There's no plot! Arrrg!

[Exonerate]

Books I had to read during the Summer:
Last Year: Roots. Eight hundred something page novel about a black man being captured, sold as a slave, and his descendents who end up cockfighting and eventually one of them writting the novel.
This Year: Brave New World and A Tale of Two Cities. And God, A Tale of Two Cities sucks, the first 6 chapters are devoted to a girl and a clerk going to France to fetch somebody.

At least most of the books I read during the school year were ok.

[RedImperator]

Argh, Frankenstein. Every fucking time anything bad happened, the Goddamn doctor would get sick for a month. Real heroic, pal. And yes, yes, I know the monster represents Dr. Frankenstein's dark nature, and that's why the doctor is inactive while the monster is active. That doesn't make the story suck less.

[StarshipTitanic]

I still have exactly a week left so I'm still doing my "Exactly a Week Before School-" I mean summer reading. I'm half-way through Ethan Frome and I still have All Quiet on the Western Front. Ethan Frome feels like a dumbed down The Picture of Dorian Gray but with that hen-pecked paitent of Dr. Hartley from The Bob Newhart Show as the protagonist instead of Mr. Carlin.

[Exonerate]

I tried to get an early start, but was kinda interrupted by my trip... Also, I'm supposed to do 20 pages of journals, but the teachers never gave out a handout on how to do them, so I'm getting everything from second-hand information.

[StarshipTitanic]

I tried to get an early start, but was kinda interrupted by my trip... Also, I'm supposed to do 20 pages of journals, but the teachers never gave out a handout on how to do them, so I'm getting everything from second-hand information.

Ouch, I only have five and I've had the benefit of already living the days I plan to write about. Suck that, summer crap. Oh, my future teacher "signed" the instruction sheet with:

BJ Boland

I'm not making this up. Maybe she should go to the Philippines and join the MILF.

[justifier]

Books I had to read during the Summer:
Last Year: Roots. Eight hundred something page novel about a black man being captured, sold as a slave, and his descendents who end up cockfighting and eventually one of them writting the novel.
This Year: Brave New World and A Tale of Two Cities. And God, A Tale of Two Cities sucks, the first 6 chapters are devoted to a girl and a clerk going to France to fetch somebody.

At least most of the books I read during the school year were ok.

Well at least Brave New World is a good book

[SylasGaunt]

Ninth grade had some good books like Animal Farm, 8th grade had the Red Badge of Courage so that was good.

Sophmore year was really kinda forgettable bookwise.. junior year to. Then my senior year hit and pretty much the only thing we read in that class that didn't have at least one person wanting to sleep with a relative was The Great Gatsby (which is the most mind-numbingly dull thing i have ever read).

[Dalton]

Books I had to read during the Summer:
Last Year: Roots. Eight hundred something page novel about a black man being captured, sold as a slave, and his descendents who end up cockfighting and eventually one of them writting the novel.

Trivia: In the TV miniseries, the actor who played Kunta Kinte went on to become...Geordi LaForge.

I read The Hobbit in eighth grade, but I don't remember a lot of the other books we did, mostly because I didn't want to read them (Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is not exactly a wonderful read for an eleventh grader).

[Darth Gojira]

So, for the start of school I have to read 'A Tree Grows in Brookyln', and I'm racing through it.

But there's no plot! No real arc at all! One event happens, and then a totally unrelated event happens, and then a completely unrelated event happens, in sequence! There's enough hanging guns in this book to arm the 3rd Army. It's not a novel or a story, it's the narrator telling us some stuff that happened in this girl's life.

Yeah. I HATE stories like that. Good think my heretical English teacher made us do anthologies of short stories. This year I'm not sure.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

"Waiting for Godot" was just retarded, a whole book where they're basically going "duh...I'm waiting for this Godot guy, what are you doing" "I'm waiting for Godot too". Talk about mind numbing.

WTF? Note to self: Don't read any books by whoever wrote that one...

Thomas Beckett. Irish existentialist, specialized in the theater of the absurd. It was essentially on the pointlessness of waiting for something to happen, because you may end up waiting forever and it never happen.

Oy.

Existentialism can be so obtuse and annoying! However he did have a point...

[Companion Cube]

Well at least Brave New World is a good book

Yep. 1984 was interesting too.

[Chardok]

HAR HAR! The only required reading I ever had to do was "The Good Earth"
although, the magnitude of pure suck emanating from that book really makes up for not having to read any others...

[El Moose Monstero]

Well, my old English A-level reading list consisted of:

King Lear
Buddha of Suburbia
Frankenstein
Nice Work
The Rape of the Lock
Gullivers Travels

and maybe a couple of others, but I cant remember them - out of all of them, I think I preffered Lear, Frankenstein and the Rape of the Lock, David Lodge, author of Nice Work, is a boring git, IMO, and can go to hell.

[neoolong]

HAR HAR! The only required reading I ever had to do was "The Good Earth"
although, the magnitude of pure suck emanating from that book really makes up for not having to read any others...

One book. How did you ever get that?

[Exonerate]

Ninth grade had some good books like Animal Farm, 8th grade had the Red Badge of Courage so that was good.

Sophmore year was really kinda forgettable bookwise.. junior year to. Then my senior year hit and pretty much the only thing we read in that class that didn't have at least one person wanting to sleep with a relative was The Great Gatsby (which is the most mind-numbingly dull thing i have ever read).

