I never hated reading, it's just that I didn't get the point of it. What are we even doing here and why?

What's the point? Math has clear purpose. I do enjoy some books. I just didn't get the point of studying them beyond reading. Why are they babbling about ? Is there any use for this information or is it just a torture in memorization? Why would I ever care about all these abstract literature terms?

Ironically they missed telling the meta story: why would anyone care about stories.

If stories are just something you read for fun, why would anyone care to teach me how to analyze them?

I completely agree with this. I loathed Shakespeare in school. Now I try to get a visit every year to the Stratford Festival (in Stratford, Canada) to see at least one or two Shakespearean plays.

I also remember reading 1984 on my own time in high school- it wasn't in the curriculum the year I might have. It blew me away. But if I'd been forced to read it, I probably would have been bored.

For other HN readers:

I was like this too. I had no interest in ol' Bill. Then I read his 'best' works. And then I read them again. It takes a bit to get really used to iambic pentameter, to the old words, to the places and people he was writing for, to his limitations of candlelight and lack of amps, etc.

Reader, it is totally worth it.

There are very many very good reasons that he is still produced and studied. I encourage you in this new year to give him a solid try. Not just a play or two. Read him and watch the plays at the same time. There are hundreds of productions on YT for every play of his, all free, most very good.

To add to this, Shakespeare might sound dry, but it's the same as if you read a screenplay instead of watching a movie; plays are meant to be seen, not (only) read.

Something else that might impact our current understanding is that we are not in their time period, so many things we don't understand might be specific to their time, even if we get the broad strokes and very human themes, such as love or revenge. It's the same as if someone 400 years from now saw the movies we put out, some things are just very specific to the time and place.

There's also the change in English and pronunciation too, of course.

My issue was the volume we were expected to read, or at least volume on top of books I wasn't interested in reading.

And exams.

Learning is one thing, being tested on facts and trivia is totally something else.

I woudl get so far ahead on the books I'd forget trivial things thye'd ask on the quizz. In high school our teacher made us read The Sword of Shanarah (~1991). I remember missing a question on a quizz because it was about a first encounter with Allanon where I answered about later in the book. But the teacher was a smart person, he just gave me the final exam on the book which I passed. So I got opted out of the quizzes. He had a whole group of nerds who were way onto scions of Shanarah or later. But this was a private school.

He told me that the reason he chose that book was that it was actually easy and a page turner, but also different than what most kids read. But most of all he chose it cause it's a big honking bok. To that point at the end of the class 90% of the kids had near on finished the book. Even the laziest kid in class had to agree that no it wasn't a big chore to read that big of a book if you broke it down and they weren't afraid of big books anymore.