The Book List

[schizoauthoress]

Replies frozen on all current comments. New comments are possible.

Stolen from helviti

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.


1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Italicize those you intend to read.

3) Underline the books you LOVE.

4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them! ...forcing books upon people generally only results in people rebelling and hating to read.

Oh, for goodness' sake, people, it was a tiny little comment!

Clearly, with coming from different parts of the country, we all do have different experiences when it comes to our education. I stand by my statement that FORCING books upon someone, simply because "this is the book we must teach with", simply because "this is classic literature, and anything else you read is trash", is a BAD IDEA.

Of the 32 books I've read from this list, I only really and truly enjoyed eight. (Double check the number that I've underlined). EVEN IF someone as "literate" as I am reads the one hundred books on this list, it's no guarantee that they will enjoy them all. As a matter of fact, I HATE Lord of the Rings, Gone with the Wind, and The Great Gatsby. Yes, I recognize their literary value, and yes, I am glad that I at least read the books and gave them a chance. But I still didn't enjoy them. Of those three I named, only The Great Gatsby was required reading, that I did for a senior-year English course. The other two, I chose to read. Freely. Had someone forced me to -- or I was constantly told that I HAD to read it because it was SO GOOD (Dune a case in point) -- I doubt I would have even picked the book up.

Telling me I have to read something because it's "a classic"? Going to backfire on you. Telling me that I ought to read something because it's a good book? Will probably at least get my interest.

FORCING BOOKS ON ME DOES NOT WORK.

And I've seen the same thing happen to other people in my classes. Which is why I said "people" would rebel and hate reading.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Elliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (Before any of you jump down my throat about not wanting to read "Dune" -- frankly, I don't give a damn)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Also don't give a damn about this book, so don't say anything to me about it.)

32 out of 100

Comments

(frozen)

[helviti.livejournal.com]

lulz. For some reason, I don't think that the forcing books upon people bit was meant seriously.

(frozen)

[schizoauthoress.livejournal.com]

Heh. Whether or not it's serious, I've seen people begin to hate reading because certain books were forced on them.

Me, I was getting in trouble in middle school for reading "Number the Stars" when I was supposed to be paying attention to the Bill Nye videos. ^_^ But some people, it's like pulling teeth to even get them to pick up a skinny little book like "Of Mice and Men".

(frozen)

[helviti.livejournal.com]

Reading Of Mice and Men WAS like pulling teeth. For me, at least. XD

(frozen)

[schizoauthoress.livejournal.com]

It can be a difficult little bugger, can't it? XD

Perhaps I should have said, "The Day No Pigs Would Die" (imo, a much easier book to read), which is about the same size/length. But you get the idea.

(frozen) Books I dun readed.

[bluezybunny.livejournal.com]

Read out of necessity:

The bible
Harry Potter
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Chronicles of Narnia
Animal Farm



Read of my own Accord:

Alice in Wonderland



A vast majority of the best-sellers don't impress me one iota. And I agree, I used to read all the time until schools forced me to read best-sellers. Now I've lost ineterest.

-Quip

(frozen)

[seventypercent.livejournal.com]

Hm, I've read 36/100. I was really surprised at a lot of the ones they listed, they had three of my All Time Favorites Ever on here, which I didn't expect! (Brideshead Revisited, The Great Gatsby, and One Hundred Years of Solitude)

Anyway, it makes me sad that reading for school makes people stop reading. I've never understood that, actually, but I think that's just because I really value the written word and kind of understand why classics become classics, and why they want to teach them in schools. I can see not enjoying having to pick apart books in class, but I can't see how that translates to a desire not to read in general. But that's just me.

(frozen) Chores!

[bluezybunny.livejournal.com]

Then allow me to explain. See, what the school does is turn reading into a chore. Imagine if playing video games you don't like was required by the school, and the games that have been selected for you were based on their popularity, and not because they harbor any exclusive educational value. I'm talking about popular games such as "Madden NFL", "The Sims", and "Who wants to be a Millionaire? for your PC" to name a few. Not only are you supposed to play those games for months at a time, you're also supposed to find all the easter eggs in them, get all the achievement points, and write ten-page long reports about what the most significant things in those games are (not significant to you, significant to your teacher). Imagine doing this for one game every semester for six years in a row.

