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Old 02-07-2013, 08:22 AM   #61
patrickt
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Old 02-07-2013, 08:33 AM   #62
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When I was 15 and in honors english I got stuck reading stuff like Pigs in Heaven and Raisin in the Sun. I wanted to read books like 1984 and Starship Troopers, books that ended up sticking with me far longer than the snoozefests we had forced on us.

I wouldn't read most of the books on this list if you paid me.
"Genre fiction" always plays second fiddle to litfic, even though litfic is itself a genre. The difference seems to be that litfic has the support of academia, while genre fiction has sales numbers.
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Old 02-07-2013, 08:38 AM   #63
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I've dumped MSIE for Firefox and never looked back. I took the quiz without a problem. It's not the site, it is MSIE that's the problem.
I've read 4, but there's a lot never heard of.

Using Firefox, I had problems with script on the page.
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Old 02-07-2013, 10:52 AM   #64
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My interaction with 15-year olds is pretty limited, but I don't think they are talking much about low riders. I've rarely even seen a low rider. 15 year olds are talking about TV, movies, anime, fashion, gossip, sports, more or less the same things they have always talked about. I don't know if they talk much about Harry Potter these days, but books do occupy at least some of their time. They probably aren't spending their time talking about the classics, but then again, adults don't either. They will talk about whatever book is trendy - it's much easier to find someone to talk to when you're talking about the book that everyone is talking about.

About the only time I'm around 15 year olds much is when I'm at a science fiction convention. They seem to spend their time in the gaming room or the anime room. Or checking out other 15 year olds.
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Old 02-07-2013, 12:35 PM   #65
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With regard to reading English language classics, I'm extremely "underread", but I have read stuff that quite some people don't know of or don't consider classics, but are considered classics in other countries.

Think about Musashi (Yuoshikawa, Japan), The Go Master (Kawabata, Japan/China), Max Havelaar (Multatuli, Netherlands), De Stille Kracht (Couperus, Netherlands).... I could go on for some time.
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Old 02-07-2013, 12:43 PM   #66
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Apparently, I'm "sort of well read" - 8 read, 9 partly, many unheard of - particularly missing out on the poems.
The novels and plays on the list are quite international, it's less American-focussed than I expected. I would think 10th graders also read just bits of the classics, as we did decades ago. There wouldn't be time for the whole Odyssey.

I wouldn't be so negative about 15 year olds, though. There are quite a few who like reading (mostly girls). The last one I met was copying a bunch of my ebooks ... which doesn't mean they're not interested in games and gossip, of course.
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Old 02-07-2013, 12:54 PM   #67
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I think having a 15-jear old read Shakespeare or Homer (or even classics) should be classified as torture.

In my opinion, these books scare more people away from reading than they attract. Most children will not appreciate books like these, and many don't have the patience to finish them. Possibly it would be better to let them read what they want, even Forgotten Realms Fantasy if they want to. (Mostly, these books are around 200-300 pages, and are very easy reads, with a few exceptions.)

Get them to be readers, and they will arrive at the classics some time later as a (young) adult, if they want to. And if they don't want to, that's fine too. Reading should be fun, and a pastime, not another chance to obtain bragging rights for having read $random-old-classic-of-1200-pages at age 15.

Edit: I see JSWolf actually days the same some posts higher up.

Last edited by Katsunami; 02-07-2013 at 01:14 PM.
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Old 02-07-2013, 01:09 PM   #68
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I think having a 15-jear old read Shakespeare or Homer (or even classics) should be classified as torture.
.
Depends on the 15yo. My husband collects versions of Shakespeare on video, and he and my daughter have been watching it since she was younger than 15. Her theater group did Midsummer Night's Dream, and she fell in love with live-performed Shakespeare. She voluntarily and of her own choosing took a survey course in Shakespeare, at which she did quite well.

