Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
@Nova: well, the big thing is, I think, that the issue is not that old aged books are being discussed but the way they're often discussed. It's something I noticed as I grew up and moved through different schools. Some teachers made books that I found to be a drag interesting in the way they discussed it. Hell, I wouldn't have made it past Catcher in the Rye were it not because of that.
And it's something that I noticed in Philosophy class too. We had three teachers across the year and only one got to make the class read the assigned material because he actually made the students care and learn about the class. The other two just gave us reading material and asked us questions about it.
I think that the problem is not so clear-cut. The issue is not the way they are discussed, nor is it that they are using old-aged books; rather, it is that they are using old-aged books and then discussing them badly.
There are teachers who can take these old-aged books, and get the class to read them by engaging the class through questioning the book and making them think about it. That is heavily dependent on the teacher, though- and even then, not everybody in the class will be happy with that, as some books just frankly bore the shit out of some people.
Then, there are teachers who go out of their way to choose books that their class finds to be more entertaining. This can be done by any teacher, but the risk is that still, not every student might like the books, and the books might be less effective than the older books they were using.
The best method I could think of would involve choosing books that the class as a whole would enjoy (or at least not despise reading, as you are unlikely to get a unanimous vote on that), and then proceeding to engage the class with that book.
I don't think that just choosing new books without engaging the class is the best way to go, and I don't think that just keeping on with the old books and engaging the class to make up for it is the way to go either.
I think that the problem is based both in the books and the students, mind. There is nothing inherently wrong with Shakespeare, or Frankenstein, or Frost's poems; they are good examples of their respective areas, and there are definitely people who learn from them.
It's just that there are also a lot of students who don't learn very well through reading them, because those books bore the hell out of them, and those students could be engaged a lot better- and thus do a lot better and learn the material better, which is the entire purpose of school- by picking texts that are more engaging to those students.
I don't really have any experience with that sort of assignment, but that sounds like a really good idea, and now I'm sort of dismayed that more teachers don't bother to show the relevance of the works that they consider important by simply comparing them to other works in that vein, or finding some way to relate them to students. It really does seem simple. Like, say, if there was a unit on satire, maybe start off by having them read excerpts from, I dunno, Twain, Vonnegut, and Pratchett, side by side, and then having them decide which issues resonate with them the most, as well as which styles of writing seem the most effective, without putting all of the focus on one work that a student might hate (like, they might hate Twain's crude narration, and I, personally, hated "Welcome to the Monkey House" greatly and am still dissuaded from reading anything else by Vonnegut, so I would most likely choose Pratchett). That way, they have a foundation for an essay that isn't just lashing out at the teacher for forcing that teacher's experience with a single work down their throats for weeks on end. The teacher could allow them to read which of the three (or more) works they want to work with, and then fill in the time between decision and essay by going over argumentative techniques/basic things that you have to do to write a good essay, and assigning open-ended reading quizzes to make sure that they're actually reading the book that they're supposed to be reading.
Not that I've really had any problems with my teachers forcing their ideas on me and my class, as far as I can remember. My classes were mostly open to discussion, and the greatest consequences of the one that wasn't were that it almost ruined The Great Gatsby for me and showed me that The Things They Carried sucks.
To address another point made here, I feel like, if too little consideration is given to modern works that may shape the future, or the classics that shaped their eras, the literary canon just impedes itself, rather than making itself relevant to everything that it can be relevant to, and so I guess I would advocate for balance, as always. And this elitist attitude that apparently exists (though I, myself, have little experience with it) just seems ignorant, and it's another form of conservatism that I hate.
I had an assignment like that in I think 11th grade. We'd read The Plague and had to pick any other work that shared themes with it. I used The Killing Joke. Teacher loved it.
For obvious reasons, I approve.
^^^ A class almost made you hate The Things They Carried? Wow. Admittedly, discussing that book makes it a more enjoyable experience—and I had an English teacher that took the Socratic method very seriously—but that would have to be one soul-crushingly dull class.
^^ I also approve.
It was, trust me. I was falling asleep in class frequently. But I think I would have hated The Things They Carried even if I read it on my own time. Maybe I was less literate than I am now, but I just saw a bunch of "war is bad, people are assholes, look at all these stories harping on that point".
I had that kind of "compare another work" assignment as well, for King Lear. I showed a clip from Code Geass. I definitely had the same experience where that assignment got the class way more interested than most of the other Lear-related stuff. A lot of the connections people came up with were rather questionable, but everyone clearly tried their hardest.
^^^ I saw it more as being about the nature of how people absorb and process painful memories, particularly the whole "I was lying" part.
^^ "We dig, we dig repetition!"
But in all seriousness, you and I have extremely different literary tastes.
Hmm. The book wasn't memorable enough for me to look so deeply into it, and I was tired every class, so I'll grant that I might not have picked up on something like that. But I don't intend on trying it again any time soon.
Snow Crash, on the other hand, is still awesome.
Wait, are you reading Snow Crash for school?!
The thing about The Things They Carried is that you can't and shouldn't read it all in one go. It's a collection of (fictional) remembered anecdotes, not a single straight narrative. The nuances only come out when you let each little story sink in, one after the other.
In some respects, it reminds me a lot of Slaughterhouse-Five, another even better book that I read for that class—
Wait a minute.
[English teacher's name], you clever bastard!
Nah. For fun. But apparently some schools teach it; a girl was surprised that I was reading it, and then she mentioned that she had read it for a class.
days remaining: 95
chapters read: 36
total progress: 5.74% complete
status: still ahead of schedule
And then you realize one of the books is missing.
