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Brina
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Jan 04, 2018 04:55AM

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I hadn't seen this news. She left the world such a legacy of work. She will be missed.

A nice tribute, Aubrey. I hadn't heard either. Very sad--and I was just starting to explore her work!
I've never read Ursula K. Le Guin's work yet. As a matter of fact, I've never even heard of her. Which I definitely feel is very sad because from what I've seen in the excerpts of her books, they are definitely amazing books.




I want to read that one. I haven't read any of her books yet. Have you read it before?

The Dispossessed is my fave of hers

The Dispossessed is my fave of hers"
Sounds interesting. I've added it to my to read list.

The Dispossessed is my fave of hers"
I've been meaning to read The Dispossessed. And now I feel the sudden urgency to read it much like your group suddenly feels the need to read AWoE. Weird how the death of an author can make us feel a greater need to read their books. I guess it's because we know that her canon is complete.
I also have had The Dispossessed on my TBR for a long while and suddenly feel that it is urgent to read it. I expect there will be group/buddy reads of her works now that she is gone. That seems to happen.

I always tend to think of it as sort of akin to a eulogy. Honoring them by listening to them speak to us.

LOL, Francisca. I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing for you. Personally I'd hate to be in HS again!



Oh, yes! I generally liked the books we read even when I was bored stiff during the actual classes.
Brina wrote: "My English teachers didn't like me and it turned me off to classics .."
Same! Well, one particular teacher, at least, and I still find it hard to read some of the authors she taught. (Which is why I generally skip group reads for Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hawthorne, etc. )

When I was in eighth grade I helped lead a student walkout to protest the inadequacy of our English teacher's instructions (I seem to remember we had gotten into an argument about how to properly use footnotes in our end-of-term paper... and yes, I wish I was kidding, but that's the truth of it). During my junior year of high school, I refused to finish The Color Purple because I hated it so much, and then said so in front of the class when our teacher called on me to answer questions about it (she flunked me for that assignment, as she should have).
A whole variety of petty, ridiculous nonsense like that. Eventually they even had to call a conference with my parents, because if I didn't want to read what they assigned, I simply wouldn't.

I largely lucked out; my biggest "problem" was that I usually read ahead of the class, and therefore was bored during some of the discussions. The worst trouble I ever got in was in 8th grade for passing notes on how numbingly boring our discussion of Jonathan Livingston Seagull was (I think we were were also irritated that our teacher refused to admit there was an allegory because she didn't want to talk about religion... begging the question of why she chose to assign the book in the first place!). My biggest pet peeve though was when teachers would ruin perfectly good books by over-analyzing them for symbols: we even did a "symbol brainstorm" on the board for the Awakening and the Great Gatsby which explains a lot of my ambivalence to both books.

Teachers (especially English teachers) who love the sound of their own voices were/are the worst.
EDIT: I don't know how you handled that situation, but clearly, you handled it better than I would have.

When I was in eighth grade I helped lead a student walkout to protest the inadequacy of our English teacher's instruction..."
The teacher I hated had a disdain for all things sci-fi and fantasy and eventually called my parents in for a conference to tell them that I was reading "trash" instead of "real" books. She also started flunking me on any writing assignment where I mentioned anything vaguely resembling ghosts or space ships.
And when it came to literature, she also would insist whatever Lit-Crit essay she was working off of was 100% correct, the one and only answer, and that there was no other possible way to interpret the situation. It was so annoying. You just weren't allowed to think for yourself in her class. You could only parrot back what she said.
In a different class I had to read Jane Eyre which I absolutely hated. We were given the option between writing an essay about the book or writing an extension/missing scene/alternate ending etc. for the book using the same writing style... I double checked that Gothic Horror was acceptable, and then wrote an alternate ending where Bertha was a vampire and killed everyone. It was quite cathartic.
Several of my teachers used this approach - where you had an option between a standard essay, or a creative writing assignment that was somewhat related to the book in question. The creative writing options generally took a lot more time and effort but if you just couldn't stand the book, it was great to have an alternative option.

"
OMG, it sounds like your high school teacher was the spiritual clone of one my college professors. And she was an absolute nightmare.
The very first thing this woman said to the class, on the very first day of class, was to announce that she was "a New Historicist, in the great tradition of T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis."
I mean... when we found out later that she hand-sewed all of her own pant suits, none of us were surprised.

