Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
Every book I was assigned to read in junior and high school were DEPRESSING ones. Wuthering Heights. GADS. I tried 3 times to read it. What a waste.
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That's awfully long to be assigned reading. And unless I'm forgetting one, this is the least realistic Brontė book. I found it pretty much a page turner, but inferior to other Brontė novels.
As for not liking DEPRESSING books: This is, like every other book preference I read about here, highly individual. Some people read murder mysteries exclusively. Can't get much more depressing than that! Personally, I have read a lot of books with happy endings, but don't find them superior. One of our kids, when small, loved being read Frank Baum, a master of long children's books with loads of happy party scenes and uniformly happy endings. Let's say I had mixed feelings reading these
Obviously there are lots of people around here who are not particularly looking for realism in their novels. When much younger, I read lots of sci fi, so I have not always been a lover of realism. People differ, and people change.
Teachers should be teaching skills, especially expository writing. The purpose of assigning books should be to generate discussion and provide the raw material for well-argued papers, not to convince students they like books. The latter is a hopeless task, although I do want students literate enough to be able to read whatever they want.