Now try going back to one of your old favorites without looking for easter eggs, without trying to get achievement points, and without trying to look for significant meaning behind the games. Try playing them for fun. It's not easy. It becomes a chore just to try to have fun playing a game you used to have fun playing.

Now imagine schools give you books you don't like to read expressly because they're popular and not because they harbor any exclusive educational value. Imagine they tell you you have to point out where in the book certain vocabulary words appear (words you're already familiar with the meaning to), find the author's meaning behind certain passages (whether or not the author intended any special meaning at all), and then psychoanalyze every significant character in the story so you can write a 10-page essay on it all.

You may not realize this, but I can find foreshadowing, irony, vocabulary words, and all manner of significant meaning behind books that I liked to read, books such as the Star Trek, Forgotten Realms, or the Wizard of OZ series to name a few. Maybe they weren't all popular, but if I cared about what's popular, my book of choice would probably be fashion magazines anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I still read, but mostly stuff I find online about politics and science, namely because my taste for fiction got burned in Fahrenheit 451. One thing that I don't understand, and maybe you can elaborate for me, is why the alleged 'classics' ought to be taught in school over any other book? I realize it's tough for teachers to keep up with what everyone is reading, but is enforcing 'classiness' really worth the price of overall student reading interests?

-Quip

(frozen) Re: Chores!

[helviti.livejournal.com]

I'm going to sort of answer parts of this, but from the looks of it, your high school education was different than mine. The reason why WE read the alleged classics is because our English classes and history classes sort of worked together, so when we were studying the Civil War, we read The Red Badge of Courage; we did this every year except for senior year when we read some of Shakespeare's plays and then a few books of our choice.

Now, you say most classics don't harbor exclusive educational value, and maybe this is correct for some, but there are a few issues with teaching, say... a book about Drizzt Do'Urden as opposed to Crime and Punishment. I love both of them and number them among my favorites, but I don't take something different away from any Forgotten Realms book each time I read it. Also, Drizzt books don't mean different things to different people; people don't regularly talk about how that book changed their views on the criminal mind or evil. People don't call RA Salvatore "the only psychologist left to learn anything from." The biggest difference between books written pre-1970s and books written now is that books written now are mostly written for entertainment, whereas Crime and Punishment was written to study the criminal mind and Watership Down was written to combat certain forms of government and ignorance. It's easier to turn that into an educational force because it was meant to be one.

You're wrong if you think that people pick things like Heart of Darkness for its popularity. Some teachers don't teach it correctly, true, but the REASON it's taught is because of the controversy over it and the historical context it's in. The fact that Joseph Conrad was a brilliant writer is also a plus, but the actual popularity has little to nothing to do with why it was chosen. I think your issue is that you had teachers who had no idea what they were doing.

Also, in a few of my other classes (Creative Writing and senior English), we read modern books - Ender's Game (a little old, but hey), The Kite Runner, A Walk in the Woods, and Speak among others. Some of them are popular, some aren't. The only thing really similar about them is that they're newer and the students hated them just as much, if not moreso, than Shakespeare & co.

I don't think people don't like classics; I think they just have an issue with reading books in school. Or maybe just reading books in general.

(frozen) Re: Chores!

[schizoauthoress.livejournal.com]

You're wrong if you think that people pick things like Heart of Darkness for its popularity. Some teachers don't teach it correctly, true, but the REASON it's taught is because of the controversy over it and the historical context it's in. The fact that Joseph Conrad was a brilliant writer is also a plus, but the actual popularity has little to nothing to do with why it was chosen. I think your issue is that you had teachers who had no idea what they were doing.

Perhaps "popularity" isn't the word. But I do know that one of my English teachers from senior year was teaching us The Great Gatsby and Heart of Darkness because it's what the syllabus called for, not because he particularly liked it. And he knew that lots of us wouldn't like the books, or wouldn't understand the underlying themes right away...but he did try. We still had to do vocabulary and write essays and all this stuff, when honestly, I think that a good discussion probably could have kept some of the slackers more engaged (though, really, there are some dedicated slackers for whom nothing works).

