slapstick humor, dirty jokes, selfishness, lecherousness, nastiness, ambition, but also nobility and decency and greatness. It's a hard thing for a high school teacher to get across to a bunch of teenagers who've never read him and think they're being asked to read a different language. I think it's even harder now because attention spans are shorter than ever.

Agree. Also, even when you get the kids enjoying a book or play, having to analyse the text for themes and supporting quotes is going to end the fun for most of them.

Macbeth is generally compelling on stage or in film. Having to write a minimum of 400 words on "Lady Macbeth is the cause of Macbeth's downfall. To what extent is this true? Discuss." will kill the excitement dead.

Primary schools do pretty well at getting kids into Shakespeare, with edited versions and CBeebies' excellent versions for the under-fives that work for any audience (Shakespeare and a couple TV idiots are backstage, so Shakespeare explains what's happening to them as it goes along). It's when you gear up to force the kids to write about it, it goes wrong.

Sure, they need analysis skills, but analysing factual text and media articles would likely be a lot more useful than analysing literature. For starters, they might actually do it and see the point...

 

[SimonDoom]

I agree, and that's why I think teachers have it arse-about-tit (and I'm a teacher, too, so I have some sympathy). Show it to them first, and then put the text in front of them.

I was an English teacher, long ago, before entering my current profession (it feels like another lifetime). I remember trying to figure out how to teach Shakespeare to high school students. It's not easy.

I remember as a student thinking that literature was a code you had to crack, and once you did all the secret meanings would be revealed. "Great" literature is so much more fun when you let go of ideas like that and just enjoy it for what it is.

 

[OffNSFW]

Lukewarm take here--I think the classroom environment isn't a great place to be introduced to most literature or be asked to read critically, but not for the reasons most people think.

Teachers are trying to get students to broaden their horizons. That necessarily means exposure to material that may not connect, especially for an age group that doesn't have the kind of life experience reflected in a lot of literature. Most of us don't deliberately seek out stuff we might not like or might not connect with, which is why many of the bad experiences described in this thread happened in school.

Also--and this is an everything problem, not just a literature one--teachers are kind of boxed into a one size fits all method of education, which is difficult for a lot of students, given that different people learn in different ways. (How many of us learn to hate math because we struggled with it in school?) But it's especially difficult with literature, where the things that resonate with us, and the meanings of things, can be very personal. The final draft of any book happens in the head of the reader. It's impossible to mediate that experience for a room of, say, 30 students and have it land with more than a fraction of them.

The mistake we make, I think, is to assume that the problem lies with our teachers asking us to interpret the text and put our feelings into words. Those things are hard to, but they make us smarter, more engaged readers. I don't think they were wrong for that. But, again, the classroom frequently presents the worst set of conditions for that to happen.

I've revisited some of the books I didn't like in school. Some of them still don't resonate with me. (Sorry, Saul Bellows.) But some of them were just waiting for me to get my heart broken a few times.

 

[OffNSFW]

I was an English teacher, long ago, before entering my current profession (it feels like another lifetime). I remember trying to figure out how to teach Shakespeare to high school students. It's not easy.

I remember as a student thinking that literature was a code you had to crack, and once you did all the secret meanings would be revealed. "Great" literature is so much more fun when you let go of ideas like that and just enjoy it for what it is.

I love this, because it reminds me of something David Bordwell, one of my favorite film scholars, once said: "Interpretation is a matter of constructing meaning out of what a movie puts before us, not finding the buried treasure."

Obviously, this is a thread about books, not movies, but I think it applies on principle. We make meaning out of everything. It's just the kind of animal we are. But it's not like solving a mathematical proof. It's more deeply felt than that.

 

[sapphyrix]

