|
there was a brief derail in the afghanistan thread about the great gatsby. people on the internet are often dismissive of required reading books in american education like the great gatsby, pride and prejudice, huck finn, etc., but i hate this blanket dismissal. some of the required reading books really are bad, but a lot of them are good! the american canon is filled with gems, and nearly all of the books you're forced to read in high school have at least some value, if for no other reason than to see their influence in later works. this thread is for talking about the books that we've all read. positivity encouraged. we can also talk about the ongoing efforts in high school education to expand required reading to include more books by minorities and women, but i don't know much about these efforts, and of course they're often fraught with issues. by the way, catcher in the rye is an easy target. if you just say that you hate catcher in the rye or your criticism of the book doesn't extend beyond "holden's annoying" i'm going to assume your favorite band is the beatles. and now, for a book that i like a lot, the grapes of wrath: quote:The houses were left vacant on the land, and the land was vacant because of this. Only the tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming, were alive; and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil, the disks of the plows shining. The tractors had lights shining, for there is no day and night for a tractor and the disks turn the earth in the darkness and they glitter in the daylight. And when a horse stops work and goes into the barn there is a life and a vitality left, there is a breathing and a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws champ on the hay, and the ears and the eyes are alive. There is a warmth of life in the barn, and the heat and smell of life. But when the motor of a tractor stops, it is as dead as the ore it came from. The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse. Then the corrugated iron doors are closed and the tractor man drives home to town, perhaps twenty miles away, and he need not come back for weeks or months, for the tractor is dead. And this is easy and efficient. So easy that the wonder goes out of work, so efficient that the wonder goes out of land and the working of it, and with the wonder the deep understanding and the relation. And in the tractor man there grows the contempt that comes only to a stranger who has little understanding and no relation. For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates; and the length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis. The man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself. When the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land.
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 21:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 20:37 |
|
|
Capital vol 1 should be required reading in high schools hth
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 21:45
|
|
|
Replace all history textbooks with A People's History of the United States
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 21:46
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfowbK4U_8c
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 21:47
|
|
|
The worst book on my high school reading list was easily Great Expectations. The story itself is fine, but the way its told is such interminable garbage. The thing that made Dickens finally make sense for young me was learning that he published in periodicals and was paid by the word. Suddenly it all made sense why he spent so much time 'developing characters', Dickens was writing himself a paycheck. Hilariously we did not finish the book within the school year because the teacher had no concept of how to schedule time around all the mandatory tests and testing prep. I think we got like 3/4 of the way in. I finished it on my own, but from what I vaguely recall across the fog of years is that the core themes are vaguely similar to The Great Gatsby, and I enjoyed Gatsby significantly more than Great Expectations.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:03
|
|
|
the problem is pushing and forcing teens to read literature by obligation, making them resent it. you gotta make them interested in reading first and encourage the merits of reading the classics Moby Dick is loving incredible and can be completely wasted on some teenager that doesn't want to read it and the more you push about HOW IMPORTANT IT IS and HOW ESSENTIAL FOR THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE and the kid is like whatever man this isn't an uniquely American phenomenon btw
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:04
|
|
|
Laughed my rear end off reading Death of a Salesman
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:06
|
|
|
dead gay comedy forums posted:the problem is pushing and forcing teens to read literature by obligation, making them resent it. you gotta make them interested in reading first and encourage the merits of reading the classics Moby Dick is three hundred pages about whaling with a story crammed somewhere in the middle of it. There should be 'Moby Dick for kids who just want to read about Ahab' and 'Moby Dick for people *super* into 18th century whaling'
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:06
|
|
|
Nothing bad about reading those books, it’s just funny to hear praise about them in such a way that it appears as if someone discovered it for the first time. It’s very Book Barn. The biggest dud I had for high school required reading was Anthem. It was a very generic dystopia with a Shyamalan (or Lovecraft?) twist ending that the story is written by Ayn Rand. At least it gives more context to “2112”
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:10
|
|
|
the only required reading book I disliked was Frankenstein -just overwrought and dull to read, and I had to really struggle to make myself get through it which never happens obviously the literary and cultural significance are such that I can't really complain about it being assigned reading, but it was the one time I really "got" what other people were complaining about with assigned reading being painful for them also, while I really liked House of Spirits and dismissing it as an inferior copy is unfair, it really isn't as good as One Hundred Years of Solitude (which was not on the list)
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:14
|
|
|
I made the mistake of trying to read Moby Dick in middle school and my brain went on autopilot as soon as Ishmael and Queequeg actually got out to sea. I really enjoyed the Ishmael and Queequeg parts a lot though, I could read an entire book of them hanging out in a port. The actual whaling stuff went over my head though. Best book I got to read in high school was Brave New World, worst was Anthem, holy poo poo does Ayn Rand suck. Even teen me was repulsed by her.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:15
