> Lord of the Flies. If anything needs to be condensed, it's Lord of the Flies. (How DARE they put that rotten piece of *so-called* literature on the required reading list?!?!)

Uhm, why they bother putting 4/5 of the stuff they do as "required" reading astounds me. I can think of very few books I read in high school that strike me as good (I'm currently in college and have yet to take an English class, but I doubt it's any better). Of course, the absolute worst offender, IMO is the Iliad, simply because it manages to make scenes of battle incredibly dull and tedious. And all the "great characters" it has are nothing of the sort; they just struck me as whiny people all squabbling over silly things (and the same thing goes for the gods, only multiplied by a power of 10). But I digress...