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book that sucked rear end that one is called a tale of two cities. another book that sucked rear end is called dunno cant remember many of these books. we were assigned zinn ppls history tho was pretty badass
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Aug 18, 2021 00:21
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Smythe posted:high school book i loved well its called cannery row and its about some based rear end mfs up round monterey steinbeck is loving epic as a californian it's also very relatable because its a lot of dust-bowlian themes of extreme poverty and early landed gentry, and boom-n-bust of capitalism and trail of devastation it always leaves behind
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Aug 18, 2021 00:21
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Xaris posted:steinbeck is loving epic yup
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Aug 18, 2021 00:22
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Raskolnikov38 posted:I ditched at least a solid month of senior year English to play video games and read catch-22 i picked Catch-22 from a list for this big essay journaling assignment cause I remembered hearing it on pepper ann. i completely failed the assignment because i was so engrossed i didn't want to stop reading every other chapter to write a couple worthless paragraphs about what i had just read. i feel sorry for the poor bastard who tried moby dick for that assignment. even the teacher tried to dissuade them from it. also, death of the author gets to be a thing cause death of the audience happened first: the author got to say and interpret whatever they wanted first before they published the work by writing itin the first place, everyone else is just playing pretend with their words afterwards.
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Aug 18, 2021 00:27
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Jon Irenicus posted:I really enjoyed The Great Gatsby, which rules, and I think it's by far the standout of the books I had to read in school. we had to read Ethan Frome and most of the kids couldn't get over the pickles and donuts? scene and our teachers subsequent discussion of sexual imagery in novels we were NOT mature enough to engage with. Ethan Frome rips but I can't imagine liking it as a high schooler, its simultaneously too boring and too excitingly dark and riveting for a young brain. or at least mine. Edith Wharton is so good, all of her stories and novels ive read are so good.
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Aug 18, 2021 00:29
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on the other hand, emma and jane austin in general suck. i have never before or since read a book that consistently put me to sleep trying to read
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Aug 18, 2021 00:31
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Xaris posted:i don't know how strictly barthe-ian you're trying to be; but there very much is a literary-style where the author should be absent and the work is in the eye of the beholder with words on a page to be interpreted as how one ever feels and such the historical or material circumstances of an piece or author is irrelevant and should not be considered. perhaps it's not the right pairing because i'm not an english major so who knows "but there is very much a literary style where the work is in the eye of the beholder with words on a page to be interpenetrated as how one ever feels and such the history or material circumstances of an piece " "or author is irrelevant and should not be considered" Yeah that is death of an author. You critique of interpret a work how ever you want. You got it! Huck fin and Jim are gay lovers. "A literary style where the author should be absent." Changing the world 'Literary style' to just "story" A story where the author should be absent. An author has to be really good, or write a story that is stone stupid to 'shove' themselves out of the story. Kid is banging on a piano / kid is writing a story. quote:Yesterday I went to the mall with mommy and daddy. And we went to the candy store. Daddy bought me a lollypop. It was strawberry. And then we went to the pet store. And mommy and daddy bought me a kitty. I named the kitty Obama. If a critic tired to analyze me by that story alone: the critic would think I was a young child, who grew up in a suburb with well off parents, who have a vague political identity of a democrat. quote:Yesterday I went to the market with mommy and my sister. And we went to the chicken stand. Mommy bought me a Marzipan. I dropped half of it. And then we went to the back of the market. And I found a baby kitty. Mommy let me keep it. I named the kitty Fernando. Now I am a Mexican child who is a bit clumsy, maybe poor and may not have a father. edit: and now a super stupid attempt to try and be roman quote:Yesterday my father took me to the roman forum. First we both ate chicken on a stick that was over cooked. We ate half and gave the rest to wild dogs. While searching for animals to sacrifice for the god Nike, I saw one cat that looked like Cesar my father bought to raise it like a proper roman cat. Of course we named it Cesar. mazzi Chart Czar has issued a correction as of 01:08 on Aug 18, 2021 |
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Aug 18, 2021 00:32
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Am I the only person who had to read "Black Boy" by Richard Wright? I thought it was fascinating, especially in the second part when he makes it to Chicago and becomes a communist.