|
|
|
Maximo Roboto posted:Nothing bad about reading those books, it’s just funny to hear praise about them in such a way that it appears as if someone discovered it for the first time. It’s very Book Barn. we had to read Anthem for 8th grade pre AP history and it was garbage. the story is like, some dumbfuck finds a lightbulb and figures out how to plug it in and then runs away to the mountains and we're supposed to worship him as a great individualist? gently caress outta here with that baby poo poo
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:16
|
|
|
I didn't actually read most of the assigned books it was all sparknotes
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:19
|
|
|
“Ego” revealed as the magic word at the end of Anthem as what broke his conditioning doesn’t even make sense, that word without context doesn’t mean anything. If we’re talking about Melville, kids should be assigned “Bartleby the Scrivener” as it’s only a novella and accurately captures the ennui and alienation of labor of white collar existence.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:21
|
|
|
dead gay comedy forums posted:the problem is pushing and forcing teens to read literature by obligation, making them resent it. you gotta make them interested in reading first and encourage the merits of reading the classics and often requires at least at least a cursory understanding georgeism, class and material dialectics and prominent labor movement of the time to appreciate them more, aka something probably most high schoolers will hate reading but really shines later on in life. but they're also pretty straight forward themes and it's something people do have to learn, at some point, to look at them and think critically and evaluation of material circumstances and what it's saying. it's interesting that a lot of the turn-of-the-century "easy highschool literature" is extremely potent and doesn't gently caress around, then starting in the post-war period you have a bunch of authors just loving and trying to beat-around-the-bush non-sense of post-modernism (or some form of it) making it unneedlessly complex. like the entire stature of straight forward honesty is seen as a gross attribute to have and only noobs are unironic and to-the-point and again you gotta start somewhere, and i think a lot of those books are good starting, but the engagements with them are largely terrible and high school students probably do not largely have the "lived experiences" (lol) to actually understand them fully and the teachers are largely poo poo at engaging them with what they have and why the books are saying what they're saying Xaris has issued a correction as of 22:28 on Aug 17, 2021 |
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:23
|
|
|
You know, now that I think back I don't really recall *reading* half the assigned books, just frenetically scanning them for key points to look like I was paying attention and piecing together the story from a paragraph here or there on each page Later in life I would be uncertain if I actually qualified for a diagnosis of ADHD.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:25
|
|
|
grapes of wrath is unironically one of the most potent and incredible modern books of all-time and its sad how little impact it's given gatsby is really loving good, i'm not ashamed to say it's also one of my favorite american literature books of all time.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:25
|
|
|
Lathe of heaven 
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:27
|
|
|
I read East of Eden on my own (too long to be school reading) and I like how it does a lot of random jaunts into kabbala and the 19th century version of the MIC and has a serial killer subplot, it’s like Steinbeck accidentally writing Pynchon or Umberto Eco.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:27
|
|
|
A Vonnegut book should be required reading for every American. Just pick one. But I think most of them have a few too many juvenile references to get past school board puritans, or at least when I went to school
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:27
|
|
|
Xaris posted:grapes of wrath is unironically one of the most potent and incredible modern books of all-time and its sad how little impact it's given In the context of reading for classwork I hated the first, like, third of Gatsby because the assignments focused on what I felt were irrelevant details about the Jazz era and the vapidness of the rich. In the latter half though I focused more on the narratives and what they had to say about the characters and found I really, really liked the book. Sometimes teachers have a unique way of murdering a book.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:31
|
|
|
Xaris posted:grapes of wrath is unironically one of the most potent and incredible modern books of all-time and its sad how little impact it's given Plus it's not like anything has changed since the book has written especially the story of rich powerful people loving over the common people just to make their net worth go up.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:33
|
|
|
quote:The wind grew stronger, whisked under stones, carried up straws and old leaves, and even little clods, marking its course as it sailed across the fields. The air and the sky darkened and through them the sun shone redly, and there was a raw sting in the air. During a night the wind raced faster over the land, dug cunningly among the rootlets of the corn, and the corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves until the roots were freed by the prying wind and then each stalk settled wearily sideways toward the earth and pointed the direction of the wind.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:34
|
|
|
Nix Panicus posted:In the context of reading for classwork I hated the first, like, third of Gatsby because the assignments focused on what I felt were irrelevant details about the Jazz era and the vapidness of the rich. In the latter half though I focused more on the narratives and what they had to say about the characters and found I really, really liked the book. Sometimes teachers have a unique way of murdering a book. vapidness of the rich is an important and useful theme even in a vacuum at least; yet it'sthe vapidness of the rich in the context of extremely poverty/inequality during the capital-boom era with financial capital consolidation and seizing wide-power in an age of extreme art deco gaudiness or rather extravagance. but yeah sadly a lot of english teachers are pretty bad at these things (because they're often NPR neoliberals -- liberals are bad).
