What books did high school ruin for you?
None, I'm not an easily impressionable sperg.
>>8052565
This.
>>8052565
You sure about that?
>>8052555
I've never read that book but I don't like it anyway
none. I never did my homework in highschool lol
Shakespeare. The process of going through it page by page to look for quotes and all of that school shit just killed all my enthusiasm for his plays.
>>8052618
haha dat fel wen lz genus
>>8052639
This. Same with poetry, but i began to appreciate it again over time.
I love Catcher in the Rye but I'll be damned if I can have a pleasant discussion about it without high school memelords making idiotic interjections and accusing me of wanting to kill John Lennon
>>8052644
>i began to appreciate it again over time.
I'm still not there yet. I can just about stomach adaptions, but the ones that use the original language still give me flashbacks. I'm pretty sure the fact that I was really fucking depressed all through high school is coloring my recollections though.
>>8052590
it's actually really good
None. I would refuse to participate if such an incident was going to occur.
>>8052618
Neither did I, and I regret it every day
>>8052713
I actually read it for the first time recently and loved it too. Is Salinger's other stuff any good?
>>8052555
Why would high school ruin this for you?
>>8053728
This. The regret is real.
>>8052555
>What books did high school ruin for you?
This is like a thread for the pretentious plebs on /lit/ who genuinely never read
>>8053734
Some people don't like the idea of being forced to read something with a forced perspective on that book.
>>8053773
Why? Are you unhappy with where you are now? I finished high school a few years ago and it is by no means be-all and end-all.
School put me off books in general for a while. It made reading feel like a chore.
>>8052639
The way they teach Shakespeare is so odd. I had to study a new play each year and I didn't see a single performance of one until I left school, at which point it all made a lot more sense.
They're not really meant to be read and I don't even think his plays are particularly ripe for analysis in the way that modern novels are. If you want children to fall in love with drama or understand what's interesting about debating literature, why force them to write essays about 400-old-plays? They can't understand it or connect with it.
If you're just going to make them watch films of the plays, then just teach them screenplays.
>>8052555
>I don't even think his plays are particularly ripe for analysis in the way that modern novels are.
>>8053785
>The way they teach Shakespeare is so odd. I had to study a new play each year and I didn't see a single performance of one until I left school, at which point it all made a lot more sense.
This was more or less my experience until I had to help produce one as part of my HSC drama course. A lot of the stuff in his plays only comes out in performance or speech, which means you're pretty much fucked if you have a shitty teacher who just gives you handouts and tells you to read the script (e.g. my year 11 teacher)
>>8052555
>What books did high school ruin for you?
I don't understand this and why people always say it. how can high school make your reading of a book worse not better? You have more than enough time to read and interpret the book as well as the opportunity to gain insight from an expert who has thoroughly studied the book allowing you new insights you might not have otherwise got.
The only people I knew who in high school who hated reading set books were the lowest of the low in academics
>>8053960
>You have more than enough time to read and interpret the book as well as the opportunity to gain insight from an expert who has thoroughly studied the book allowing you new insights you might not have otherwise got.
Because being forced to read something, and reading something on your own terms are very different, particularly if you're being forced to read something analytically with one eye open looking for quotes you need for an essay, as opposed to however you normally read things.
>>8053733
His other stuff is just as great, if not better. Give Nine Stories a shot
>>8053960
It's in the way most HS lit teachers ham-fist their way through the analysis. Imagine if you were made to sit through a semester of the average >>>/b/ user telling you what you were supposed to have gotten out of the Red Badge of Courage.
Your calling them "experts" is at odds with the experience of most American HS students. What kind of school did you attend?
This!!
>>8053785
I didn't like Shakespeare until my high school English teacher played us Branaughs Hamlet.
It was like I suddenly understood everything.
>>8054100
Nigga if we allowed high school kids to pick everything just because they want to read it, or on their own terms or whatever, we'd have generations be fucking retarded.
This is how a canon develops nigga and why it's taught nigga. It's why /lit/ has a canon. Because they're the shit you should be reading.
"High schoolers should get to pick what they read!" Get the fuck outta here with your communist bullshit.
>>8052588
Yeah, bucko, I'm sure.
>>8054707
I don't think you are, sweet cheeks
>>8054500
>nigga
>don't let our children become retarded!
>>8054500
>we'd have generations be fucking retarded
I have bad news for you...
