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Post by Queen on Dec 8, 2016 12:50:52 GMT -5
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Post by Queen on Dec 8, 2016 12:53:39 GMT -5
Kes Troubled kid makes his life better with a Kestral called Kes. I don't remember anything more about it, I found it boring... it was some kid in Scotland, made no sense in my world.
Catcher in the Rye Hated it. Can't tell you anything about it as I have blocked it from my mind.
Animal Farm Allegory of the failures of communism... or politics and propaganda generally. Loved it, it was funny and scary. Totally got the politics of it.
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Post by tucano on Dec 8, 2016 13:01:24 GMT -5
Studied and performed Animal Farm for GCSE Drama. I was Napoleon (no comments please).
We had to study plays as well as novels, I remember enjoying The Crucible.
The Mayor of Casterbridge which was pretty dull at the time.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Dec 8, 2016 15:34:22 GMT -5
Waiting for Godot - have paid to go and see it a few time since I studied it.
Emma - have happily reread it.
Bridge to Terabithia was a set text for the start of high school (Yr 8 maybe?). I was astounded to find out later that at some stage it was a banned book. Also watched the recent movie because I had fond yet hazy memories of the book. The movie did seem to change some things around.
Heart of Darkness - found that a bit of a slog. Haven't ever felt the need to find anymore of his books.
The Great Gatsby - loved it, went to see the recent movie, loved that as well. Have read more Fitzgerald, fictional accounts of Fitzgerald's life and backstories to Gatsby since school.
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Post by shilgia on Dec 8, 2016 16:12:58 GMT -5
It didn't work that way for us. We had to read 25 Dutch-language novels between 11th and 12th grade (with an oral exam about all of them at the end of grade 12). There were certain rules to it (no more than 2 books by the same author; x from before 1900; y from between 1900 and 1920; etc.), but other than that, you could pick and choose your own books. There was a long list of pre-approved books, and if you wanted to read a book that was not on the list, you could ask to get it approved. (This was to prevent the equivalent of Danielle Steele and the like ending up on people's reading lists. If your proposed book was generally considered literary and it was not a translated work, it would generally be approved.)
The rules were similar for foreign languages (10 books for English, 5 for German, 5 for French), except that the standards were laxer the 'harder' the language. In Dutch it had to be real literature. In English it could be literature-ish (Harry Potter might have been acceptable). In French the books could be Harlequin romance novels for all they cared so long as you managed to read them in French.
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Post by sprite on Dec 8, 2016 17:08:45 GMT -5
something very boring about a city boy visiting his grandparents in cape breton for a summer. i suspect it was supposed to be a coming of age book, but the only good bit was when he accidentally drank a couple of beers and started talking to a frog.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 8, 2016 18:45:55 GMT -5
Interesting list, Q. The only thing I've read on it was "Things Fall Apart," which I didn't read in school, but Spawn did. Spawn also had to read "Catcher in the Rye," which he despised (agree with that opinion)
What were we assigned? Vaguely remember....
Great Expectations (hated it, HATED it) The Great Gatsby (don't remember anything about it... should read it again probably) Don't remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird, but surely I must have Dune (hey, it was the 1970s) (I loved it and have read it several times since) Le Petit Prince (read it in French class three times in three separate schools... interesting the first time around but by #3 I was like STOP) Also in French: L'Etranger and La Peste - French V teacher was a big Camus fan. Remember thinking they were edgy and cool Bunch of Shakespeare probably Other things
shilgia - then how did you have a class discussion, if you were all reading separate books? Or did you do a presentation on them for the class or something? (I think doing it that way is far preferable, but still, hard for doing it in class)
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Post by shilgia on Dec 8, 2016 19:01:16 GMT -5
shilgia - then how did you have a class discussion, if you were all reading separate books? Or did you do a presentation on them for the class or something? (I think doing it that way is far preferable, but still, hard for doing it in class) I actually don't remember us ever having a class discussion about a whole book in high school. We read a lot of poems, and some short stories and talked about those. But also a lot of time was spent in the most ridiculous way of all: with the teacher droning on and on about individual authors' biographies, bibliographies, literary clique, styles, feuds with other authors, etc. purely in the abstract (which we then would be quizzed on). (Piet Paaltjens was born in 18xx in . Etc.)
