That is entirely possible, and maybe I will do so. But that would be irrelevant to this thread. The point is what I thought of it as a high school student, whether the book (or the way in which it was taught) had any educational value to me at that time, and whether it might have turned me off to the idea of reading if I had not already been interested in reading. There are many books I’ve read post-high school (some enjoyable, some not so much) from which I’ve learned a lot, but which would have been meaningless to me as a teenager, and I never would have picked them up if I had learned in school that reading was just a dreary chore and an externally-imposed obligation.

In one of my college classes we read A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. I hated it, but I’m glad I read it because it gave me a chance to think about certain ideas and about WHY I disagree with them, based in part on my own knowledge and life experience as an older, returning student. But I’m glad I didn’t read A Small Place in high school. It would have accomplished nothing at that time, and furthermore, the prof wasn’t really interested in discussing alternative perspectives; his perspective (it’s a “wonderful” book, “let’s not tear it apart” with any different views) was the only one that mattered. This was generally my impression with regard to literary analysis in high school: that the teacher’s interpretation was the “right” one, and the students were expected to reach the same conclusion.

By contrast, I had one college class in which we discussed Beatles songs, and the prof was interested in each student’s ideas. She even made the point that the Beatles themselves thought that other peoples’ interpretations of their songs were perfectly valid. I learned a lot from that prof, and not just about the Beatles.