Great Gatsby wasn't that bad. I read it last year (Our school decided to have Freshmen take American Lit... No idea why)

I read the Hobbit during 7th grade on my own. Frankenstein too, along with Animal Farm... In fact, I read nearly all of the HS level books available at my school library because they determined my reading level to be 12 or something, and that I had to read books with a level of 9 or above to get points to get a good grade...

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

So, for the start of school I have to read 'A Tree Grows in Brookyln', and I'm racing through it.

But there's no plot! No real arc at all! One event happens, and then a totally unrelated event happens, and then a completely unrelated event happens, in sequence! There's enough hanging guns in this book to arm the 3rd Army. It's not a novel or a story, it's the narrator telling us some stuff that happened in this girl's life.

Yet another "profound" 300+ page character sketch. Don't you just love those?

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

The books I had to read my senior year included "Catcher in the Rye" and Adolf Huxley's "Brave New World".

Sorry, just a nitpick, but it's Aldous Huxley. Just in case it matters to anybody. lol

[Stravo]

I have always been of the opinion that the so called 'great works' are forced on High Schoolers and College kids because otherwise most folks wouldn't read them. I do believe that now as an adult I appreciate some of the works that we're force fed as kids and isn't it better that someone actually reads a book and cares about it now than force a child to read a book that he could care less about and for the rest of his life will resent because he was forced to read it? What does a child get from these books that have ANY relevance to RL? In Peggy Sue got married she tells her Math teacher "I assure you I will have no need for Algebra in my adult life" Same goes for these 'great works' I assure you that the Great Gatsby has never once come up in my career even in passing conversation.

Wouldn't it be far healthier to let someone discover these works on their own? Or are schools in the business of propping up works that most likely have no relevance to our every day lives. I can undertsand why Shakespeare is mandatory, one you NEED a teacher to help you undertsand the way Shakespeare wrote, two more importantly, Shakespeare by far was an artist of the English language. It is a fucking pleasure to read what he can do with the language and craft a good story to boot.

Now do we need to read Dostesky, Camas, etc??

[Zac Naloen]

You guys don't get to read Lord Of The Flies in school?

Man you guys are deprived... that book is awesome

[Stravo]

You guys don't get to read Lord Of The Flies in school?

Man you guys are deprived... that book is awesome

Picked that up on my own and loved it.

[Zac Naloen]

its one of my all time favourite books

[Uraniun235]

A partial list of what was at the rack:
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Catch-22
Ender's Game
To Kill a Mockingbird Read it
Various Shakespeare Read Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet
Stranger In a Strange Land
Starship Troopers
Brave New World
Animal Farm Read it
1984 Read it
Lord of the Flies Read it
The Hobbit
I, Robot
Foundation
The Illiad
The Battle For Gaul
Some Book by John McCain

I've read several of the other books on that list on my own, but those are the books that we were assigned in high school.

Lord of the Flies was especially fun in that the teacher would turn us loose on discussions regarding it. This was the same teacher that did a unit on Vietnam, despite his being an AP English class and not a history class... but, when you consider that regular English 12 did almost NOTHING second semester, and that the AP English test was before the Vietnam unit, then I had no problem with it. He got some of the Vietnam vets from the school and the community to talk to us... that was really interesting.

[Zac Naloen]

who wrote starship troopers?

i've been wanting to read it for a while... but can never remember who wrote it lol...

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

I have always been of the opinion that the so called 'great works' are forced on High Schoolers and College kids because otherwise most folks wouldn't read them. I do believe that now as an adult I appreciate some of the works that we're force fed as kids and isn't it better that someone actually reads a book and cares about it now than force a child to read a book that he could care less about and for the rest of his life will resent because he was forced to read it? What does a child get from these books that have ANY relevance to RL? In Peggy Sue got married she tells her Math teacher "I assure you I will have no need for Algebra in my adult life" Same goes for these 'great works' I assure you that the Great Gatsby has never once come up in my career even in passing conversation.

Wouldn't it be far healthier to let someone discover these works on their own? Or are schools in the business of propping up works that most likely have no relevance to our every day lives. I can undertsand why Shakespeare is mandatory, one you NEED a teacher to help you undertsand the way Shakespeare wrote, two more importantly, Shakespeare by far was an artist of the English language. It is a fucking pleasure to read what he can do with the language and craft a good story to boot.

Now do we need to read Dostesky, Camas, etc??

It's probably true that most of the Public School inventory of "classic works" are not the kind of things kids are going to find engaging anymore.

Still, even if the inventory changes, school literacy programs definitely should be encouraged. (The question of how to implement them with maximum effectiveness is a far thornier subject.)

I can attribute my own formative explorations into literature to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the ensuing shambles of a book report it ellicited. Had it not been for that ungodly mess of a book report and my strange and sudden obsession with making my writing sound as good as Mark Twain's did, I might never have started down the dark and treacherous road toward Writing.

[Darth Yoshi]

I don't believe I've ever had a summer reading list. I find that weird.

To be honest, I never like Lord of the Flies. The ending was just too contrived. It should have ended with Ralph's head being stuck on a stake and the rest of the boys starving because they burned everything on the island.

Anyway, I'm taking Film as Literature, so I don't have to read.