How to foster a love of reading and literary analysis

So Meg Cabot posted a rant today about mandatory reading lists, and how much she hated them, entitled “How To Foster a Hatred of Reading,” in response to a NY Times article entitled “The Future of Reading.” I think part of Cabot’s argument is sound—if you want to foster a love of reading in kids, forcing them to read isn’t the greatest idea. Kids aren’t exactly enamored with things that look like work, and mandatory reading lists are, well, work.

But I don’t think the problem’s with the mandatory reading lists, necessarily. It’s with the way reading is taught, and the way reading is dealt with culturally. I look at the conversations and attitudes surrounding books and reading here in the United States, and I see two common attitudes:

The slobs think the snobs think everything you read should be a work of literature that will enrich your life forever, and be a statement of art and the human condition. It should transcend trivialties like plot, and Make A Statement. These books are usually depressing, difficult to understand, and unpleasant in every way. The slobs think the snobs are fun-hating elitist pricks, and that they overthink and over-analyze everything. Slobs just want to have fun, dammit, and the snobs are pissing on their parade of dukes, Greek tycoons and vampires who, if they’re not sparkly and creepy, are gangsta-rap lovin’ dudes with PhDs in Vhiolent Chrime.

The snobs think the slobs are intellectually lazy, and don’t understand why you’d want to read something poorly-written, or that adhered to a formula. The snobs are oftentimes reluctant to recognize formula in literary fiction, and aren’t necessarily the clearest about figuring out where the line between entertainment and art lie, but dammit, it’s there, and they’ll know it when they see it (just like porn! Which, by the way, is what romance readers are reading). The snobs think the slobs have degraded their literary palates by reading too much trash, and worry about the social and political ramifications if you’re not reading the rights sorts of things.

Both sides are really annoying, because they both, by and large, have it wrong, even if they do get a couple of things right. I can’t help but wonder what Meg Cabot’s experiences with reading The Scarlet Letter and Wuthering Heights would’ve been if they hadn’t been sold, not only as homework, but tedious homework. The Scarlet Letter has become a joke—every kid knows it’s supposed to be a miserable, slow reading experience, and just about all except the most nerdly ones who relish dense stories are going to approach it as such.

I grew up in a household and a culture that emphasized academic excellence—sometimes pathologically so. But one of the blessings was how I was taught to approach what I thought of as Big Books. Every Big Book I read was like leveling up in a video game: it was proof that I was getting older and smarter. Reading the big, intimidating classics wasn’t a chore; it was sign that I was growing up, that I was getting smarter and more capable. I took statements like “You’re probably not ready for this book yet” as a challenge, and I’d pick it up anyway. Some of the books I disliked intensely (like Wuthering Heights, and anything Hemingway); but many others, like Madame Bovary, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, Don Quixote, just about everything by Thomas Hardy, John Steinbeck or Mark Twain, and many other books on typical mandatory reading lists, I just adored and gobbled up before I was quite 16 years old.

I’m going to take the snob side for a moment, and say this: just about all the books on the mandatory reading lists have something enduring and important to say about us: about us as individuals, about us as culture, and about us as civilizations. They’ve stuck around so long because they represent fascinating and enduring looks into what people used to value and what people continue to value, and are capable of resonating with us centuries—sometimes millennia—after they were written. And most kids aren’t going to pick these books up on their own, because they’ve been represented as Hard, and Boring, and Unsexy. And, failing a culture that makes reading complex, dense books as exciting as leveling up in a video game, it falls on teachers and parents to show kids that these books are sexy and exciting, and if they’re hard, well, they’re well worth the work.

And now to switch to the slob side: it also wouldn’t kill to have the kids select their own reading material sometimes, y’know? The books may or may not be especially well-written, but they’re obviously compelling, and I’m a firm believer that pop culture has valuable and interesting things to say about the human condition, too. The most important aspect of teaching kids to read is how to read critically, and to recognize how books tell us a lot not only about the authors and what the authors are writing about, but about the readers themselves and how they process text and meaning, and we don’t need Moby motherfucking Dick to do that. (Incidentally: Moby Dick was a book I picked up fully expecting to hate, and ended up loving; others, like Sometimes a Great Notion, I expected to love, and ended up loathing. Such are the vagaries of mandatory reading.) Allowing the kids to select their own books introduces a great deal more diversity into the reading experience than a mandatory reading list ever could, because those lists tend to favor the dead, the white, and the male. There’s a quick, disdainful reference in the NY Times article to how kids, when allowed to choose for themselves, pick “plenty of young-adult chick-lit novels,” and I don’t think these people get it: the YA novels obviously speak to teenage girls in a way, say, The Unbearable Lightness of Being won’t—and can’t. And this isn’t a bad thing, or a good thing; it’s just a thing, and we need to recognize it and work with it.

This part of Cabot’s article actually made me sad:

I don’t think there should be mandatory reading lists in school. I cannot think of a single book I enjoyed that I was required to read in school….

…with the exceptions of books I had read before they were assigned to me in school, like To Kill A Mockingbird, and Catcher in the Rye, which were then ruined by someone going on and on about all the “symbolism” in them, and what the authors really meant, which, as an author myself, I can tell you–THE PEOPLE WRITING ABOUT THESE BOOKS DO NOT KNOW. Seriously. THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE AUTHOR REALLY MEANT AT ALL, AND ARE MORE THAN LIKELY WRONG. THIS IS WHY THESE AUTHORS ARE IN HIDING.

Man, what kind of miserable-ass, misguided English teachers did she have? Because I feel that any teacher worth her salt would’ve taught the readers that sometimes, what the author meant and what the author expressed aren’t necessarily the same thing, and that reading is both personal and interactive—it’s a highly solitary activity, in that the reader generally reads alone, but the reader is engaged in a dialogue with the text itself. Reader insights may not have anything to do with what the author meant, and may have everything to do with the reader’s own experiences, and you know what? That’s OK. In fact, that’s great. Language is slippery, and meaning is even slipperier, and we all have something to contribute to the dialogue surrounding books and the reading experience.

Ultimately, I think I’m in favor of some kind of hybrid approach: have a mandatory reading list together with a bunch of books the kids get to pick for themselves. But more than that, I think we need to change the way we look at books and talk about them. I’m tired of the old dichotomies. Some of the most depressing books I’ve read have been romance novels (Devil’s Embrace by Catherine Coulter is deeply, deeply depressing, because holy shit that book is one long, loving paean to the joys of Stockholm Syndrome), and some of the most hopeful and uplifting, even if they have a pang of bittersweet, belong on many mandatory reading lists (most Austen novels, Far From the Madding Crowd, several Dickens novels).

