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Back when people read books, they used to make you read them in school, maybe in English class. I was reminded of this by someone mentioning the Kite Runner in another thread, because as a good product of the Canadian education system, that was one of the books I had to read. We also read Ender's Game at one point which was pretty random but taught me that posting on the internet is the most important thing you can do as a human being so I guess it wasn't all bad.
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Apr 4, 2023 11:36
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Mentioned it in another thread that it ultimately led to me getting married but we read pride and prejudice in school. Didn't want to, was a 15 year old shithead who thought I knew it all and this was irrelevant frilly rubbish. Started it and read it in like two nights and completely turned me on my head about what 'old' writing could be Liked catcher in the rye, loved the bell jar, didn't like Hamlet until I saw it performed and then it made sense
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Apr 4, 2023 12:12
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Also read some Austen, which I loved, and one Steinbeck although I can't remember which one. It definitely got me into reading more Steinbeck though. I don't think we read anything from the last 50 years which is kind of strange.
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Apr 4, 2023 12:53
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Weirdly, I don't remember having to read a single book in my native language when I was in school. I did usually try to do as little school work as possible, but I'm not sure if I could have gotten away with pretending to have read whole books. In English class we read Of Mice And Men, Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies. No wonder young people would rather just speak English now lol.
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Apr 4, 2023 12:59
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high school english book memories reading slaughterhouse five and cat's cradle in grade 9, which led to me reading most of vonnegut over the next few years making the teacher very upset by comparing the dialogue in jane eyre to star wars: the clone wars the grade 12 teacher cutting Merchant of Venice because she thought we weren't mature enough... and giving us 100 Years of Solitude instead
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Apr 4, 2023 13:15
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Hand Knit posted:making the teacher very upset by comparing the dialogue in jane eyre to star wars: the clone wars lmao
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Apr 4, 2023 13:26
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Mr Rochester and Darth sidious - very similar!
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Apr 4, 2023 13:28
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vyelkin posted:lmao i have grown older and wiser and would like to apologize for my past words, which were very unfair to Mr. Lucas
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Apr 4, 2023 13:46
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Hand Knit posted:making the teacher very upset by comparing the dialogue in jane eyre to star wars: the clone wars "I don't like Mrs Rochester. She's coarse and rough and irritating and locked in the attic"
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Apr 4, 2023 13:53
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I had an English teacher who was a big Ayn Rand fan. I was a 15 year old idiot and completely blown away by these radical new ideas so enthusiastically presented by my "cool" teacher who rebelled against traditional curriculum  Carpe Diem, O Captain, my Captain! The first thing we read in class was the short story Anthem. Later we read The Fountainhead. I got extra credit by reading Atlas Shrugged and giving a class presentation on it. I didn't really need the extra credit; I did need approval from a parental figure though 
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Apr 4, 2023 17:08
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In Grade 4 we had to read Stuart Little and that poo poo sucked we were way too old for it at that point In Grade 6 we read The Giver though and that poo poo ruled. Baby's First 1984 In Grade 9 we had to choose books with movie adaptations and compare and contrast them so I chose Jurassic Park 2 The Lost World lmao that poo poo was painful In Grade 10 or 11? We read Fahrenheit 451 and that poo poo also ruled But we also had to include some Canadian literature because of the law so we ended up reading this lovely book 'Juliet Naked' which was basically 'what if Kurt Cobain turned out to be alive 20 years later and a lady cheated on her husband with him' that poo poo sucked rear end Also I got to read Watership Down in Grade 12 and wrote a paper arguing it's a work of existentialist literature that poo poo was fun
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Apr 4, 2023 18:02
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I did not like The Things They Carried when I was assigned it in high school, but I enjoyed it upon rereading it more recently.
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Apr 4, 2023 20:48
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I remember having to read The Red Badge of Courage over the summer before 10th grade. I hated it at the time, but I was a stupid loving teenager, so it's probably actually a good book. I haven't had the urge to go back to it to find out, but I do like Stephen Crane's poem "A Man Said to the Universe":quote:A man said to the universe: I also remember hating Pride and Prejudice, but, again, I was very stupid. It wasn't until 12th grade (or maybe college) that I could really appreciate good literature.