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Aug 18, 2021 00:34
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my bony fealty posted:Ethan Frome rips but I can't imagine liking it as a high schooler, its simultaneously too boring and too excitingly dark and riveting for a young brain. or at least mine. Edith Wharton is so good, all of her stories and novels ive read are so good. I haven't gone back to Ethan Frome but when I was sixteen you could feel something flying over your head. the dinner scene(s)? in particular gave me the vibe of something very dark and adult happening but then, ya know, pickles and donuts something similar would happen when we read An Enemy of the People and I didn't Get It for a long time
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Aug 18, 2021 00:46
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when i was in high school something i read a lot was 2 websites 1 of them was called game faqs and another was yea thats right something awful
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Aug 18, 2021 00:49
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Smythe posted:when i was in high school something i read a lot was 2 websites 1 of them was called game faqs and another was yea thats right something awful 2 girls 1 cup was a literary masterpiece. I heard they adapted it into a movie a while back. If you havent seen it I recommend you go check it out
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Aug 18, 2021 00:56
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Nix Panicus posted:2 girls 1 cup was a literary masterpiece. I heard they adapted it into a movie a while back. If you havent seen it I recommend you go check it out 2 girls 1 cup is a useful historic touchstone b/c you occasionally get people trying to argue that some thing on the internet represents a new cultural low brought about X and people would never have "got away" with doing something so provocative "a decade ago", and if you or anyone else are ever inclined to take them the least bit seriously its nice to be able to take a step back and say "no, you dipshit motherfucker, people were showing their grandparents scat porn to get reaction shots back in 2007" LGD has issued a correction as of 01:05 on Aug 18, 2021 |
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Aug 18, 2021 01:02
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LGD posted:2 girls 1 cup is a useful historic touchstone b/c you occasionally get people trying to argue that some thing on the internet represents a new cultural low brought about X and people would never have "got away" with doing something so provocative "a decade ago", and if you or anyone else are ever inclined to take them the least bit seriously its nice to be able to take a step back and say "no, you dipshit motherfucker, people were showing their grandparents scat porn to get reaction shots back in 2007"  And Lil Kim's Purple Dress.
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Aug 18, 2021 01:07
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school was really good at taking books that were interesting and making them an absolute slog to read with tight deadlines and tests filled with irrelevant questions about what color the jacket was that some character put on at the beginning of chapter 4. it took me years to be able to read for pleasure again. there were also bad books. so very many bad books, but the red badge of courage stands out as the worst. it was incredibly dry, abstract, full of language and metaphors that were incomprehensible to anyone born after 1890 and was generally completely unrelatable to a bunch of 13 year olds in the 90s. it was the only book that i just couldn't bring myself to read and just took a failing grade on the test.
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Aug 18, 2021 01:21
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When I read Jane Eyre for high school I did not like it. Our teacher could not control the class and spent less time on teaching the book than she did on denying persistent rumors that she was a groupie for Led Zeppelin. When I read Wide Sargasso Sea in college though? Hot drat. That poo poo's good, even if it is basically Jane Eyre fanfiction.
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Aug 18, 2021 01:40
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A Gin Palace posted:can they make "combat liberalism" required reading in schools
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Aug 18, 2021 01:41
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honestly kinda shocked how many people in here actually read the assigned reading books. almost nobody read the books in my school, it wasn't commonly done. I only read the books when they were 90 pages or something
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Aug 18, 2021 01:44
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Nix Panicus posted:gently caress Dickens Dick Fuckens
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Aug 18, 2021 01:44
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I did all of the required reading because I was a huge nerd. I’ve been out of high school for a long time and I don’t have kids so I don’t know how it is now but I remember almost all of the books we were required to read were really centered on the cis hetro white male experience. I brought this up to one of my English teachers and their response was “we are gonna read Othello in a few months that has a black guy in it”
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Aug 18, 2021 01:56
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The Sun Also Rises was far better rereading it in my late 20s understanding that it was about barely functional alcoholics and rich failsons ruining the lives of the people around them with no lasting reprecussions.