I’m also a big fan of an approach that embraces the maxim that even though reading the book may not have been fun, thinking about it and talking about it certainly can be. (C’mon: most of y’all love the D- and F reviews best, and don’t even pretend that isn’t true.) The singular agony of having to suffer through a bad book, or a book we don’t like, tends to bring on passion and comedy in equal measure, and we need to tap into that. I think we need to free kids from the expectation that they Must Love This Book Or Else; honest reactions and dialogue about those reactions would be a far better teaching tool than some kind of rote “see Symbol X in Element Y” lesson plan.

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  1. Julie says:

    Back when my son was in public school they had a program called DEAR – Drop Everything And Read. The idea was that a student was supposed to spend 20 minutes a day on a book of their own choosing – reading in class. It was a great idea, but class schedules beyond the sixth grade didn’t permit such a luxury.

    My son was an avid reader until he had the joy sucked out of him by a couple of awful English teachers. He’s now rediscovering a few authors he liked back in high school.

    (Captcha is position59. Hmmmm……)

  2. Lostshadows says:

    I think I’m beginning to appreciate the book reports we had to do in elementary school more. It generally wasn’t a written paper, and it was on a book we picked. (And standing behind a bully who was having both really skinny little kids books turned down, while holding something really thick is a sweet memory.)
    I also lucked out in HS, since while we got assigned reading, I got several teachers who had some imagination. (Okay, Dune is long enough to scare most sophomores, but it almost made up Ethan Frome.) Summer reading that’s a mystery book, a fantasy book, and a SF book? Woohoo!

    I think most required reading would also be improved by teacher realizing that, just because it’s a classic, doesn’t mean everyone will like it.
    (To this day, I still remember the HS teacher who wrote the note on a paper, “I seems like you didn’t like this book. Why don’t you write something positive about it?”)
    And if the word symbolism was verboten. (Poor “Outcasts of Poker Flats” you never stood a chance.)

    @La Reine Noire:

    But when she was going on and on about Christ symbolism in Hemingway, all I could see was a story about an old man who couldn’t catch a fish.

    I’d blame the teacher. Hemingway said that “The old man is an old man, and the sea is the sea.”

  3. ocelott says:

    Yeah, I have to say, every high school English teacher I ever had told us “THIS IS WHAT THE AUTHOR IS TRYING TO SAY THROUGH SYMBOLIC MEANING” with no room for discussion or argument.  In fact, once or twice someone asked “isn’t it possible we’re reading more out of this than the author intended to put in?  That this symbolism is just a happy accident?” and was told “NO, THIS IS THE WAY IT IS.”

    Ok, they might not have shouted it, as my caps might suggest.  But the rest of the conversation is pretty much accurate.

  4. Bookfiend says:

    I read this post just as I’d finish preparing a literature lecture 😀 , and thought I’d add a couple of thoughts from someone who also takes a hybrid approach (I teach the ‘serious stuff’, but read mostly sci-fi and fantasy on my own time).

    In my experience, there are two things that are killing a balanced approach to reading:

    1. On the snob side, literary theory. Really, if you want to eliminate all desire to read, ask a student to do a ‘structuralist reading’ of a work of literature. I hated this approach to literature as a student, and have banished it from my own work with students as a professor. I like to look at a work in the context of the history and philosophy of its time, without trying to fit a square peg into a round hole (because really, a ‘Marxist reading of ‘Julius Caesar’ ‘…???). Students will always make all kinds of interesting comparisons to other works, and discussions are fun. As Candy wrote, there are reasons why these works have lasted (besides being part of that Dead White Male canon), and I try to explore these reasons. We focus on the books, and if my students want to read the critics, more power to them; but I won’t force it on them.

    2. On the slob side, I see genre fiction becoming increasingly compartmentalized. We no longer have plain old ‘science fiction’. We have ‘hard science fiction’ or ‘speculative fiction’ or ‘military science fiction’, and so on. While these are informative labels, I find that they have the effect of pitting groups of readers against one another (I’ve seen this in sci-fi and fantasy forums), and of alienating non-genre readers who might have wanted to try dipping their feet into the genre. Myself, I like organizing things into ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’ (and yes, I know I contradicted myself at the beginning 😀 ). Any well-written work is worth reading in my opinion, no matter the genre.

    Okay, back to work ;).

  5. Lostshadows says:

    and Gone With the Wind (which I HATED, mainly because I wanted to bitch slap Scarlett).

    What? I’m not actually alone in that opinion?

  6. Bookfiend says:

    Above, “I’d finish” should be “I’d finished”.

  7. RoseG says:

    No one ever accuses math teachers of taking the fun out of solving quadratic equations.

    Actually, a mathematician name Paul Lockhart wrote quite a wonderful essay doing just that. His basic premise is that pure mathematics is an art, and that the standard maths curriculum kills the creative components of it.

    And most people probably aren’t going to argue that all education should be happy-puppies-and-rainbows all the time, but our current system greatly privileges the ability to give the “right” answer to “What is the theme of To Kill a Mockingbird” over critical thinking and genuine reading comprehension, which is a problem. And if the former is consistently dead dull and the latter more often genuinely engaging (if not necessarily fun), well, we should probably run with it, even if the kids are *gasp* having fun in school.

  8. Julie says:

    RoseG, your comment needs to be framed. No, it needs to be tattooed into the forehead of every so-called education expert responsible for ruining our schools.

  9. English Teacher says:

    @Jen – Your comment about reading books too early taps into something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

    Last year I read “A Tale of Two Cities” with a class of high school seniors.  I adore the book.  They hated it.  But one thing they loved was when I handed them construction paper and a few other materials and told them that they had to MAKE something 3 dimensional (no drawings), as a way of identifying with Dr. Manette’s shoemaking.  They all remembered Dr. Manette and the shoes after that.  They equally LOVED when I brought in knitting needles and yarn and showed them how to knit when we got up to Madame Defarge.  Most of them had never SEEN anyone knitting, or making shoes, or doing any kind of manual creative work.  So of course some of the most vivid images about obsessive repeated activity in the book didn’t speak to them at all.  Same problem with the chapter “Drawn to the Lodestone Rock.”  Start out: what’s a lodestone?  It’s a magnet, used here as a term for a compass.  What’s a compass?  Something people used before GPS to find their way in the woods.  (How does it work?  What does a compass look like?)  I’ve run into the same problem teaching the Odyssey with 9th graders; the whole romantic thing about Penelope weaving and unweaving so that she can hold off the suitors gets lost because the kids don’t know what weaving is and have never seen weaving (even those little potholders).  Odysseus stringing the bow makes no sense because they’ve never played with bows, and have no innate concept about tension and work and why it’s hard to string a bow.

