How do you feel about the books you were made to read?

i'm going into 10th grade, and i've yet to read a good book assigned to me. I read To Kill A MockingBird and found it was well writtin, but it was a hassle to read. Now I have to read The Joy Luck CLub and this too is a boring book. For an optional book this year i could've read "One Flew Over The Coo Coo's Nest" Which was my favorite movie, so i'll have to pick the book up soon.

Did you read The Outsiders?

Sounds familiar, what was it about?

I am thankful that I HAD TO read various what I thought would be boring books because I enjoyed the conversations, dissecting, and explaining afterwards. It really exercised my brain and got my mind thinking of differing opinions and interpretations. It was a good tool for the future.

The only book I look at with a "what-the-hey" expression is The Catcher in the Rye. A complete waste of paper in my opinion. I've continued to be astonished at the popularity or 'trendiness' it attained. Sort of like a childishly splattered canvas which is oohed and ahhed over as "Art". Not my bag, baby.

Re: How do you feel about the books you were made to read?


When I was in high school, we had to read one of Andre Norton's books. I loved her writing so much that I began to read more of her work.

As far as what should be included in the curriculum -- hopefully Charles Dickens books are still being read. I especially loved David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, and A Christmas Carol.

I loved The Joy Luck Club. My formative years were spent in Asia, and I have always had a deep appreciation of Asian culture.

The Outsiders has been made into a movie. It's about the separation between the rich and the poor and about this kid.

Many of the books mentioned I read in school, but got nothing out of them.....

When I became an adult, I reread many of them, now getting the message......

I'm grateful I was exposed to them at the younger age, so I can appreciate them now.

Zeroh - I'm not sure that many 10th graders could fully appreciate the Joy Luck Club for instrance.

As I stated in another post, I'd read the book, seen the movie a couple times in the past and enjoyed it all in adult years, but.......it was only OK

Then, after I went through some particular experiences in life, I happened to pick it up again, and got a totally different, more powerful message.

Different books for different stages of life.

Chai Tea, Good post. A well-written book is a work of art, and, as is the case with all works of art, each time we experience it, it is different because we are different.

Throughout my schooling, I was asked to read books which I was not yet ready to appreciate fully because I was lacking the necessary life experience. However, I did find something interesting to the young me in almost every assigned book--and my memory will often remind me when it would be particularly enjoyable to reread these books. In other words, by stretching my mind, my teachers primed me for a great deal of future enjoyment.

I could have wasted a lot of time resenting the difficulty that assigned books presented me. Fortunately, both my teachers and my parents made me understand that I was "laying down basic tracks." I took the books as they were to me at the time, and, most of them gave me the down-payment on later rewards. It would have been a cop-out for me to say that I found some of my school books boring, when, in fact, I was intellectually boring because my aesthetic vision and world view were, quite naturally, largely undeveloped.

For those who are struggling with difficult books, I'd recommend that you enjoy fully what you can now. The rest will come later--often without your even having to re-read the book. Things shift in our minds as we grow, revealing new patterns and thoughts we found inscrutable earlier. My favorite literature class in college was titled PROBLEMS IN FICTION. Some of those problems are just now reaching towards tentative solutions, 40 years later. These long-evolving satisfactions are characteristic of the best books.

Chai Tea, Good post. A well-written book is a work of art, and, as is the case with all works of art, each time we experience it, it is different because we are different.

Throughout my schooling, I was asked to read books which I was not yet ready to appreciate fully because I was lacking the necessary life experience. However, I did find something interesting to the young me in almost every assigned book--and my memory will often remind me when it would be particularly enjoyable to reread these books. In other words, by stretching my mind, my teachers primed me for a great deal of future enjoyment.

I could have wasted a lot of time resenting the difficulty that assigned books presented me. Fortunately, both my teachers and my parents made me understand that I was "laying down basic tracks." I took the books as they were to me at the time, and, most of them gave me the down-payment on later rewards. It would have been a cop-out for me to say that I found some of my school books boring, when, in fact, I was intellectually boring because my aesthetic vision and world view were, quite naturally, largely undeveloped.

For those who are struggling with difficult books, I'd recommend that you enjoy fully what you can now. The rest will come later--often without your even having to re-read the book. Things shift in our minds as we grow, revealing new patterns and thoughts we found inscrutable earlier. My favorite literature class in college was titled PROBLEMS IN FICTION. Some of those problems are just now reaching towards tentative solutions, 40 years later. These long-evolving satisfactions are characteristic of the best books.

1984 is another good example.

