For The L♥ve of Reading discussion

In school you are required to read, talk about, and mostly write a paper on these books. What do you think about the teachers picks? Did you enjoy any of your required reading? If you had to base your love of books on the readings from school would you be a reader?

I've never really liked any of the picks from my schools. There is an occasional okay and maybe even, though more rare, good read. I think that there should be more choices that are relatable and books that we like. If I didn't love to read and only based on the teachers picks I would never pick up a book again. They give books such a bad apperance, couldn't think of the right word. They make so many people think that there's nothing good to read and lots of people after high school never really read again. It's terrible when there are so many good books out there.

By the way Elyssa, I think it's really great what're doing. Even though lots of people don't read so many still do! I hope you have lots of success!

Yes, that is terrible. Well in my Gifted Program, we usually start reading novels in sixth grade. 6th grade we read The Cay, and this year (7th grade), we've read Animal Farm. We still have to read The Giver, which I've read before, and Lord of the Flies, which I believe we start tomorrow. Yay! :)

The books that we read in GEMS (name of gifted program) are usually interesting to me. If my teacher was to make me read a book that I didn't like, I would probably just get over it and read the next one. They seemt o always pick out books that I find appealling.

I'll stick to the past semester for this:

Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger: A typical Horatio Alger book. They could have chosen a different one (with a different title!) and gotten the same result.

Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: It's the Great Gatsby. Everyone loves the Great Gatsby. x]

Death of a Salesman by Miller: A bit confusing in places, but overall, a good enough story.

There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz: Not my type of book. It opened everyone's eyes to how terrible ghetto life is, though.

I can't remember any of the books that I was made to read besides the Animal Farm, Where the Red Fern Grows, and To Kill A Mocking Bird. I guess none of the others were worth the time.

With that I would not be a reader if I based books upon the required readings.

Here are the books I was required to read:

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

The Brave New World by Adlophus Huxley

O Pineer by Willa Cather

Ethane Frome by Edith Wharton

Portrait of A Lady by Henry James

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

What did you think of these books? If you had to base your reading on these books how would you feel?

uh, my education reading programme can resume itself to this

1st phase - till +- 9th grade -> childish books that noone cares about, about 50 pages

2nd phase - 9th, 10th grade up -> books written in an old portuguese that noone speaks anymore and that noone cares too

yep, i think i did a goog ejob explaining

That doesn't seem like a good mix of books. How can the school support and help youth into reading if all the books they pick are what no one cares about? Did your reading programs encourage your love of reading?

(Note: I was in public school through sixth grade and have been homeschooling since seventh)

You would think that fostering a love of reading would be the main goal, but when I look back on the required reading, I don't remember liking any of them, but I still loved reading. Some of the books we read in elementary school, I hated. But if I were to read some of those again (Animal Farm is the first that comes to mind), I may have a different opinion.

Now, as a homeschooler, I read what I like, for the most part. (Or what my mom chooses, or books for my class). Being a person who loves classics helps that, since I read by choice what people are forced to read.

Elyssa (or anyone else), what would you say the purpose of the reading programs is? To introduce the kids who wouldn't ordinarily pick up a book to literature? If so, I don't think that they are doing this.

I think that most of the books they choose have to have several issue within so their is some the class can talk about. I know with To Kill A Mockingbird it is about racism and how people acted in that time. It was also a pick because it was extremely hard for the author to come forth with a book like that within the time that he wrote it. He stepped up and spoke up or wrote up about what was happening. People don't like to be shown the truth.

How do you think the school system should go about choosing books that will be taught and discussed? Are there books you would recommend and why?

To tell you the truth we gripe about it so much I'm not sure how they should chose them. I loved some of them and hate some of them. You aren't going to make all the students happy or even a majority. I remember I had a teacher that had us read books in class and chose one outside of school to read on our own. It's a good approach as any I guess.
I read soooooooooo many I can't really remember. I loved To Kill A Mocking Bird and Fahrenheit 451. Hated I Am the Cheese so it really just depends.

The ones that I've read for school so far are:

Fahrenheit 451
Romeo and Juliet
Lord of the Flies
Macbeth
Brave New World
The Catcher in the Rye
Life of Pi
Hamlet

I liked Tom Sawyer, period. I hated the required books in school. I hated them so much that I didn't read for the first 37 years of my life. That was 20 years ago. Now I absolutely love to read. I would write book reports on the same three books year after year. I would either not read much or use cliff notes for the required reading. In other words, I read as little of them as I could.

I know I used cliff notes and renter the movie. Or a group of us would split up the chapters. Reading two middle chapters barely made the book interesting but we never failed by sharing highlight notes.