    My point is that we tend to think of reading as something that PROVIDES information of things we DON’T have experience of, whereas when we read for pleasure, I think we’re mostly activating memories and/or prior knowledge of things we HAVE experienced.  Of COURSE we have to read for information sometimes, and the magic of a good book (I’m thinking especially of historical novels here) is that it provides us with information but also with enough cues to make us feel as if the unfamiliar is ACTUALLY FAMILIAR.  But it stands to reason that (hopefully) as we get older we’ll have more experiences to draw on, so our reading will become more meaningful.

    So what implication does this have for teaching a love of books?  I’ve seen (and used) something similar to the DEAR program Julie mentioned, but my unscientific anecdotal observation is that it just cements a love of books among those who love reading already, and doesn’t do much for those for whom it is a chore.  I would argue that the problem is that our educational system at least in the lower grades is SO focused on reading that it blanks out the experiences that make reading meaningful.  Kids should do more “summer camp” type activities (e.g. making models out of wood, clay, plastic, paper and every conceivable substance affordable, knitting, making potholders, building with blocks, USING THEIR HANDS AND EYES AND NOSES) rather than reading books about kids (or adults) who do these things.  It may not be “the real thing” (I can see worries about putting an actual longbow into a kid’s hand just to help appreciate Robin Hood) but it makes reading about the real thing more familiar, and thus (I suspect) more pleasurable.

    And @Jody, yes, I think critical and analytical thinking are necessary, and thanks for pointing out that not everything has to be fun for everybody.  Most teachers I know bend over backwards to try to find relevant and exciting texts for students, only to be told “Miss, I can’t read this book because it doesn’t interest me,” by little dears who have learned that “reading is fun” and therefore if it involves ANY challenge they shouldn’t have to make the effort.

    Forgive the length of the post.  But I thought it was worth weighing in, since I’m always a little saddened by the general assumption that English teachers are incompetent fools who enjoy making brilliant students like Ms. Cabot suffer.

  10. Kris says:

    RoseG, your comment reminded me of my favorite math teacher in high school who taught us the quadratic formula to the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Her class helped me resolve many of my prejudices against math (we’re still not best pals, but we don’t need to be).

    I agree that a hybrid system is probably best. I was fortunate enough to have a mother and grandmother who encouraged reading for fun and enlightenment. They didn’t really guide me too much, occasionally they would suggest that I might be tad young for the subject matter, but otherwise they trusted me to make wise choices.

    I’m an English Major who has an aversion to large portions of canon (most stem from high school, where there didn’t seem to be any joy in most of my classes). However, as I make myself go back and read some of it, it grows on me. (I hated Steinbeck in HS, but took a class this summer as sort of a personal challenge, and while I still think that he can be incredibly depressing, I really loved his voice, and how well he understood human nature and social unrest.)

    I think that it’s important to find a balance for the classroom, the student (of all ages), and our personal reading lists. I usually manage two Sci-fi or Romance novels for every “literary” I read, just because I can read them faster.

  11. Wayward says:

    I was like Kimberly Anne – I’d read what was given fast so I could enjoy it ( or not, if it just plain stank 😉 ) before the teacher could suck all the life out of it with over-analysis.

      Didn’t help that I kept getting teachers who were married to their own personal interpretations.  Made it easy to get good grades, though.  We used to joke that one would give an A+ to anything titled ‘Greek People In The Bible Having Sex’, his three favourite themes.  For another, all you had to do was claim that everything was penii.  Is there a tall building?  It is a penis.  A rock?  It is a penis.  A cheese sandwich?  IT IS A PENIS!

      Catchpa: every47.  My brother’s bookshelves are an interesting mix of Obligatory Classics and whatever the fad flavour of the week is – he works in a bookstore, he likes to have an idea of what people are asking after.

  12. joykenn says:

    You know to really enjoy something (skateboarding, batting, or reading) you have to be somewhat proficient at it and that means practice.  My oldest son didn’t enjoy reading until I took him with me to a science fiction conference.  He absolutely loved a presentation given by a writer and a Emergency Room doctor about how to kill off your characters or give them lingering conditions.  A few other presentations about wars and fighting got his interest. (Sigh, no he did not become a serial killer but young teenage boys are pretty gruesome!).  He actually went with me to the library to find books by some of the authors and ….the more he read, the better he became at reading and the more he enjoyed it.  Now reading is one of his greatest joys and he’s a very fast reader.  Get kids to read whatever it is and you might “hook” them for life.

  13. Robin says:

    I’m still trying to get my breath back from reading Cabot’s essay. It took me aback for the pure invective in her tone and what seemed like a massive oversimplification regarding WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING (I can use the all caps, right, since she did?).

    On the one hand, she says this:

    Fortunately, no one, not the librarians, my parents, my teachers, no one ever said, “Hey. Don’t you think you’ve read this novelization of a movie enough times, Cabot? How about moving on to some Nathaniel Hawthorne now?”

    Then this:

    Why are people always making kids hate to read by forcing them to read things they don’t want to read, or aren’t ready to read yet?

    And this:

    I actually did read To Kill A Mockingbird on my own (because my mom gave it to me one day when the library was closed and I couldn’t check out The Fantastic Voyage again). And I really liked it. 

    But guess what? I still hated The Scarlet Letter (and yes, Wuthering Heights too) with a passion (and still do today) because I was “required” to read them in school.

    Okay, so the upshot here is any book she was required to read in school she hates, therefore no kid should be required to read any book in school. And that “people” are “always” forcing kids to read what they hate and therefore fostering a hatred of reading.

    So how is that overgeneralized argument any different from what she’s arguing against? There seem to be a few pervasive assumptions, namely that a) any book assigned in school will be hated, and b) that EVERYONE is making kids hate reading by downgrading genre fiction and elevating esoteric literary fiction and c) THEN insisting that teachers are being unbelievably arrogant by pretending to know what the author meant.

    Really? REALLY?

    Okay, so my counter-arguments:

    1. EVERYONE is not doing ANYTHING, because schools and teachers are different. Since Cabot had teachers who didn’t trash her SF reading, why the generalized assumption in the other direction? I’ve never been a primary or secondary school English teacher, but I’ve worked with plenty of them (through NEH, NIH, or other outreach-type initiatives), and has anyone really stopped to consider lately how much shit these teachers take—from their students, from the parents, from society—for one of the least financially lucrative jobs in the US relative to work expended? Beyond that, though, there are so many teachers out there who want nothing more than to share their own love of reading with their students, and who are implementing all sorts of innovative and integrative approaches. Here’s a curriculum bit from the Science Fiction list of the Yale-New Haven Teacher’s Institute, which has been active since 1978 (and extends well beyond New Haven), for example. But there are lots of examples out there. Lots.