Do the classics have some intrinsic educational value that more recent, or modern books don't? I'm not sure that's true. We can recognize the educational value and the underlying themes because lots of people who came before us have done so, too. This is an example from Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls novel.

One of the characters, named Nothing (though he also has a normal name that he doesn't use), is asked by his teacher about Lord of the Flies and why the main character has trouble killing Jack (I think -- the kid who led the hunters, anyway). Nothing says it's because of the love between Jack and the main character that they won't acknowledge (or something to that effect). Nothing gets laughed at for reading homosexual subtext in the novel, and the teacher gets angry with him. But who's to say that that is NOT a valid interpretation? No one but the scores of analyzers who came before Nothing/Ms. Brite.

Maybe teachers and curriculum creators like the classics because they can always steer the discussion and interpretations to something that is considered "right". Just a thought.

(frozen) Re: Chores!

[helviti.livejournal.com]

I was more comparing a classic to a Forgotten Realms novel, not modern books in general. The thing with things like FR & Star Trek books is that they're more focused on the plot (for obvious reasons) so that the bones of the books tend to be weaker than the actual flesh.

And again, I said I could only answer it from my experience where I know that the reason we read certain books was for historical context - we read books about that time from that time. A book about Drizzt Do'Urden wouldn't really fit in well in a section on Puritan New England. Part of my point was that maybe generalizing the reasoning behind why teachers pick certain books is a bad idea since it's obviously completely different for different schools. I mean, the only time I've taken an English class not connected to a history class, it was mostly a pick your own book sort of thing. *shrugs*

(frozen) Re: Chores!

[schizoauthoress.livejournal.com]

Good point. Of course, these "series" books tend to be a bit weak overall in the "underlying message" realm...you're right, they are plot-focused. Anything you need to know is pretty much spelled out, and almost every attempt at tackling "issues" like racism or classism feel fairly heavy-handed.

Most of my English classes have been linked to the History class I took also. I see what you mean about not reading a Drizzt book and trying to connect it to, say, the civil rights movement. I was just replying in a more general way. Sorry if I misread you.

(frozen) Re: Chores!

[bluezybunny.livejournal.com]

Yes, it seems our highschool educations were very different. Our history and English classes couldn't synchronize with eachother at all because history itself was only one of the many required social studies credits. Not only could any student take history class at any time during their highschool career, our history class basically went from ancient Rome to modern American politics in the span of the school year. The only other history class we had was American history, which basically focused more detail on our country and that's it. There was still no way for our English teachers to know which students were taking which history courses and when, though, and since we had four different social studies courses to choose from in three years of highschool social studies credits, we had enough leg room to skip one of those history classes. So perhaps ours were out of whack and that's why I'm not seeing the relevance to their choice in books.

Certainly I'm not suggesting that the teachers require Forgotten Realms or Star Trek as reading material (I tried to allude to that but I guess I wasn't clear). I just think, on the same token, they should also not require classics which contain no exclusive relevance. Animal Farm, for example, was quite droll and I would've been far more compelled to simply read the history behind the goings-on than overly-stylized and exaggerated fiction about it. There's no accounting for taste, and I hope you wouldn't hold it against me to want the objective facts rather than one author's twisted point of view. Mein Kampf has equal, if not more historical value than a book like Animal Farm, so why aren't we reading it? Please don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting we read either of their opinions, but I don't want a twisted point of view in one person's favor, regardless of whether it's Adolf Hitler or George Orwell. If I want to learn about history, I'll read a history book. If I want a story with good morals in it, I'll read Doctor Seuss.

I can tell you, there are people who don't like classics but who loved reading in general, and I'm one of those people. I did like Shakespear, though. Anyway, my point is that there's no accounting for taste. I find more educational value in non-fiction, so when it comes to literacy class, I don't think a book like Animal Farm is any more relevant than, for example, Drizzt Do'Urden (though I've never actually read any books about Drizzt, I hope you get my point).

-Quip

(frozen) Re: Chores!

