I think sometimes people think a book is boring when they're just kind of bad at reading books. It's a skill, like any other, that can be practised and deepened and improved. Sure, you probably know how to read by the time you're ten, but reading a book isn't just about reading and understanding the open meaning of a sentence: it's about appreciating the aptness of a simile, recognising symbolism and allegory when it arises, reading widely enough to be able to tell good writers from bad, and why, and seeing how little one writer can put down to evoke an image or how much another can put down to establish the right mood.
The more and more widely your read the better you get at it, until you die, at which point you're still not done because you were probably halfway through a book.
I generally agree with your point, but now and then I've met someone who tries to tell me something like Finnegan's Wake is the pinnacle of Western literature and I Just need "to get it" so I can finally experience it properly.
Oh sure there are unbearable people all over the world trying to press their favourite book on someone else and will, unless justly murdered, continue until they die. Monsters.
I posit that there's absolutely zero things wrong with not teaching teenagers classic literature.
Keep that for college courses for someone who's interested in it.
Nothing will be lost if we don't have 14 year olds read Romeo and Juliet or Gatsby.
I disagree strongly. Teaching art and literature and culture is important for rounded development.
Most of them aren't doing the reading to begin with, so, like I said, nothing will be lost.
I'll meet you halfway if we get rid of just Gatsby, how's that?
Gatsby is excellent, topical, and short
Why get rid of it over, say, Canterbury Tales or The Odyssey?
Topical to what, exactly? The struggles of the upper socialites of the 1920s? You could theoretically work it into a combo lesson plan with The Great Depression but lol @ that ever happening.
Man it is 6:30 in the goddamn morning, don’t make me come up with an articulate defense of Gatsby’s exploration of the moral emptiness and ennui of the decadent upper class
Not really something a 14 year old will comprehend.
I figure most 14 year olds think being a rich asshole is cool
It’s not bad to introduce them to the notion that rich people are hollow-out monsters that destroy others without serious thought
Atomika on
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
That isn't a post about anyone here in particular, or their judgement of any book in particular. But "it's boring" is a thing i know kids say about stuff they just don't want to engage with.
Someone hasn't read the Grapes of Wrath, I see.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
That isn't a post about anyone here in particular, or their judgement of any book in particular. But "it's boring" is a thing i know kids say about stuff they just don't want to engage with.
Wuthering Heights is melodramatic and inane
I mean if you wanted to describe [chat] with two words you've done a bang up job.
Count of Monte Cristo has the best readability:oldness ratio of any book I know.
I will go to the mat for The Count of Monte Cristo. It barely has a dull moment, a wonderfully complex yet easily-followed plot, and the abridged version is still a doorstop but you don't care, the book is so good.
What I'm saying is that The Count of Monte Cristo needs an HBO series like Game of Thrones.
I don't think a book being boring really has anything to do with how good of a reader one is, more so that the content is just not engaging to the person.
Just like Marvel movies don't really engage with some people.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
The ability to appreciate prose takes years to develop. It seems like a cognitive thing, an aspect of language development. A lot of great authors have rich prose but it's going to be an annoying slog if you haven't spent years reading and absorbing, which teenagers almost always have not because they haven't been alive that long.
They can be forgiven for not savouring the astounding turns of phrase in modern lit, I think.
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
I posit that there's absolutely zero things wrong with not teaching teenagers classic literature.
Keep that for college courses for someone who's interested in it.
Nothing will be lost if we don't have 14 year olds read Romeo and Juliet or Gatsby.
I disagree strongly. Teaching art and literature and culture is important for rounded development.
Most of them aren't doing the reading to begin with, so, like I said, nothing will be lost.
I'll meet you halfway if we get rid of just Gatsby, how's that?
Gatsby is excellent, topical, and short
Why get rid of it over, say, Canterbury Tales or The Odyssey?
Topical to what, exactly? The struggles of the upper socialites of the 1920s? You could theoretically work it into a combo lesson plan with The Great Depression but lol @ that ever happening.
Man it is 6:30 in the goddamn morning, don’t make me come up with an articulate defense of Gatsby’s exploration of the moral emptiness and ennui of the decadent upper class
Not really something a 14 year old will comprehend.
Ooh no i think i caught the moral emptiness of the decadent upper class. It just isn't a lesson i needed because I grew up in a rich people tourism based economy. I already knew enough about the decadent upper class.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
[743/23000] okay so “gettin up in those guts” means something totally different here I’m finding out, I bet ‘spermaceti’ isn’t even the money-shot
Got more info on my job, will be working with Jamf, SonicWall, Ruckus, and Securly. New things to learn!
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IlpalaJust this guy, y'knowTexasRegistered Userregular
Most fun I ever had reading in high school was when they let us make performances out of it. Like we assigned parts for Macbeth or (granted in a speaking class not lit class) we had to recite a monologue from whatever work we picked and I did The Telltale Heart and I got to ham it up a bit.