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Apr 4, 2023 21:36
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lol stephen cranes lines helped get me into poetry every few years i try to remember a book we read in middle school as part of the era of everyone reading survival young adult fiction constantly and i asked my group chat again today, so I'm posting it to make my memory more concrete this time: call it courage
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Apr 4, 2023 22:38
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oh Christ, i was also talking about i am the cheese with some of my students today. that poo poo was hosed up
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Apr 4, 2023 22:39
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Junior year of high school one of the books I had to read over the summer and write a paper on for honors English was The Good Earth. I remember it being very depressing. I got an F on the paper. Actually I got Fs on all my summer reading papers that year. Still got a B+ that quarter.
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Apr 5, 2023 00:30
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i was right at the right age to hate everyone in The Great Gatsby but not quite at the right age to realize that was the intent and ended up thinking that book sucked rear end for most of my life
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Apr 5, 2023 01:00
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Obasan. What a lame rear end book. It has a lot of lofty ideas in it and the premise of it is interesting but the writing is very young adult in the worst ways.
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Apr 5, 2023 03:03
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Diqnol posted:Obasan. What a lame rear end book. It has a lot of lofty ideas in it and the premise of it is interesting but the writing is very young adult in the worst ways. The Joy Kogawa book or is there another Obasan out there?
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Apr 5, 2023 03:18
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During our Shakespeare curriculum in 11th grade English, we watched Romeo + Juliet and the 1968 Romeo and Juliet because our teacher didn't want us to read the play for some reason. We read Hamlet and Julius Caesar, though, and I remember them both being fine.
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Apr 5, 2023 03:36
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Oh my god we watched the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet stretched out over like a week and a half bc of how long it is
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Apr 5, 2023 03:38
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Patware posted:i was right at the right age to hate everyone in The Great Gatsby but not quite at the right age to realize that was the intent and ended up thinking that book sucked rear end for most of my life The trouble with The Great Gatsby is that students haven't yet learned that the American Dream is a bunch of crap and a lot of authors spent time deconstructing it in different ways. Same with Death of a Salesman. I actually want to see Death of a Salesman where the Lomans are all played by the Trump family but the show proceeds perfectly straight otherwise.
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Apr 5, 2023 03:49
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My ninth-grade English class somehow managed to get through Death of a Salesman okay, but we turned into hideous snarky little shits for Lord of the Flies right afterwards, which feels like a metaphor for something
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Apr 5, 2023 04:26
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Hm, I don't remember all of them, but off the top of my head these are some of the books I remember having to read, back at school: Animal Farm The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Space Demons Looking for Alibrandi
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Apr 5, 2023 04:43
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I read The Mayor of Casterbridge and loved it.
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Apr 5, 2023 04:55
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Do schools not do actual books anymore? I think we had Animal Farm, Julius Caesar, Lord of the Flies, and A Separate Peace in one year, Huckleberry Finn, The Scarlet Letter, The Glass Menagerie, and Death of a Salesman the next year, Tale of Two Cities, Macbeth and Pride and Prejudice the next year, and Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Heart of Darkness, Sound and the Fury, Wuthering Heights, King Lear, and Streetcar Named Desire the last year, not counting summer reading.
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Apr 5, 2023 06:14
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Hobologist posted:Do schools not do actual books anymore? I think we had Animal Farm, Julius Caesar, Lord of the Flies, and A Separate Peace in one year, Huckleberry Finn, The Scarlet Letter, The Glass Menagerie, and Death of a Salesman the next year, Tale of Two Cities, Macbeth and Pride and Prejudice the next year, and Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Heart of Darkness, Sound and the Fury, Wuthering Heights, King Lear, and Streetcar Named Desire the last year, not counting summer reading. I mean, I had to read a lot more than just the two books I mentioned in my previous post. I just mentioned The Red Badge of Courage and Pride and Prejudice because I remember teenage me disliking those in particular. With some exceptions, I had to read most of the books you listed in high school as well. I was in the AP track, though, so I don't know how many books the other English classes had to actually read. I remember in 12th grade one of the non-AP English classes had to read Lord of the Rings. I'm assuming most of the students didn't actually do that, though. They had an extra credit opportunity to come to school dressed as characters, and I had a friend who came as Tom Bombadil. Apparently I was the only person all day who correctly guessed which character he was. He seemed to really appreciate that.