[helviti.livejournal.com]

Okay, something I just assumed you knew: there's no such as a 'classic fiction' genre and the 'classics' genre consists of things written essentially pre-1960 (the date is a little fudged and opened for change). So Dr. Seuss is a classic, as is Mein Kampf (which, incidentally, certain classes at my school DID read, so your point doesn't make much sense to me there), and as is The Wizard of Oz (which would've been a better example instead of Animal Farm because we had to play Populist "Where's Waldo?" with it). Other popular classics include The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.
We read The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which was taught during the pre-Civil War sections. Another is, for the Taoism and Asian religions section, the Tao Te Ching. Also not fiction, at least if you're Taoist.

You seem to be particularly against the idea of classic fiction just because you would rather read the history... you're pretty alone in that, I think. I've been in two classes where we got to choose between having a history text and an anthology of literature as our primary text - both times, the anthology was chosen. I know there are people who'd rather read history, but your argument becomes a whole lot less objective when you start dragging your own personal tastes into it and I'm having a hard time answering it because all I can really say is "Don't go into English."

Literacy classes focus on style as much as the fact that it's fiction, too. So Drizzt Do'Urden wouldn't be much use in a class on Russian literature pre-1900. There are fantasy genre classes, though, and there's a chance he'd be taught in one of those.

I'm getting a little rushed here, so I'm not going to go back through what I just said to edit it, but: if you got an education in which you read more fiction than not, then you got a bad education as classics hold more non-fiction than fiction in them. Also, I'm surprised that you didn't study, say, The Declaration of Independence and others.

Also- in keeping with what I was saying earlier, I doubt most people would make the distinction between classics and modern literature in regards to their taste as The Lord of the Rings reads nothing like Emily Dickenson. I think people like more 'classics' than they realize because 'classics' isn't as limited as people seem to think it is.

ETA: Food for a thought. This certainly isn't true when concerning Orwell or Hitler, but much of older history is based off of stuff deemed as 'fiction.' The King Arthur legends, for example. And, in Russia, they didn't really start writing down their history until 989 AD and even their histories after that are considered fiction in many respects. You read in a history text that "Vladimir sent out ambassadors to study different religions in 988," but the only place historians really got that from was "Vladimir Christianizes Russia," in which Vladimir does things like drag the old sun god into the river and drown him. You'd be surprised at how much stuff cooked up and present as hard, dry fact is actually based on stories such as that and is just a general opinion of what happened.

Keeping in that line of thought, a history text that says "Vladimir christianized Russia in 989 AD after he was baptized to marry Basil II's sister," doesn't really get into the thoughts and feelings of the people at the time, which is part of the reason for high school English- you're supposed to get a glimpse of different opinions and the culture along with the styles and such of the time - reading about it doesn't quite have the same effect as actually reading it. A good example of this is the couple of pages devoted to Russian suffering and how ingrained in them it was in my Russian history text - okay, so now I know that, but it didn't really hit home until I'd read Russian literature from "Boris and Gleb" (~995) to Crime and Punishment (1866) to "Wooden Horses" (~1970), which contained the words "suffering," "woe," and "wept" on almost every single page.

(frozen) Re: Chores!

[bluezybunny.livejournal.com]

I'm objective enough that I'd be saying the schools shouldn't choose which books the kids read for a literary course whether or not I loved these books, so this isn't about a temper-tantrum on my part. I also advocate drug legalization and homosexual rights without being a fag-toting homosexual (tee hee, I made a subeeism!). What this is about for me is resolving a fundamental problem with our education system, and I'm hoping we have that as a common goal. I also hope you're not suggesting we keep things the same as they have been on account that the results work on paper despite not working in practice. I only used myself as an example because I find it's easier to make testimonials on my own behalf than on behalf of hypothetical students who may not even exist. If I didn't have myself as an example, you'd see me working with whatever else is available. When I suggested leaving culture and history to history class, it wasn't just a matter of personal taste, I really think we should leave these things to history class. When it comes to literacy, no one is especially required to read historical fiction over, say, their book of preference. You can find literary value in any book. If people are looking for cultural value, they should find it in social studies where it belongs.

