Which novels would you recommend for adults whose reading skills lag?

@tsarstepan,

Quote:

I'm assuming these individuals are aware of their reading shortcomings and hopefully won't take offense in what seemingly might be initially patronizing suggestions.

I am wrestling with text book selection now but -- following some of the commentary this thread received -- there is no way I would discuss the matter here.

However, as I struggle with selections and as time goes by and makes my inability to settle on one, I find myself confronting the issues this thread raised.

Patronizing, eh.

Patronizing as in offering Rebecca in place of Jane Eyre. I don't see that as patronizing. Du Maurier wrote very easy to understand but solid prose.

The ethical struggle here, to me, is to not offer some help is step on their faces. I would have said fingers but faces seems to better fit.

Perhaps, they might see a list as an invitation to enjoy themselves. My daughter's college roommate liked receiving books as gifts. She considered them permission to take a short vacation.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Quote:

Maybe, but where would the sense of overall accomplishment come from. "I just read Charlottes Web"

Reading something you can understand is a good thing. Language teachers begin with children's picture books.

If Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, The Narrative of Frederick Douglass and Ever Since Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould are taught to tenth graders and if students enrolled in college level courses struggle with them, perhaps, taking them temporarily back a few levels is better than giving them something they will abandon.

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@Green Witch,

Quote:

when someone is not reading at a high school level it usually indicates they have been behind for a very long time and might not do any better being given yet another classical adult novel.

That is exactly what I feel. When I received the body blow that my alleged hatred for my students was evident, you can imagine how I reacted here in my own room.

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@plainoldme,

plainoldme wrote:

Quote:
I'm assuming these individuals are aware of their reading shortcomings and hopefully won't take offense in what seemingly might be initially patronizing suggestions.

I am wrestling with text book selection now but -- following some of the commentary this thread received -- there is no way I would discuss the matter here.

However, as I struggle with selections and as time goes by and makes my inability to settle on one, I find myself confronting the issues this thread raised.

Patronizing, eh.

Patronizing as in offering Rebecca in place of Jane Eyre. I don't see that as patronizing. Du Maurier wrote very easy to understand but solid prose.

The ethical struggle here, to me, is to not offer some help is step on their faces. I would have said fingers but faces seems to better fit.

Perhaps, they might see a list as an invitation to enjoy themselves. My daughter's college roommate liked receiving books as gifts. She considered them permission to take a short vacation.

I'm sure I said it somewhere here at a2k but it bears repeating. If it were merely up to the English teachers I have had in middle school and high school. The same can be said of the English professors from my college English classes.

My father encouraged me to be a reader not by assigning me the so called wonderbooks of the academic elite but by developing an interest in reading via my own reading path.

Nothing personal but theres is a serious disconnect between English teacher and students who have trouble reading or even finding an interest in reading. I had trouble reading in elementary school. Most teachers assign these MUST READ classics even though these chores are tantamount to death sentences by mere literary boredom.

If you want the student to read, increasing his or her reading ability, alleged classics of the English department, no matter how literarily accessible they are will only make their readers give up quicker as no torture is better then slow torture.

1 Reply

@tsarstepan,

But the point is that the books I have been listing are NOT classics.

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@plainoldme,

Not what reputation I've heard associated with Rebecca.

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@plainoldme,

There is a movie "Rebecca" starring Laurence Olivier and Oliveir DeHavilland. After reading you could rent the DVD from the Library and show the movie to the students. Another great source of reading is the Reader's Digest. It is very good as it cuts out superfluous words and reading matter. It cuts to the chase and provides excellent reading.

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"Kathy and Mark"

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@talk72000,

The movie Rebecca is different from the book in major plot points. It could end up being more a discussion of how movies had to hold to certain standards.

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@talk72000,

I bet the Reader's Digest was one of my best teachers to learn about English grammar. Subscribed to that magazine for decades about five lifetimes ago.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

One of the brothers used to read the Reader's Digest. When I began reading it I soon realized how concise they were and still have all the details.

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Which novels would you recommend for adults whose reading skills lag?

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