>>Except for “Scarlet Letter.” Terrible, terrible book.
People hate “Scarlet Letter,” but like “Sound and the Fury” it has so many layers to peel back. I teach it to a bunch of bored regular ed kids in public school and a lot of them love it.
There is no greater explanation other than it is a very convoluted diorama of many different aspects of the “human heart in conflict with itself”.
I read it in AP English, my junior year in HS. I found it to be almost impenetrable, dull, and lazy (the pastor "looked into his heart"? The big scarlet A in the sky? A girl named Hester?).
I haven't read "Sound and the Fury." We did read "Light in August" and it was pretty good. We read some of Faulkner's short stories, and I loved "Young Goodman Brown."
"The Great Gatsby" was one I almost gave up on until it started really picking up after a few chapters.
Hands down the best book I read in high school was "Grendel." We read that in my honor's English class in 12th grade after we read "Beowulf" (meh). Fantastic book that took all of your preconceived notions made in "Beowulf" and turned them on their heads. Even though I knew how it was going to end, I had no idea what was going to happen next!