Summer reading books for school...my rant!

[freak show]

The books are.

Secret life of bee's- Sue Monk Kidd

Plain Truth - Jodi Picoult

breathing underwater - Alex flinn (the one i got)

a long way gone- Ishamael Bach

Twisted- laurie halse anderson (the other one i got)

The book thief- markus zusak

 

 

Is this reading list part of some punishment you haven't mentioned?

 

But seriously: That has got to be one of the most absurd reading lists I've ever seen. Don't people read the "Classics" anymore? Faulkner' date=' Joyce, Hemingway, etc.?

 

It looks to me like your teacher got her picks from the Oprah Winfrey Show...

 

[TommyK]

6 books only? All about Teen drama and suicide?? Sounds like Social Engineering to me.

 

One would think a reading list should have at least 100 books of various genres so a student can pick what interests them.

 

I never liked reading in school, but that was just plain teen-age laziness. I love to read today.

[ShredAstaire]

I don't think anyone enjoys reading books that they are forced to read....reading is supposed to be fun...not work.

[TommyK]

Last summer I bought a box of videos. One was "Where the Red Fern Grows". I remember kids reading the book when I was in school. The title looked, to me, like a girl's book, so I never read it. But the cover on this video caught my attention. I watched it. Dang... it's a book about a boy and his dogs. It don't get my 'boy' than that.

 

I never had a 'reading list'. We could select books from the school's library or the public library, which was a defacto reading list, but we had literally thousands of books to choose from.

 

In my Sophomore English class we HAD to read "Great Expectations". I hated ever page I read as well as the pages I didn't read. In my book report I explained why it was that I did not like the book. I think I got a "B" on it.

 

Read the required work, you can't get around it. If you don't like the book, state that in your report. If you have GOOD, thoughtful reasons, you shouldn't be penalized for it. You'll have to come up with something better than "It was Stoopid" or "****ing dumb". Explaine WHY you thought it was 'stoopid' and '****ing dumb'. (avoid using **** words in your report).

[milod]

Well... I think most of the "old people" <grin> here agree on three points:

 

1. The book list has some sort of agenda other than reading enjoyment.

 

2. You gotta bite the bullet and read the stuff and do your report anyway.

 

3. Reading is something older folks on here like to do whether they have gobs of formal education or whether they have relatively little formal education.

 

Oh - I'll freely admit I loathed reading Jane Austen when I was in high school. I doubt very seriously I'd enjoy it very much more were I to read it today.

 

m

[DAS44]

Don't people read the "Classics" anymore? Faulkner' date=' Joyce, Hemingway, etc.?

[/quote']

The lists we get always has a few classics, one or two Hemingway's without fail.

[jnastynebr]

Just bite the bullet and read a couple of books. Its not going to kill you.

Some of my favorite books were assignments in college, most of which, I would have never read otherwise.

If you don't like them after your finished, than you can blast them in your reports (the assignment was to read them, not like them). Take the opportunity to question the assigned genre, and let your instructor know that you think your time would be better used studying the classics, and not some teen drama paperback.

[Shnate McDuanus]

Yep, throughout high school my reading lists contained Classics as well--or, at least, they contained works by the well-regarded authors of the Classics. I won't deny that my reading lists also had agendas, although they were longer lists so the agendas were often more subtle. Usually about half of them were contemporary literature by non-native English speakers, with a focus on "messages" and "morals," as opposed to ideas and possibilities--in other words, they tended to present the conclusions rather than imply them. This is a criticism that I have with the vast majority of contemporary literature that I've read: that they have blatantly apparent agendas, and overall that they lack subtlety.

 

As for my summer reading, I was always sure to seek out the works of Twain, or Steinbeck, or Voltaire...or Melville...

[SGplayer1994]

dem00n, as a junior in high school, that's why you should only take advanced math and science classes, because literature and history always make you read that crap, and math and science pay a lot now.

[milod]

XDemonknight... <grin> You wrote: "As for my summer reading, I was always sure to seek out the works of Twain, or Steinbeck, or Voltaire...or Melville..."

 

Yeah, the new modern stuff is good.

 

But everybody should read Caesar's commentary on the campaign in Gaul. It's pretty short and gives a view of a somewhat different "Europe" than today, Plutarch and Livy if not as much as possible by Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, and such. Gilgamesh in a number of versions is the oldest "book" I know of, and it predates even Homer by a long, long time. It's also usually translated in a short version that's easy to read. There should be an available easily read version of the "Song of Roland" that once was a high school sophomore required reading.

 

Yeah, science and math pay well nowadays, far better than careers that focus on how one might use science and math.

 

So perhaps a bit of "the Prince" wouldn't hurt. Machiavelli's thoughts have been rather well considered by a lot of folks in science, math and engineering fields whether they were otherwise good at it or not.

 

Oh, and on engineering, Vitruvius should be mandatory.

 

m

[Jeff-7]

I never had any issues with the required reading curriculum from elementary through high school. I have always loved to read and the accelerated reader program was a pretty awesome idea (for those who never participated - books were assigned a point value based on length of book and difficulty: first grade reading level through 12th etc. and you were rewarded by how many points you received at the end of the period over testing on those books - and you chose which books to read). The only time I ran into issues were for a class I took my freshman year of college called H2P (honors humanities projects). Some of the books were downright painful. I still have probably 20 of the books required for the classes (yes, there was H2P 2) and feel no urge to ever open them again.

 

Edit: M I had to read gilgamesh - the long version for this class, and many many more.

[Artie Owl]

Oh MAN did you miss out dem00n. I got A Long Way Gone by Beah, he was orphaned by wartorn Africa and tells an insane tale of survival drugs and violence, it was a gripping book. Maybe it's not to late to switch.

[retrosurfer1959]

The Book Thief - is also a good book about a young girl in Nazi germany and her life

[pohatu771]

dem00n' date=' as a junior in high school, that's why you should only take advanced math and science classes, because literature and history always make you read that crap, and math and science pay a lot now.[/quote']

dem00n goes to the same New York state public high school system that I went to - you have to take English, and the first three years are almost entirely literature. Junior year is also American history. You fit anything else in around your core requirements - English, History, Science, Math, and Physical Education. You also have to fill it out with Art/Music or Language.