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Post by scrubb on Dec 8, 2016 21:59:44 GMT -5
The only ones I can remember having to read are
Who Has Seen the Wind (it's about growing up on the prairies) To Kill a Mockingbird
I loved TKAM and still do. Who has Seen the Wind was ok. I haven't reread it.
Oh yeah, just remembered we did a Sci Fi section in Grade 10 and everyone had to read Alas Babylon. I don't remember anything about it, though I think I enjoyed it at the time. I know I also read The Chrysalids then but don't remember if it was mandatory or if I chose it, but I liked it a lot.
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Post by lillielangtry on Dec 9, 2016 2:27:43 GMT -5
Shilgia, I like the idea of reading a certain number of books with some freedom to choose which ones, but don't like the sound of those classes. Sometimes doing a close reading can be really interesting.
I think I enjoyed most of the books we read in English - it was my favourite subject. I remember To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men... lots of plays...
For German A Level we had to read All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues). It's not a short or easy book and our German was hopelessly inadequate for the task. We sat for weeks in class and translated it page by page. Ugh. I can't even look at it.
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 9, 2016 5:40:56 GMT -5
wow shilgia, I'm sorry but that sounds like a complete waste of class time! (as lillie said) Though it could be worse, I once took a Spanish class where the teacher spent most of the time lecturing us about his philosophical ideas (in English).
The read-your-own-individual-book idea can work, though: In the Evolution class I took a couple of years ago, we all read On The Origin of Species and then also each read another, more modern book on the topic. We then each led a presentation and discussion on our book. It was a fantastic class. (Of course we were all grownups who were invested in learning about the subject, which helps.)
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Post by sprite on Dec 9, 2016 6:13:59 GMT -5
lillie, i read the 'illustrated classics' comic of All Quiet, which was a good, if depressing read, and i can see why it was suppressed. but i can't imagine reading it in my second language.
in junior high, aside from that horrid cape breton novel, i don't recall what we read. it was a very grammar oriented sort of class, how to write reports etc. we did have to do a book report, where part of the assignment was to write an extra chapter for the book. I'd read 'The Handmaid's Tale' and i think my chapter was fairly well done. but i'm guessing that my 14 yr old self missed a lot of the subtext of the book, and should probably re-read it.
my classes were all in french, but because we were such beginners we only read graded readers. something about the future, and robots pretending to be human and playing hockey.
in high school, there was shakespeare romeo/juliet, hamlet, midsummer night's dream. austen--pride and prejudice? there must have been others, as we had to cover shakespeare and a novel each year, but i only have vague memories of a short story about a white boy on the south african Veldt. i was lucky in that i was taking enriched literature, so we did a lot of reading and writing, more like what i would do at uni.
french literature--guy du maupassant short stories. 'a piece of string' still creeps me out.
Kes was supposed to be an amazing novel/movie that accurately portrayed the hopelessness and limited horizons of working class children in a britain which was losing it's manufacturing/mining jobs.
Scrubb--did you not have to read 'roses are difficult here'? that was our 'canadian' novel in first yr english lit at university.
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Post by snowwhite on Dec 9, 2016 6:32:52 GMT -5
Kes (don't think it was Scotland?) didn't think much of it either.
Great Gatsby, hated it so much I still want to burn any copy I see.
A Month in the Country, still one of my all time favourite books (see, it wasn't all bad, honest!)
Walkabout, still think this was a very strange choice for a bunch of 11 year-olds.
Animal Farm, cool, enjoyed reading it, although allegorical nature was a bit lost on us as 12 year-olds.
Enjoyed all the Shakespeare we did, and doing gothic as a topic at A-level - I read a lot of books I liked for A-level, actually... I think when I was younger I liked the set poetry more.
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Post by Queen on Dec 9, 2016 11:05:12 GMT -5
I like the Dutch approach - but think one of the things that was good about all reading the same texts is you get to go in depth with lots of points of view. Swings and roundabouts I guess.
For French we read Pagnol, I think Jean de Florette, and a bunch of poetry - in which I discovered Apollinaire. Loved both, and had enough French to cope with the books we were given to read.
