High school reading

[FirstBlood]

Scarlet Letter is a terrible book... Hawthorne managed to stretch a crappy short story into a full fledged novel of random overly descriptive bull shit

Faulkner is my favorite. As I Lay Dying is fantastic.

[Omni]

I hated The Scarlet Letter as well. I can respect Hawthorne as a good writer, but that book is simply not good.

I read Julius Caesar awhile ago (like 4 years ago) and probably wasn't mature enough to really evaluate it, but I'm almost positive that if I read it again it still wouldn't hold a candle to Hamlet. *points to sig*

I loved Oliver Twist. Couldn't stand Return of the Native. Hardy wishes he was half the author Dickens was. My English teacher said his last novel got ripped apart by critics so badly that he only wrote poetry thereafter. That was definitely a good idea.

One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest was amazing, but it's probably the only story that was better in movie form (probably cuz of Nicholson). Catcher in the Rye is another favorite.

I was upset to hear that Lord of the Rings was taken out of the AP English curriculum, cuz I'd love to study it on that "scholarly" level, but what are you gonna do. Maybe in college, I suppose.

Brave New World was decent, but Anthem is very similiar to it and I liked that alot better. Can't really put my finger on why, though.

I had to read The Partner over the summer one year, and I really liked it. Interesting story that was really a joy to read. Grisham did a great job of making me want to know what happens next. I hear all his novels are pretty much the same, though.

I guess that about rounds out the highlights of my HS reading. I'm sure college will gimme some more good material as well.

[sggg]

Eep.... It's been 10 years since I graduated from HS (yikes!), so I cannot remember everything we were assigned back then. For the most part it was a bunch of predictable stuff I thought was OK. Most of it was decent, yet not particularly appealing to me. What stands out most vividly is the book I most liked - "To Kill A Mockingbird" - and the book I most disliked - "The Great Gatsby". Everything else fell somewhere in the middle.. I was and remain indifferent about it.

However, I recall better what I personally chose to read at that time of my life. Sometime around Grade 10-11 I started buying a lot of books. I would mainly look for classics. I read a lot of classic Russian literature such as stuff by Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Tolstoy.. and I read random other things like Joseph Conrad too.. My most favourite book from those days was definitely "Fathers and Sons" by Turgenev. It had a very profound impact on me.

As for the last question about how my opinion would change now (10 years later for me), it's very hard to say. I didn't read many books for high school that would be appealing to me now. So, I don't think my opinion would change much at all. I simply don't care enough to bother with them. I would like to go back and read some of the other books I read from back then though, such as the aforementioned "Fathers and Sons". It would be very interesting to compare my thoughts on it now to what I thought back then.

Anyway, I had far better luck with what was assigned in uni. For "World Masterpieces II" we has a massive text filled with books, from which we'd only read a small percentage of works. I enjoyed so much of the stuff in the book I would read unassigned books from the text (even in class, heh) and I didn't sell the book back after the semester. These days I constantly seek out literature from lesser known sources that would not have even been in those texts. I really like to read classic Czech and Russian literature. I like to find new upcoming authors and read novels written from different points in history and written by people from different cultures.

So basically, without passing judgment on anything, what I read in HS simply holds little appeal for me. I'd just assume read and appreciate what interests me more.

[Sqoon]

Originally posted by Stone
'The Scarlet Letter' was hard to get through - have you read 'Rappacini's Daughter'? It was a short story (maybe a novella) that I thought was great. Gives you the Hawthorne feel, bit more engaging.

The only other work I've read of Hawthorne's was a short story which had to do with a black veil and maybe a funeral. (That's not 'Daughter' is it?) It was around the same time I was assigned Scarlet Letter, and I think I liked the idea of that short story but was put off by his style.

[FirstBlood]

You mean The Minister's Black Veil? Where the town goes crazy because the Minister all of a sudden began wearing a black veil?

I also had to read that. It was much better than The Scarlet Letter, because Hawthorne was able to limit himself to a short story.

[Stone]

Hawthorne's pretty well known for his short stories, I think, for those reasons - he really advanced the style.

[Lordmrw]

its been so long, I don't remember most of what I read in high school. I do remember hating the Scarlet Letter and the Great Gatsby with a passion. I liked Frankenstein and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy out of what comes to mind.

[sggg]

Lordmrw, did your HS actually assign Hitchhiker's Guide? If so, that's very neat!

My HS certainly didn't.. but I happened to have read them for the first time when I was in HS... (I was actually first exposed to them from the old text based DOS game I had when I was little)...

[Lobo]

Best book I read in high school would probably be Anthem by Any Rand.

Even though I wrote an alternate ending that was better... Anthem was still good.

[Rhydant]

The Scarelt Letter is the worst book ive ever read. i got about 3/4ths the way though it before putting my copy of the book on my teacher's desk and saying "I refuse to finish this book".

and then i discovered sparknotes.com

i rather liked (parts) of Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mocking Bird--what a great book. i also enjoyed Grapes of Wrath.