Books - Required School Reading #1 - Page 2

dukesmom · 11-02-2004, 04:28 AM

When I look back, I wonder what was wrong with my teachers. There are so many classics we were never required to read, yet I got stuck reading A Separate Peace and Lord of the Flies both in junior high and high school. Hated them both each time.

I do remember being given choices a couple of times – i.e. read 2 of the following 3 novels – but I was never impressed with the selection. The only book I flew through was The Outsiders. To this day, I have never finished Wuthering Heights, a book we did an entire unit on in 10th or 11th grade. Besides the usual Shakespeare plays, I can't remember specific titles of other required readings. The saddest thing about my situation - I was in "Honor's English" from 8th grade through 12th.

AdriaMichelle · 11-02-2004, 02:30 PM

There were times when I hate required school reading, but each year I learn to appreciate the books a little bit more. I remember my freshmen year of high school, we read "Animal Farm", and I loved it. I even had to do for numerous students w/ the question and answer things we had to do for each chapter. I also enjoyed "The Great Gatsby". Although, I enjoy reading the books I have to read for my college classes, since the majority of them always seem to be more interesting that the ones I had to read in high school.

ETA - I enjoyed reading "To Kill A Mockingbird" it was such a wonderful book. I also liked "A Separate Peace" and "West Side Story".

igloo155 · 11-02-2004, 10:24 PM

As a future English teacher for high school stutents; I am interested in why so many students dislike reading novels in class. I do understand that while you are reading you can be so focused on trying to remember little details that it can be unjoyable but is it only because they aren't books you would normally choose to read? Also many times a teacher can beat a concept to death and it ruins the whole novel. Did you guys have any assignments where you got to choose the book yourself and do you prefer that since it gives you the opportunity to pick something you would normally pick?

Profaine Angel · 11-03-2004, 12:07 AM

I think I liked most of what we had to do but there were some I just hated, and when I hate a book I just can not read it.

yr 7 - Amy/Amaryllis (loved), Seven Little Australians (loved), Dawn of Fear (loved), The Great Gilly Hopkins (liked), Pagan's Crusade (read 1 chapter of, ick)
yr 8 - The House Guest (I don't think I even read any

), The Gathering (loved), Much Ado About Nothing (liked)...I can't seem to remember the other for that year!
yr 9 - A Dip in the Poole (loved), To Kill a Mockingbird (loved), I'm sure something Shakespeare
yr 10 - The Wife of Martin Guerre (ick! but short, thank god), Romeo & Juliet (ick again), A Separate Peace (not bad), The Woman in Black (scared the crap outta me, rotfl), Under Milkwood (weird but fun) and something else our teacher hated too so we watched three film versions of Jane Eyre because there wasn't enough time to read the book before the end of the year.
yr 11 - Lord of the Flies (liked), How Many Miles to Babylon (not bad), My Brother Jack (eh...but readable), I'm the King of the Castle (ditto), Macbeth (loved)
yr 12 - Hamlet (loved), Fly Away Peter (adored), The Age of Innocence (read half of, then got out the film as it was so dull - ended up writing my final exam on it and Peter and got an A

)

I liked when we could choose our own books though. For semester 1 of year 9 we were in the school's country campus so we got to pick our own books and do reports on them

I love reading but there's nothing worse than being saddled with a boring book

barelylegal · 11-03-2004, 03:04 AM

I never mindes requiered reading. But sometimes the teacher chose such a boring book!! And even worse, having to over-analyze every sentence of it and interpreting it the TEACHER'S way. No thank you! But I also had a few teachers that us choose what book to read, so that was nice. Sure we had some limitations, such as: only from this list we received or a certain author, but still that's allright.

Marjanah · 11-07-2004, 09:51 PM

There was comparatively little required reading in my highschool. My mother always talked about a list of books but we didn't really have that. I remember getting a list of options (and I always saved the list as recommended reading for when I had time) but we usually only had to read one or two books on the list.

We did at least one Shakespeare play every year : Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear and Othello. I remember reading Lord of the Flies in Grade 10. We spent weeks and weeks on it, and I got bored after awhile but the book was okay. We read Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz in Grade 11, and then, in Grade 12, we chose one from some of the classics everyone else seems to have read, like the Great Gatsby, Tess of d'Ubervilles, Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel...I read Robertson Davies' Fifth Business for school as well as The Odyssey, Cold Mountain, The Edible Woman, and the Stone Diaries. Some others read A handmaid's tale, She's Come Undone, The Lives of Girls and Women, and Surfacing but I never had to.

MalloryKeaton · 11-09-2004, 01:37 AM

I read the Odyssey in 9th grade.