I first found it difficult or boring in that I couldn't understand "what the big deal was"

But, I really thought "newspeak" was cool. I still say "doubleplusgood" sometimes.

That was enough for me to pick it up again later, and be horrified.

Chai Tea -- It is true that some books are for certain times in life.

Yes, Dickens is still being read in schools and the kids at the high school where I am a sub hate him.

The late Canadian author Robertson Davies said that because he lived so long, he tried to read books that authors wrote at the age he was when he read them. In other words, at age 50, he would read books written by Balzac and Dickens when they were 50.

Plainoldme, I am delighted that Dickens is being read in your local high school--BUT I hope that it is seniors studying his work, and that they are doing GREAT EXPECTATIONS, rather than, say, BLEAK HOUSE. One place where teachers get into trouble--and, by painful extension, their pupils--is following a curriculum that never should have been in place, even 50 years ago! Most of Dickens is a ridiculous slog for a 9th- or 10th-grader: there would be almost no immediate pleasure for them, and such pleasure must exist, or what's the point--unless it's to turn them off English lit forever.

When I taught English to the 9th and 10th grades, I insisted that I be allowed to use works written after 1950. Otherwise, vocabulary and syntax problems tend to deny the kids way too much of the enjoyment they should be having. I shared a lot of Italo Calvino (INVISIBLE CITIES), Raymond Carver (poems and stories), Sharon Olds, Marge Piercy, Linda Gregg, Billy Collins, etc. Poetry, in particular, with which a young person can connect makes for great conversation; also, if kids like these poems and stories, they painlessly install fresh syntax and vocabulary, making a reasonably entertaining reading of Dickens possible by the time they are 12th graders.

You are a brave soul to work as a sub; the responsibility is high, and there is too often little support. I hope the teachers you are standing in for leave you detailed information--AND the permission to ignore it entirely if the best conversation wants to go in another direction.

When I was in transition from teaching in a private boarding school to teaching in public day school (a move I've never regretted!), I spent a year teaching for a community college at night and subbing in local high schools by day. As I was helping support a family, I told the schools that I'd sub in any subject, except for lab sciences. One day, I'd teach beginning Algebra; the next, AP French; the next, Health! It was a LOT of fun--and adventure--especially after I learned to ignore unworkable lesson plans and just wing it. Of course, there were dark days, too. I taught ONE day of English at a particular high school, and I was delighted (although not surprised) never to be asked back. The 10th-graders I was given were unruly to the actual point of being unreachable. After an hour of this nonsense, I yelled for their attention and told them that "you are the rudest f...ing people I've ever met. I am handing you over to your principal, and then I'm going home to play with my children, who are much more fun."

"You swore at us. You swore. You'll never work here again!" they trumpeted in chorus.

"Yes, my plan exactly!"

I sincerely hope you don't have many days like that! Perhaps, you are a long-term sub in a school with reasonable kids?

What were the books you had to read that you loved?

All of them in the end. While in school I loved that we were reading
: 1984, all the Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Farley Mowatt (Lost in the Barrens)

Which ones did you hate?

I hated at the time having to read the Yearling and Grain. I felt as though they were forcing too much praire culture down my throat, while I wanted to read about far-away.

In either of the above, do you think it was the book or the teacher?

Always the actual book. I'd just mouth off or tune out when I didn't like the teacher, and continue reading.

How do you feel about "must reads"?

Awesome. Let's teach kids how to read and write WHILE they are in school.

If you are a parent, what do you say to your kids when they balk at a particular book?

Don't have kids. But when I spend time with other people's kids, and they do this, I tell them it's fine if they don't like something. But what is it that they don't like? Is it because it's boring? Is it because they don't like or have trouble with reading?

Do you think your high school experience made or broke your love of reading?

Neither. I loved books since I was little. My parents told me stories every night and bought me a library of books. I even had the Encyclopedia Brittanica while in Kindergarden. They rock.

What would you include in a high school American lit curriculum? English lit curriculum? World lit?[/B]

For all of them, I would tailor them to specific school and children.
Some books that relate to their lives and history; and some that outside of their 'boundaries'.
Unrealistic maybe; but I feel literature programs have become too rigid and souless. The whole point is to gain passion and skills concerning language.

I apologize for the horrible english in my post.
I need to learn to preview on here. I let all of my skills check out while posting on forums, it seems.
Also, I'm very tired.
Anyways, I'm sorry.