Despite writing fetish porn on here, I typically write some pretty clean and cute YA, and I'm trying to get it traditionally published. Therefore I kind of HAVE TO read the popular YA books to know what tropes are in/out/fresh/already used, regardless of how bad those popular YA books are..........
The A Court of Thorns and Roses series? Bleeeggghhhhh. It felt like fetish porn aimed at teenagers??? Like dude, I write fetish porn and I write for teenagers, and NEVER the two shall meet. But ACOTAR and its sequels? The two met. And it's.... squicky. And not very good in other ways too. O_O;
Another big squick was a YA book I read that had first cousin incest as the romantic subplot. The MC was... young and had her first sexual awakening to her first cousin. And they had sex. And the book portrayed this as romantic the whole way and never, ever acknowledged it was incest????
Also, The Night Circus. Not YA, not squicky, but it felt like one book's worth of exercise in world building, but JUST world building. Everything felt so whimsical and mystical and stuff atmospherically, but the characters felt flat and NOTHING ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Despite writing fetish porn on here, I typically write some pretty clean and cute YA, and I'm trying to get it traditionally published. Therefore I kind of HAVE TO read the popular YA books to know what tropes are in/out/fresh/already used, regardless of how bad those popular YA books are..........
The A Court of Thorns and Roses series? Bleeeggghhhhh. It felt like fetish porn aimed at teenagers??? Like dude, I write fetish porn and I write for teenagers, and NEVER the two shall meet. But ACOTAR and its sequels? The two met. And it's.... squicky. And not very good in other ways too. O_O;
Another big squick was a YA book I read that had first cousin incest as the romantic subplot. The MC was... young and had her first sexual awakening to her first cousin. And they had sex. And the book portrayed this as romantic the whole way and never, ever acknowledged it was incest????
Also, The Night Circus. Not YA, not squicky, but it felt like one book's worth of exercise in world building, but JUST world building. Everything felt so whimsical and mystical and stuff atmospherically, but the characters felt flat and NOTHING ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

Depending on jurisdiction, first cousins shagging may not be incest at all - it's perfectly legal in England&Wales, for example.

Cousins getting it on would be laughed at - lots of "Normal for Norfolk" jokes, but no-one would react with horror.

There's a lot of books that purport to be aimed at adults, but everyone knows the main audience is teenagers wanting thrills. Anne Rice and her pseudonym. Virginia Andrews.

Actual YA suffers from either getting very dated very quickly, or going for fantasy worlds, in which case the author needs to do some world-building...

 

[TheRedChamber]

For all the negativity here and despite the fact this is the 'hated books' thread, I have to say that while English Literature wasn't my favourite subject at school, I seem to have done a whole lot better than most. I've probably forgotten most of the boring ones, but we had Brighton Rock - with its mix of sex and gangsters, Wuthering Heights - with its mix of sex and ghosts and sizzling gypsies, Tess of the D'Urbervilles with its mix of sex and milkmaids, Animal Farm - with its mix of sex biting social commentary. We even did a Jeeves and Wooster story (this being around the time of the Fry and Laurie version). There was also a book, which I don't think was particularly famous, that has stuck with me about the fishermen going over to Dunkirk that I found very moving at the time. I do remember MacBeth being a bit whatever - not my favourite Shakespeare play even today. I'm sure this was all spread over four years or so, but in most cases the teacher was providing information that helped to put the books in context (including the hidden meaning of keys in locks in 19th century novels...)

EDIT: I'm also vaguely recalling that we did Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh, and while I remember it being quite good, I can't actually remember much about it. Reading a synopsis it seems an unlikely choice...

 

[pink_silk_glove]

about the fishermen going over to Dunkirk

The Snow Goose?

That was a crippled sailor in a small boat making several trips across the channel to rescue soldiers.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

The Snow Goose?

That was a crippled sailor in a small boat making several trips across the channel to rescue soldiers.

Oh god, not the Snow Goose!

It's actually a perfectly OK book. I quite enjoyed it, age 30 or so.
But in school we had two problems: one, we had to do it Reading Round the Class - one minute of every 12 year old in turn mostly mumbling, and stumbling over all the big words. Pure hell.
And being twelve, we lacked a lot of the context the author mostly took for granted. Like, Dunkirk is in France. Not the north of Scotland! And it's in the middle of WWII, not 100 years ago. In fact, it being WWII and in northern France is really quite relevant!
The teacher didn't bother mentioning these salient points, mostly being too hung over, I think, so it all went over our heads except for the descriptions of the landscape. Which I assumed was Northern Scotland and no-one else knew any better.

 

[SimonDoom]

There seems to be a very strong tie between "books you hated" and "books they forced you to read in school." That's not surprising.