Elizajoey · 11-09-2004, 04:29 AM

The books I have read in the last year, really haven't interested me. We studied Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and whilst I adored the ideas and issues it brought up, I found the book, itself to be a real drag to read. The prose wasn't interesting but the themes within the book was clever.

We also had to study King Lear which I really didn't enjoy at all. I must admit, I'm not a Shakespeare fan. It's not that I don't understand him, I do, I just dislike the way, one author, has been put on a pedestal as this great person of literature when I think there were more interesting writers from that time period in history.

Last year, was much more interesting. We did Great Gatsby which I really adored. I found the book really interesting to read, I actually read it pretty early - all in two nights. We also studied Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender and The Crucicle which were within the Area of Study of Law and Order. I quite liked the Crucible and it provided a nice history and pop culture lesson.

The best book that has been required reading would definitely be To Kill A Mockingbird in Year Nine. I think that speaks for itself! I also enjoyed reading Taronga in Year Eight.

igloo155 I think it can just be hard for books - some are quite predictable - you just have to look at the posts here - there seems to be common books read. Whilst I agree, we need to read them, I think you need to provide a different spin on things and not study it in the predictable way where students can just regurgitate the same, almost cliche essays that have been done to death for years.

It makes me wonder, whether in thirty years, what books, if any, that have been written in the nineties and the 00's will feature in student's reading lists in 2034.

Crossbow · 11-09-2004, 06:28 PM

I hated reading assigned books in school. In fact, I hate doing anything with a deadline. By my Junior year og hich school, I completely gave up on doing the assigned reading and just wrote my essays based on what the teacher said in class. That year we did Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew, The Hobbit, The Canterbury Tales, and Beowulf. I got an A without reading a single word.

Oh, except that I had to read the part of the Hecate aloud in class. It went something like this...

Teacher: You're next.
Me: Me? What? What are we doing?
Teacher: It's your turn to read. You're Hecate.
Me: Um... what page are we on? Oh, wait, I don't have a book. Can someone loan me a book?

That's when I learned that actually doing the work only puts you behind in class. You have to ignore the material and only pay attention to what the teacher wants you to say about it.

Marjanah · 11-11-2004, 11:44 PM

Crossbow that's a sad story...and sadly true about highschool reading. I remember learning that you could disagree with your teacher in an essay if you wanted to but that involved a lot of research, and a lot of work because you had to make your argument flawless. otherwise, regurgitation was key.

And I understand the comment someone made about Shakespeare being put on a pedestal, especially since, in his time, what he wrote wasn't considered high literature and it makes you wonder what will be classic in 500 years (I live in fear of it being Goosebumps and the babysitter's club). Still, all weird bits aside, I rather liked Shakespeare...but that scene with Hecate in Macbeth wasn't the best.

Also, i couldn't get through Brave new World when I had to read it for school. The characters drove me nuts. I have this recollection of throwing the book down on the table and yelling "fine, be that way!!" I used Cole's notes for that one...but I think I told my teacher later and he laughed.

~*Echo*~ · 11-12-2004, 02:18 AM

Lets see-

9th Grade: Loved Of Mice and Men, liked Romeo and Juliet, and kind of enjoyed A Seperate Peace. However, I also hated Ellen Foster (oh, how I hated that book), almost couldn't finish Bless the Beasts and Childrenand was unenthused about Night (could have just been when I read it though; I have a feeling I would be more interested in it now).

10th Grade: We didn't read too many novels; since it was World Lit, we read more along the lines short stories and poems from around the world and bits and pieces of various religious texts. Of what we did read, I liked Julius Caesar but disliked Lord of the Flies and Great Expectations (mostly because it was crammed in toward the end of the year, so I had to do a ton of reading each night to get it done).

This year, we've read Things Fall Apart (which I didn't like), The Grapes of Wrath (which I did like, although not as much as I hoped I would), and Hiroshima (which I'm reading right now).

Overall, I've kind of got mixed feelings about required reading. On the one hand, I end up reading authors that I might not have otherwise; still, it can be painful if I don't like the book or I'm being forced to read it in a short period of time.