FF XIV - Qih'to Furishu (on Siren), Battle.Net - Ilpala#1975
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Fuck Joe Manchin
Moby Dick, but I've rewritten the chapter on whale biology to be scientific accurate
As we all know, whales are large floating sacs, filled with insects. But until recently, we had no idea which insects. Entertain me, dear reader, as I relay this exciting information from Europe's fore-most natural philosophers.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Senior AP lit was SlaughterHouse Five, The Jungle, Crime and Punishment, The Poisonwood Bible, and some Austen-esque forgettable thing with the heroine drowning herself in the ocean
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
That chapter being scientifically accurate would be terrible because it would require the protagonist to know things that a whaler of that era wouldn't know.
That chapter being scientifically accurate would be terrible because it would require the protagonist to know things that a whaler of that era wouldn't know.
Oh good point, we need period accuracy
Moby Dick, but most of it's actually about suspicion of Ishmael because he has a Jewish name.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
That isn't a post about anyone here in particular, or their judgement of any book in particular. But "it's boring" is a thing i know kids say about stuff they just don't want to engage with.
Counterpoint, a lot of the extant English canon could be replaced with more modern works that touch the same themes without having the albatross of dated English as a gatekeeper for students
Sometimes things are just boring
Like, Moby Dick is a great, important book
It's also stuffed full of chapters that don't matter (an entire chapter on incorrect whale biology??? Woooo) and is written in an old enough dialect to require more work to extract meaning than should reasonably be expected of a high school student
Triple dog counterpoint
It is important that we understand the literary classics so that we have the same base set of knowledge even though some of the books use older forms of English and Outdated social norms (I'm looking at you Tom Sawyer).
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
I don't think a book being boring really has anything to do with how good of a reader one is, more so that the content is just not engaging to the person.
Just like Marvel movies don't really engage with some people.
I don't think it's particularly controversial to suggest that some people read at different levels than others, even if they understand most of the same words.
AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
edited May 2018
[12376/23000] Hey I know it’s a big sausage fest out here, but I just heard the captain tell everyone he’s looking for that big white dick. Miss me with that gay shit, son
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Oh sure there are unbearable people all over the world trying to press their favourite book on someone else and will, unless justly murdered, continue until they die. Monsters.
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I figure most 14 year olds think being a rich asshole is cool
It’s not bad to introduce them to the notion that rich people are hollow-out monsters that destroy others without serious thought
Someone hasn't read the Grapes of Wrath, I see.
Atomika is melodramatic and inane
kids will get it then
I will go to the mat for The Count of Monte Cristo. It barely has a dull moment, a wonderfully complex yet easily-followed plot, and the abridged version is still a doorstop but you don't care, the book is so good.
What I'm saying is that The Count of Monte Cristo needs an HBO series like Game of Thrones.
Just like Marvel movies don't really engage with some people.
so many of those are just utterly wasted on kids
OTOH how do you get them to grow up
Some classics are still good reads!
Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are still fun to sift through.
They can be forgiven for not savouring the astounding turns of phrase in modern lit, I think.
Moby Dick, but I've just stuffed several chapters of Campbell's biology in randomly.
The trailer!
Short stories are easier to digest and you can take the time to actually teach some of the prose rather than slogging through a chapter a night
I could see an excerpt because of some kind of social significance, but 2 entire books just makes me retroactively think she was pushing the agenda.
Ooh no i think i caught the moral emptiness of the decadent upper class. It just isn't a lesson i needed because I grew up in a rich people tourism based economy. I already knew enough about the decadent upper class.
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Fuck Joe Manchin
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I'll have to watch it sometime. In my experience, every adaptation has had to cut or simplify plot lines to make it fit into a two hour movie.
If I was running the series I would make the 10 episode first season end
The 2nd season would be the section of the novel that is usually cut in the abridged version.
she wasn't a philosopher and only an author in the most technical sense
if she existed today shed be doing youtube videos alongside Jordan Peterson.
Oh good point, we need period accuracy
Moby Dick, but most of it's actually about suspicion of Ishmael because he has a Jewish name.
It is important that we understand the literary classics so that we have the same base set of knowledge even though some of the books use older forms of English and Outdated social norms (I'm looking at you Tom Sawyer).
"This is my substitute for pistol and ball"
There's enough there that I might have to read the doorstop
I don't think it's particularly controversial to suggest that some people read at different levels than others, even if they understand most of the same words.
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It has zero humour. No jokes! Who writes a whole book with no jokes? A girl genius who thinks she's all that and takes herself very seriously, I guess
Frankenstein is only amazing in the last 20 pages. That makes the preceding two hundred worth, though.
I think this is a reasonable idea.
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The goth girl that fucks her boyfriend on top of a grave.
Its why Poe works so well for High Schoolers
plus there's all the emo shit they love