Different countries, different languages, different times but all of us have the same experience with forced reading in schools
I had the same problems. Moreover, I had a similar problem at home. My father belived that reading books is VERY important. So, he forced me to read books of his choice. Sometimes we discovered that he forced me to read books 1 year ahead of school curiculum. If you add to this that I went to school 1 year younger than the rest of the kids...it was terrible :behead: On any holidays I was not allowed to leave house or watch TV unless I have finished to read a certain amount of pages
Eventually, I started to come across interesting books and develope my own taste but my dad and school have put me off many writers probably for the rest of my life (at least Russian classics
).
P.S. HarryT & NatCh
I agree more or less with yuor replies to my "long" post. Especially I liked an example of art/artists because I have had a similar discussion (about "impressionist" art)with my wife who is an artists and she attepmpted to explain to me a history behind it and why it is important. Although, I am pretty sure my father would never consider The Lord of the Rings a great literature because it is not serious and it is fiction! Yes he did like fiction when he was very young but for him it was never anything too important. Speaking about him I speak about a certain type of people I have met who have a very similar point of view.