Shit I have to read for High School

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I watched Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth my senior year of high school. It was gorier than most horror movies. One girl walked out during it; I guess she never told her parents because the teacher never got in trouble.

 

Back to books, I know The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a fairly popular/controversial title in schools these days. I haven't read it, but, from what I've heard it about, it's a step in the right direction re: getting kids interested in literature. Forcing students to read dry, dusty prose from dead, white men or heavy-handed tomes of multiculturalism are doing just as much to turn young people off reading than the distractions of TV or the Internet.

 

What do you guys think are some good titles for high schoolers? I mentioned Slaughterhouse Five earlier; that one is taught in high schools, but, due to its profanity, sexual, and supposedly anti-religious content, it's not taught enough. It's weird, funny, and a little difficult, but not too difficult to be impossible to follow.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Also, was I the only person here who had the pleasure of reading Ayn Rand in high school? We had to read Anthem in 11th grade.

We did Anthem in 8th grade. It was ass even then.

 

I assume you mean Ellison Invisible Man and not Wells? Weird, cuz that book had plenty of its own controversial content. Some sex, a little bit of abortion talk, a shitload of various racisms, violence, and even a segment where the main character becomes a Communist.

Not nearly as graphic, as I recall. Beloved has a nice pile of rape, rapists violently drinking milk out of their victim's breasts, and a woman brutally murdering her infant child with a saw. I don't think anybody failed to get the slip signed, though.

 

Why do English teachers invariably hit kids with Romeo & Juliet anyway? Just because the main characters are roughly their age? It's not one of Shakespeare's better masterpieces, and you'd think that having two idiot kids who commit suicide over their puppy love would not be a role model you'd want to teach to impressionable teenagers.

It's one of his more straightforward works, which makes it a pretty good intro to his catalog. A lot of his other work plays heavily with gender, identity, and politics in a way that might be a little heavy for most 9th/10th graders to really follow. Most students already know the basic story, too, since it's such a cultural touchstone. That eliminates some of the initial challenge of comprehension that a lot of people encounter when they read plays in verse for the first time. My school gradually ran us through R&J, Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and King Lear, but I think that much Shakespeare is somewhat uncommon.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I read The Bluest Eye for an Adolescent Literature class in college. I read it in my 20s; I liked it then, but I'm sure if I was made to read it when I was 15 I would've hated it. That something so comparatively dense is shoved down so many unwilling throats only shows just how out of touch so many high-school English departments are. One of the reasons I quit teaching entry-level writing/lit college classes is I didn't have the energy to break freshmen of years-long apathy/outright dislike of reading.

[At Home 0]

What do you guys think are some good titles for high schoolers?

 

Murakami - Norwegian Wood

Roth - American Pastoral

And for poetry, I think some of Feynman's poems should make it in there. Really beautiful poems.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

What do you guys think are some good titles for high schoolers? I mentioned Slaughterhouse Five earlier; that one is taught in high schools, but, due to its profanity, sexual, and supposedly anti-religious content, it's not taught enough. It's weird, funny, and a little difficult, but not too difficult to be impossible to follow.

 

I think White Teeth would work fairly well. It's "multiculturalist," but not in a way that's so heavy-handed as to be totally off-putting. It's also a lot of fun.

 

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The occasional scene of graphic violence might be troublesome, but it's a relatively easy read (compared to McCarthy's other work, certainly) and it brings up a lot of subjects, like loyalty and morality, for people to chew on. The only other McCarthy book that might work is All the Pretty Horses.

[At Home 0]

I had to read a bunch of multi-cultural books, which has led me to this conclusion: books not about white people are boring.

 

What actual books did you read?

 

I read Things Fall Apart, two books about chinks, and House of the Spirits. I enjoyed it, but felt as if HotS could have been boiled down to the story of the two brothers and how they fared during the revolution (even though this ended up being a tiny number of chapters, including the cilmax), the rest was just like watching a family slide show. The car decapitation in the first chapter was a nice surprise though.

 

My AP English teacher was big on Freud. She did not like me telling her that Freud is really useless psychology.