Now that we're not looking for hidden meaning behind my words, let's focus on the actual argument at hand, namely to pinpoint the cause and possible solution to our lack of student literary interests. I brought up Mein Kampf as a ridiculous but relevant example of the kind of book we shouldn't be teaching in literacy courses, and was hoping the comparison could be made by it holding equal footing with the books we're already required to read. If they actually are making Mein Kampf required reading in literacy class, all the worse. If you're wondering why literacy class would make students less interested in books, your answer is right there: the schools are requiring students to read books of social propaganda. This belongs in social studies.

Perhaps a book like Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia aren't exactly propaganda (the latter of which is debateable), but I find neither of them especially appealing because the plots are extremely black and white (which coinsidentally reads exactly like propaganda to me, but I digress). If I can't identify with the author, how am I going to enjoy his book? How can other students be expected to find value in these books that they can't find in their book of choice? I hope you can at least concede that if our goal is to get students interested in reading, we shouldn't be picking stories for them that they may not like.

I think it's good that we're defining 'classic'. I guess it's a tough word to pinpoint. I wouldn't define it by its age, though; movies like Star Wars became 'instant classics' which suggests to me that a classic doesn't even have to be a year old. I'd say a story's classical value has to do more with how well they're received, or in other words, that a story's class is based on how wide of a target audience a story can pull in, hence my referring to it as being based on popularity. In a way, it's a smart move because you're more likely to rope in students with a book that caters to a wider audience, but then you're affording special interest and neglecting the students for whom these books don't cater to. And as I've said, even though this works on paper, it apparently doesn't work in practice, so it's time to restrategize this smart move.

-Quip

(frozen) Re: Chores!

[helviti.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying it needs to stay the same, especially wherever it is you went to school. For the most part, I've sort of lost the thread of the conversation - as I said earlier, it's clear that your educational experience was much different than mine. The last true LITERACY class I took was in like... 8th grade. Maybe I should've been more clear - I haven't taken an elementary school "history" or "English" class in a good while, I just had two sections of "Modern America," one that focused on the more historical aspect (just straight up history) and one that focused more literary and cultural aspect (analysis and such). We had all we could do to fit everything into two classes, so I don't really agree with your suggestion that it should all be in one class; I think my education would've been severely lacking for it, as I learned a lot in both of the sections. We actually got to read The Jungle and Common Sense instead of just an excerpt. From what I understand from teachers and education students, that's the way English and history are supposed to be taught in high school, because by high school you should be able to read and structure a basic analysis. To continue on with basic literacy classes is retarded unless you're a ridiculously slow learner.

Personally, I think the way we did it worked fairly well; you can't throw the entire US education system into one basket and say there's something wrong with it - I think it's pretty obvious that you and I come from completely different academic backgrounds. A lot of times I forget that I come from one the top ranked gold medal high schools in the country and that sort of affects my views on these things. We managed to read classics without destroying anyone's love of reading; the people who hated it usually still hated it, but I never said literacy class would make students less interested in books because 1- that didn't HAPPEN and 2- our English class was actually ENGLISH and not just literacy (in the strictest definition, not in the everything written definition).

We learned about history in history and wrote about it in English. English isn't supposed to just be about reading, it's supposed to be about taking thoughts and writing about them. Vocab and spelling we left in the dust in middle school (actually, maybe elementary school). Social propaganda was taught as such, usually with an opposing viewpoint and you were asked to compare and contrast and then throw your OWN views in based on historical facts you learned in history and the original documents you read. THAT is high school English, not reading Drizzt Do'Urden or some other choice book, finding SAT words and foreshadowing, and doing brown bag reports. I did that in 8th grade and even then it was stupid and boring.

We were generally given a list of pairs of books we could choose to read about a certain subject and we just chose one pair (usually supplemented by a list of documents from the history portion of class). Mein Kampf vs Animal Farm (I think; it was Mein Kampf vs something like that) was actually one of them for a particular essay, though I didn't choose it. So books were picked based on topic and not popularity and students could pick from that list. It made things a lot easier on us. Also, there were quite a few times where we got to pick our own book (especially in my modern lit class where it was a create your own booklist) but, as I said before, it did little to help the kids who were already against the idea of reading analysis. They still hated it and tried to pick over-analyzed books so their work could be minimal. I think more of them actually were upset that they couldn't use classics as classics generally come with SparkNotes, but you're probably not going to find that for most modern books.