And then you drop your Kindle down the stairs.
> kindle
> forever
> bitches
laughing[plural noun].[image file extension]
and my iPhone
and my old ipod touch that I haven't thought about in months
s'all good
ain't nothin stopping this train
Okay.
I have two books to review this time.
The first book is called The Magician's Guild, by Trudi Canavan. People may remember me reviewing the Traitor Spy trilogy by the same author earlier.
The Magician's Guild is the first book in the Black Magician trilogy. The Traitor Spy trilogy is set after this book, and continues on the ramifications from this trilogy.
The Magician's Guild explores a massive class divide. The conflict in the book is derived from the classism between the Magicians and the nobles, the higher class of people within the city, and the Slums and the people who live in them, the lower classes.
The framing device of the book is that, every year, there is a Purge, wherein Guild Magicians and city guards sweep through the city, purging undesirables, immigrants, and vagrants. This works about as well as you'd think; i.e. not at all.
Canavan's works do manage to present this issue in a manner that is not black-and-white, though. The Purge is portrayed as wrong, but the reasons that it came into being do make sense, and the protagonists of the series (and many of the other supporting characters) do acknowledge that it is wrong.
The protagonists, Sonea and Cery, are both fairly interesting, although they do not break new ground this early within the series.
This book is worth giving a shot if only for the prose alone; it is solid and flows well, much like the prose in The Stormlight Archives. The book presents itself well, explores its conflicts well, and has a solid plot. I would recommend it to anyone in search of a(nother) decent fantasy book to read.
The second book I have to review is called Temeraire.
Temeraire is a set of historical fantasy novels set during the Napoleonic Wars... but with dragons.
Ordinarily, this is where you would roll your eyes and dismiss it as another gimicky book. And, well, you would only be half wrong.
The book is very gimicky. Captain Laurence, of the British Royal Navy, captures a French frigate, and within it sits a dragon egg. When the egg hatches, the dragon chooses Laurence to bond with, and Laurence is taken from his life in the Navy and away to train as an aviator.
Laurence is decent as a protagonist. He is very uptight, but he is a decent person behind all that, unwilling to hear slights against either people in the Navy or aviators, despite tension between the groups. Temeraire also makes for a good protagonist, although not a point-of-view character, as a very Jacobsian dragon.
This is another book I would recommend for the prose alone. The author made an effort to make not just the protagonist, but also the narrator, sound as if they were actually speaking within this world. The prose flows well, and does not miss opportunities to slowly construct itself as a very similar world to our own.
Temeraire is most definitely a book I would suggest buying. I do not know about the sequels yet, but I hope to review them at a later date.
And, lastly, I bought The Casual Vacancy today. Expect a review of it in a few days, when I get around to reading it.
Okay, I'm fifty pages into The Casual Vacancy now.
Rowling's prose has certainly improved a bit. There's a certain vicious bite to it, suited well enough to the tone of the book, and she uses very strong language (not often foul language, but strong language).
The characters are... well, the characters are repellant, to put it simply. From the boy who is obsessed with the new girl (to the point of masturbating to the thought of her, albeit not on page), to the local gossipmongers, to the man whose death drives the plot (and was secretly corrupt anyway), it's very hard to sympathize with any of them. Of course, this may be the point- with no need to concern ourselves with feeling sorry for the characters, it's easy enough to want to see them suffer without feeling guilty about it.
There is one character I do sympathize with, somewhat. Krystal is a foul girl- openly sexual in the worst ways, foul-mouthed, a slut, someone who is viewed with condescension and pity, and most people see her only for her body, a view which she encourages. However, early on (that is, a bit earlier than the part I am up to, about forty-five pages in), her guidance counsellor has made mention of quite a few things that put her character into perspective- her mother's habit of having friends dropping like flies, so Krystal saw a dead man she didn't even know in her bathroom as a young child, some talk about how her mother dropped Krystal off at Nana Cath's house, someone who is mentioned to be "A strange mixture of scourge and saviour".
It's actually pretty (morbidly) fascinating to watch these people. A small village sheen covers the underbelly of the city, and we are thrown straight into that underbelly, seeing the worst parts of people, until we end up hoping that they suffer.
It's strange. Normally, I hate books where all the characters are loathsome people. However, here, there's no real overarching plot- no threat that needs to be dealt with, no world or country or town to save. Just a bunch of loathsome people who have to deal with other loathsome people and I'm going to have fun watching them suffer.
Maybe I had a different experience, but a lot of my high school reading had 'fun' books (which were just trite and dull) and some classes even let me choose my books, which led to a pretty great bird course where I just read the Drizzt books for a semester.
I agree with one, but the way it's phrased is so asinine that it makes me want to disagree. Reading should be fun, yes, but not always. You need to do both. Star Wars novel obsessives would benefit from some Umberto Eco and people who only read supposed refined literature would benefit from some airplane novels.
On the same subject, I'm currently reading a Drizzt book (Neverwinter) and avoiding dealing with my family.
Sure is 2002 in here.
Hopefully going to order Under the Volcano off Amazon tomorrow, since I just recently got paid. I just have to check to make sure I actually have enough money to do so. It's like Ulysses but written by an American and taking place in turn-of-the-century Mexico, and taking place in turn-of-the-century Mexico makes everything better.
Got off work to find The Well of Ascension had arrived. I have tomorrow off. Excellent.
From Well of Ascension; spoilers for Final Empire:
I initially interpreted this sentence as meaning the opposite of what it does, leading to some laughter. It's possible I could use some sleep.