What would you include in a high school American lit curriculum? English lit curriculum? World lit?[/B]

For all of them, I would tailor them to specific school and children.
Some books that relate to their lives and history; and some that outside of their 'boundaries'.
Unrealistic maybe; but I feel literature programs have become too rigid and souless. The whole point is to gain passion and skills concerning language.[/quote]

Couldn't agree more, flushd! Developing students' passion for--and skills in--as many subjects as possible should be the mission of schools and teachers. Unfortunately, as more teachers feel pressured (and are, sometimes, ordered) to teach to an increasing number of state and federal assessment tests, programs are becoming "rigid and soulless." Of course, it's important that all kids possess certain skills and that they be tested occasionally to be sure those skills are in place and working well, but, in recent years, the lists of skills the states and the feds mandate have grown both overly extensive and, therefore, not surprisingly, increasingly arbitrary.

If a teacher is going to communicate well, he or she must consider his specific audience. Ideally, a Lit teacher should have enough books in the classroom that decisions about curriculum can be made after he gets to know the needs and interests of a particular group. The mentality that says "This is 9th Grade; the book MUST be LORD OF THE FLIES" or "We'd better spend a LOT of time practicing with the sample writing prompts the state has suggested" is likely to turn on considerably fewer kids to Lit than a teacher who makes the effort to tailor the reading to a specific class and comes up with writing topics with which this class can connect.

Teachers should be allowed the flexibility to inspire individual children; instead, they are being increasingly asked to follow precise, arbitrary directions for more and more of each class period. The states and the feds need to realize that teachers are working with human beings, not stamping out widgets.

King Solomans Mines was a group read read out by the headmaster & we followed the words.
The Magic Faraway tree @ primary School was good.

I loved Dickens and Shakespeare, hated Nostromo (Conrad) and Animal Farm with a passion! Nostromo was such an unsympathetic character I didn't give a **** about his moral decline! so slow and boring and sheer torture to make myself read it!

Didn't enjoy La Peste (Camus)

I remember reading Hereward the Wake in class at the age of 11 - you know that excrutiating slow reading aloud, going round the class - it was tooooo slow and I was always chapters ahead, wanting to get on with the story - so when it came to my turn I never knew where we were up to

Doing Robert Burns living in Scotland was fun - Tam o'Shanter is great with wonderful lines that I still remember.

Wordsworth could be boring and pedestrian with occasional bits where I related. 'and fears and fancies thick upon me came, dim sadness and blind thoughts I knew not, nor could name' is a pretty good description of depression and it stayed in my memory all these years - I think the same poem had bits about babies 'trailing clouds of glory as they came' - oh dear no no no oversentimental nonsense!!! I didn't like Keats and loved the war poets.

I liked Jane Austen - nice easy gentle reading!

In the midwest, it seems that many books were thought of as adult, both by schools and libraries, so, when I began ninth grade, I had my first opportunity to read what I wanted and not the endless drivel of the junior novel as it existed in the late 50s.

Miklos recommends a post-1950 curriculum. Hmmm. I taught Of Mice and Men last year while taking over an English class for a month from a teacher who was out with appendicitis. Before I began, I first considered that these kids probably knew nothing about the 1930s -- after all, that decade isn't the subject of mass culture explorations -- so I devoted a day to the Great Depression.

I am now teaching Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong to English Language LEarners. Ms. Wong was born in 1922 and published her book in 1950, so I find I have to give my kids a watered down (most of them have been in this country and speaking English for less than a year) history of the Depression.

The point that I am trying to make, is by keeping literature too current, you miss the opportunity to give the kids the context that created that literature.

Plainold me,

My recommendation for beginning high-school English classes with post-1950's books is based on the fact that, up until 9th grade, many students are subjected to--though written by different authors--the same sort of "endless drivel of the junior novel" that you suffered in the 50's. These books have been dumbed-down as thoroughly as primers have. If you look at a primer from the 1920's, you will likely be favorably impressed with both the broad vocabulary and interesting syntax. All of today's primers, and almost all of today's "junior novels" are as bland as low-quality oatmeal--and without the nutritional value.

I am so glad you gave your students background on the Depression before you began OF MICE AND MEN. Context is so very important, if a student is to appreciate the larger connections in a story. When I taught authors like Calvino--even though they wrote after 1950--I needed to fill in lots of pre-1950 background. More than once, I ran into 9th-grade classes who did not know about the Holocaust! I immediately dove into a multiple-day discussion of this immensely important event. Filling kids in on the Holocaust--or the Depression--is more valuable than discussing even a thick pile of literature books.

I don't think that teaching books written post-1950 would necessarily limit your exploration of significant historical or cultural developments. If one chooses books with resonance, one can take the discussion in many directions--in both time and place.

Again, good for you, an experienced hand, substituting. You clearly see this as education, not merely a job. Although it IS a tough job some days!