(frozen) Re: Chores!

[helviti.livejournal.com]

Having had a much more lenient, do-it-yourself approach, I'm pretty confident in saying that most of the people who graduated with me didn't lose their love of reading in school. I've known these people forever; those that loved it still love it, but a good number of them have hated reading since the first grade and that hasn't changed.

I think that students disinterest in reading nowadays has less to do with schools (the worst of which are still better than they were back in the 1800s or even 1950s, but they still liked reading - even older books - as entertainment) and more to do with modern culture. A lot of people START school not willing to pick up a book, so I don't think all of the blame can be laid on the schools, if any of it. I also think a lot of it has to do with when kids are taught to read. Most people who I know who love to read were taught very early (I learned when I was two, for example), but the majority of kids I babysit, coach, or teach don't learn how to form full sentences on paper until they're SEVEN and they wait until six to learn the alphabet. Since I work with kids and in a few reading programs, I have a different perspective from most people, but we took a reading poll last week with a selected group of twenty five year olds and only one said they could read "big kid books" and three said they liked reading. The others said it was either too boring or too hard. *shrugs* Take from that what you will; my opinion is that people have enjoyed reading despite insane and awful school systems for centuries, so either that's not the full issue or people today are just pathetic.

(frozen)

[seventypercent.livejournal.com]

I have a few fundamental problems with the points you're bringing up. First of all, to start with, I don't agree that the books being read are chosen based on "popularity" alone, and have no educational value. I'll come back to this later, when I answer your question about why certain classics should be taught in school, but I feel like it's worth saying, since I think a lot of your argument rests on that assessment.

Having gone to public high school and after taking many english classes, I don't need to "imagine" all of what you said happening. I, along with the rest of my advanced english classes, read famous books, picked them apart, and wrote essays on them. For me, that wasn't pleasurable - I didn't enjoy trying to find symbolism and meaning in a lot of things, because I'm not good at figuring those things out. A lot of people do and are, though... hence the thousands of English majors out there in the world. But even if I didn't enjoy it, I still see the merit in it. You are learning skills that actually enhance your enjoyment of literary works - of course I realize that I'm using the skills I picked up in English class when I'm reading today. I think you're supposed to go back to your favorite books and see all of those things - you're supposed to engage with them, find meaning in them, understand the characters' motivations and psyches. Reading is not a video game - you aren't supposed to just go through the motions to get to the end. Books are meant to give you a much deeper emotional and intellectual experience, and in my opinion, reading in English classes is meant to hone that skill. Personally, I love picking apart books to figure out why the writer made certain choices, the meaning behind the structure, plot choices, characters, the use of language, etc... but that's because I'm really into writing, and I think reading other authors' work is basically a treasure trove for someone who wants to be one.

When I use the word "classics," I'm using my own definition, and it generally fits all of the books listed in Schiz's entry above. They are books that are generally thought to be meaningful for their historical, cultural, and/or literary value - they're popular in that people know of them, but I would hardly say that most people in the country or the world have read them (minus, of course, Harry Potter). They may not be to everyone's taste, but there is absolutely something distinctive about each of them that makes them popular enough for people to know about them. Here is where I really disagree with your assessment that schools assign books based on "popularity" that have no "educational value." The books being assigned in schools are not "popular" - Chuck Palahniuk is popular, Cormac McCarthy is popular. The books being assigned are well-known, and they DO have educational value. As I said before, many of them have immense historical or cultural value (see: Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Grapes of Wrath, the works of Shakespeare, etc etc), or they are amazing examples of great writing (see: The Great Gatsby, one of my favorite books, and in my opinion, an example of the Great American Novel). Teachers shouldn't be keeping up with what everyone is reading - they should be giving students a foundation in the English language, American culture, and literature in general, which is where I come back to my original point. I find it sad that people use all of this as a reason to get turned off literature. If one doesn't like what he or she is reading in class, that's one thing - I'd suggest reading something different, independent of class. That's what I did. It doesn't have to be a "great work," either - I read pulp fiction until I graduated high school and was far, far away from the classics of Advanced English. But I was still reading, and I was still loving it. I can't understand not liking the analytical skills you picked up in class, since I'm a fan of anything that makes me think or expands my mind, and I'm sure you don't mean to say that you don't think developing intellectually is a bad thing.