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Apr 5, 2023 06:28
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BeastOfTheEdelwood posted:I remember in 12th grade one of the non-AP English classes had to read Lord of the Rings. I'm assuming most of the students didn't actually do that, though. They had an extra credit opportunity to come to school dressed as characters, and I had a friend who came as Tom Bombadil. Apparently I was the only person all day who correctly guessed which character he was. He seemed to really appreciate that. Oh come on! If your friend was wearing a blue jacket and/or yellow boots, there should've been no excuse for getting it wrong! Terrible
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Apr 5, 2023 06:34
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Thomas Hardy. Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Goddamn that was a loving ordeal when i was 15
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Apr 5, 2023 07:01
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HORSE-SLAUGHTERER posted:Thomas Hardy. Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Goddamn that was a loving ordeal when i was 15 We did Tess, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Far From The Madding Crowd and yeah, that was an ordeal at 15-16. I do remember having a lightbulb moment as to where JK Rowling nicked all her character names though when a single page of Far From The Madding Crowd had the words 'hagrid' and 'dumbledore' on it, as Dorset slang
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Apr 5, 2023 10:11
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I loved my GCSE English classes apart from having to study The Go-between and I'm the King of the Castle. Both kind of torrid but dull coming of age type novels about tween/teenage boys. The most I remember are the stupid jokes we made about what 'spooning' and all the pathetic fallacy.
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Apr 5, 2023 11:34
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I was 16 or 17 and a handmaid's tale was the book that was assigned for national exams and I really did not like it. Unsurprisingly after everyone seemingly across the UK did awfully in the exams on it it got made as reading for the final year instead. No idea if that helped exam tesults
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Apr 5, 2023 12:00
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In 12th grade I had this older teacher (RIP, Mrs. Looper) who was aiming too high for the majority of students of a non-AP English class: Beowulf was my favorite (a bored student kept pissing off the teacher by replacing geats with geeks) Dante's Inferno was sweet Handmaid's Tale was alright
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Apr 5, 2023 12:38
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There was a set syllabus for the country the teacher had to pick three from. His sole concern was minimising his workload, so he picked the two shortest books on the list and a movie. I can't remember what themes Of Mice and Men has in common with On The Waterfront, but I'm sure I wrote a lovely essay about it.
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Apr 5, 2023 13:07
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Huckleberry Finn owns. Of Mice and Men was good. Death of a Salesman was good. Most of the rest was trash Did read some excerpts by Amy Tan in class and ended up reading her stuff for fun. Gambit from the X-Men posted:oh Christ, i was also talking about i am the cheese with some of my students today. that poo poo was hosed up oh yeah this one
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Apr 5, 2023 13:22
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Why do I feel like I read Hatchet like at least three times between elementary and middle school? also I read A Separate Peace once in 9th grade AP english and I got so bored of it that I dropped into regular 10th grade english - where I had to read A Separate Peace again! Son of a bitch!
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Apr 5, 2023 13:26
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I remember my delight at reading John Donne's poetry and discovering how horny he was 
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Apr 5, 2023 13:35
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We read Catcher in the Rye at one point and I was just the right age to passionately hate Holden Caulfield, which I did, but more importantly my family owned a VHS of the very bad Mel Gibson movie Conspiracy Theory in which he compulsively buys copies of Catcher in the Rye as a way for his handlers to track him and so while reading the book I kept just wondering wtf was the relationship between those two pieces of media.
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Apr 5, 2023 13:52
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Pepe Silvia Browne posted:Why do I feel like I read Hatchet like at least three times between elementary and middle school? probably because Hatchet beats rear end
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Apr 5, 2023 13:56
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Patware posted:probably because Hatchet beats rear end yeah but it's not the only book (or, because this was a public school, it may have been)
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Apr 5, 2023 14:28
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