Beyond Reality discussion

In keeping with the “back to school” theme—what was your attitude toward required reading when you were (or if you still are) a student? What books did you find especially memorable in school?

In my school we had very few required books, we could pick almost any book for a book report. I loved the never-ending story and want to read it again!

I have been a mood reader my entire life. Reading assigned works was always difficult for me (whether I was interested in the text or not). I think the only full novel I read when assigned was Little Women - but even that went awry. I had an older abridged version that was apparently missing the death of a main character. My teacher, therefore, thought I had lied about reading it. I showed her my copy and she was forced to apologize.
I've always meant to go back and read the full thing,

For the most part, I did not enjoy the required reading in school. I was so much more interested in SF and Fantasy, and being forced to read things like The Scarlett Letter and what felt like every singe Shakespeare tragedy were mind numbing at best.

All books we read for class from kindergarten through high school were all pre selected for us. The best we got was in grade school. The class would have a table with a pre selection of books on it. Now and then we could select a new book from that table to write a book report.

I often swear that our reading assignments we specifically designed to make sure kids learned to despise reading. To this day I can't stand any of Shakespeare's tragedies. They were the only works of his in the list.

To add to it, we never really discussed anything we read. It was more about "What happened in Chapter 10 when . . . ". Or "What did the flower in the vase in Chapter 6 represent". We never talked about the plot or the characters. We never discussed motivations or how one set of actions earlier in the book affected later events. We were tested to see if we had actually read the book, but there was not much interest in what we got out of it.

Even when the books were in my preferred genre, it was less than ideal.

One year I remember reading Fahrenheit 451. There was absolutely no discussion about the deeper themes of the book, such as censorship or the affects of mass media on society.

We read Childhood's End one year. I remember actually enjoying the book. I have absolutely no memory of anything we did in regards to it in class however.

Now there were a couple exceptions.

I had an 8th grade English teacher who introduced me to Poe. I remember her reading The Tell-Tale Heart out loud to us in class. I was fascinated. I also remember her reading the poem The Bells. I had read it myself and thought it seemed stupid. But when she read it to the class, it just clicked to me and I understood the emotions behind the repetitive words. Not exactly assigned reading, but it showed that literature could be something that could be enjoyed instead of tedium.

My senior year English Lit teacher loved SF/F and let me write my term paper on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That was the hardest term paper I ever wrote as there's not much in the way of substance. :)

I have similar complaints with how History is (or at least used to be) taught. According to my year long American History class, there was the Mayflower, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WW2. And not much of interest happened before, in between, or after those events. It was many years later before I learned that Plymouth was not the first European settlement in the Americas.

I loved reading for school in elementary school, because we had a lot of choice about what to read (I remember doing a book report on The Fellowship of the Ring in 4th grade!). In middle school I found most of the books we had to read fairly boring, and I don't recall any interesting conversations about them - starting in 8th grade we started to really pick apart the symbolism and themes in everything we read and I found that most of the time it crushed any enjoyment I might have had.

I came into high school with the attitude that I hated required reading, until we read A Separate Peace, I absolutely loved it, and I realized that just because we had to read a book for school didn't automatically make it boring. Not that I loved everything we read from then on, but I approached it with much more of an open mind.

Later in high school I had some choice in my lit classes, so I did a semester of Shakespeare, a semester of Russian lit, and a semester of Modern German lit (the latter two I took not because of any particular interest, but because I adored the teacher). Russian lit was my favorite.

I loved to read and I read from a wide variety of genres during my school years. I never minded the “required” reading because I just liked to read! Sometimes I ended up loving a book and other times, not so much. But I’d rather read for class than do almost anything else.

I also belonged to the “Great Books” programs at least through 8th grade and there was far more discussion about the themes, motivations, and conflicts as opposed to the basic who, what, when, & where. I realized that not all “classics” were boring, dusty old books. (Now, this was 50+ years ago, so I’m sure the program is different now, but we reread mostly classic western lit.)

It was awful.

There were books that I enjoyed reading before they were assigned in class, and again (long) after. but the only required reading I could enjoy while it was assigned was Shakespeare.

Most I enjoyed, others not. I hated Catcher in the Rye, I couldn't relate to anything in the book. It probably was the wrong time, very different cultural background, and possibly a bad translation -- but I never tried to read it again.

Leserling wrote: "Most I enjoyed, others not. I hated Catcher in the Rye, I couldn't relate to anything in the book. It probably was the wrong time, very different cultural background, and possibly a bad translation..."

Yeah, its kind of sad. At that age, we're too young to have much personal experience to draw on for context. You find yourself not really understanding and you just struggle to care about any of it other than the grade you'll get at the end.

School books were a mixed bag for me. In elementary school, we could read anything "at our level" (a fraught limit, for sure) that was on topic. That gave me a lot of freedom to read what I wanted, but not much grounding in pushing myself or deconstructing a text. I read a few biographies that stick with me (Amelia Earhart and Sally Ride) and my Gifted pullout class did Island of the Blue Dolphins and My Side of the Mountain, which got me into the "kid alone in the wilderness" subgenre of kids' fiction.

In middle school, I had a decent Gifted English/Lit teacher, who did give us some variety in genres (we read A Wrinkle in Time, which I loved) but tended towards "classics" and "boy with animal that dies" a little much (can I at least get a girl with a dragon?!?). I remember being the only kid in class who knew that Sherlock Holmes had a drug problem because my dad had already read most of the Holmes oeuvre to me (I was popular for a whole 60 seconds!).

High school was a mixed bag. There was less genre variety and a LOT of classics, but my entire series of English teachers was fantastic at teaching me to break down texts, examine historical and cultural context, and explore outside of my own culture. (I'm an IB grad, if that means anything to anyone here; there's a big emphasis on multiculturalism in the whole curriculum that I really appreciate.) I hated a lot of it at the time and felt then that it robbed me of enjoying books; I read a lot of Star Wars outside of school to compensate. Now though, it's much lower effort for me to deconstruct a book's plot or structure than it was when I was 14 and it's easier for me to switch that part of my brain off if I just want to enjoy the story. I see how I approach texts differently than other members of my book clubs and am grateful to have that skill set. Our high school selections definitely suffered from the same problem Random described; we read 4 (!) Shakespeare tragedies and not a single comedy, history, or anything else (A Midsummer Night's Dream was an optional choice). The reads that stick with me are how much I connected with To Kill a Mockingbird, a few short stories ("Those Who Walk Away from Omelas" and "The Illustrated Man" were our only sff choices in 4 years), and how much I still resent my senior year English teacher (otherwise fabulous) for telling me (after I complained about the lack of sci fi reads) that I would enjoy our next book... 1984.

Lindsey, if you loved Omelas you will appreciate the homage to it that N.K. Jemisin has written as the first story in her anthology How Long 'til Black Future Month?! The whole anthology is genius.