Kevin's Watch

when some group came out with the best 100 novels of the english language or whatever it was, the wife and I decided to start on the list. so i picked up the Great Gatsby. i hated that book so damned much, after i finished i quit the project. i hated everything about the damn book.

I quite enjoyed:
The Old Man and the Sea
Persuasion (to my surprise)
Julius Caeser

The following were turds:
The Death of a Salesman
The Grapes of Wrath

High Lord Tolkien wrote:I still get a sick feeling in my stomach when I even think or hear "The Scarlet Letter"

Yes yes yes,you beat me to it HLT.

actually i'm reading the Scarlet Letter right now for our library's book club. i picked it because even though i grew up in New Hampshire i have never read it. i have read the House of the Seven Gables, even though i don't remember anything about it.

Watership Down: Richard Adams

I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit this, however, most of the books I was assigned to read in school, I never bothered reading. Don't get me wrong, I've been a serious reader all of my life, I just did not like having books picked out for me.

I realize now that I missed out on a lot of good books, but at the time, I was too busy doing stupid teenage stuff, like hanging out and being cool. I mean, who cares about an education?

I was fortunate in that I was a talented quiz and test taker and managed to fool everybody. Sometimes I would get lucky and we would read aloud in class, and that gave me some idea as to what was going on in a book.

Some goodness that I missed:
Lord of the Flies
Fahrenheit 451
Catch-22

Some things I'm glad I missed:
Red Badge of Courage
Scarlet Letter
Catcher in the Rye

/And thus having spoken, the half-educated Lady Revel retreats to her library.

I did not like school, but I suspect my reasons were the opposite of yours, Lady Revel.

The only books on your list that my class did were Fahrenheit 451 and Catcher in the Rye. Fahrenheit wasn't interesting enough for me to remember much of it. We also sat through the Francois Truffaut film of the novel, and frankly it was boring. Catcher is just overrated. The protagonist's petulant teen angst or whatever was laughable to me.

Personally, I liked Farenheit 451. Wish they'd assigned us stuff like that in school. We got things like The Great Gatsby, Things Fall Apart, etc. Not a sci-fi one in the lot.

School was really just a null for me. As long I passed, they left me alone, as long as they left me alone, I was happy. I was ineducable, and they realised it quickly. And I paid even less attention to the "social" aspects than I did to the schoolwork.

--A

let's see remembering back to high school....the ones I remember being forced to read are:

Scarlet Letter - hated it
The Color Purple - hated it
Catcher in the rye - hated it

Julius Caeser - thumbs up
The Illiad and The Oddysey - thumbs up
The Canterbury Tales - thumbs up
Sir Gawain and The Green Knight - thumbs up
Masque of Red Death - thumbs up
The Tempest - thumbs up
Beowulf - thumbs up

Death of a Salesman - meh

we read some more stuff but I forget now....

The worst for high school, the best for college:

Worst - Franny and Zooey - J. D. Salinger (which is why I've never checked out Catcher in the Rye)

Best - As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner (if you think George R. R. Martin can write the multiple POV narrative well, you should try this one)

worst: Faulkner bored me.

best: Shakespeare.

The book I am doing for school now, Looking For Alibrandi, is the worst book I have ever read. Ever. The main character whinges so much it isn't funny.

In year seven, we had to read The Cay, and I enjoyed it. Well written, great plot.

Spring wrote:The book I am doing for school now, Looking For Alibrandi, is the worst book I have ever read. Ever. The main character whinges so much it isn't funny.

More than Linden?

Hmmmm, books I remember liking a lot... I can't say that any of the books I read for classwork in High School were anything other than assignments. A few of them I may have admired for their technical or literary value, but the only things from High School that really come to mind are the ones I remember despising:
A Tale of Two Cities (painful - I read it because it was assigned)
Great Expectations (the only thing worse than this book is having to watch the horrid movie with that snotty overrated b!tch Gwyneth Paltrow.)

More recently, and (I am ashamed to admit) voluntarily, I picked up a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces because it was pretty high on the list of must-reads at our local bookstore. I read it all. I will never get that time back - I felt like running back into the store and demanding the return of my squandered brain cells, so I could go huff Redi-Whip or something. Disappointing.

I read a lot in my early years, but I can honestly say that I only enjoyed the books that I picked, that were totally for my entertainment. When books like TCoTC (that have depth beyond their pure fantasy entertainment value) is when I am forced to grow as a person. Classical literature I can certainly appreciate for it's literary value and technical expertise, but I can't really say that I enjoy reading it, in the same way that I can admire Picasso for his artistic talent without truly enjoying his work.

I'm probably just unrefined.

DW

some books i was assigned to read that i ended up enjoying:

The Pearl
Animal Farm
Brave New World
Lord of the Flies
The Iliad
Oedipus Rex

I hated <b>The Pearl</b> and <b>The Lord of the Flies</b>--too depressing and not how I want to perceive humanity. I also did not care for <b>Childhood's End</b>; I have no desire to belong to a hive mind.

I really loved reading <b>More than Human</b>, and, though it took me a while to get into it, I liked <b>Silas Marner</b> and <b>Grapes of Wrath</b>.

I liked <b>Oliver Twist, David Copperfield,</b> and <b>Jane Eyre</b> too

i don't think Lord of the Flies or The Pearl are any more negative about the nature of mankind than Jane Eyre, and certainly not Oliver Twist. people seem to focus on Jack and his bunch as the singular negative representation of humanity in Lord of the Flies, and forget about the bravery and nobility that Ralph represents, the spirituality that Simon represents, or the intellectual aspect of mankind that Piggy represents. in The Pearl, a man learns a lesson, the hard way, granted, but learns it just the same. through tragedy he comes to find the folly of placing too high a value on material wealth.he is saddened at the end but ultimately a better, more wise, man.

for me, a story that gets many accolades that i have never been able to enjoy is The Old Man and the Sea, because the ending is so disheartening. the moral of the story seems to be "life's a b*tch, then you die", which for me is unsatisfactory.

In the past two years of English, I've read 5 Shakespearean plays and they've all been great (Hamlet being my favorite). This year we read the Sophoclean plays which I disliked, Camus's The Plague which I'm sure was wonderful but I neglected to read it. Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five was great, and so were Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and Dandelion Wine, and McCaffrey's Dragonflight. I also liked Death of a Salesman.

Hamlet is my favorite Shakespearean play--and MacBeth a very close second.