 

Whether or not Freud is "useless psychology" has absolutely no bearing on whether or not his work is useful for literary analysis.

 

And surprise, surprise, it wasn't. The Freudian look at Hamlet was essentially recanting everything that had already been discussed for the last 200 years, but under the viel of Freud's Electra and Oedipus complexes. "So, maybe Hamlet HAS A SEXY THING WITH THE MOM~! Freud!"

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

I had to read a bunch of multi-cultural books, which has led me to this conclusion: books not about white people are boring.

 

What actual books did you read?

 

I read Things Fall Apart, two books about chinks, and House of the Spirits. I enjoyed it, but felt as if HotS could have been boiled down to the story of the two brothers and how they fared during the revolution (even though this ended up being a tiny number of chapters, including the cilmax), the rest was just like watching a family slide show. The car decapitation in the first chapter was a nice surprise though.

 

House of the Spirits kinda sucks. It's really weird that they'd make you read that instead of 100 Years of Solitude, which is both more well-known and a much (much) better book.

 

My AP English teacher was big on Freud. She did not like me telling her that Freud is really useless psychology.

 

Whether or not Freud is "useless psychology" has absolutely no bearing on whether or not his work is useful for literary analysis.

 

And surprise, surprise, it wasn't. The Freudian look at Hamlet was essentially recanting everything that had already been discussed for the last 200 years, but under the viel of Freud's Electra and Oedipus complexes. "So, maybe Hamlet HAS A SEXY THING WITH THE MOM~! Freud!"

 

I'll concede that straight-up, literal Freudian analysis (eg reading everything through the lens of the Oedipus Complex or w/e) is pretty played out these days. That said, the broader conceptual framework that undergirds Freudian theory was hugely influential in the development of modern critical theory, as it laid the groundwork for a full-scale critique of rational subjectivity and in the process opened the door for literary analysis that moved beyond simple formalism or intentionalism. The idea that words can mean more than we intend them to is basically the cornerstone of all contemporary literary analysis. So, yeah, Freud's actually pretty far from "useless."

[Jingus 0]

Also, was I the only person here who had the pleasure of reading Ayn Rand in high school? We had to read Anthem in 11th grade. Terrible, terrible book. In fact, thinking back on it, the whole reading list for that class was pretty bad: The House on Mango Street, The Lord of the Flies, Anthem, Brave New World and some stupid fucking Neil Simon plays.

We got Anthem too. At least it was short and simple, even if its general theme of "Communism is a concept which sprung directly from Satan's asshole" was heavy-handed. As compared to Brave New World, about three times as long, and still one of the more perplexing "if we're not careful the future's gonna suck" books I've ever read. Why hate on Lord of the Flies, though? Not the greatest literature ever written, but at least it had children murdering each other so it wasn't boring.

 

IBeloved has a nice pile of rape, rapists violently drinking milk out of their victim's breasts, and a woman brutally murdering her infant child with a saw. I don't think anybody failed to get the slip signed, though.

Huh. Well. Never read the book, just saw the Oprah movie when we screened it for our movie club in college, and slept through at least half of it.

 

It's one of his more straightforward works, which makes it a pretty good intro to his catalog. A lot of his other work plays heavily with gender, identity, and politics in a way that might be a little heavy for most 9th/10th graders to really follow. Most students already know the basic story, too, since it's such a cultural touchstone. That eliminates some of the initial challenge of comprehension that a lot of people encounter when they read plays in verse for the first time. My school gradually ran us through R&J, Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and King Lear, but I think that much Shakespeare is somewhat uncommon.

I guess that is true about it being simpler and easier to digest, as opposed to many of his other plays. How much Shakespeare is common, these days? I remember having R+J and Julius Caesar, but am blanking on anything else. We maybe might've done Tempest, but upon reflection I think that was in theater class, not english. Didn't help that at my high school we had regular, honors, and AP English classes, all with completely different curriculums. And sometimes even the teachers within the same levels in the same grades just decided to teach different stuff. Thus somehow stuff like Catcher in the Rye and Hamlet were never taught in any class I attended.

