For those of you taking advanced literature courses in high school there are certain novels required to be read for class. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wonders "Why were these books chosen?". My list included the Grapes of Wrath, 1984, As I Lay Dying, and Their Eyes were Watching God to name a few. I admit, though being a book love myself, I can be quite bored or frustrated with many of our books. It was incredibly annoying to read through the southern drawl of As I Lay Dying and Grapes of Wrath. It was like translating from a foreign language. Perhaps you'd agree with some of these opinions.
But what I began to notice was an appreciation for these novels AFTER I'd read them. After Grapes of Wrath, even though I loathed reading it, I admired the family's courageous spirit and the messages throughout the story: don't always believe stories or a "land of milk and honey"....some people have no compassion for the destitute...
It was this end result that convinced me that reading these classics was not a waste of time. It made sense that these works were the greats of literature, because they combine the "moral of the story" from our childhood reading, the drama, and sometimes witty irony or other things the careful reader can notice.
Still, I think there should be a little more choice when it comes to AP Lit novels. There are some books I've read that have all the aspects of the AP novel (imagery, teachings, special plot elements) that are not considered classics or anything close to that category. Take the book "Diary" by Chuck Palaniuk for instance. That's a fairly new book that's quite entertaining. The book compiled the requirements of an AP lit book as well as including humor and mystery and an interesting story line. I'd like to see more of this when it comes to novel reading in school.
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Your list was quite different from mine it sounds like. I had Pride and Prejudice, Song of Solomon, and Hamlet to name a few. I had to watch Grapes of Wrath in eighth grade, and didn't think it was so bad. Then again, my class and teacher made it interesting. Try and think of funny things that could happen to the characters to make the books more interesting. A girl in my class asked what happened to the grandmother who died, and my teacher, knowing that we were bored with the movie, said that the family ate her. Thinking of the books as satires helped me get through the boring ones. I do agree that there should be more options to the reading lists though. All of our books were assigned and we didn't get any choice of a book to read.
Thanks for the comment!
Yeah, I agree that Grapes of Wrath wasn't so bad...but reading 750 pages of it can be.
Hmm, I didn't read those books that you mentioned. The only thing by Shakespeare that we read was King Lear, and trust me, it's hard to get through. Others on this list included The Poisonwood Bible, the Things They Carried, and Go Tell It On the Mountain. It's funny, but re-reading these books actually makes it more enjoyable. Maybe I'm just weird.
It's kind of funny that the advanced high school English classes, many of which are AP and teach the same things, don't teach the same books for the most part. We do have one book in common though. My class just started the Poisonwood Bible as a last minute read and paper type of project. I'm not sure of what to make of the book though. It gets redundant and a bit boring which makes me wonder like you do, why were these books chosen for us to read?
I don't have AP but I have IB.
So we read:
The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
Kitchen by Banana Yamamoto
Madam Bovary
Fiela's Child
Othello
1984
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Robert Frost Poetry
Mythology by Edith Hamilton
The Bible as in literature
The best books were Kitchen God's Wife, House of spirits and Fiela's Child. I recommend them!
I was also involved in IB and found myself reading:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Siddartha
Cry, the Beloved Country
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Kitchen
Hamlet
Robert Frost Poetry
Edgar Allen Poe short stories
(there are others, but its been a while. I also have tried to block the memory because I was one of the few who didn't get a diploma)
And I discovered in this selection what good imagery does to a book. I also found how much I could relate to the character in Ivan when I had to work in construction. Even though the work was in the summer, I was still exhausted from the work. Somehow, like Ivan, I still loved the work and enjoyed the fruits of my labor. However, I guess I wasn't in the same line of work as Ivan because I had to make the mortar and stock the brick, whereas Ivan just laid down the bricks. I still can't believe that he could lay brick at -10 degrees!
-Stephonas
I was very pleased with the books we got for AP English (even though I had to caugh up 50 bucks for them). But I think that my teacher did an excellent job at picking books, mainly because they perpare us. I loath many of the books, or at least the process of translating them, but I know that I will be just that much more prepared for the test. There is infact a method to thier madness.
There are 10 types of people in the world; Those who know binary and those who don't