    2. It is not true for everyone that mandatory reading = hatred. I still remember my experience of reading Tale of Two Cities in 9th grade English and being totally overwhelmed with the way my teacher helped us read and understand the novel. I still remember the moment where Madame Defarge’s knitting was revealed for its true significance, not only to the plot, but also to the way the story was constructed. OMG it was like a whole new world opened up once I understood how many levels books could work on, and I owe that to a mandatory reading list. I probably even owe to those lists the way I argued with my 12th grade English teacher over what Hawthorne meant in The Scarlet Letter, because he was WRONG, dammit, and I wasn’t going to accept what he had to say! Because, amazingly enough, I had an actual brain and wasn’t just a little robot child accepting everything a teacher told me as the WORD OF GOD. And it was some solid -albeit annoyingly precocious and anti-authoritarian – critical thinking skills trained on those mandatory books that bestowed such a gift on me.

    3. Having worked with more than a few students who did not like reading, I found that a critical partner in the battle to encourage them was the parents. Parents making room for their kids to read, parents who love reading themselves, parents who read with their kids and who read to their kids. Parents who facilitate any sign of their kids’ interest in reading. Parents who go to their kids’ class conferences and who keep in touch with the teacher and who don’t expect school to polish junior into a shiny penny of civic engagment and academic excellence. Parents who are active in their school system and who are paying close attention to what their kids are learning and why. Who are willing to work with teachers and assist in their kids’ learning. For older kids, peer groups make a difference, too.

    4. Back to the issue of teaching books as if the author meant a, b, or c. Yes, this is something that as grown-ups we know does not exist. That no reader can scientifically deduce what the author meant, any more than any author can communicate exactly what s/he means directly and without an unconscious counter-text being written simultaneously. Texts are their own critical world, and neither author nor reader has the final word on what it means to anyone. But even accepting that as true, I don’t see it as an argument for the elimination of required reading, since that approach is not book specific, but pedagogical in nature.

    5. As I said last night on Twitter, I support a mixed-genre approach to reading in school, and a healthy balance between teacher-directed and student-directed reading experiences/activities. Not only, IMO, is is important to promote autonomy in kids by empowering them to choose and read the books they want, but it’s also, IMO, important to help students find books that they might not find themselves. And those books are often on the required reading lists. And IMO those books help fortify the idea of a unified learning community, giving students of all abilities the opportunity to engage in a shared experience, one that they may not love at the time. Because that’s one of the most difficult things about this issue: you often don’t know the pay-offs or the costs until later.

    I cannot tell you how many hours I felt were wasted in middle school learning about Mark Twain, traveling to his dusty old home, seeing Hal Holbrook impersonate him on Broadway, etc. I swore I would never read another freaking Mark Twain book ever again! And I probably kept that promise until I took an entire seminar on Twain one summer in college (it was the only class left!). And I learned to love Twain in a way I never thought possible. And to be so incredibly grateful for all that stuff that I thought was shoved down my throat in seventh grade. Now all that occupies a position of grateful remembrance for me. I know it’s nothing I ever would have chosen for myself if I had the choice, because I didn’t have the wisdom as a 12 or 13 year old to know any better. Which, to me, is one of the most powerful arguments for mandatory reading lists in school. It may not mean that every kid will love every book assigned (I still don’t like The Grapes of Wrath or The Red Badge of Courage), and it certainly doesn’t mean that the lists have to be all about classic lit or that they shouldn’t evolve over time (honestly, I’m way more concerned about race and gender equity than genre equity, but that’s another argument). But at least those lists provide a common thread of ideas and experiences on which to build, and that is still a critical function of institutionalized education in a democratic society.

  14. English Teacher says:

    Thanks, Robin.  You said everything I was feeling but was trying to be too sweet and reasonable to say.  (Teachers learn to take disrespect and smile.  It’s part of the job description.)

    But I have to share this because the timing is so perfect:  I had a kid in my 9th grade class last year who devoured the Twilight series, and within a week of our summer reading list being handed out (the kids had to pick 2 books off a list of six choices, in a mix of genres) was already almost done with her first “assigned” book.  So at the end of June I sent her a link to this site’s comments section about “recommendations for YA romance” (in response to a request from YA librarian), with a boatload of recommendations, discussions about what was appropriate/inappropriate for her age group, links to other review sites, etc. and told her she might enjoy sifting through it.  Five minutes ago I got an email from her saying “Thanks for the link, I really enjoyed it.” 

    I have no idea which books (if any) she tracked down, but a huge THANK YOU to all the members of this community, who showed a bright kid that there’s a place where people argue passionately about books, and gave your suggestions to a girl who was worried about being bored over the summer.

  15. quichepup says:

    One of the main reasons some kids hate the required reading lists is because teachers aren’t excited about the books themselves. Many teachers are teaching what the kids need to know to pass the standardized tests and little else. I’m reminded of the Simpsons, where Lisa’s teacher hit the “independent thought alarm” when she voices a contrary opinion in class.

    Besides some books just suck, even if they are canon. My son and I share a deep hatred for Catcher in the Rye, a book we were both forced to read 25 yrs. apart. On the other hand I remember my beloved AP English teacher got us reading Canterbury Tales by pointing out the dirty parts.

  16. Robin says:

    @English Teacher: I fully support people’s right to complain about our social institutions, but I also get frustrated by over-generalized criticisms backed up by absolutely no interest in supporting or participating in change. And for education, it’s particularly problematic, IMO, because everyone, not just those who have children, are affected by the quality and viability of schools. I’m still breathing deep over that Cabot essay, trying for a zen calm, and it helped to vent a little, but yeah, I am so over the blame game when it comes to education.  I don’t think people really understand the immense and diversely situated challenges facing education, especially public education, in this country, nor the critical need for more public involvement and support in supporting educators. Although if public funding continues its current downslide, we may eventually be in a position to see what, exactly, society would be like if it weren’t for those much-derided schools and teachers.

  17. Madd says:

    I also lucked out in HS, since while we got assigned reading, I got several teachers who had some imagination. (Okay, Dune is long enough to scare most sophomores, but it almost made up Ethan Frome.) Summer reading that’s a mystery book, a fantasy book, and a SF book? Woohoo!

    I LOVE Dune. It would have rocked to have something like that assigned. Your post reminded me of a line in Grosse Point Blank where the lead character says to his former English teacher “are you still inflicting all that horrible Ethan Frome damage on your students?”

    and Gone With the Wind (which I HATED, mainly because I wanted to bitch slap Scarlett).

    What? I’m not actually alone in that opinion?