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Aug 18, 2021 02:14
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Casey Finnigan posted:honestly kinda shocked how many people in here actually read the assigned reading books. almost nobody read the books in my school, it wasn't commonly done. I only read the books when they were 90 pages or something tbf when i went to community college, i had to read a fair bit of those for various english classes like 1A/1B/5/etc again anyways but yes i figure most people just plagiarized since shits been written about 50000000x times that it's still trivial to change a few words because even a homegroan essay paper is probably gunna hit a bunch of plagiarism flags anyways because there isn't much else to say that hasn't been done hundreds of millions of times; or just used sparknotes at the very least.
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Aug 18, 2021 03:51
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Xaris posted:tbf when i went to community college, i had to read a fair bit of those for various english classes like 1A/1B/5/etc again anyways some of the poo poo on the plagiarism stuff is insane. I had a sentence get flagged because it was similar to some archived invisionfree post
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Aug 18, 2021 03:55
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lol fortunately plag tools weren't used at all when i was in college (<2006-2010~) but i can't imagine even coming up with your own poo poo not still flagging because there's still only so many words that can be strung together about something i imagine it's probably really bad now, buti maybe teachers actually take the time to evaluate hits properly instead of just relying on a pass/fail hit by the tool
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Aug 18, 2021 03:58
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the real assignment is throwing together a markov chain script to generate a plagiarism-evading nonsense book report about why ender's game is fascist trash
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Aug 18, 2021 04:11
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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 I read this on my own in college because it was one of those books I'd "missed" in high school since it was never assigned. I definitely got the feeling I would have loved it at 13 but even as like a 19-year-old it was obvious what an insufferable idiot Holden was. That book would be wasted on middle or high schoolers. Poe and Dante were probably the best assigned reading I had because they were both old as gently caress by my standards at the time but really fun to read
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Aug 18, 2021 06:07
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Maximo Roboto posted: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. Steinbeck is really loving great and I don't get it at all why people thought (and think still) he didn't deserve to win the nobel and the pulitzer, to the point he himself thought as much for a while, apparently (I'd imagine because he must have pissed some people off, an American author preaching insidious communistic unamerican propaganda or something)
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Aug 18, 2021 06:12
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Raskolnikov38 posted:is crime and punishment a normal high school book or do they save it for AP/IB classes Dostoevsky is so loving amazing and brilliant that it should be never taught in a school with western modern education practices, the risk of ruining authors because of bad classes must never be underestimated (same for all greats really)
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Aug 18, 2021 06:16
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LGD posted:I read it but I was an AP kid so Russian literature is so loving spectacular that the awe it carries just intimidates people
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Aug 18, 2021 06:19
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Not Important posted:When I read Jane Eyre for high school I did not like it. Our teacher could not control the class and spent less time on teaching the book than she did on denying persistent rumors that she was a groupie for Led Zeppelin. On the topic of the brontes I read wuthering heights as an adult and was moved almost to tears but had I been forced to read it in high school and answer stupid questions on a test about it I would have hated it. It sucks because you have to teach kids *how* to read literature if they’re ever going to do it as adults but good luck getting most teens to resonate with a lot of literary themes.
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Aug 18, 2021 06:30
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dead gay comedy forums posted:Steinbeck is really loving great and I don't get it at all why people thought My high school in Oklahoma didn't even have Grapes of Wrath in the library. I'd put money on this being the reason.
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Aug 18, 2021 06:38
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TheSlutPit posted:On the topic of the brontes I read wuthering heights as an adult and was moved almost to tears but had I been forced to read it in high school and answer stupid questions on a test about it I would have hated it. It sucks because you have to teach kids *how* to read literature if they’re ever going to do it as adults but good luck getting most teens to resonate with a lot of literary themes. it goes back to the fundamental problem of americana education which is treating kids like children for 18 years and suddenly they're free. it's a rather resentful system. and as always, the prussian education model is intended to teach kids to shut da gently caress up and do menial tasks without buckling. there is of course solutions and alternatives to this, but not under capitalism and the way its treated as 14-year long daycare. even with the current system, I do think you can strike a balance though, pratchett has a lot of very good literary themes and is also "fun", as can be vonnegut (whom is sometimes taught in school as well), and others. this is kind of the case but not always.