 

The Freudian look at Hamlet was essentially recanting everything that had already been discussed for the last 200 years, but under the viel of Freud's Electra and Oedipus complexes. "So, maybe Hamlet HAS A SEXY THING WITH THE MOM~! Freud!"

It's not an uncommon interpretation, everyone from Laurence Olivier on down has delved into that one.

[King Kamala 0]

We did Shakespeare every year in English class. Freshman year was Romeo and Juliet, sophomore year was Macbeth, junior year was King Lear, and senior year was Hamlet.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

We had a unit of Shakespeare every year in English, but I don't know whether or not that was unique to the AP/Honors program.

 

9th - Romeo & Juliet

10th - Julius Caesar

11th - Othello

12th - Hamlet

[Guest Czech please!]

Why do English teachers invariably hit kids with Romeo & Juliet anyway? Just because the main characters are roughly their age? It's not one of Shakespeare's better masterpieces, and you'd think that having two idiot kids who commit suicide over their puppy love would not be a role model you'd want to teach to impressionable teenagers.

How else are they gonna appreciate West Side Story?

 

Also, was I the only person here who had the pleasure of reading Ayn Rand in high school? We had to read Anthem in 11th grade. Terrible, terrible book. In fact, thinking back on it, the whole reading list for that class was pretty bad: The House on Mango Street, The Lord of the Flies, Anthem, Brave New World and some stupid fucking Neil Simon plays. What dumb class.

I read Lord of the Flies and Anthem for honors world history my sophomore year of high school. I had already read the former in 6th grade and so had everyone else so we only devoted like three days to it; Anthem did suck, you're right. Had to read Brave New World summer of '03 for AP English and probably liked it then more than I would now. Our teacher tried to play it up as being really sexual and her efforts were just gross. Still not my least favorite book from the class, which was Cry, the Beloved Country. Maybe it was good, but that was a point in time (beginning of 2nd semester) where I was too busy with extracurriculars to really devote myself to regular curriculars, and I just couldn't be bothered. The fact that I hated my English teacher didn't help. It wasn't even fun hate, like I had with my 8th grade social studies/math teacher, which was more like a rivalry where we'd admit what worthy foes we were when nobody was looking, just a stupid bitch I couldn't stand. She always pronounced the prefix "un-" as "on-". Onbelievable.

[Jingus 0]

Brave New World always felt whiny to me. I was forced to read the damn thing twice, both before and after I lost my virginity, and both times I was perplexed by Huxley's weird prudish take on the sex. "OMG, there will be ORGIES in teh FUTURE! Isn't that just AWFUL?" Um. No. When writing a book in which you're trying to warn people about the possibilities of a future dystopia, shouldn't you be trying to make this speculative society sound like it's not a whole lot of fun?

 

How else are they gonna appreciate West Side Story?

Considering it's about a bunch of gang members who are all dressed in pastels and all look about 30, plus singing and dancing, I'd imagine that one's a tough sell to today's youth.

 

That actually reminds me of the strangest book I ever saw in my high school library. They had a novelized version of West Side Story. In case anyone else was as confused by that concept as I was, please let me repeat it for clarity: a novelization of a musical. What. I still don't understand why such a book would exist, let alone why that library had three or four copies of it.

[godthedog 0]

i read huxley's 'the doors of perception', and he struck me as kind of a tool. like somebody who wants to be a really literate social critic in the vein of george orwell, but without that special something.

[Vampiro69 0]

I remember in junior/high school we had to read the following books.

 

The Grapes of Wrath- didn't care for it but that was the 8th grade

Of Mice & Men- decent, would recommend it

Romeo & Juilet- nothing special, for some reason all the girls were expecting something like the DiCaprio-Danes movie

To Kill a Mockingbird- really liked, and the movie was great

Animal Farm (enjoyed it so much that I checked out 1984 for a book report)

 

Thats all I can recall of the top of my head.

