Guilty secrets: books we SAY we've read...but haven't - Page 4

oltifreakinbaby · July 25th, 2009, 01:03 AM

Read 1984 and Ulysses. I HATED Catcher in the Rye. I didn't even bother finishing the book, I actually got someone else to spark notes it for me and tell me what they read on spark notes and got an A on my essay.

I remember I tried to read Anna Karenina while in like 7th grade and I couldn't get through it. I read it again in 10th grade and finally got it lol.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sleuth

To Kill a Mockingbird /Harper Lee ... I had to write an essay in high school... I read a few chapters but did not have the time to finish it before the essay was due.

Lorna Doone - My Nanna gave it to me, I read the first chapter but wasn't interested. I lied to her about reading it and told her it was a great book!

I had to read it in 9th grade too. Didn't like it. I know there was an underlying theme to it but I just didn't care. It didn't interest me. We even watched the movie and I thought it was boring.

crumpet · July 27th, 2009, 03:13 PM

I hate Shakespeare, overrated fuck.

Penny Lane · July 27th, 2009, 04:57 PM

^^ I always needed the books with the Shakespearian english on one side and the modern english translation on the other side.. I tried to read Hamlet in the original text and just could not do it.

witchcurlgirl · July 27th, 2009, 05:01 PM

I've always found Shakespeare is better and more easily understood 'out loud' than read to ones self. Which makes sense, since he was writing plays.

buttmunch · July 28th, 2009, 05:34 AM

Not a huge fan of Shakes either. I agree that he's better performed than read. Too bad schools don't think about that and just schelp kids to see a performance. Better yet, they could take them to see 'The Compleat Works of Shakespeare, abridged'. Hilarious show that more or less gets you up to speed on all the major plays.

zigzag · August 13th, 2009, 12:36 PM

once in high school i read a cliff notes we had at home not realizing that it wasn't the entire book (i was truly innocent). when my teacher called me on it, i lied and told her i had to return the real book and brought that in. it wasn't until she explained things in class that i realized that i had cheated. my mother never even told me it wasn't the real book. i remember now it was Jane Eyre. otherwise, what i had to read in school was fairly appealing. never had to read 1984 so i haven't. i don't see reason for anyone to lie unless someone feels they must for cultural reasons which is ridiculous.

i've read the Shakespeare that was required of me and no more, i've enjoyed many classics and missed many as well. some i've seen the movies of so i'm familiar with. i prefer fiction/romance/mystery as my genre of choice tho i have ventured into biographies and NF with a particular purpose. i have read the entire Bible with the exception of skipping through some of the lengthy begats. if i am to be judged by it, i want to know what it says.

atrayubrandy · August 15th, 2009, 06:00 PM

I've read quite a few classics but one comes to mind that I lied about reading. Catch-22. It was required reading in my high school english class but after suffering through 3 or 4 chapters I couldn't take any more.

zigzag · August 16th, 2009, 12:19 PM

I can't believe some of the things i read in high school that were allowed such as,

Helter Skelter
Go ask Alice (a fave)
The Bell Jar (back then i'm surprised wasn't deemed inappropriate)

and remember the sob stories,

Eric
Sunshine
Love Story (which also shouldn't have been teen reading)

i'm talking 70s here. things were different then. i wonder how many parents knew what was going on??

Penny Lane · August 16th, 2009, 05:04 PM

I read Go Ask Alice and the Bell Jar in high school.. nothing wrong with those books... I think more damage would be done if kids were sheltered from books of that nature rather than exposed to and encouraged to analyze them in an academic setting.

witchcurlgirl · August 16th, 2009, 11:38 PM

I read Go Ask Alice in elementary school. So lame. Even then I could tell it was a fake. A novelized after school special. (The author, I found out many years later, is a Mormon fundie who wrote numerous fake diary type novels)

Hated The Bell Jar. Sorry you were married to a bastard and topped yourself Sylvia, but The Bell Jar sucked. It's only interesting to depressed high school girls.

