Are you as well-read as a 10th grader?

[crich70]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

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.

My mom has said the same thing in the past. She had to read Julius Caesar in school and thought it boring, but then she saw a movie based on the play and it came alive for her.

[vxf]

I read 14. Partially read none, because I don't 'partially read'. Heard I think of all, except the cod one, Custer, the art one and the African Americans in the Civil War.
Frankly, the list is complete bs.
If this is what kids read in school nowadays, I am glad I don't have kids.
A book about cod and no... bah don't get me started...

[Acataloger]

"You're pretty well read

You're familiar with words like 'Bildungsroman,' 'synecdoche,' and 'anagnorisis,' but perhaps not with today's updated literary curriculum."

After spending most of my working years in libraries and bookstores, I have heard of most of the titles, read some of many, but I agree that remembering short stories (and individual poems) is a lot to ask.

Anyway, I finally have all the time in the world to read whatever appeals to me! First I'll have to look up anagnorisis.....

[teh603]

Originally Posted by vxf

If this is what kids read in school nowadays, I am glad I don't have kids.

More like they stick a funnel in the kid's mouth and stuff the books down their throat.

[voracious71]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

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.

Me too.. I liked The Odyssey and Beowulf. Also enjoyed the Canterbury Tales so much that I took a whole class on Chaucer in college. I was a theatre nerd as well as a book lover in high school so I liked Shakespeare too.

[Fat Abe]

My child is completing high school and none of these books are offered in his Literature or Sociology curriculum. Shocking? No. Adolescents have a low attention span, and video games are the only medium where they become involved in plot-oriented storytelling and "role" playing. If the Christian Science Monitor put Twilight or Harry Potter on their list, they would have gotten a more positive response from the survey. Most surfers probably quit after 5 books. Of the 9 books I did not read, there are probably a few I'll add to my reading list. Haskins' book on the Civil War looks like a fast read, but finding it in a library will not be easy. The book has only one review on Amazon, and I'll bet most people did not even know of the title, prior to the survey.

[BenG]

I got this score:

You're sort of well read

You could probably hold your own in a literary conversation, but perhaps not with today's 15-year-olds.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by Krykorya

In tenth year, we didn't read any books in English; we analysed movies.

When I took the quiz, I was jokingly thinking to myself where's the option that says "I have seen the movie".

I was pretty surprised by your statement. I can't imagine an English class that doesn't read books. However, I was surprised by how many websites there are that are about how to "create lesson plans for english language arts and literature classes based on movies and film". Actually I found some really good lists of movies to watch, and I'm guessing many of them are probably free to view on Amazon Prime so thanks for sharing your school experience.

[Sweetpea]

I gave up on the quiz... I never heard of the first 10 books (except the first) and I figure it wouldn't be different for the rest.

We never read translated literature at school and for English class we were more into British English...

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

When I took the quiz, I was jokingly thinking to myself where's the option that says "I have seen the movie".

I was pretty surprised by your statement. I can't imagine an English class that doesn't read books. However, I was surprised by how many websites there are that are about how to "create lesson plans for english language arts and literature classes based on movies and film". Actually I found some really good lists of movies to watch, and I'm guessing many of them are probably free to view on Amazon Prime so thanks for sharing your school experience.

You're welcome. This was in 2007, so it was quite recent, too. Still, I'd prefer to have read the books (and did go home and read them!).

[BelleZora]

The BBC posted a Big Read Top 100 books list challenge in 2003. They believed that most people had read only 6 of the 100 books. My 11th-grade granddaughter tells me that she has read the following on the list, most school requirements:

1. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
2. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
3. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
4. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
5. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
6. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
7. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
8. Animal Farm - George Orwell
9. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
10. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
11. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
12. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
13. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
14. Harry Potter series
15. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

She and her sister, also 16, love to discuss The Hunger Games Trilogy, House of Night series, and The Mortal Instruments series. They believe that they are average readers among their friends. They discussed Animal Farm seemingly endlessly in my presence.

If they are average, book writers and publishers should remain busy for decades.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

The BBC posted a Big Read Top 100 books list challenge in 2003. They believed that most people had read only 6 of the 100 books. My 11th-grade granddaughter tells me that she has read the following on the list, most school requirements:

1. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
2. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
3. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
4. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
5. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
6. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
7. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
8. Animal Farm - George Orwell
9. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
10. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
11. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
12. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
13. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
14. Harry Potter series
15. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

She and her sister, also 16, love to discuss The Hunger Games Trilogy, House of Night series, and The Mortal Instruments series. They believe that they are average readers among their friends. They discussed Animal Farm seemingly endlessly in my presence.

If they are average, book writers and publishers should remain busy for decades.

And the common one to both quizzes is "Harper Lee"

[Katsunami]

That is a nice list. Some easy to read stories, but with a deeper meaning such as Animal Farm and Christmas Carol. Some stuff that costs a bit more perseverance but is still doable when split in parts, such as The Three Musketeers and Lord of the Rings. I can see children liking the Narnia stories, Alice, and at least the first few Harry Potter books.

It gets better when they are allowed to draw comparisons with the movies (for books that have them, which are quite a few) and get to explain what the differences are, what they liked about that, what not, and why.

Yes, I think this is quite a fun list. I think that only children squarely opposed to reading will have trouble with it. I'd be hard pressed to make a better one; I might just add The Hobbit, Black Beauty, and The old man and the sea.

[Kretzer]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

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).

Oh well ... okay ... I'll admit it's not actually reading. But it is also about appreciating the original text. Good teaching can get you there. I remember that our English teacher explained about all the great rhetorics in Marc Antony's speech, and I found that really cool. That wasn't only me, not everybody hated literature at my school.
Even in French (which I was never good at) I quite enjoyed reading bits of "Candid" and some Moliere stuff. Usually you wouldn't have to plough through the whole book, just take out some interesting parts.

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?

Because many people/teachers still consider it trivial, I guess. "It can't be good if it's really popular"

[Katsunami]

"Oh. Yeah, Fantasy. *snort*"

Fantasy did get a very bad name. At first you basically had only Tolkien, in the Epic / High Fantasy genre (of course there was "other" Fantasy, but IMHO, Tolkien started Fantasy as most people know it today). Then, starting in the 70's with Brooks and later Eddings, more people began to write Fantasy. Now there is so much of it that it seems *everybody* writes Fantasy and I doubt I'll ever read 5% of it. And I suspect that there's really bad Fantasy too...