I didn't get into reading because I liked any of the books that were required by a teacher. So the answer would be no I would not be a reader if I were to base it on what I was required to read in school. There were a few books that I thought were good but most were not my cup of tea.
Though I will say that once I actually started to love reading the required stuff wasn't so hard.

well it depends th eteacher too. because some teachers might just get the book from some other perosn say its ok and then theyll read it and just give it to the class. others might actuallly like the book and just want to share.

so to answer the question i sometimes like the reading they choose. and the books they picked didnt make me want to read, a lot like i do know, but i dont know... no

I wonder what would make reading more enjoyable for students? Cara's teacher had a book plan, alternate from the class pick to a personal pick.

I walked away and just thought of the another main reason why I didn't enjoy reading in school. If not only being handed a book that you dread. As you page through and see 400+ papers you hear the announcement that you have a month until the test. Time reading feels so forced. I have never enjoyed time deadlines for reading. Deadlines for papers no big deal or major projects. I would have to say I work good under pressure but not for reading. I like to read and my pace varies with each book.

For me my favorite required readings have to be "My Name is Asher Lev" and "Things Fall Apart"

I can't really think of any required reading at all that I have not enjoyed. In the past few years some of the books I've had to read for school have been: Great Expectations, Night, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Animal Farm, Mythology, Much Ado About Nothing, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Chosen, Anthem, Fahrenheit 451, and Julius Caesar. If anything, reading books for school that I've already read on my own makes me enjoy them more. Obviously some, I like more than others, but unlike most people I know, I've never not at all liked anything.

One aspect of this discussion that has interested me is talking about making the reading something kids would enjoy. I don't disagree with it, but think about college you don't get to choose what you read there either. Sometimes the list would be as long as my arm for what a class required you to read. So should colleges change? Or should kids in order to be prepared for going to college learn early about reading books they are less interested in?

You have a good point, Jencey. A lot of the required reading in college is every bit as boring as the high school required reading. I still used Cliff notes whenever possible. I guess you just can't get rid of them, so you might as well read them. Who knows? You might learn something or (gasp) have fun reading them with the right attitude going in.

Pandy wrote: "I can't really think of any required reading at all that I have not enjoyed. In the past few years some of the books I've had to read for school have been: Great Expectations, Night, Romeo and Juli..."

Ive read some of those books but they were nor required.the only one I didnt really like was great expectations, but thats beacause i hate dickens

Jencey, good point. I was thinking of that a little bit. Although, all the reads that have been required for me have been within my field. If I don't enjoy them or learn from them then I'm headed into the wrong field. Some of the required readings for me have been Which is sort of the bible for my hertiage.
I read this one for my Judaism and Christianity class. That class was all about how Christianity allowed the holocaust the happened.... I loved it! Favorite Class Ever!
I read this one for microbiology class. Awesome book on science.
Right now for Minority Women in Lit Which happens to be a book I picked up on my own last year.

was another required reading. This one was for history. What a variety. I guess I'm lucky because I'm interested in so many fields. I'm going to school for Biology, History (War & torture), Religious Studies & Humanities (Native American Cultures).

I definitely think we should teach kids to love to read. Maybe the answer is helping them understand the time period and the era those authors came from. I remember asking my english teacher in eleventh grade about the Portrait Of A Lady because I didn't understand the story. She explained it to me but maybe going in if I had had the material I might have enjoyed or understood it better. The problem is coming where teachers can't just require a book and expect students to understand. So that greater learning can take place.

Its been a lot of years since I was in high school. Well, I have grandkids who are teenagers, which just proves it. :o)

I moved a LOT (my Dad was a career Naval officer) and so the schools changed a lot from billet to billet. Part of the time I was attending school in Europe, and the reading there was much more interesting than here.

Of the books that I HAD to read for school, my main memories are:

Great Gatsby--at the time I read it, I thought it was one of the worst stories ever written. But I had to read it the year we came home from Europe, and I had almost no understanding of the Roaring 20's--and of Prohibitation. I did re-read it about 8 or 9 years later, after I'd gotten some more American history under my belt, and had a better understanding of it. However, I never have understood why Fitzgerald is considered such a great writer. (I've also read several of his other works, and, while they do a good job of describing the Jazz Age, as stories they didn't hold my interest.)