    You mean there are people who didn’t?

  18. Candy says:

    @Robin:

    But even accepting that as true, I don’t see it as an argument for the elimination of required reading, since that approach is not book specific, but pedagogical in nature

    Jesus, yes, that’s what I was trying to say for a good chunk of my blog entry and didn’t quite articulate. There’s nothing broken about the idea of mandatory reading lists; the biggest issues seem to lie with the way those mandatory books are taught.

    …honestly, I’m way more concerned about race and gender equity than genre equity, but that’s another argument…

    When it comes to mandatory reading lists, I have to admit that race and gender equity being more my concern, too, because if there’s some sort of hybrid system being implemented, I don’t see genre equity being an issue, because the kids will more likely than not correct that deficit all by themselves. I think that genre equity becomes more of an issue when a school implements nothing but a mandatory reading list, because I’m all for trying to capture the attention of kids who find reading difficult and/or boring, and if that takes robots, wizards, hot vampires, or Captain friggin’ Underpants (which, by the way, I love, love, love, and I didn’t find those books until I was 25 or 26), then I say Go For It.

    Something else that would be interesting for schools to explore as a way to capture and foster readers, especially resistant readers: adding graphic novels to mandatory reading lists. There’s so much that’s good out there, and not just superhero stories (because most people still associate comics with dudes in tights and capes, though there are several excellent superhero comics out there, too), but works like Maus, or Persepolis, or Blankets. But is that not book-ish enough? I’m pretty sure there are schools out there that already have a program like that in place, but I was wondering how invested people were in the idea of Mandatory Books Being Strictly Text, Thank You.

  19. Jennie Blake says:

    (I, for one, will forever hate “The Grapes of Wrath” because of a teacher who basically battered the symbolism in the book to death with a variety of farming implements.)
    I would just like to second, third, and fourth to infinity and beyond the idea that the love of reading is most helped by giving people both choice and guidance and encouraging them to have books scattered about the house.
      As a middle school teacher, I saw more teenagers being taught to *hate* reading by mindless worksheets, essay assignments, and “pop quizzes” than anything else, and it made me deeply depressed. Mandatory reading lists only work if they are very, very, very, very carefully thought out AND if there is some leeway for student’s personalities.
    Of course, in my classroom, we basically had a reading free-for-all (you like it? then read it! you finished it? then read something else!) and you know what? They could ALL spell, read, and write darn good essays by the end.  Because they had all READ enough good writing to be able to. 
    There is simply no substitute. 
    Love,
    the girl whose father once had “strong words” with a librarian who tried to block her from checking out “Are you there God? It’s me Margaret” at what was deemed a “tender” age.

  20. Jocelyn says:

    I was so lucky in my English teachers – I didn’t universally love everything they assigned, but they never tried to suck the joy out of reading.  When they discussed the books, they didn’t talk about the symbolysim, but about the motivations of the characters, and the things we liked and didn’t like about the novels.  There are books I read that I loved and never would have picked up on my own (the Scarlett Letter is one of them) and they really opened my eyes to new things. In fact, when they did discuss symbolysm, they spoke of it like a great, fun secret that was a lovely add-on to the plot, instead of the real meaning of the book.  Dudes, it sounds like some of your teachers would have been happier teaching you about decoder rings.

    Though my love of reading came mostly from watching my mother read and write, and discovering books and genres that worked for me on my own, I think my teachers did a great job of encouraging and expanding that love.

    Honestly, I think the only thing any of them did to put me off reading was a fourth-grade teacher who accused me of padding the number of books I was reading because she was displaying the number on a chart on the wall, and my line on the graph was much higher than everyone else’s (I was actually minimizing the number because it was a little embarassing how much I read).  I still feel a little indignant all these years later that she thought I was reading for her dumb graph and not just because I liked to read.  That was an elementary school teacher, though, my English teachers were fantastic.

  21. Candy says:

    @Jody: You make interesting points (that I think are echoed in Robin’s comment, too) about the necessity of learning certain things, and how having fun while doing it isn’t necessarily the point—that having kids finish books they don’t enjoy, just like finishing anything they don’t enjoy in school, is part of the process of teaching discipline. I agree with you, in that I don’t think kids should read only books they love. If nothing else, having to read a bad book throws a good book into starker relief, ditto reading a book you love vs. a book you hate. But I do think that making the learning process engaging and a pleasure (if not strictly “fun”) is a better way to go, because even though not every book a kid reads needs to be a keeper, keeping that kid engaged in the process of learning about that book instead of seeing learning as a source of pain is important. And it’s so easy to confuse the two. I think Meg Cabot has done exactly this: confused bad teaching for bad books and bad book lists.

    I think we’re in such an uproar over reading because it’s one of the parts of the educational process that we think NEEDS to be fun and engaging—that something is drastically lost to us if we don’t have a large population of smart, engaged, critical readers. Your comments about math, Latin and French got me thinking that we don’t typically treat the other aspects of schooling in that way (though I like RoseG pointing out that math is, can be and should be taught in fun, creative ways). If people don’t like math, or don’t get it, we shrug our shoulders and move on, because math occupies a sphere that’s more strictly compartmentalized as academic. That’s not to say that basic math skills aren’t every bit as essential as basic reading skills, but we’re not used to seeing people mathing for fun. So when kids don’t like reading, or are turned off books completely because of bad English teachers? It’s a tragedy. And I think it says something about the importance of the process to us.

  22. Julie says:

    I hope no one thinks I’m down on teachers. My mom is a retired teacher and I’m aware of all the BS she went through to do her job.

    I applaud the teachers who work hard to make any subject interesting for their students, because I’ve seen what they’re working against in the public school systems. It can be soul sucking. I just saw @JennyBlake’s post and that’s what I mean.

    Jocelyn wrote:

    Honestly, I think the only thing any of them did to put me off reading was a fourth-grade teacher who accused me of padding the number of books I was reading because she was displaying the number on a chart on the wall, and my line on the graph was much higher than everyone else’s (I was actually minimizing the number because it was a little embarassing how much I read).
    I still feel a little indignant all these years later that she thought I was reading for her dumb graph and not just because I liked to read. That was an elementary school teacher, though, my English teachers were fantastic.

    OMG! The same thing happened to me. It took a visit from the aforementioned school teacher mom to set that particular teacher straight.

  23. Candy says:

    @Natalie: so glad one of my bad analogies has been helpful! Anybody want to hear about my analogy about how learning new vocabulary is kind of like picking up extra ammo packs and new equipment?

  24. Jody says:

    I meant to say periodic table of the elements.  Oops.

    Perhaps we’re confusing ‘reading’ with ‘literature’.  How many commenters have said they hated some of the required books, but maintain they still love to read?

