[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I think reading a book in class makes a bigger impact because you are naturally getting more out of it than you would reading the same book for pleasure.

That may be true for some, or even most, but that wasn't my experience at all. I certainly wouldn't use the word naturally.

Originally Posted by sufue

I hated having to read (fiction) books for class. I had to go at the class speed, not mine, and sometimes had to analyze books to the point of not enjoying them anymore. If I feel like "settling" for enjoying a rip-roaring good story instead of looking for the fifth level of meaning, that's I want to do.

My favorite example is The Hobbit, which we had in one of my middle school classes. By that time, I had probably read it maybe five times on my own, as well as all three Lord of the Rings books, but I ended up flunking one quiz on it because I had no idea what had happened in Chapter X, as opposed to Chapter X-1, or X+1, or X+2, since I knew the book so well that I didn't read it by chapters. So my answer described what happened partly in Chapter X and partly in some other chapters, and the teacher felt that meant I hadn't been "taking my assignments seriously".

For me, at least, assigning books tended to ruin them for me...at least temporarily.

I still love Tolkien's books, BTW, but it took a little while to recover from having The Hobbit in class .

That's what I disliked the most about school. The focus on the irrelevant.

I would read the entire history book the first few weeks of the school year just for the joy of learning history. But I always had to cram for the tests. I always got an A, but I'm sure it would have been a C or lower if I had to retake the exact same test an hour later.