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Aug 18, 2021 07:16
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American Literature is fantastic, but maybe kids should read something that isn't completely alien to them.
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Aug 18, 2021 07:19
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Xaris posted:I completely agree. it's actually kind of a shame because a lot of that turn-of-the-century (1900-1939) literature is really fuckin; great and then takes a poo poo immediately by 1940/WW2 (which that immediate plummet into the sewer is also a fascinating topic in it's own) but gets better again by 1955+ i would love to hear your take on postwar literature. tell me more about this sudden drop in quality
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Aug 18, 2021 07:54
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Aglet56 posted:i would love to hear your take on postwar literature. tell me more about this sudden drop in quality following onto that, you had federal policies that gave virtually all white people essentially free houses out in the now-developing suburbs leading to the subsequent the rapid suburbanization of america as families left denser-walkable cities like philly, boston, ny, detroit, chicago, st louis, etc with the prospect of a tract-house with a white picket fence and the station wagon. along with the rapid diaspora of american workers, the work then changed: instead of working for a blatant greedy bloated boss high up in the factory loft smacking the whip in factories along the docks of Philidelphia where you and other workers could talk and see it, it became more "white collar" in a wider-range because now they could export those lovely jobs to other countries (granted that didn't happen immediately). but the dual combo of being handed a life of what was really immense luxury and massive step-up in living, relocating out to alienating suburbs, and disconnect of more exploited conditions where you could unionize did a big damper. as we all know, it's insidious alienating and almost a yeoman-farmer esque individualistic attitude that arrises. you also had the shift of more academia-academia and people becoming upper-class compared to what they were in more poverty-esque conditions (and we all know people have a memory of a goldfish), and giving rise to a generation of landed-gentries that was isolated from previous conditions. the extreme "impoverished lived experiences" to gave rise to a lot of the good early-1900s authors from henry george, steinbecks, upton sinclairs, etc was almost erased from living memory. one could also just say the new deal worked i mean there were still authors like steinbeck still writing in the post-war period, largely similar things they were writing before-hand (like cannery row is good), but there was definitely a major shift. there was some good work coming out by 1960 where perceptive people experienced that america was actually still really evil, going right back to where it was in the 1920s, and the awful fascism of the likes of mcarthy, edgar hoover, cia/fbi, allen dulles, the fake cold war, etc. but those were relatively niche in the overall lexicon and essentially lacking any influence that previous authors like georges used to have. Xaris has issued a correction as of 08:24 on Aug 18, 2021 |
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Aug 18, 2021 08:22
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things fall apart is the good one
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Aug 18, 2021 08:31
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Bored Online posted:things fall apart is the good one
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Aug 18, 2021 08:41
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I read Moby Dick when I was 30 and Frankenstein when I was 33 and I'm really glad I never associated those with the American public school system.
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Aug 18, 2021 14:15
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Am I only the guy who liked non-fiction books better while being a kiddo
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Aug 18, 2021 14:16
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LGD posted: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 "It really isn't as good as One Hundred Years of Solitude" has to be the very definition of praising with faint damnation also, Bored Online posted:things fall apart is the good one
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Aug 18, 2021 15:45
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Palladium posted:Am I only the guy who liked non-fiction books better while being a kiddo nope! I liked history way more, it was more fun idk? like it was far better for the imagination part reading about Rome and imagining all the crazy wild poo poo and I remember going "woah holy poo poo these guys wow omfg" I am glad that I did because once I moved into big boy pants literature that helped a lot, especially with conceptualization (ty Disco Elysium for that word) for the narratives, interpreting and connecting and concluding stuff
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Aug 18, 2021 15:52
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