    There’s never been a school course entitled ‘Loving To Read 101’ as far as I know and yet reading proficiency is essential to academic achievement.  Is there any argument that avid readers are more successful in school?

    Instilling a love of reading is just as much a home issue as is personal hygiene or responsibility for a pet.  While teachers and schools can and mostly do create reading-friendly environments, their job is to teach content (lliterature), not context (a love of reading).  Holding teachers responsibile for whether or not a child loves to read is a WTF of the most F-edness. 

    Sure, some teachers are more nurturing than others, but the same goes for doctors, Scout leaders, Sunday School teachers and every other adult a child comes in contact with.  That’s life.

  25. ninjapenguin says:

    Okay, first of all I just wanted to reiterate what so many people have said here about being a voracious reader from early on.  We didn’t have much required reading in my school (other than what was in the textbook) and I usually preferred what I read on my own—even when it was on the list of Recommended Classics my teacher had given me. But then my college freshman English class killed my love for Jane Eyre by making me write a five page paper on the symbolism of Gateshead (her childhood home) and going on and on and how the moon was her mother. Seriously, WTF?  Thankfully, my Shakespeare class was kickass.  We examined the plays as scripts, talking about casting choices and how we’d stage or play certain scenes, which seemed to me such a natural way of looking at them.  I think everyone was really excited about that class, and I know my writings and discussions were much more in depth and opinionated than in that horrible English class.

    Second, I lately read Enchanted Hunters (which I highly recommend), an examination of childhood reading and literature.  One point the author brings up that I hadn’t realized before is that while we, as a culture, say that we highly value reading, we often tend to, in the next breath, disparage people who read.  We call book lovers bookworms; we talk about it using the language of drug or alcohol addiction or else of gluttony: we’re addicted to books, voracious readers, we’re desperate for a fix of our favorite authors, we consume books and glut ourselves on them.  There is a general feeling that reading “too much” is unhealthy both physically and mentally.  So I have to wonder if this also has much to do both with how to foster a love of reading and, perhaps, why some teachers do so poorly at such.

    Thirdly, I just want to say that you guys are awesome, and thanks to you (and Dear Author) I have read my first romance novels as an adult: Devil’s Delilah by Loretta Chase and The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer.  BTW, totally loved them!  I am definitely going to have to track down more. (Captcha agrees with my tastes: british78)

  26. Robin says:

    @Jody: You make interesting points (that I think are echoed in Robin’s comment, too) about the necessity of learning certain things, and how having fun while doing it isn’t necessarily the point—that having kids finish books they don’t enjoy, just like finishing anything they don’t enjoy in school, is part of the process of teaching discipline.

    I just want to make the clarification that I’m not suggesting that mandatory reading is about teaching discipline; I think it’s also about learning, and perhaps more generally about the difference between enjoying the process of learning and enjoying every single thing you’re learning. As well as the reality that even subjects or books you didn’t like might have (likely have) actually taught you something you value.

    No collective educational environment is going to match every student’s needs every time. I had teachers I hated in school, teachers I look back on now and realize just shouldn’t have been teaching. And I had teachers who were clearly born to it, who were talented and dedicated and would have taught (and did!) no matter how crappy the pay. And I’ve had students (albeit at the college level) who came back to me at the end of a term or even years later and thanked me for opening them up to books/ideas/interpretations they would not otherwise have been aware of/open to. Because the dynamic of teaching and learning is active, dynamic, and unpredictable beyond a certain point.

    Which is part of why for every kid who hates The Scarlet Letter, there’s one who loves it. For every kid who loves Pride and Prejudice, another hates it. And so on.

    If I had to distill my response to the ‘let’s toss the reading list out the window’ argument into one sound byte, I guess it would be ‘let’s focus on the appreciation of learning as opposed to haggling over what books are Good or Bad.’ And by that I mean, let us parents, students, teachers, everyone else value learning more. Let us be more active in supporting the educational institutions in our community and let us fight for every kid’s right to flourish in a learning community. Let us embrace equity in educational opportunities, let us stop being content with the reality that many of our most needy kids are being educated in PRISON rather than school, and let us all take responsibility for our own part in how much or little we value and support schools in our local communities. Because if we’re not more attentive, this is going to be the ubiquitous reality against which we’re battling, wishing for the good old days of required reading lists.

  27. Lynn says:

    Thinking back about what I read in school, what comes to mind isn’t so much what I read.  I remember talking a lot about theme and symbols and such but not much about plot or character motivations or story structure.  To the point where I was often confused about what was actually going on in the story.

    The Great Gatsby was a particular offender in this case.  I remember the green light and everything it could represent, but don’t ask me what the plot was. And you can bet I was bored by it.  (Although, with Gatsby, I suspect it has something to do with things that are obvious to adults but not so much to 15-year-olds.)

    Anyway, I wonder if kids are bored because they’re confused?  And that spending some time talking about what is actually happening in the book might help?

  28. Tina C. says:

    Robin wrote:

    But even accepting that as true, I don’t see it as an argument for the elimination of required reading, since that approach is not book specific, but pedagogical in nature.

    I agree.  As much as I may have disliked a lot of my mandatory reading in my pre-college years, it wasn’t necessarily because of the specific texts.  Okay, in a lot of instances, it was, but there were some that I liked well enough before all the interest was sucked from my body until I draped across my desk like a deflated balloon, praying that the bell would ring or a meteor would hit the school, one or the other.  I was bored and frustrated by the process—the tedium of it was stupefying.  There are better ways of teaching these books and engaging the students so that they are part of the process and not just voice recorders that will reproduce the “right” conclusions later on some essay test or term paper. 

    And I have noticed that things have changed somewhat since I was in grade school.  My daughter read Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt, and Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, in elementary school and just loved them.  (Red Badge of Courage didn’t get assigned until 7th grade—vast improvement over making 4th graders read it!)  Also her required reading included a much greater diversity of authors than I was offered in high school, with books from all different cultures and a separate section for women authors.  So, it seems that things have changed for the better.  At least in some places.

    But I thought it was worth weighing in, since I’m always a little saddened by the general assumption that English teachers are incompetent fools who enjoy making brilliant students like Ms. Cabot suffer.

    I don’t think that English teachers are incompetent fools.  My AP English teacher was great!  I still didn’t much care for the Book of Job (one of the 3 main texts that we covered that year), but she really brought us into the discussion and if one person talked about how something we read reminded him of some Police lyrics, she was not only open to it, she got him to make a short presentation about it.  So I’m not saying that all of my teachers were like the ones that I complain about—just, unfortunately, most of them.  However, when I say my experience with the way that The Great Works of (Dead, White, Male) Literature were taught generally sucked, I’m only referring to my experience.