I read both Sunshine and Love Story, and don't remember anything in either book that was inappropriate for young people. They weren't good books, but they certainly weren't something my parents wouldn't have wanted me reading.

buttmunch · August 18th, 2009, 07:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zigzag

I can't believe some of the things i read in high school that were allowed such as,

Helter Skelter
Go ask Alice (a fave)
The Bell Jar (back then i'm surprised wasn't deemed inappropriate)

and remember the sob stories,

Eric
Sunshine
Love Story (which also shouldn't have been teen reading)

i'm talking 70s here. things were different then. i wonder how many parents knew what was going on??

I don't see anything wrong with HS students reading any of those books. I read them all before the age of 15 and I'm doing ok. Ideas aren't something to run from.

zigzag · August 18th, 2009, 12:50 PM

i was talking appropriate for the 70s in case you didn't see my last line. Helter Skelter just didn't have any educational value nor the Bell Jar, nor Love Story.

Go Ask Alice may serve some purpose to deter kids from drugs but was rather morbid in parts.

Sunshine and Eric were ok fiction, i didn't mean they were inappropriate, just sob stories.

but my point was, i wondered if parents knew what their kids were reading. back then parents were more likely to object to certain materials being used in schools. today, if kids are reading anything is a grand hurrah.

buttmunch · August 18th, 2009, 10:53 PM

^^Actually, I think today parents are much more likely to ask for books to be banned or pull a nutty over 'inappropriate' material. I grew up in the '70's and rarely remember any hullabaloo over reading material As far as what has educational value , that's pretty subjective. One could say many books have little or no educational value but that would quite difficult to quantify.

As far as a book being appropriate I think most teenagers could pick up the newspaper or turn on the news any day of the week and find far more 'inappropriate' material.

Books have value, even if it isn't obvious to each and every reader. And by the time a kid is in his or her mid-teens they should be able to stand being exposed to a variety of ideas, styles, subjects without it 'hurting' them. Books are the life-blood of the mind and I think all kids should read anything and everything they can get their hands on.

There are any number of people who don't see any value in the Harry Potter series but I think there is a lot of value in them for kids. The books raise lots of questions about right and wrong, ambiguity, loyalty, the fact that life isn't a series of black and white events and that even the wisest among us aren't always sure of what to do in any given situation, but there have been many districts where parents have tried to have the books banned on religious reasons or otherwise. That's just being afraid of ideas.

As far as the books you mentioned I can't agree. The Bell Jar is a beautifully written book. Helter Skelter is a cracking good read and leads one to question what creates these sorts of people in society. Go Ask Alice is great, even though it's fake. And there's nothing wrong with a good cry over a novel. I don't think there needs to be 'value' in everything you read. Reading should be fun and for pleasure and isn't that what we want kids to get out of it? The love and joy of reading?

zigzag · August 21st, 2009, 11:07 AM

well i know that in the early 80s i tried to donate some Nancy Drews to the local library and they were rejected for not being appropriate. it was 83 to be exact as i was not working that summer so i remember it specifically. i thought that was downright unreasonable. so if that was any indication of the times, the 70s should be have stricter. thats just one persons thought, and i'm certainly not opposed to many opinions here. the books were obviously read and nobody said anything.

atrayubrandy · August 22nd, 2009, 02:02 PM

I clearly remember in my elementary school all the books we read dealt with death in some way. We read a book where the father died trying to climb Mt. Everest, a book where the mother died and the kids had to take care of themselves, a book where a kid somehow ended up on a deserted island with a man who got malaria (I'm fuzzy on the details of that book), A Bridge to Tarabithia (where the friend dies), and Where the Red Fern Grows (the dogs die). I didn't think anything of it at the time. Looking back, I do believe it was inappropriate. I'm all for teaching children to cope with death and the other tragedies of life but I think that having every single book deal with it is over kill. No wonder I had a pathological fear of my parents dying.