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:34
|
|
|
catcher in the rye sucks, holden is a pretentious dipshit who resonates with teenaged readers who think that whatever part of the veil they have pierced has transformed them into ubermensch
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:36
|
|
|
Raskolnikov38 posted:catcher in the rye sucks, holden is a pretentious dipshit who resonates with teenaged readers who think that whatever part of the veil they have pierced has transformed them into ubermensch oh yeah i was gunna make this post. catcher is dogshit. definitely the most horrible common core english books. it's an CIA op to make people hate books
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:36
|
|
|
Raskolnikov38 posted:catcher in the rye sucks, holden is a pretentious dipshit who resonates with teenaged readers who think that whatever part of the veil they have pierced has transformed them into ubermensch Xaris posted:oh yeah i was gunna make this post. catcher is dogshit. definitely the most horrible common core english books.  gently caress catcher in the rye
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:39
|
|
|
is crime and punishment a normal high school book or do they save it for AP/IB classes
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:41
|
|
|
catcher in the rye is fine. it's short and it's easy and it resonates with some kids. it's the flipside of making kids read books that are too advanced for them: sometimes, kids like reading books that aren't advanced at all. it can be very encouraging to read a book that you understand and that seems to say the things that you're thinking and that ends on an ultimately positive message ("be nice to your sister") plus it makes you want to kill reagan
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:41
|
|
|
death of the author movement is terrible
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:42
|
|
|
Does anyone else remember something called 'Father's Arcane Daughter' or was my english teacher that year given a lot of latitude?
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:43
|
|
|
Aglet56 posted:catcher in the rye is fine. it's short and it's easy and it resonates with some kids. it's the flipside of making kids read books that are too advanced for them: sometimes, kids like reading books that aren't advanced at all. it can be very encouraging to read a book that you understand and that seems to say the things that you're thinking and that ends on an ultimately positive message ("be nice to your sister") the only redeeming feature of catcher is that any teenager can look at holden and tell themselves "well at least i'm not that"
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:43
|
|
|
Maximo Roboto posted:If we’re talking about Melville, kids should be assigned “Bartleby the Scrivener” as it’s only a novella and accurately captures the ennui and alienation of labor of white collar existence. Only if they can say they would prefer not to read it
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:43
|
|
|
I still have my beat to poo poo copy of The Jungle on my bookshelf
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:44
|
|
|
Maximo Roboto posted:If we’re talking about Melville, kids should be assigned “Bartleby the Scrivener” as it’s only a novella and accurately captures the ennui and alienation of labor of white collar existence. bartleby the scrivener loving owns. i didn't read this until English 1B of community college but it was fantastic. but at the same point i dont think high-school people would get anything out of it, maybe some of them that do the ~summer jobs~. it's somewhat hard to engage in some literature of melville, steinbeck, sinclair, etc without having lived experiences outside of a very sheltered 18-year long cradle to understand and engage with. but its also very short so its worth reading
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:45
|
|
|
actually you know what book i hated more than catcher? great expectations, or really anything written by dickens.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:47
|
|
|
Raskolnikov38 posted:is crime and punishment a normal high school book or do they save it for AP/IB classes I read it but I was an AP kid so  on a semi-related note, I genuinely don't know why War and Peace was built up as some sort of unapproachable literary monstrosity in the culture when I was a kid/teen, due to its origin it's obviously long by traditional novel standards and involves a lot of characters, but its totally engaging throughout
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:50
|
|
|
Raskolnikov38 posted:actually you know what book i hated more than catcher? great expectations, or really anything written by dickens. gently caress Dickens
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:50
|
|
|
dickens is the worst i thank god every day that the muppets managed to make one of his works enjoyable south park great expectations is also good but more in a cathartic way Raskolnikov38 has issued a correction as of 22:55 on Aug 17, 2021 |
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 20:37 |
|
|
Go ask alice
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2021 22:54
|
|