>>8052555
Poetry mademy highschool times a horrible hell lol
Midnights summers dream. The entire thing is a great jerry springer episode however the teacher made it some posh elitist thing. These supercillious cunts who teach shakespear with their worthless liberal arts degrees are the post modern cancer of our society. Lit is for enjoyment not posh status, go and buy gucci gucci if you care about status.
>>8054500
The problem isn't that kids are reading books they shouldn't read, the problem is that the education system forces agendas behind every piece of literature they push. Instead of teaching kids how to read literature by themselves and get the most of it, equipping them with the tools necessary to do so, they teach kids how they feel about the piece and belittle any other opinion. Or, and this is even worse, they assign literature that's way over kid's heads, couple this with the aforementioned forced feeding, and you will convince kids to HATE reading.
That is absolutely fucking pathetic.
>>8055355
To build on this, here's an example: My high school went from "teaching" The Hunger Games in 8th grade to shoving Charles Dickens down our throats in 9th. If you think you can transition from The Hunger Games to A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations without properly teaching kids how to read you're smoking some grade A dank shit.
I know so many people, even at university level who "hate reading", reminds me of the "I hate math" meme
>>8055394
Well they both derive from being taught poorly. Feels bad. Niggas gotta walk by themselves before they start saying shit like that.
>tfw you're privately educated and can't imagine any of the nonsense in this thread
>privately educated
>incapable of abstract thought
>>8055432
>not backlinking
>>8055438
see here >>8055419
now here>>8055432
>>8055452
ok i'm >>8055432
>>8055445
The Great Gatsby
Animal Farm
1984
Of Mice and Men
To Kill A Mockingbird
Any play by Shakespeare
>>8055461
So why u hating man
>>8055475
No particular reason.
>>8053960
>an expert
High school teachers are experts of nothing. If they did an undergrad thesis, they have a solid knowledge of one specific thing, but the high school curriculum requires them to teach a number of things far away from any level of expertise and some things they don't even really like.
>>8052713
>Read Catcher in the Rye in high school
>Relate to Holden a lot
>Everyone else despises him
>Lose respect from my peers for defending Holden when they were talking about how much of an asshole they thought he was
>mfw they just dont understand
>>8055372
>Hunger Games
>eighth grade
Get off my lawn.
The only time high school introduced me to fap material.
I had this odd thing where every book we read throughout every grade was a book I'd already read a year or more before. And it's not like I was a huge reader.
Also pic related.
>>8056131
>Robert Cormier
Is he the only good YA author? I can think of good children's authors and authors that write literature that's good for teenagers, but no one else firmly within the realm of YA comes to mind.
>>8054390
Read it in high school, but was not assigned to read it. How did the assignments ruin the book for you?
>>8056258
Cormier is like the Melville of YA.
>>8055707
Feeling old yet, Grandpa?
Learning about the true background of postmodernism turned me off all postmodern.
>>8056482
What do you mean by that?
>>8053960
One, is being forced to read, that is enough to make some people angry.
Two, making work out of it and getting sidetracked on details. This is especially bad with historical works were one must stop to learn context and terms.
Three, going too deep. Sometimes that phrase the author used does not contain the multiple meanings specifically designed over years to effect your deeper subconscious in a manner that will alter your life's existence, they just thought it sounded right to them.
All of this is why I hated reading "The Things They Carried". My teacher literally stopped our reading every few minutes to explain things and have us search for means so deep they could not possibly exist. If you spend two hours discussing the type font of the word "it" on page 176, and why the author choose to print it that way, despite that font being the same and nearly every other word in the book you need help.
>>8052555
"The Things They Carried"
see above
there are more, but that one was really ruined more then most.
>>8055568
This literally happened to me
Holden is the farthest thing from an asshole I can imagine. He's confronted with this listless, diseased, degenerate society that rejects him totally and all he can think of is his aimless desire to heal that same world. The passage explaining the title killed me. It really did.
I'd actually say the way his character evokes such an irrational and involuntary sense of disgust in >90% of the people who read it is one of the novel's greatest strengths.
Thank god our teacher moved and we ended up not being forced into writing superficial essays on it (last text of the year) or I almost certainly would not appreciate it the way I do
>>8052555
Grendal
>>8057764
This and slaughterhouse five were the only books I liked in school
>>8053779
This