Anyway, hopefully this answered your questions.

(frozen) Misread.

[bluezybunny.livejournal.com]

Your reading comprehension skills still need refining, because I never said the books aren't educational. What I said is that they don't harbor any exclusive educational value, which is to say you can find educational value in any book regardless of whether or not it's a 'classic'. Even Mein Kampf, written by Adolf Hitler, has historical, educational value. It's long been translated into English, so the language barrier is out of the question. So why aren't we reading Mein Kampf in schools? What variable separates it from the other classics? Maybe because it's not popular?

-Quip

(frozen) Condescending prick?

[seventypercent.livejournal.com]

Each book that is taught in school has an exclusive educational value, which is exactly what I said. My example of the Great Gatsby - it is, as I said, in my opinion, an example of the Great American Novel, it's well written, etcetera, etcetera. Do you want me to give you a rundown of the education value for every book that is commonly taught in high schools?

Mein Kampf is often taught in college classes, particularly history classes, but not in high school English classes for a number of reasons.

1) It's not fiction.

2) It's not even particularly well-written. His points are circular, his metaphors are confusing, and many of his arguments are completely illogical.

3) While it has historical and educational value, it does not have American cultural value, nor does is it an accurate depiction of German culture today. Books in English classes are often chosen to give students a foundation of the literary culture of their own society, or of other societies around the world.

4) It's a terrible example for your point because the taboo nature of its subject matter far overrules any intrinsic educational value it might have, for most people. This is the variable that separates it from other "classics."

I would argue that it is, however, a popular book. I know tons of white men who, for whatever reason, have been particularly fascinated with it.


I'm really not sure why your comments to me are so patronizing and argumentative. My original comment had nothing to do with you, it was hardly a dig, or offensive at all to anyone. I was merely stating that I don't understand how reading books can put people off reading books.

(frozen) You can call me "Dick".

[bluezybunny.livejournal.com]

I just don't like when people have paragraphs worth of argument against an argument attributed to me that I never made. I also thought it would be amusing to point out the irony of your suggesting that I might not have appreciated the literary skills we've acquired.

and I'm sure you don't mean to say that you don't think developing intellectually is a bad thing.

Let's clean up those double-negatives, shall we?

and I'm sure you mean to say that you think developing intellectually is a bad thing.

Inoffensive indeed. But I can appreciate a good battle of wits, as long as we're getting valid points across.

Anyway:

1. Some would argue that the bible isn't a work of fiction. Maybe it's not required reading in schools outside of the south, though.

2. I would argue that the bible wasn't particularly well-written, either. If you need examples of circular reasoning, confusing metaphors, and illogical arguments, look no further than: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

3. Wasn't the bible based in the middle east? Don't I remember also having read Homer's Illiad in English class? Didn't that take place in Greece? Do people in Greece still believe in cyclopses and dragons at the edges of the world?

4. Ooh, but the bible isn't taboo. You got me. Then again, is it because it's taboo that we don't read it or is it because we don't read it that it's taboo?

-Quip

(frozen) Re: Chores!

[seventypercent.livejournal.com]

It was a typo. I meant to say:

"...and I'm sure you don't mean to say that you think developing intellectually is a bad thing."

So while your translation would have been offensive, it's not what I meant.

I'm actually finished with this argument, because I don't find striking up battles of wits with strangers on the Internet all that entertaining. You can take this as a concession, if you'd like, but I'm secure with my opinions, and I stand by my earlier statement that it's very sad that reading books and developing analytical skills puts some people off reading.

Also, I have no idea what you're trying to say about the Bible. Do you think I'm religious or something, and that I'd advocate reading it in schools? I would not. Like Mein Kampf, it's a text that is laced with too much controversy, that truly overshadows any literary value it might have.

I think, maybe, you should stop wasting your time arguing with me and just go read a book instead. That's what I'm doing.