Whether by natural inclination or parental encouragement or other environmental factors I developed a habit of reading good books from an early age, and I think it made a big difference. I remember reading The Lord of the Flies in sixth grade and later reading it in high school, and I was glad that I'd read it on my own and formed my own thoughts about it before the teacher went over all the symbolism and "meanings" in the book. Same thing with Animal Farm. When you read a book for a class it's like you've got the teacher sitting on your shoulder reminding you, "Remember what I want you to get out of this book!" But if most of your reading takes place outside of class rather than in, then you're better equipped to tell the teacher to hush up and let you enjoy the story on your own terms.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

There seems to be a very strong tie between "books you hated" and "books they forced you to read in school." That's not surprising.

Whether by natural inclination or parental encouragement or other environmental factors I developed a habit of reading good books from an early age, and I think it made a big difference. I remember reading The Lord of the Flies in sixth grade and later reading it in high school, and I was glad that I'd read it on my own and formed my own thoughts about it before the teacher went over all the symbolism and "meanings" in the book. Same thing with Animal Farm. When you read a book for a class it's like you've got the teacher sitting on your shoulder reminding you, "Remember what I want you to get out of this book!" But if most of your reading takes place outside of class rather than in, then you're better equipped to tell the teacher to hush up and let you enjoy the story on your own terms.

Excellent point. Poor teachers have ruined great literature for countless people.

 

[TheRedChamber]

The Snow Goose?

That was a crippled sailor in a small boat making several trips across the channel to rescue soldiers.

Honestly, even if you say the correct name, I'm probably not going to have a flash of recognition.

Oh god, not the Snow Goose!

It's actually a perfectly OK book. I quite enjoyed it, age 30 or so.
But in school we had two problems: one, we had to do it Reading Round the Class - one minute of every 12 year old in turn mostly mumbling, and stumbling over all the big words. Pure hell.
And being twelve, we lacked a lot of the context the author mostly took for granted. Like, Dunkirk is in France. Not the north of Scotland! And it's in the middle of WWII, not 100 years ago. In fact, it being WWII and in northern France is really quite relevant!
The teacher didn't bother mentioning these salient points, mostly being too hung over, I think, so it all went over our heads except for the descriptions of the landscape. Which I assumed was Northern Scotland and no-one else knew any better.

Hmmm, Dundee, Dunfermline, Dunkirk - I suppose even the Kirk part is quite Scottish. It was actually quite an intelligent mistake, looked at that way.

I'm pretty sure the teacher managed 'there's a war on' or maybe it was just a completely different book that explained the context.

 

[SimonDoom]

Excellent point. Poor teachers have ruined great literature for countless people.

To be fair-- and this is part of why I don't really "hate" any of the so-called "great" books--I had excellent teachers. I have nothing to complain about. But one can chafe against being taught even if the teaching is good.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Hmmm, Dundee, Dunfermline, Dunkirk - I suppose even the Kirk part is quite Scottish. It was actually quite an intelligent mistake, looked at that way.

Well, Dunkirk is the Anglicized spelling. In French it's Dunquerque (which in itself is probably a mangling of Dutch), so blame the English for that one. : P

 

[WhiteTailDarkTip]

Also, The Night Circus. Not YA, not squicky, but it felt like one book's worth of exercise in world building, but JUST world building. Everything felt so whimsical and mystical and stuff atmospherically, but the characters felt flat and NOTHING ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

Agree about SJM but The Night Circus was tremendous! I had to read it twice to grok all that was happening and I ’kin loved it!
It’s a duel, carried out by proxies to prove a philosophical point, and it becomes clear that no matter how abstruse the debate, one of the contestants must die. Some of the candidates from previous contests have killed themselves rather than ‘win’.
One of the characters says, “We are fish in a bowl, dear … Watched from all angles. If one of us floats to the top, it was not accidental.”
Wonderful stuff.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

When I started this thread, I was halfway through the American Gods. I've just finished the book. Yeah. The micro-things are done well, often even beautifully. The scenes, the descriptions, the imagery. The dialogue is sharp and witty and very well done.

On a macro level, yeah, the book kinda sucks. I agree with Simon that the worldbuilding is just plain silly and lazy. I could name many examples of why it doesn't work. The pacing is way too slow and it made me skim through certain parts or I wouldn't have made it to the end. There were too many interludes just to introduce a fresh piece of folklore or a new/old god who often ended up barely having any screen time.

The plot is also nonsensical. The way the author conveniently and suddenly made up some quick new ways in which the world works just so the plot could move forward in a specific direction. The gullibility of all the other gods even if many of them are millennia old... It's all so plot-convenient. The book could have been so much better with just a bit more thought put into the plot and worldbuilding.