The trick to introducing kids to Shakespeare is to let them see it performed, not just reading the script. I tutored a very reluctant kid who was being partially home-schooled, and when it came time to do Romeo and Juliette, I had him watch a couple of the versions that we have, and he was able to get into R&J much easier than just reading it as his classmates had to do.
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Old 02-07-2013, 01:18 PM   #69
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My Dutch teacher said something like: "Don't let me catch you reading a movie."

Obviously he meant you should read the book, not just see the movie. And yes, he would give you a low mark if he noticed you didn't read the book, read only summaries or only watched the movie.
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Old 02-07-2013, 01:34 PM   #70
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I think having a 15-jear old read Shakespeare or Homer (or even classics) should be classified as torture.
I remember loving reading Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey), Sophocles (Oedipus the King) and Virgil (the Aeneid) when I was that age. Beowulf was another favorite.

For Shakespeare we read it aloud with different people reading different parts which I think made it easier to tackle at that age. Sometimes we watched Shakespeare as a movie/performance first. I remember it not as torture, but as enjoyable.
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Old 02-07-2013, 04:46 PM   #71
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I think having a 15-jear old read Shakespeare or Homer (or even classics) should be classified as torture.
Not necessarily. It depends how it is presented, I guess. I remember seeing Julius Ceasar with Marlon Brando (which, I think, uses the original text) at about that age. Even with rather limited English skills I was deeply imoressed.

I'd fully agree that forcing kids to read never ads to enjoying books. But good teaching can help them discover things they 'd never find and appreciate otherwise.
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Old 02-07-2013, 04:58 PM   #72
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I remember in the 9th grade, we read Julius Caesar, with each person reading a section at a time out loud. If the goal of the class was to make people hate reading in general, and to hate Shakespeare in particular, it would have quite effectively met this goal. I had no problem reading it, but others in the class struggled mightily, particularly with reading out loud.
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Old 02-07-2013, 07:01 PM   #73
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I hated Shakespeare. I thought it was heavy, the words where just awful and then on top of that all the dissecting that the teachers made us do. It just wasn't fun.

The way I look at it, English class is turning a lot of would-be readers in;t won't-be readers. I was a reader before English class. So that never put me off reading. What it did put me off was reading "classics". To this day, I find a lot of classics to be overblown and not modern enough for kids of today.
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Old 02-07-2013, 07:19 PM   #74
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Not necessarily. It depends how it is presented, I guess. I remember seeing Julius Ceasar with Marlon Brando (which, I think, uses the original text) at about that age. Even with rather limited English skills I was deeply imoressed.
I said *read* Shakespeare or Homer, not watch a movie or a play based on those works. I'm fairly convinced that Shakespeare, Homer, and many classics are not fit for most 14-15 year olds. In my class *everybody* hated "Literature class", be it in Dutch, English, German or French, except for a select few who were good with languages and were trained readers already (of whom I was one, except for French, a language I hate even today and dropped as soon as could be).

That sort of stuff is too difficult for most people of that age, and they're not even interested in it. Who wants to struggle with old versions of languages, when even the modern versions are giving you enough problems; when even your native language (modern version) is hard for you? Who wants to read a 500 page long classic in old English (such as Canterbury Tales) when you're having difficulty with an early 20th century rendition of your native language (in this case, Dutch)? No one.

If you like to read stuff like this at 14/15, good for you. Still, you're the exception to the rule.

And is Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, often quoted as *THE* book of the 20th century, required reading, nowadays? I don't mean that you're allowed to read it for your literature list: I mean required to read, fail-your-exam-if-you-don't, like "A Midsummer night's dream", "Macbeth" and "Canterbury Tales" were for me. (Among others.) If it isn't, why not?

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Old 02-07-2013, 07:39 PM   #75
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I remember loving reading Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey), Sophocles (Oedipus the King) and Virgil (the Aeneid) when I was that age. Beowulf was another favorite.
Me too (hence my degree in classical philology). I loved reading Boccaccio and Petrarca in high school as well. Reading Shakespeare was also great fun.
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