The Old Man and the Sea OK, I'm going to say right up front--this is the only book that Ernest Hemingway wrote that is worth the paper its printed on. Of course--the reason I think that might have to do with the fact that the teacher who assigned every single one of his books for us to read was a major pain in the ***, and was completely convinced that Hemingway was the greatest author that the English language ever produced. If you disagreed with him, forget getting a good grade. As a result, everyone in that class left it hating Hemingway. I still hear from 2 of the others even after all these years (38 years) and of the 3 of us--none will touch Hemingway with a 10 foot cattle prod--and we also won't go to any movie made from any of his books.

Jonathan Swift--A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works was a required reading for a Protest Through the Ages class. This was probably the one work that everyone in the class loved. Swift, despite the differences in the usage of the English language got his points across with humour and everyone loves to laugh.

The books that I was required to read in school in Europe would have kept me reading. The ones that I was required to read after we got back to the U.S.--probably would have turned me off reading if I wasn't already hooked on it.

Do you remember any of the books you read in Europe? I'm curious.

i teach high school english - juniors and AP juniors. i feel that the books i had to read during my high school career and college for that matter were not a good sampling of what is out there in terms of variety and genres. in college (i attended UH which has a top notch creative writing program, but not so for other english degrees) was largely british literature. i had to take a british lit. survey course and additional courses that included: romanticism, shakespeare, renaissance drama, victorian lit ... you get the picture.

in my AP course the curriculum is largely non-fiction. we have read: ethan frome, the adventures of huckleberry finn, the grapes of wrath, the scarlet letter and nickle and dimed. when i teach the novels i teach them as argumentative pieces rather than focusing on symbolism or character development.

i think at such a young age, many of the students can't appreciate what the author may be doing in the work. they are often skeptical of varying interpretation. they want only way one of looking at things and are not open to other ideas.

Your last paragraph is insightful. Do you think that it is because we are too close minded and don't want to think more then one way or because we aren't made to look at some in more then one way? I know several people who don't like poetry because they don't like that it could mean more then one thing. They just want to know what the answer is and be done with it. Many people these days write with one meaning so we don't get exposed as much as we would of many years ago.

i don't know why we tend to focus on one answer. perahps the interpretation of the literature forces us to think outside of the box and we are not programmed to accept a variety of other views. i love reading and so for me, i can read a book and take something new from it after each read. books like the scarlet letter and the grapes of wrath. books i'm so familiar with by now that i can choose a portion and find some meaning in what i just read.

poetry is a whole other story. my students dread poetry. but i feel it is because of the format. i went to a workshop the other day and the man presenting gave interesting ways to teach poetry. he said to read the poem at least twice before letting the kids see the poem. have them determine line breaks and rhyme scheme. these are alternate ways to present this form. i found it useful.

In my English class we are actually working on poetry right now and I'll admit I dred it too. There are a few peoms that I like but it's really limited because the structure puts me off as you said. It feels very ackward to me. It doesn't read as a story most of the time.
Also the teachers that I have had in the past always tell me to figure out what the poet is trying to say. What I usually come up with is wrong. An example would be the poem has some biblical or mythical reference and I've never heard of it. Like the man who got his hair cut off and lost all his strength. One of the lines in the poem refered to that and I had never heard of it so I missed the meaning entirely. (I found out later that it is a well known story)

Oh, the story of Samson? What poem?

I think that was the story. As for the poem I haven't the faintest recollection. Sorry I have bad memory.

I had to read How to Win Friends and Influence People for my HS accounting class. (Another topic made me remember this book.) But I don't remember what was written on the pages. Must of blocked this book out of my mind as well.

I am recalling more and more books I read in high school as I read this...but I will say it was college before I really took in the how and why of the story we were given. I recall taking a class on African American writers. I recall the book Color Purple and the author Toni Morrison - oh yes it was The Bluest Eye and Beloved. I liked them but honestly would need to go back and reread them to tell you about them now.

i was required to read

Boy Of the Painted Cave (Semi-boring)

Sign of the Beaver (Really boring)

Bridge to Tarabithia (sp?) (EXTREMELY boring.)

The Cay (Ok)

The Well (pretty good)

and im only in 6th grade so i have yet to read more

I read Boy of the Painted Cave on my own...it was okay.
Bridge to Terabithia? Gosh, that made me cry. I hated it. The Cay made me cry, too. I had to read it in fifth grade. Along with Animal Farm, which I LOATHED. And in sixth grade, we read Where The Red Fern Grows. Which made me so sad that I threw it across the room...

My friends had to read Where The Read Fern Grows, they said it was really sad, and now they are going to watch the movie. They are expecting a lot of tears.

We were made to read Where the Red Fern Grows I think in 5th grade. I just remember it being really really sad. I might have to revisit this book.