Anyone else feel like they read too much for their own good?

I'm thankfully out of high school, but my last year we had these really irritating vocabulary books everyone complained about. I didn't like them either, you didn't really learn the words from them, but everyone else was complaining because they were too hard. Personally I felt like the only word they had which actually should have been in there was ubiquitous- the rest of it was words I've known almost my whole life.

Oh, and of course it was ridiculous that we both had to know them and know how to spell them correctly.

All the time.

My classmates whine and moan about doing ten grammar problems. Ten! And whenever we read a novel, they don't even bother to do their work that goes along with it.

I suppose my problem isn't reading too much; just with having lazy, stupid classmates. They're the people you see in B&A asking you to do their homework for them, seriously.

I was 13 when I read The Count of Monte Cristo while in class we were reading such "classics" as The Chrysalids. I tell you, some of the "literature" they make you read in school is unbelieveable.

Yes and it bugs the heck out of me. A lot of people in my class don't even bother reading. They just read Sparknotes or Cliffnotes and then during class discussions, we're stuck explaining the main plot to the people who didn't read the book.

*Sigh*. Today it became blatantly obvious that I am leagues above my fellow classmates in my English class. Students in higher classes got to read The Scarlet Letter (one of my favorites), while I am stuck reading The Shades of Simon Gray as featured in Seventeen magazine. If you don't know, Sventeen is a superficial teenager's dream magazine. It isn't a classic or anything. Really, it's the farthest thing from good, intelligent literature that I've ever seen.

I pointed the problems I had with the first few chapters out (politely, of course) to my teacher, and everyone in the room just sort of gawked at me. Then, at the end of class, I asked him if, since we were reading about a guy named Simon Gray, maybe our next novel could be The Picture of Dorian Gray. He shot the idea down, on account of the fact that my classmates have the reading level of fifth graders.

Has anyone else had to face this sort of problem? And if anyone has a suggestion as to what classics an advanced high school reader should check out, please let me know.

<--- This smiley cracks me up. I think he's my favorite.