What is the WORST book you were ever forced to read?

I guess the book I took the least enjoyment in reading was probably 1984, since we're asking what the worst book was. But I wound up not liking Don Quixote as much as I thought I would. I was familiar with Man of LaMancha, and I thought it would be more like that, but it is much more dry and serious and there are obviously no musical numbers. I've been meaning to re-read it as an adult, and I think I have found a better translation than the one we used in H.S., too.

I wasn't forced to read this in school but when She's Come Undone was on Oprah's book club i felt like I was in a pressure cooker to read it. I am a coracious reader and everyone I knew was hounding me about reading this book. Finally I picked it up in line at the grocery store and read it. It was tedious and depressing and it never got any better it just got worse and worse. By the end of the book I wanted to kill myself. I have avoided most Oprah's book club books like the plague ever since with only two exceptions, both of which I didn't realize were on her list til after I read them, Where the Heart is and White Oleander.

i know these 2 books are classics, but i absolutely hated '1984' and 'le petit prince' (the little prince). i didnt understand them, so maybe that's why i didnt like them at all.

For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Hemingway. I don't even remember what it was about, but I know it had to be terrible for me to hate it (avid book geek here).

Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. That book was BORING and pointless for me. My 12th grade honors English teacher was really into India and Buddhism and Hinduism and yoga and the like, so of course we spent an entire freakin' quarter on this book. This book, coupled with the assignments we had to do for it, was torturous. Then we read Hamlet, which was way better.

I absolutely HATED George Orwell's 1984. It was hideously boring, not to mention sick and demented.

Mine was "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclaire. I was in 8th grade & thought it was just the grossest book. It is still one of the grossest books I have ever run across.

I, too, was forced to read books I'd never have read on my own and wouldn't re-read unless you paid me big bucks to do so. My own bete noir in college was Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. It was long, dry, and uninvolving to the max.

I really disliked having to memorize the prologue to The Canterbury Tales in Middle English... such a waste of time! Also disliked reading The Scarlet Letter... found it pretty dull.

I have another one - for a class last semester, I had a book called "The Power of Grammar" - ugh! Yes, it's as boring as it sounds. It has become somewhat of a joke in my apartment - whenever someone is having a hard time falling asleep, I offer them "The Power of Grammar" to help!

A Seperate Piece. I had to read this in 10th grade and definitly was not a fan. It was very boring and I think the story was very dated.

"Lord of the Flies" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" tie for my worst. The beginning of "Catcher in the Rye" is needlessly boring and extremely difficult to get through. F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Bridal Party" is also terrible and overlong for a short story. I remember there being two pages dedicated to describing a normal dress. Not even the wedding dress, just a normal dress.

I absolutely positively loathe 1984 by george orwell. I had to read it in high school. It was just too out there for my taste at the time, and also seemed to rely on fear and scare tactics.

Antigone by Sophocles.

One book that we were forced to read in my junior year was Lord of the Flies. I hated it.

I am a book-a-holic. I cant stop reading. I love to read. But there was one book in year 12, that I hated so much. It was boring, pointless and boring! It was The Catcher In The Rye. I just didnt understand it....

"The Pearl" by John Steinbeck. Awful AWFUL book!

Junior year they made me read Huck Finn. I. HATED. HUCK. FINN. When they made us write a paper on it, I wrote a paper about how much I hated the book, and why. I got a 96. :P And I still maintain that Huckleberry Finn is a homosexual, basically. :P

Honestly? I think I'm the only person in the world who thinks this, but my least favourite was 'Romeo And Juliet' by, yup, you guessed it, Mr. Shakespeare himself. Just incase you're curious, BTW, my favourite Shakespeare was Macbeth, and my favourite school time book of all was 'Tuck Everlasting'. I was in grade eight when I read that and my teacher was amazing. God, that was a long time ago...

i HATED the scarlet letter. i can't even talk about it. I could never read it for long periods of time. I could hardly stand a page. My teacher said it IS the greatest book in English Lit. Yeah right! There is nothing great about that book. It is the WORST book ever.