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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 2, 2012 14:55:24 GMT 1
This article on Cracked.com - '4 Ways High School Makes You Hate Reading'.I agree completely with this here. I read and write as a hobby, but I still have it in my head that reading is work and that anything short of Dickens is slacking off. Schools would do better etting people to read by letting them pick a book. I find that if a person gets into reading, they will seek out the masterpieces, and maybe even enjoy them then. You shouldn't force the good stuff on them before they even enjoy the process of reading itself. Let the read Twilight and whathaveyou. At least that way they will be reading.
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Post by jklinders on Oct 2, 2012 16:23:08 GMT 1
Honestly I found it profoundly silly in High School lit picking apart Shakespeare plays for every graft of symbolism in meaning in every line. Wasn't Shakespeare like the popcorn cinema of his day or something? It got worse when we were doing Lord of the Flies. A book I read several years earlier and hated before we ever picked it up in class. I found myself thinking "bullshit, bullshit" every other minute as my teacher espoused on that intentionally dreary piece of work.
Animal Farm on the other hand was actually not bad. A little heavy handed but at least I could accept that all the metaphors mentioned were for real. As in not made up a hundred or so years after the fact.
Frankly, lit is a waste of time to have as a class. If you cannot get what the author was getting at without it being beaten into your skull then one of 2 things is happening. Either A- What the author was getting at is not relevant anymore or B- even if you are shown you still won't get it. in which case why the hell are you wasting anyone's time.
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Post by Warhammer Gorvar on Oct 2, 2012 20:07:15 GMT 1
i...studied English Lit. and we did spend alot of time on Shakespeare looking for underlying meaning. TBH if it wasnt for my bachelor classes, i may never have seen Hamlet, which is my fav Shakespeare play by far. Now i do agree with linders here, Shakespeare did churn out a lot of plays and only a few did have a deeper meaning (Again Hamlet may have been a nod to his son Hamnet who died during the creation of the piece).
My girlfriend ahted shakespeare as well until the bachelors because the teachers were so focused on Grammar...GRAMMAR.
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 2, 2012 22:19:45 GMT 1
Shakespeare really does have a LOT of meaning in every line. I know schools somehoe find a way to make this not fun, but it is immensely fun to read his plays, rather than sit and watch. Every single line is poetry - not just the rhyming ones. I bet he was the Christopher Nolan of the Renaissance.
They ALL have deep meaning. But not personal meaning, or particularly complex satire. Deep human meaning. They are superb examples of examining and expressing the human condition within traditional tragedy / comedy plot structures of the time. He takes something like 'romantic comedy' and he throws in thought-proviking philosophical lines among the gags. He takes 'revenge tragedy' and turns it into Hamlet - one of the most brilliant pieces of the English language, questioning family relationships, depression and fear of death.
They're damn deep. And damn good. But you shouldn't force kids to appreciate this stuff. It's like handing out filet mingon at a kids' party and demanding compliments. You should ket them read things they will enjoy, and include one Shakespeare along the way. It's like starting guitar lessons by asking them to play Hendrix. If they are allowed to enjoy books, they will check out the good ones.
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Post by Lily Ariel Linders on Oct 2, 2012 22:56:30 GMT 1
I love Shakespeare - because it's just awesome to read. And watch. And enjoy. My favourite Shakespeare plays include "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet", "Twelfth Night", "Titus Andronicus" and "Macbeth". To name a few.
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Post by Warhammer Gorvar on Oct 2, 2012 22:58:34 GMT 1
I think Shakespeare is meant to be seen rather then read as it was meant. A witty one liner is easier seen then you have to read i na book. then again Tyrion Lannister makes me laugh so i dont know...
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 2, 2012 23:10:28 GMT 1
But Shakespeare's best work isn't one-liners! It's soliloquies - brilliant mirrors in dialogue or costume from one act to another, themes coming up again and again in the most incidental details, the rhythm and sounds of every word in a speech.
You should definitely see the plays first. But if you like them, you'll probably enjoy reading them even more. There is so much in every scene that you won't pick it all up as you hear it the first time.
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Post by Warhammer Gorvar on Oct 2, 2012 23:29:56 GMT 1
Of course I like Soliloquies as well. I wouldnt have picked Hamlet as my favourite if i didnt you plebian. u.u
jk.
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 2, 2012 23:31:29 GMT 1
That all might have come across as more patronising than I meant, you ignorant foreigner.
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Post by Warhammer Gorvar on Oct 2, 2012 23:52:45 GMT 1
Limey fruitcake!
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 2, 2012 23:59:37 GMT 1
I consider this homophobic and you are banned.
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Post by Clint Johnston on Oct 3, 2012 5:30:07 GMT 1
*reads link & main post*
Hmm. I'm hesitant on this one. While he's certainly right about the level of interest War & Peace generally gets, allowing for lighter fare isn't necessarily called for. As a librarian, I've seen a lot of summer reading lists, and all of them had plenty of options. The problem was lazy students. The author of the cracked article assumes that the kids have a logical reason for their dislike of the old and dry. This is usually not the case. The reason is usually "I want to do _____ instead". Then they find what looks like the easiest read and complain that "Animal Farm" doesn't make any sense. If they had utilized the resources available to them at the beginning of the summer, they would set with a more interesting book on a topic they enjoy.
Secondly, the "book club" books of late have been terrible. Hunger Games? I tried the whole series and to the point of screaming at the audio-book on occasion at the stupidity. I've only been to that point once before and that was an unfortunate time out with an ill-chosen Gabaldon novel. Compare that to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which I just read, and there are amazing layers of difference. Hunger games has a love triangle where the moody boys just decide to wait the girl out because they can't help her make up her mind.. MND has a love triangle where the two men previously fighting about one girl are now fighting over the other, and the girl is so confused, she thinks they (and her confused friend who is out of sorts at being dropped spontaneously) are teasing her and they all run around the forest screaming at one another until they fall in exhaustion. Which sounds like the cleverer story?
Granted I had control of my own reading all through high school.
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Post by Warhammer Gorvar on Oct 3, 2012 11:38:55 GMT 1
Agreed with you there dude, i was at a library myself behind the scnes this August and the lists i;ve seen.....Fifty Shades of Grey was booked out more then any other novel and some of them (dutch novels) were pretty damn good and had WAY more depth then a middle-aged woman's libido gone batshitinsane and cranked to 11!
Also Klingon Hamlet because.......q'plah!
I demand a duel, Buch! My ancestors demand retributrion for this insult upon me and my house!
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Post by Battlechantress on Oct 3, 2012 14:01:32 GMT 1
Speaking of "50 Shades", a talk show host was interviewing the author and then had three guys stroke the author's ego (no pun intended, honest) by telling her that reading the book helped their sex life with their wives. (Before you ask, I was stuck watching the damn thing at work.) All three guys said the same words in the first or second sentence that they spoke: "I'd be arrested for acting like Christian [male character] in real life!" And yet, the author continued to insist that the book *wasn't* a rape fantasy (uh, when a criminal profiler says that guys like that will get you killed in the real world, it probably is)....
After having to listen to that show and bits from the book, I have decided to continue staying the hell away from that series, because life is too short to read bad books.
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 3, 2012 14:04:41 GMT 1
People will always prefer pandering crap. You wouldn't believe how well the movies Battleship and Wrath of the Titans have rented in shops, while really good movies - Oscar winners and modern classics - gather dust. Nobody is saying that The Hunger Games are better than Shakespeare - but I don't think it's smart to make people read something that's difficult.
Gorvar - we will duel in the traditional way. Like on the TV show Gkadiators', with big rubber sticks.
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