10-04-2012, 03:01 PM | #76 | |
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Oh, and I forgot to add in my previous post that I enjoy reading Shakespeare, when I am in the mood to do so. |
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10-04-2012, 04:10 PM | #77 | |
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10-04-2012, 04:40 PM | #78 |
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Dickens, Shakespeare, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, and James Joyce etc. are interesting about the time you reach adulthood; you think, "Wow! This is grownup literature," but once you've changed the diaper on your first newborn they don't seem quite so interesting or relevant.
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10-04-2012, 04:48 PM | #79 |
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I find the comedies the most difficult to follow, since they are full of word play that requires knowing the culture of the time. If you're familiar with the culture, everything makes sense. If you're not, you miss the point of many lines. I guess I'm not familiar enough, because I often have to pause and piece out what was said and try to guess the meaning. That's possible when reading, but impossible when listening in real time. Even worse, poor actors who don't quite understand the gist of their lines get the stresses wrong, and make the job even harder. In high school, we used textbooks that had the lines on one page, and notes on the facing page. I would groan when I read the meaning of a phrase and realized that I would never have guessed it on my own.
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10-04-2012, 05:29 PM | #80 | |
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10-04-2012, 05:32 PM | #81 |
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10-04-2012, 06:00 PM | #82 | |
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What kills them is...death. Talk about depressing stuff. Who the hell wants to read downers all the time? 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. I tried when I was older just to see if I was missing something. WHAT A WASTE. Should have thrown them all over the cliff 1/4 of the way in. Shakespeare? Yeah, let's go have death. Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Ceasar, etc. Moby Dick? Why did the whale have to die? Only character I liked. 1984? Who says it was fiction? Just got the year wrong. Hmph. |
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10-04-2012, 07:59 PM | #83 |
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Probably because 1) I read these with a gun to my head, 2) I spent way too much time talking about them, and 3) I spent way too much time writing about them.
It may just be that in elementary school we read for pleasure and in high school we read for a grade...except that I did like mythology of all ages, history, and most things greek. Maybe they are just crap ;-) |
10-04-2012, 09:38 PM | #84 | |
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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. |
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10-04-2012, 10:09 PM | #85 | |
Maria Schneider
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Yes, I get that there are "great life lessons" in literature, but surely. SURELY, they cannot all be of the variety that includes death and destruction of the human will. Wuthering Heights is extremely long. Somewhere around 400 pages too long. |
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10-05-2012, 05:12 AM | #86 |
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Ask almost any European and they will tell you that Americans have a very peculiar relationship with alcohol. 21 year for a beer that isn't even that high in alcohol content? Just doesn't make any sense. Then when you watch television shows, yes I know this isn't reality, it seems you can't walk into a house or an office without having a glass of whiskey.
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10-05-2012, 07:45 AM | #87 | ||
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10-05-2012, 08:34 AM | #88 | |
Maria Schneider
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I've heard that Shakespeare even wrote a couple of comedies. Why not those instead of the tragedies? Pride and Prejudice would be better than Wuthering (ANYTHING is better). That's not to say that I'm enamored of it either, but it was better. In all honestly it's quite possible to teach lit without having to go all wonky with that type of reading. |
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10-05-2012, 08:41 AM | #89 |
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A Shakespearean "comedy" is not, of course, using the word "comedy" as it's used today. Eg, "The Merchant of Venice" is classed as a comedy, but it's not exactly a laugh a minute.
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10-05-2012, 09:00 AM | #90 |
Maria Schneider
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Well, I haven't read them--I was told on another discussion that the comedies were some of the best reading. Thank you, however, for the education. It is good to know. I won't throw that out there so casually again.
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