HAHAHAHA
The worst part of the symbolism brainstorm was the our Great Gatsby essay prompt was to discuss a symbol we hadn't discussed in class. I mean, Fitzgerald is a bit heavy on the symbolism but that's just too about a galaxy too far. This was the moment I renounced any desire to major in English in college. (I think I wrote about the weather because I was too much of a rule-follower to do much more than complain.)
On a more positive note, 8th grade and 11th grade were the exception. I had awesome English teachers most of the time, who really wanted to have real discussions, inspire love of literature, and definitely helped me appreciate some books I wouldn't have gotten as much out of alone. (Tale of Two Cities is my favorite Dickens in large part due to my sophomore English teacher!)

This is part of why I always finished up the book as soon as I could - in the first day or two, usually. That way I got to have my own experience with it first instead of being forced to look for all the symbolism and such that the teachers always wanted you to look for. It made the classes a bit more boring, sure, but the books were the important part.
Pillsonista wrote: "The very first thing this woman said to the class, on the very first day of class, was to announce that she was "a New Historicist, in the great tradition of T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis."..."
Wow... I've taken quite a few English classes and I still have no clue what she's talking about... Or who F.R. Leavis is, for that matter.
I had a wonderful 8th grade English teacher who encouraged me to try to read a variety of books, but never criticized what I chose to read. At this time I was still struggling with dyslexia, so reading was a chore.

I literally don't remember a time where books were not a part of my life. My earliest memory of my father was of him reading on the sofa, and my mother says that when I was an infant I would fall asleep on his chest as he read.
For my father's family, especially, books and reading were more than an expectation, they were a birthright. And the kind of birthright nobody could take from you unless you let them. My great-grandfather, my father's paternal grandfather, immigrated to the United States from what was then the Russian empire, and what is now Poland, around the turn of the 20th century.
Ethnically, he was Polish and Ashkenazi. He must have at least witnessed, if not experienced, some truly, utterly horrific things, because he was willing to leave the shtetl, where our extensive family had lived for generations, and literally walk across an entire continent to get on a boat to move, permanently, to a country whose language he did not speak (according to my grandfather he never lost his heavy accent, although he spoke nothing but English to his sons) and whose culture he could not have known. Eventually, two of his brothers would emigrate as well, on the eve of the Great War. The rest of the family did not, and a generation later they suffered a fate unimaginable.
Books, reading, gave dignity to my great-grandfather's life. It was the one thing he could give to his sons that connected them with a past that they could not know; a past he did not want them to know, or else he would never have stepped foot outside his home to leave it, but never wanted them to forget. Because if my great-grandfather had not left when he did, essentially sacrificing his hopes and all that he knew for the future of his children yet to be born, there's a very good chance that my family, and consequently, myself, would have ceased to exist or would never have existed at all.
That's what books mean to me. And that can't be taught in school.
I would beg my mom to buy me those Little Golden Books as a small child. She would read to me (and my siblings) daily. I learned my love of stories and illustrations from those good memories.

I literally don't remember a time where books were not a part of my life. My earliest memory of my father was of ..."
Your family set a wonderful example for you.

Oh Katy! The Golden Books!! My mom would read them to me too. I'm so happy I have a few of them still, with all the colorings and scribblings I adorned them with!! 😁
I have a few of mine too. They are treasures to me. And I have a few of my children's too. No grandkids to hand them to yet.


😊

The one in Palo Alto next weekend is my go to treasure hunt.


Me too... I had four teachers teaching English, at different stages of school and they were awesome.esp. the one during our high school...she was very supportive and encouraging. .she made the classes interesting...she was one of our favourite teachers..



Erin wrote: "Does anyone else get annoyed with themselves for starting too many books at one time? I then fight my way through finishing them, which is decreasing my enjoyment. I seriously don't know why I've d..."
Unfortunately, yes. I finally made a "Pick it up again later" list for some of these books so that I can concentrate on one or two.
Unfortunately, yes. I finally made a "Pick it up again later" list for some of these books so that I can concentrate on one or two.


It makes the reading a little hectic at times, but after I've finished a few, I feel a sense of accomplishment. And then I start all over again!
Glad to know I'm not the only one! ;)



I do the same exact thing, except it doesn't affect my enjoyment. If anything, the more books I'm reading, the more enjoyment I get out of what I'm reading.
But my reading habits are such a vortex of chaos that it's a stretch to even call them 'habits'. Thankfully, this Goodreads account has helped me to at least keep track of what I'm reading at any one time, because the worse thing that happens with reading so many books at once is that from time to time I actually forget what I've started (although that doesn't happen as often as it probably should). None of that has occurred since I actively started using my account.

I do try read a variety of books, of different genres, so that I can read to suit my mood.
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