WinterPolaris · 11-21-2004, 05:49 AM

It really depends on the book and the teacher. I can like the book itself, but end up hating it simply because of the discussions in class, or vice versa. I think I liked most books, even though I don't really quite like reading itself. I can't really think of anything I absolutely hated. Here's what [I think] I read:

9th grade - To Kill A Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, A Tale of Two Cities, Antigone, Ordinary People, Great Expectations

10th grade - Jane Eyre, Julius Caesar, Farenheit 451, Animal Farm, Les Miserables, The Good Earth, Cold Sassy Tree, Cyrano de Bergerac, How Green Was My Valley, My Family and Other Animals, A Separate Peace, And Then There Were None [choice from a list]

11th grade - The Fountainhead, The Crucible, The Scarlett Letter, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Farewell To Arms, Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, Death of a Salesman, Ethan Frome, Catcher in the Rye, Breakfast at Tiffany's [choice from a list], The Sea Wolf [choice from a list]

12th grade - Brave New World, 1984, Wuthering Heights [choice from a list], Picture of Dorian Gray [choice from a list], Heart of Darkness [choice from a list], The Odyssey, and a bazillion romantic poets. We're now going into Oedipus the King, and will then continue the year with Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and some other novels that my teacher is still trying to decide.

So far, I love all of them, maybe with the exception of Great Expectations (never really a Dickens fan) and How Green Was My Valley. However, my absolute favorites are the ones that I got to pick out of a list (And Then There Were None, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Sea Wolf, Wuthering Heights, Picture of Dorian Gray, and Heart of Darkness). Go figure.

In Fair Verona · 11-22-2004, 04:23 AM

Freshman -
A Seperate Peace - I really liked this book, enough to actually read the sequel. I just really liked the friendship.
The Odyssey - I love mythology, but having to study it in school just ruins it, and this was a bad reading experience because my teacher was insane.
Great Expectations - Ugh. I hated this book, not because it was long or hard, but because I thought Pip and Estella were both horrible characters.
Romeo and Juliet - Easy to read, I liked it, what I disliked was having to read the watered down version in the textbook.
The Chosen - I liked it, not because of the style, but because I like learning about different cultures and this was about Jewish people. I read the sequel over the summer, which I liked better because it was more psychological.

Sophomore -
Oedipus Rex - I liked it, I love learning about things like this and greek tragedies with their irony are so fun.
Antigone - Again, liked it. Short and fun.
Ethan Frome - Easy to read, but the most boring god-awful book with god-awful characters.
Julius Caeser - An easy unit, was fun, not as interesting because I already knew a lot about this.
The Da Vinci Code (choice) - I heart this book. Great story-telling.
The Girl with the Pearl Earring (choice) - I liked the writing style a lot, it was easy and interesting and I'm a big fan of art.
A Tale of Two Cities - I think this might be my favorite book because I just loved this, it was so enjoyable and Sydney Carton is such a great character.
To Kill a Mockingbird - I liked the story but I found it a little too easy.
Lord of the Flies - I loved this because of all the theorizing we did over it in class, and it was really interesting.

Junior -
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - This book should die.
The Awakening - I love books centering around women, especially in the past, I really liked this book, it was something I actually got more involved with.
The Scarlett Letter - I liked this book for the same reasons as the Awakening, although the symbolism in this annoyed me a little.
The Crucible - I liked this because it was over something that interests me.
Huckleberry Finn - We're reading it now.

That's as far as I am right now.

Candice L. · 11-23-2004, 02:44 PM

When I went to private school, the classes were a few years ahead of my public school. So I read Romeo and Juliet in both seventh and ninth grade.

Required reading in elementary school was much more fun. My classes then read books like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Westing Game, The Pushcart War, and some Ronld Dahl books too. The only book I remember hating during that time was Johnny Tremain, which just dragged and dragged and had no exciting points whatsoever.

In middle school we used to have to do monthly book reports, which was a big pain, but other than that, the reading then was okay too. My favorites from then wereTuck Everlasting and The Pigman. Then I got into high school and I reread To Kill a Mockingbird (and I liked it better the second go-round). Sophomore year, I loved A Separate Peace (all of it except the ending

) and junior year, I liked The Crucible. But senior year, we didn't get to read very many novels, which sucked.

I think more English teachers should make an effort to get students reading more modern literature. Not to knock the classics, but some of them can be a bit dry. I've heard of schools letting kids read The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Giver in English classes, and those were two books that I read in my own time (okay, I read the second one for Battle of the Books, but still!

), and I wish I'd gotten to read them within the context of the classroom so I could discuss them.

germ881 · 11-23-2004, 09:43 PM

9th Grade: Romeo and Juliet, Catcher and The Rye, 1984, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, and a lot of short stories (Most Dangerous Game, Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Cask of Amontillado, etc.) We were also required to pick a book from the NY times <100 Greatest Novels of All Time> a do an oral report on it every month.

10th Grade: Frankenstein, Othello, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Antigone. We did portfolios for each.

11th Grade: So far we've read The Scarlett Letter and The Great Gatsby. I'm not sure what's next. It's an AP Eng. Lang class, so not much reading is done in it anyway.

Looking at how my freshmen year compared to my sophomore in terms of reading, my old school worked us a lot harder. I kind of miss it too.