[Smartly Pretty 0]

I just started "Amusing Ourselves To Death". I'm supposed to have it read/annotated/done an initial reading assignment by 10 am tomorrow. I put a pot of coffee on. I used to kick myself for putting off these books, but now I kind of find these nights fun. Sleep is lame.

 

UPDATE: Five chapters done! And it's been what, an hour and a half? Maybe an hour and 45? I overestimated the amount of time this would take. Suck my dick, Neil Postman.

 

Anyway, this book is pretty interesting. Some of his ideas are kind of retarded, but some are pretty cool. They're all interesting though. I mean, likening eye glasses to designer babies is a stretch and really contrived, but it's a pretty interesting thought, kind of. I like his idea that politics are just a never-ending loop of news. That's kinda cool.

 

UPDATE AGAIN: I finished! Yay! And I liked this one! Fast Food Nation sucked and Walden bored me to tears, but this one was fun. I even finished the assignment that goes with it. I listened to "Fillmore Jive" to celebrate, just for the part that goes "I neeeeeeed to sleeeeeep"

[Smues 0]

What I mostly remember about books we had to read in High School was that I wanted to read Catcher in the Rye but no my junior year only the AP class did. So of course my senior year the non ap junior class read it. But I read it on my own and managed to use it to get some bonus points in my vocab class, so that worked.

 

Books I remember being forced to read:

 

To Kill a Mockingbird - Didn't like it at the time, but I was 14 and stupid. It's really good.

Romeo and Juliet - Not my thing. I don't like Shakespear. And of course the other classes got to watch the movie version where you get to see Juliet's tits. My class had to watch the Decaprio one. Lame.

Stotan - I think that was the title. I don't expect anybody here to have heard of it. We basically had to read it because the guy who wrote it went to our highschool and loosly based it in our high school. It sucked.

Julius Ceaser - I actually remember enjoying this somewhat.

Of Mice and Men - Awesome.

The Scarlet Letter - Awful. I'd read a chapter and instantly forget every word I read. Borrrrriiinnnggg.

The Adventures of Huck Finn - Awful. Trying to read the parts where Jim was speaking just made my brain hurt. It's like Jar Jar Binks in print form.

Kaffir Boy - Beyond awful, and to think I was happy originally that I was assigned this instead of the Diary of Ann Frank or Black Like Me.

 

Would have been more but I took Creative Writing and Vocabulary class my senior year to get out of senior English. (Didn't want to have to do a senior project.)

 

[Czech please! 0]

Huckleberry Finn is the opposite of awful. Read it again outside the auspices of a high school English class.

[Obi Chris Kenobi 0]

What I mostly remember about books we had to read in High School was that I wanted to read Catcher in the Rye but no my junior year only the AP class did. So of course my senior year the non ap junior class read it. But I read it on my own and managed to use it to get some bonus points in my vocab class, so that worked.

 

Books I remember being forced to read:

 

To Kill a Mockingbird - Didn't like it at the time, but I was 14 and stupid. It's really good.

Romeo and Juliet - Not my thing. I don't like Shakespear. And of course the other classes got to watch the movie version where you get to see Juliet's tits. My class had to watch the Decaprio one. Lame.

Stotan - I think that was the title. I don't expect anybody here to have heard of it. We basically had to read it because the guy who wrote it went to our highschool and loosly based it in our high school. It sucked.

Julius Ceaser - I actually remember enjoying this somewhat.

Of Mice and Men - Awesome.

The Scarlet Letter - Awful. I'd read a chapter and instantly forget every word I read. Borrrrriiinnnggg.

The Adventures of Huck Finn - Awful. Trying to read the parts where Jim was speaking just made my brain hurt. It's like Jar Jar Binks in print form.

Kaffir Boy - Beyond awful, and to think I was happy originally that I was assigned this instead of the Diary of Ann Frank or Black Like Me.

 

Would have been more but I took Creative Writing and Vocabulary class my senior year to get out of senior English. (Didn't want to have to do a senior project.)

 

I remember they tried to make me read that and I got so angry. So they gave me Catcher in the Rhye instead. I haven't shot anyone famous yet though.