Book Meme

[majorjune]

Snagged from irishredlass ...

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1.) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2.) Italicize those you intend to read.
3.) Underline those you LOVE.
4.) Put an asterisk next to the books you'd rather shove hot pokers in your eyes than read.

01. Pride and Prejudice -

Comments

[majorjune]

I don't know if it was disorganization, or the fact that all 3 of those books had movies made from them around the same time...and yep, we were forced to watch those movies in school.

At least we watched "Johnny Tremaine" and "The Red Badge of Courage" (the original version) in their entirety each time we were forced to read the books. "Lord of the Flies" we got a "selected clips" version (most graphic parts deleted)...

So I think it was pure laziness on the part of the school system in general, teachers in particular. Remember, I graduated number 85 in a class of 1183, and I don't know jackshit regarding actual grammar. The only reason I can compose a halfway intelligible sentence is because I read so much as a child, read ADULT literature, and I basically just mimicked what I'd read.

My school system, in the name of teaching us "English", threw one book at us after another. Appararantly in the 1950s there was a scandal when all these kids who'd graduated from our school system with honors, some of whom had even been AP students, and had gotten into fancy colleges because of their grades, routinely flunked out within a year.

Because they couldn't read. They'd been taught grammar, could write wonderful essays, which helped get them into those fancy colleges -- but when tested, turned out they could only read between the 4th and 7th grade levels, and therefore could not keep up with college reading assignments.

So after the scandal broke, they went to the other extreme...didn't teach us grammar, but damn we could all read.

So that's is why I think we got the same book given to us multiple times -- they didn't care about us getting a broad range of American Lit, they only wanted to know if we comprehended what we read.

And if there was a movie of the book to help things along, so much the better. If there had been contemporary movie versions of "Jane Eyre", "Pride and Prejudice", "Wuthering Heights", etc., we'd have gotten those to read.

We got more Shakespeare taught to us than any other school system in the area -- because we had The American Shakespeare Theater right in town. Which every year had a discounted student season. So we got taught whatever was deemed the "easiest" Shakespeare play in the reperatory being done for that particular season.

Meaning no "Titus Andronicus", not even "Hamlet", "Othello", "MacBeth"...only the comedies for us! :-/

First live play I ever saw in my life was "Richard III" -- when I was 6 years old!

continued below...

[majorjune]

Mom had gotten free tickets given to her, she figured it would be culturally enriching to bring her 6 and 7 y.o. daughters to it. Don't think she had a complete grasp as to the, uh, INTENSITY of the play! Even though we had Shakespeare's complete works at home, she only used the tome to come up with new puppy names, she never actually sat down and READ it! lol

Anyway, at that age I had no idea why adults were dressed in funny clothes, least of all understand what they were saying. I just knew there were a lot of angry people shouting at each other.

It was an evening performance. Past my bedtime, I fell asleep thru most of it, but having front-row seats, the sword fights (with real swords) woke me up and kept my attention, as did the part where those little boys, not much older then me, were taken away, and then I could hear them screaming as they were killed.

Kids weren't supposed to be murdered! Yeah, ADULTS sometimes killed each other, but never KIDS!

"Mommy?" I asked as we left the theater, "Why were they dressed that way and talking funny?"

"Because that's how people used to dress and talk..."

"Were they really fighting? Did those people really die up there?"

"No...it's like the westerns we watch on TV...those are modern people pretending to be people from long ago, and like in westerns when a character gets shot, the actor playing him doesn't die..."

"Oh....but Mommy, what were they all fighting about?"

"Well, it's a true story about someone long ago in England who wanted to become king, he killed those who stood in his way..."

"You mean that back then they REALLY killed those little boys?!?!?"

"Yes, sadly the two young princes were killed, because they would have been next in line for the throne..."

So even though what I had just seen was play-acting, it showed something that had really happened -- KIDS HAD REALLY BEEN KILLED.

Pretty intense for a 6 y.o. Yet the next day at school the only thing that was impressive enough for me to rave to schoolmates about was all the sword fights..."They used REAL swords!" "Ooooh!"

So at the age of 6 I had survived the trauma of watching "Richard III"'s depiction of various killings, including the killing of two boys about my own age. But in highschool such fare was considered either "too intense" or just too difficult for the teacher to teach, so we got "A Midsummer's Night's Dream", "All's Well That Ends Well", etc. Only non-comedy we ever got (and only non-theater production), was "Romeo and Juliette"...