Let us now read about depressed white males with no lives!

[rj_anderson]

Shannon Hale has just written the most insightful and accurate description of what high school and college reading lists do to many passionate young readers that I've ever read. Her experience mirrors my own in many ways, on the high school side at least:

How Reader Girl Got Her Groove Back

But how about you lot on my f-list? Do you find that the books you were made to read in high school and the way your teachers approached them whetted your appetite for reading and literature, or stifled it?

ETA: As is her gift, sartorias has linked to the same essay with much more thoughtful comments and a more interesting topic of discussion. I'll just send you over there, shall I?

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I'm vey glad I didn't get forced to read Austen in high school; I wasn't ready for her. I have no idea why; it certainly wasn't the language that was too difficult, or the plots. Maybe I just wasn't up to her delicate irony? All I know is that I tried P&P at 18, couldn't get anywhere with it, tried it again at about 23 or 24 and fell in love.

I think two things saved me from Hale's fate; a certain stubbornness that doesn't let me think I love something just because I "should", and a math contest my brother won in about 5th grade (when I was in 10th). His prize was a copy of Heinlein's Number of the Beats (I strongly suspect whoever chose it hadn't actually *read* it). I'd been reading Asimov for years, as well as my mom's Zenna Henderson and Anne McCaffrey, but it was that oneHeinlein book that turned me on to the res tof his stuff and led directly to my majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Once there, of course, any fiction reading was an escape so I was free to read what I wanted.

ETA: I had a great English teacher for 10th-12th grades, which also helped. We read books I enjoyed and books I never finished (wrote papers based on the class discussion). She admitted to hating Milton's Paradise Lost and I think hearing that an *English teacher* could dislike such a famous classic was also very freeing.

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

I'm vey glad I didn't get forced to read Austen in high school; I wasn't ready for her.

Ditto to that. I tried very hard to read S&S as a teen and could. Not. Do it. I could read Shakespeare with ease, a knack that I seem to have lost since then, but I can read Austen with enthusiasm, now, so I guess it was an even trade.

[kerravonsen]

That's interesting... I read Austen in Grade 9 ("Pride and Prejudice") and loved it -- but then I think that particular English teacher was one of the few who didn't boringify things. It was a school where we had really tiny class sizes, and everyone was required to participate in the discussion.

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think everybody's ready for different books at different times. I just recently finished To Kill a Mockingbird (as you probably know, since I could not shut up about it *grin*) and while I absolutely adored it, I'm not sure I would have been able to appreciate its awesomeness as a highschooler. But then Mr. Bill's highschool-age cousins just read it, as well, and they loved it and spoke to me eloquently of its virtues. So who knows.

[drmm.livejournal.com]

I'm vey glad I didn't get forced to read Austen in high school; I wasn't ready for her.

See, I was the opposite. I read P&P in high school and fell utterly and completely in love. I promptly bought and read every single Austen book and even now I consider P&P my favorite book ever.

On the other hand, I read Jane Eyre the following year and utterly despised it. When I read it again several years later for a college class, I certainly liked it a whole lot better (although I still am not a fan of the melodramatic style of the Bronte sisters and I have no real desire to read it again).

(That experience, along with discussions with classmates, led me to my Austen vs. Bronte theory that says most Austen fans will not be huge fans of Bronte and vice versa, given the difference in style -- melodrama vs. subtle sarcasm).

[kerravonsen]

Well, I loved Jane Eyre too... but I haven't even been tempted to read the other Bronte sisters' work. No, not even Wuthering Heights!

[drmm.livejournal.com]

I tried reading Wuthering Heights. It was one of the few books I've started and never finished. I felt like chucking it out the window. I know I started reading another Bronte sister book that I didn't finish as well.

Jane Eyre is at least tolerable, although I am still not a fan of the melodrama (madwoman in the attic and all that).