(frozen) Sure.... 'typo'.

[bluezybunny.livejournal.com]

Well, either you meant to say it the way you did, in which case you shot first, or you didn't, in which case your reading comprehension needs work.

I find conversations to hold much more intellectual value than books. Even conversations with you. So if it's analytical skills you're looking to develop, you might want to try pulling your nose out of a book every once in a while to actually have a battle of wits with another intelligent individual. It's done wonders for me.

I never suggested you were religious, though you do seem to have a habit of reading into what I'm saying. Perhaps you're still trying to find hidden meaning behind my words? Regardless, I think I've made my point pretty clearly that there's no accounting for taste, and a school shouldn't be the ones deciding what we read. I'm glad you agree.

-Quip

(frozen)

[schizoauthoress.livejournal.com]

Okay, perhaps I need to step in. Might be a bit late to do so, but I'd like to just say a few things.

1. First off, thank you to both of you for remaining relatively civil.

2. I'm going to apologize for Quip, even if he wouldn't want me to. He's my boyfriend, and seventypercent is my friend; I'd prefer there to be as little tension on my f-list as possible.

I'm sorry that bluezybunny is a very blunt person. I'm sorry that he considers almost every conversation a debate, and reacts accordingly. It can be a bit off-putting. And, seventypercent, if your feelings were hurt by him, I am especially sorry for that.

3. bluezybunny, when debating/conversing with people in my journal. kindly do not use The Bible as an example. Clearly, this conversation proves that The Bible is a loaded subject. If you MUST bring it up, for goodness sake, make sure to unequivocally state that it's an example only and you have no underlying assumption/ulterior motive in bringing it up.

And seventypercent, your claim (in "Condescending prick?") that your 'original post had nothing to do with [him]' is a bit inaccurate, given that it's a reply to his comment. Yes, it did have something to do with him; you argued against some of his points! I know you don't know him well, and this is likely your first interaction with him...hey, if you don't want to talk to him again, I will totally step in and stop any conversations between you two.

5. Final jabs: you both obviously can read. So don't insult each other over what the other chooses to read. It's not cool.

(frozen)

[seventypercent.livejournal.com]

4. My original post was not a reply to his comment, it was a reply to your entry. Specifically:

...forcing books upon people generally only results in people rebelling and hating to read.

My subsequent comments were replies to him, and I was arguing against his points. When I wrote my original reply, however, I had not even read the rest of the comments on your entry. So, yeah, I stand by that statement.

5. I never meant to insult anyone's taste in reading. If I did, I'm sorry, I was either vastly misunderstood or I misstated my point. I was simply saying that I think it sucks that reading in English classes turns people off to reading, and I understand why many books that are taught in English classes are chosen, and why many of them are special (something that I have now repeated about a dozen times). I didn't say reading other books are bad - reading ANYTHING IS GOOD. My main point is "PLEASE, PEOPLE, READ."


Yeah, I took a lot of offense to the condescending manner in which every single reply - starting with the first - was written. But fuck it. I'm confident with my skillz... analytical, conversational, and otherwise.

(frozen)

[schizoauthoress.livejournal.com]

My original post was not a reply to his comment, it was a reply to your entry.

That's why I like to quote when I'm replying to specific stuff. And I don't know, but somehow it worked out that you replied to bluezybunny's comment and not my original entry. That's probably why he engaged you in debate/conversation...but hey, glitches happen.

Point #5 was basically in response to these two statements (bolded bits especially annoyed me):
Him to you: "Your reading comprehension skills still need refining, because I never said the books aren't educational. What I said is that they don't harbor any exclusive educational value..."
You to him: "I think, maybe, you should stop wasting your time arguing with me and just go read a book instead."

...I kind of don't want to get into why I'm annoyed by those statements...I'm sure you both can figure it out.

(frozen)

[seventypercent.livejournal.com]

That's weird. When I see the comment on my screen, it comes out as a reply to your entry, not to his comment. There's no indentation.

Yeah, I can see how that would annoy both of you, and I'm sorry for it. I was fed up with the way he'd been speaking to me, and a bit tipsy, but I hate letting my temper get the best of me. It ruins good points.