What books did you have to study at school?

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

I guess I need to pick a different book that nobody finishes. Atlas Shrugged maybe? I suppose it should be a book that people actually start, though.

Pick again, read that too.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

I guess I need to pick a different book that nobody finishes. Atlas Shrugged maybe? I suppose it should be a book that people actually start, though.

I've read Atlas Shrugged at least twice. For fun.

[Cinisajoy]

In high school, we had English language first semester and Literature second semester in most Texas schools. In California, I took Greek Mythology for my English class.

[rem736]

for me, here in socal, usa, the english curriculum included

novels -
red badge of courage - stephen crane
the catcher in the rye - j.d. salinger
old man and the sea - ernest hemingway
a farewell to arms - ernest hemingway
the illustrated man - ray bradbury

plays -
greek comedies/tragedies - aeschyus, sophocles, euripides
hamlet - shakespeare
a mid summer's night dream - shakespeare
the crucible - arthur miller

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Pick again, read that too.

Originally Posted by Catlady

I've read Atlas Shrugged at least twice. For fun.

I suppose in a forum specifically for readers, I shouldn't be surprised. Maybe it's a topic for a new thread: "how many of the books that nobody else reads have you read?"

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If you read a translation of a book like "Anna Karenina", how much of Tolstoy are you reading, and how much the interpretation of the translator?

Only semi-related, I know, but I can't let a discussion of translations go by without giving kudos to the English translations of the Asterix stories. The translations are a work of art in themselves.

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

I don't know how I forgot Dickens! I had to read A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield, but Great Expectations is actually one of my favorite books.

I was made to read Great Expectations in school, and hated it. I read it later for pleasure and absolutely loved it. My kids have similar experiences - both have had an early fanatical enthusiasm for reading destroyed by the way Eng. Lit. is taught in (UK) schools. Something is very, very wrong here.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by jbjb

I was made to read Great Expectations in school, and hated it. I read it later for pleasure and absolutely loved it. My kids have similar experiences - both have had an early fanatical enthusiasm for reading destroyed by the way Eng. Lit. is taught in (UK) schools. Something is very, very wrong here.

I was fortunate to have an excellent English Lit teacher. I loved it!

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I was fortunate to have an excellent English Lit teacher. I loved it!

It's the forced over-analysis of the books which has put off my kids - trying to read far more into every sentence than the author could in any way have plausibly intended. Sometimes if an author says that something is green, it's just because it's green - you really don't need to read layer upon layer of meaning into it.

To be fair, it's not the school's fault (it's a good school), it just seems to be what the current system requires.

[maddz]

Our 'O' level set books for my year were Pride and Prejudice, and Romeo and Juliet (boo - I voted for Julius Caesar). I recall we did some poetry as well, but I don't remember what. Other Shakespeare I recall studying were Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice. I think we may have done A Tale of Two Cities as well, which probably explains my loathing of Dickens (but I still read Pride and Prejudice at least every couple of years). Outside of English, I did The Aeneid for Latin, and also read my way through the Greek Literature in Translation book list for pleasure, [hem, hem, Aristophanes - some of it was absolutely feelthy for a convent school] (being A stream I did Latin instead).

I recall my sister did Jane Eyre and The History of Mr Polly, but I don't remember what Shakespeare she did.

[crich70]

I don't recall many. Of course I had few happy memories about the two yrs I was in regular High School.

Animal Farm
I am the Cheese
Flowers for Algernon
Medea

[crich70]

Originally Posted by jbjb

It's the forced over-analysis of the books which has put off my kids - trying to read far more into every sentence than the author could in any way have plausibly intended. Sometimes if an author says that something is green, it's just because it's green - you really don't need to read layer upon layer of meaning into it.

To be fair, it's not the school's fault (it's a good school), it just seems to be what the current system requires.

And not everyone is ready for the same book at the same time. I remember reading an article by Steve Allen about reading in which when he was a kid he was supposed to read Moby Dick and he found it a bore at the time, but then yrs later he read it and enjoyed it.

[Sweetpea]

We had a list of books, with multiple books per era, where we had to pick two or three books from, per era. I hated it. I actually never read most of the books I had to read and read the books I wanted...

Van den vos Reynaerde
Mariken van Nieumeghen

that was from the early period.

Then from the 1800 to 1940 series I read

Erik of het klein insectenboek by Godfried Bomans
Max Havelaar by Multatuli (read half of it)
Kleine Johannes by Frederik van Eeden. I actually read this book, and liked it.
Het verboden rijk by J. Slauerhoff. I've always loved historic novels and especially if they take place in the Far East.

After the war, the literature books become depressing and I don't even remember the ones I had said I had read. I think I'd have become so depressed as the main characters in those books that I'd have, like the main characters in those books, killed myself...

There's only one book I do remember:
De verwoesting van Hyperion by Hugo Raes, the only SF book I've ever found that qualifies as a Dutch literature book... Also very depressing (big war, most of humanity is destroyed, only one small enclave survives, but the rats, who have evolved and want to destroy those last humans for their knowledge)

Having said that, I did love the Dutch literature classes (that wasn't so much about the books, but rather about the entire history of the Dutch language). I just hated reading those Dutch literature books. In general, boring, depressing and/or impossible to read due to severe language changes...

[maddz]

Originally Posted by crich70

And not everyone is ready for the same book at the same time. I remember reading an article by Steve Allen about reading in which when he was a kid he was supposed to read Moby Dick and he found it a bore at the time, but then yrs later he read it and enjoyed it.

I think you're right. I read various Victorian authors in my twenties having read them in school but in all honesty still didn't enjoy them; getting on for 40 years later I may like them better but am not minded to try. My problem is that having gone to a convent school I got a belly-full of being preached and moralised at in general and don't really want to have more of the same, and I find a lot of Victorian authors to be very much in that mould.

There's also the issue of language - classic literature tends to be very 'literary' in style, and I think that goes over your head when you're younger (which reminds me of a comment I came across about Glen Cook and why someone like his books so much - the sentences were short and sounded like actual people speaking). As I've got older, I find I tend to appreciate the sentence structure of classic literature more (and I'm much more intolerant of badly constructed writing).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by jbjb

It's the forced over-analysis of the books which has put off my kids - trying to read far more into every sentence than the author could in any way have plausibly intended. Sometimes if an author says that something is green, it's just because it's green - you really don't need to read layer upon layer of meaning into it.

Isn't that the whole point of studying literature, though: to teach you how to understand what lies beneath the surface? Take Dickens, for example: most of his books have strong elements of satire and commentary on the social conditions prevalent at the time. A child isn't going to see or understand that unless they're taught to see the "sub-text", so to speak. That's the difference between teaching literature and simply reading for pleasure.