In Russian we "read" Pushkin, which was hopeless. We did a page by page translation for the whole fecking year. AND STILL DID NOT FINISH THE DAMN THING. I'm not even sure which one it was and I certainly don't care what happened in it.
As a result I love French, got better at it and can still just about speak it... and I hated Russian (which I'd loved up to that year).
I sometimes wonder if I'd have gone in an artier direction in terms of university choices if I hadn't been force-fed Pushkin.
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Post by Queen on Dec 9, 2016 11:11:03 GMT -5
OK apparently I remember more Russian than I realised... I remembered it in Russian and it was Капитанская дочка, The Captain's Daughter.
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Post by sprite on Dec 9, 2016 11:48:16 GMT -5
you lot had ambitious teachers. i did russian in uni, and all the literature we covered was in translation. 3rd year language, we looked at a storybook called 'divnograd' (wierd town) but even that was graded for learners and had line-by-line translations.
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Post by scicaro on Dec 9, 2016 12:09:00 GMT -5
The hobbit (loved) To kill a mockingbird (also loved) King Solomon's mines (hated - it seemed to go on forever) The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (also loved) Macbeth (enjoyed) and we also watched the Polanski film which the has a scene where lady Macbeth is naked - great fun for teenagers.
There must have been others but those are what I remember.
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Post by Queen on Dec 9, 2016 12:15:08 GMT -5
I did French at Uni, and read Stendahl, Hugo and Flaubert in French. There was something more modern as well but I can't remember what.... clearly not that good.
I remember reading Madame Bovary and wanting to slap her, but I have that with a number of heroines in historical fiction... the scene of the seduction in a carriage stuck with me though - I found it somewhat humorous and I'm still not sure if it was supposed to be.
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Post by tucano on Dec 9, 2016 12:53:28 GMT -5
I had to read Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais at uni. Hard work.
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Post by snowwhite on Dec 9, 2016 13:24:36 GMT -5
Oh yes, I remember enjoying the Latin literature we had for GCSE, both the poems and the stories, and even the Greek lit was sort of cool (the bit where Odysseus blinds the cyclops).
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Post by mei on Dec 9, 2016 13:43:41 GMT -5
what shilgia said about the Dutch system.
but, I remember one book that we did with the whole class and analysed to the letter. HATED it. Hate the book, though I like several others of the author but having to consider every sentence in this book and what it might possibly mean other than what was literally written really put me off it.
so I'll take the individual reading lists any day!
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Post by shilgia on Dec 9, 2016 13:45:21 GMT -5
What book, mei?
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Post by mei on Dec 9, 2016 13:53:18 GMT -5
Het Stenen Bruidsbed by Harry Mulisch.
should really reread it now, to see if it's really so unenjoyable as my memory of it is.
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Post by shilgia on Dec 9, 2016 14:07:05 GMT -5
Ah, interesting. Odd choice; there are so many better (and more appealing to teenagers) Mulisch books.
(BTW, the famous book/long poem that bears your name as a title was on my list.)
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Post by mei on Dec 9, 2016 14:21:41 GMT -5
yes, absolutely. I (really) like some of his other books. but this...
a famous book with my name? hmmm, will have to google, nothing comes to mind!
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Post by shilgia on Dec 9, 2016 14:28:05 GMT -5
Een nieuwe lente, een nieuw geluid . . . ? No?
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Post by mei on Dec 9, 2016 15:24:40 GMT -5
No idea...
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Post by tzarine on Dec 9, 2016 15:39:38 GMT -5
tzarevich has had interesting lists
in middle school malcolm x
high school - i have reread many of these w him catcher in the rye hamlet macbeth great gatsby beyond the mountains great gatsby disgrace he will also watch kore eda's wonderful life!
i will have to put on my thinking cap to recover my list
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Post by shilgia on Dec 9, 2016 15:45:49 GMT -5
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Post by scrubb on Dec 9, 2016 16:04:28 GMT -5
Sprite - I've never even heard of "Roses are Difficult Here".
Just remembered we also read Of Mice and Men. I didn't particularly like it at the time, but even then I recognized that it was good.
I'm only talking high school, since I was an English major in uni.
In French we read storybooks aimed at students - very simple. In Grade 9 we could read Asterix comics.
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