• PolandIsAStateOfMind
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    2 minutes ago

    Harry Potter. I tried to read first book but couldn’t, the cringyness was high and the naming convention was straight up from 90’s bad fantasy book parody. It’s like one of the few books i not finished after i started, and i read a lot. And while the others are just forgettable experiences, HP is constantly in my face in media, reminding me of it.

  • funkforager@sh.itjust.works
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    59 minutes ago

    Rich dad poor dad. Rich dad never existed. It’s all made up grift and, consequentially, people fall for it and make expensive life investment decisions after it.

  • NauticalNoodle
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    6 hours ago

    the scarlet letter. I found it extremely unrelatable, and generally boring. I think The Crucible play by the same author conveys the same overarching principles about religious hypocrisy and herd mentality in a much more interesting way.

    • beliquititious@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      10 hours ago

      I’ve read it twice, and I agree. The plot amounts to spoiled, rich children take their ball and go home because they’re mad the poors won’t let them strip the world of resources for personal gain. The author makes it clear throughout the text that Dagny, Hank, and Galt are the heros for fucking off to larp as robber barons in the 1880’s.

      As a philosophic text objectivism is naive at best and a cynical justification for authoritarianism at its worst.

  • Otter@lemmy.ca
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    8 hours ago

    Charles Dickens wasn’t fun, back when we covered it in school

  • Alice@beehaw.org
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    9 hours ago

    When I was a kid I absolutely loved The Chronicles of Narnia and I hated The Last Battle. I thought King Tirian was an unpleasant asshole and I thought killing the Pevensies sucked because they all go to Narnia Heaven forever while Susan has to bury them.

    It probably wasn’t a bad book but it felt like it ended my childhood.

  • Che Banana@beehaw.org
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    10 hours ago

    The grapes of wrath. I hate read that in about 5 days in HSchool and still cannot stand it. The other books we were assigned I enjoyed…but this motherfucker, nope.

  • JackLSauce@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Can’t remember the name but there’s a novel set in Ireland in the not-too-distant future

    Synopsis implied it had become a surveillance state but didn’t gave up before confirming due to the literal writing style

    I swear every sentence was written in the passive voice (poorly remembered examples):

    “It was made known through the clothes he wore they were sent from the department of security”

    “As she walked outside the smell made Spring’s arrival clear”

    Totally fine normally but do it every single sentence and it becomes a mystery novel where the mystery is what the hell you just read!

    … Or idk, Harry Potter 5 is pretty meandering

    • ultranaut@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Are you sure it wasn’t set in Scotland? Charlie Stross wrote a novel a bit like you describe, its in the second person, which is very unusual and definitely rubs some people the wrong way. I think it was Halting State.

  • all-knight-party@fedia.io
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    7 hours ago

    Had to read Animal Farm for school. Haven’t read it since then, so this could be a now incorrect edgy high school opinion, but I felt that its allegory was so obvious and direct that it had no need to be written and was a waste of time to read when we could’ve just directly discussed communism instead.

  • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬
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    11 hours ago

    For me personally: Triton. I remember reading it 25+ years ago. I really had to fight through it, after circa half of it I put it away and never touched it again.

    So remarkably not my favorite book that I still feel the exhaustion when thinking about it.