  29. SusannaG says:

    I am having flashbacks to ninth grade.

    Mrs. Carter was a notorious book-killer.

    The only Hemingway that I really like is the one we didn’t have to read in her class – The Sun Also Rises.  My God, do I hate The Old Man and the Sea!

    I’ll never forget getting in trouble for, of all things, reading the unabridged Great Expectations, “Because the REST of the class is not reading that version, Susanna!”  (My parents are English professors.  They laughed their heads off.)

    I think the only reason To Kill a Mockingbird survived Mrs. Carter is that I had already read it.  It was, interestingly enough, enjoyed by about the entire class, and was easily the most recently published book we ever had as assigned reading.  Also, we saw the movie, and what’s not to like about watching Gregory Peck IN CLASS?

    On the other hand, I had several very good English teachers in school (a couple of whom used the “pick books from a long list for different amounts of points” system).  But somehow I’ll never forget Mrs. Carter or the assignment to diagram sentences from Silas Marner.

  30. Jody says:

    I do think that making the learning process engaging and a pleasure (if not strictly “fun”) is a better way to go.

    Candy, I posted before I read this.  You’re exactly right, and I’m off and running on my next rant, which is to say, ‘if only”.  These days, the sort of magical creative teachers who go the extra mile to make their subjects memorable and exciting are not only largely unrewarded, but actively discouraged. 

    The teacher who performed the math miracles immortalized in the movie Stand and Deliver went unacknowleged by his school system. 

    In the current public school climate, with school systems sanctioned if students don’t meet standardized test score goals, unbelievable amounts of paperwork, mainstreaming and providing individual attention to students who really have no business in regular classrooms, No Child Left Behind and litigious parents, it’s a triumph if and when any actual learning goes on at all.

    Rant over.

  31. Julie says:

    In the current public school climate, with school systems sanctioned if students don’t meet standardized test score goals, unbelievable amounts of paperwork, mainstreaming and providing individual attention to students who really have no business in regular classrooms, No Child Left Behind and litigious parents, it’s a triumph if and when any actual learning goes on at all.

    Quoted for truth.

  32. pamelia says:

    I also agree with several people who’ve stated some books are too advanced for high-school readers; Gatsby for instance which I thought was incomprehensible when I was 16.  I read it again at 22 in college and loved it because I could understand not just the words but the characters and their motivations.  Pride and Prejudice which I read on my own at age 13 and found intensely boring because NOTHING HAPPENED is now one of my favorite books.  I think a lot of the curriculum is chosen without a nod to the ages of the intended readers.  Does a 16 year-old really relate to Hester Prynne? When I was in elementary school my Grandma’s cousin who was an English teacher in Canada loaned me some of her textbooks for her classes which were full of stories about young people from their perspective and I didn’t want to return those books!

  33. me and not you says:

    In grade school, up until high school that is, we had a mix—books we were required to read (usually in class) and we discussed as a class.  And then we had to do a number of book reports, on whatever we wanted.  The one stipulation was no babysitters club, or … ghostbusters or whatever that series was.  Sweet Vally high probably wouldn’t have been allowed either.

    In high school that changed, but I went to a private school, where you didn’t have time to read for fun if you wanted to.  Several of us would bemoan the start of school because we couldn’t read for fun anymore.

    Overall, I probably had more good english teachers than bad, with the notable exception of Mr. … apparently I blocked his name.  Anyway, he had us reading the same book my little sister (4 years younger) was reading, and we were supposed to be in the “advanced” class.  We read several different versions of Anne Franke (one, her diary, two, the play, three, watched the movie, four, went to see the play)—should he really have been surprised when we were so bored we were quoting the lines at each other?  I don’t honestly mind a mediocre teacher, as one who is patently bad.  I’ve had plenty of teachers who did all they could to make the material interesting, but ultimately weren’t actually teaching us acurate information (not entirely sure if that’s the teacher’s fault)

    However, I loooved Shakespear.  And, at least with Scarlet Letter, the “symbolism” seemed to actually be real, as opposed to “the teacher is totally making this up, holy poop” (Cold Mountain—hate it with a deep passion).  With the exception of the symbolism-happy teacher, I always enjoyed english class (ironically, she’s probably the one who taught me most about writing, keeping in mind I tend to write more in a “scientific” manner, and less in a “creative”/“critique” kind of way).  On the other hand, I was the kind of kid who read “the handmaiden” when I was in 5th grade.  Got in trouble when my mom finally took a good look at it (its not that graphic, I don’t know what her problem was).  It was my first introduction to dystopia, and I probably would have benefitted from having someone to talk about it…

  34. Jocelyn says:

    I just have to say, I love Hemingway (though I don’t like old man and the sea – I think most programs choose that as your Hemingway gateway drug because it’s short and supposedly unintimidating to young readers).

    I love his work because of all authors, I think he’s the one that invites the reader to bring the most to the story.  He’s only telling you a very limited number of things, giving you the outline, and then letting your imagination fill in the details.  He’s horrible to read as a young reader for that reason, too – I remember reading his story “Hills like White Elephants” in high school and having no context to realize he was talking about abortion. 

    At any rate, all of you who met him when you were young, try going back and reading “A Moveable Feast” or some of his books about traveling, or the one that was published posthumously, “The Garden of Eden” which is my favorite of all of his books.  He doesn’t do happy endings, but he makes you really think and engage with his text.  Which is wonderful.

  35. caligi says:

    I think summer reading lists just need to change, that’s all. Few high school students want to spend lazy summer days reading heavy-hitting classics. Requiring those sorts of books be summer reading is very much a fast-track to resentment. Summer lists should have lighter fare and even some genre fic in there. Just something to keep them using their brains a wee bit.

    During the schoolyear is the time for Tolstoy, Steinbeck and Dickens. Sure they’re not the sort of books high school students want to read, but they should anyways, and they’re at least in the habit of reluctantly doing schoolwork during the schoolyear. I still hate Tolstoy, but I’m glad I was forced to read him. Had I not been forced, I would never have read any of his stuff and I would have missed out on an experience, even if I never want to read it again. Even if I didn’t like the books forced on me, I didn’t resent the books themselves because my time was not my own then as it was during the summer. I understood that they were boring me to tears for my own good much in the same way I was expected to joylessly churn out algebra homework.

    I hear people on the “book ruined by teacher” experience. My AP English teacher way back in the whens was notorious for finding homosexual overtones in every.single.book we read that year. Still to this day I can’t look at To The Lighthouse without giggling. He was so ridiculous that I was able to draw my own conclusions, since I was absolutely not accepting his.

