[quote:]I still hate Great Expectations and Dora Copperfield, but I'm willing to give the rest of Dickens' works a chance[/quote:]Somewhat belated I know, but [b:]Ryl F[/b:], I found reading the book after watching a really good film interpretation (in my case David Lean's 'Great Expectations' was a terrific key to getting on with it...

I was bored by a lot of what we read in HS, especially American writers. To this day I have a slight bias against American "straight" fiction (as opposed to genre fiction).

As for the OP, I didn't understand Shakespeare until I was in college and I suddenly realized I understood his language. Dickens is taking a bit longer. I hated HATED Dickens up until I did a study-abroad class with a teacher who adored ol' Charlie. We went to a reading at Dickens' London house (http://www.dickensmuseum.com/readings.ht...) and the light bulb above my head went off. I suddenly understood how entertaining all those dull novels could be. I still hate Great Expectations and Dora Copperfield, but I'm willing to give the rest of Dickens' works a chance.

I didn't dislike anything I read in high school, but I don't recall being challenged either. The emphasis was on speed rather than comprehension and appreciation, and I feel like I was shortchanged. I read fast but I don't retain much, and I don't pick up on theme and subtext. I have to force myself to slow down and think about what the author is saying.

High praise--thank you. I am easily bored, but also easily amused, and I try to teach from that vantage.

>Do you always know when the joy of reading has really sunk in with a student?

Usually when it has, they want to tell the teacher. I no longer teach English (or high school), but I hear about it when a student gets electrified by something we're reading.

For what it's worth, I've never told students they should enjoy something I've assigned, though I tell them that I hope they will. However, the purpose of reading literature at the high school level is not, in my opinion, to instill a love of literature (though again, I hope it will). Instead, I describe why I chose that work rather than some other and what its purpose is in the curriculum. I encourage students to back up their opinions about what they're reading with examples from the texts. There are a lot of people who would enjoy and be good at critical analysis but who have not been taught that you can read a book systematically for its strengths and flaws, or for what it tells you about the culture in which it was written, as well as for pleasure.

I once had high schoolers read the opening paragraph of every novel Ursula K. Le Guin had published (okay, not the Catwings books, but all the YA and SF). In pairs, they then wrote the opening paragraph of Le Guin's next novel, based on the patterns they observed. I posted all of these and we discussed what might happen in each. They then read The Eye of the Heron and we moved on. When Le Guin published her next book, the opening paragraph was uncannily familiar because the students had captured her style and opening imagery and themes so well. I read the opening to them, had them speculate about what would happen, and I did not assign it. I saw a lot of students reading it, though!

Jamie, You are absolutely right re: 'classic = boring'. I never quite got (and get even less now I can disseminate it all better than I did) why teachers back then were so rigid and one-dimensional... Mind you, your comment re: finding the good stuff yourself is what makes it fun too, it would just be a shame if I missed 'the book'... you know?

I have read some Hemingway, bup, but Faulkner has never really been part of the curriculum for secondary schools here (I suppose if you're in the US that's high school?) If I searched on Faulkner, what would I be in for?

Well done Shoshana for breaking that trend :-). Do you always know when the joy of reading has really sunk in with a student?

Interestingly (I hope), yesterday I attended my first reading by an author and it was very illuminating hear how he read a book compared to how it would have sounded in my own head. The book is 'Crawling through thorns' by Welsh author John Sam Jones and tells the story of growing up in rural Wales as a gay man and his experiences of the enlightened approach to therapy back in those days... not!

I also was offered (after mentioning the experience re: Chuck and Bill above) to get some tutoring on demystifying the bard so that's all good.

Cheers
Mark

I had several really good English teachers, so I was spared that experience. When I became a middle and high school English teacher, I tried to give better reasons for the curriculum than "It's a classic!"

I've kind of had a reverse process with Faulkner - because it was so hard for me when I was younger, I thought of it as great. Now he doesn't do it for me.

Hemingway, on the other hand, who I thought was dumb when I was younger (but never read any - I was a jerk), is one of my favorite writers.

There are several books that I tried to read when I was too young, and it took me years to get around to trying them again. And I used to exclude entire genres out of ignorance and based on false assumptions. My reading experience continues to improve as I age.

High school English class taught me that any book labeled a "classic" was by definition boring. And since I got a BS degree in college, I didn't read much literature there. So I had to discover the good stuff on my own.

This may just be a rare example of something getting more fun with age...

When I was a school, partly because of the way these things were taught and partly because I could be a right little sod when the mood struck, I could not stand reading stuff like Shakespeare or Dickens.

Now, although I still have trouble with the bard, I am having a blast discovering Charlie (as t'were!) I am just about finishing Pickwick Papers and really enjoyed it, laugh-out-loud in a couple of places.

Any similar experiences?

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