    Yet another teacher ruined Thomas Hardy for me. His very favorite book was The Return of the Native. I try to read this book once every 5 years or so and have never managed to get past the first page without cringing. All I can remember is him yelling at us, with that nasty skin tag on his nose, telling us we wouldn’t know a great book if it bit us on the ass. Similar tirades turned me against Bronte and Austen, though recent readings were successful. Was that the fault of required reading? No, I just got unlucky when I ended up with a nutty teacher that year. Another teacher was a dream, having us read Rebecca, The Hobbit, Lord of the Flies, an Agatha Christie book, the Catcher in the Rye, etc and then having a class-wide discussion of the books.

    I did not come away from school with a love of reading, and I don’t see anything wrong with that. In fact, until I started reading romance in January, I think I read maybe 2 or 3 novels a year. A Vonnegut here, a Pratchett there, and that was about it. I kept trying to read lit fic books people suggested to me, but could never get more than a chapter in before getting bored. I decided I must not like fiction. All those years, was my life poorer? I didn’t think so. I don’t think my life’s any richer now, just different.

    I don’t think there’s really any reason to try to foster a love of reading in kids. I’d rather focus on fostering curiosity, however it manifests itself. Some people read, some tinker, others do. I don’t think loving to read is actually integral to loving to learn. It’s merely one tool of many.

  36. Alisa Neil says:

    I’m trying to remember exactly what was req. reading. As a class we did 1 book a semester & had 4 book reports off the “approved” list. What I do remember we did: Hamlet, Tale of Two Cities, Romeo & Juliet (watched the 60s Zefferelli(?) movie—complete w/ permission slips sent home because I think there was a boob in it 9th grade), Jane Eyre, Jekyll & Hyde, To Kill A Mockingbird… I read a lot off the lists on my own, even not for class.

    Our approved lists that we had to pick off of to read/do reports on had all the expected (Austen, Dickens, Hawthorne, Hemmingway, the Brontes, Shakespear, all your typical classics most teens won’t touch unless forced to at least crack Cliff Notes for class lots with archaic language to make your eyes cross when you’re worried about Friday night’s football game). It also had Wells, Verne, Bradbury, Frank Herbert’s Dune. Judy Blume never went off the reading lists—Are You There God it’s Me Margaret and Deenie were still on the lists all the way through Sr. Year. Lois Duncan & SE Hinton stayed on them. So did the Little House on the Prairies & Newbury’s like Island of The Blue Dolphins & Witch of Blackbird Pond. My graduating class had 29 kids and we were *huge* avg was about 20. K-12 in one building so the varied reading levels weren’t made an issue of on the independent book reports. Kids who simply weren’t able to slog through Dickens had Twain or Ingalls (rural farming area, those books made sense and language not difficult) the main english teacher we had 7-12 was awesome and all 3 were good about steering to reading level on the pick from the list reading, though the other two could make Stephen King’s goriest or the raunchiest erotica (not that that would have been allowed) bore high school boys to tears.

    School my kids are attending is bit bigger (avg about 35-40 kids per grade but still K-12) and has the same sort of limited mixed approach.  I was a bookworm in a non reading family. The mixed lists got me trips to library 7 miles away.

    My kids…I’ve got 2 readers who’d read a cereal box for something to read. My daughter, and honestly the youngest who is autistic is fascinated w/ letters symbols and reads better than his 10yr old brother. My 9yr old reads well, but has yet to find the hook. wants to read, but what he’s interested in is written below him & he’s bored. What’s his level reading, is not his interest. 10yo has learning dificulties. Unless it’s military history, football or spongebob he won’t touch. My eldest is *finally* getting into books with Harry Dresden really catching him at going on 15. The girl rolls her eyes at the books forced to read she doesn’t care for. The Eldest skims by BS’ing to a D I could throttle him for and doesn’t crack the book, asks his sister for what it’s about if it’s one she’s read just to read. Not hit the issue w/ the younger boys so much yet.

  37. Lostshadows says:

    I LOVE Dune. It would have rocked to have something like that assigned.

    I can actually only suspect that Dune would have survived for me on it own. I’d actually read it after I got dragged to the movie. On the other hand, I did get stuck writing a paper on “Dune as an Epic.” 😛

    Your post reminded me of a line in Grosse Point Blank where the lead character says to his former English teacher “are you still inflicting all that horrible Ethan Frome damage on your students?”

    Our class assignment for Ethan Frome was to rewrite the ending. Much cathartic bloodshed of characters did ensue on my part. >:)

    and Gone With the Wind (which I HATED, mainly because I wanted to bitch slap Scarlett).

      What? I’m not actually alone in that opinion?

    You mean there are people who didn’t?

    I have never, ever seen anyone saying bad about the book or movie. It always struck me as odd.

  38. Karen says:

    I went to public school and was very fortunate to be in advanced English classes 3 out of 4 years in High School.  The only year I did not enjoy reading was that one year not in advanced AP.  The teacher lost me with the necessity to memorize songs from the musical “Don Quixote” rather than actually see the musical/read the play/read the book!

    I will say that the more trash I read, the more impatient I become when a book requires me to think.  I guess I am thoroughly on the “slob” side…

    being31….I wish I was 31!

  39. willa says:

    I have to disagree that giving a book meaning or symbolism that the author did not intend is wrong. It’s not wrong (with the usual sensible caveat: that nobody is clearly reaching for meaning that isn’t there).

    Lots of authors have no idea what they’re giving away when they write a novel. Stephen King, in his memoir On Writing, states that he didn’t realize the symbolic importance of blood that was weaving through Carrie as he wrote it, only after writing it did he see the symbolism he’d put in the novel. (That’s a paraphrase, but close.)

    Lots of authors also are extremely unreliable as narrators. Laurell K. Hamilton is the best example I can come up with right now. I haven’t read her most recent Anita Blake novels, but I do know that in her later AB books, the author was telling me one thing about Anita and showing me quite another. While the author would have me believe her main character was caring, brave, strong, beloved, and always right, I saw the character to be an almost sociopathic frightshow, not at all caring, not at all brave, but hateful, mean-spirited, cruel, and hypocritical in the extreme, as well as incapable of truly loving other characters in the book. Would the author agree with my assessment of her main character? I really, really doubt it. Is the author right about her character, while I’m wrong? I really, really don’t think so.

    I’m sure that that’s not really what other commenters are saying about reading symbolism and meaning into a story without the author’s direct say-so, but it made me nervous all the same.

  40. MJ says:

    @Candy: Lots of colleges now have all incoming freshmen, regardless of major, read and discuss a chosen book, and this year several colleges have chosen Persepolis.

    @Robin: You said it!

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