Oh, gg, you break my heart. "Cue for Treason" was my hands down favourite book when I was about eleven. So exciting, and all that Shakespeare!

I hated "Lord of the Flies", too. I've always disliked those heavy handed allegorical-type books - I'm a huge fan of George Orwell, he's my hero, but the two books of his that I just can't stand to read are "1984" and "Animal Farm".

I actually kind of liked "Animal Farm", more than I thought I would, anyway. Or maybe I like it more now than I did in grade 11, because I remember the reason why I thought it was going to be boring or terrible was because the teacher explained beforehand what the allegory was and stuff, and the time I wasn't at all interested in the Russian Revolution and rise of communism, but now I've studied that on it's own and find it interesting so maybe that's why my memory says I like "Animal Farm".

Come to think of it, maybe I should give "Cue for Treason" another try. That was the book we read in the fall of grade 9, and it was to prepare us for our first dose of Shakespeare. Again, I think I didn't like it because I wasn't interested in Elizabethan times (I didn't think I liked history at all when I was in the younger years of high school), but now I do. So I might like it more if I read it again.

You're a little old for it now, and might find it a bit hokey - it's aimed at about junior high. I really loved Trease's books when I was a kid, as I was mad about history.

I didn't enjoy Lord of the Flies at all when I was forced to read it at the age of 15, nor have i enjoyed any of Thomas Hardy's novels I have read - his poetry is a different matter altogether - I love it.
I also intensely disliked the sequel to The Secret Garden, "Misselthwaite", I guess purely because the writer developed the characters as adults into totally different from the way I had imagined them... very disappointing.

Quote:

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Perhaps that's a good age to read Jeffrey Archer!

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I think you might be on to something there, lesley. I think I would have enjoyed Archer very much if he'd been around when I was fifteen - now he's on my "I can stand it if I have to" list.

When I was a young teen, "young adult literature" hadn't been invented yet. When you were twelve, you got your adult library card, and moved over to the adult side - and it was pretty scary. I remember wandering quite lost through those stacks, looking for familiar names, or some way of knowing what would be a good book.

There were stacks of Readers Digest Condensed Books around the house, and I started reading them. If I liked something, I would then go and get all of that author's books out of the library. There was none of what I was scared of in those books - they weren't "hard", there was no explicit sex, and there was just a little complexity and nuance, not enough to throw me. Archer would have fitted right in.

By the way, my other strategy was to go for the "classics" - in those years I read Dickens, Twain, Thackeray, Steinbeck, Hemingway .... all of whom, on the whole, served me better than the James Micheners I found through Condensed Books.

Every school set book

I almost always enjoyed reading all my English Lit books. I usually had them all read before the school year even started. As mentioned previously, there were a few I hated, like "Moby Dick" and "Lord of the Flies". Not only would I read all the set texts but I would also read other books by the same author.

Whilst English classes stimulated a love of books, they completed killed any love of poetry I may have possessed, which is rather unfortunate since I come from a family of published poets. I particularly hated the way the teachers insisted on dissecting a poem and attributing symbolic meaning to almost every word in it. I really didn't believe that their interpretation of what the author meant by a particular choice of word was necessarily true. For example, we would spend hours discussing why a poet chose to describe a rose as red, and what the red symbolised. I was often tempted to say maybe "red" wasn't symbolic, and the poet chose red because it was a one syllable word and it fit the meter, as opposed to yellow which, as a two-syllable word, would not sound as good! I lived in vain for the day when a poet would burst into our English class and say "That's NOT what I meant at all!"

They do it with songs too. John Lennon didn't seem to have much patience with people who were Searching for the Deep Meanings of their songs. Here's a nice bit from the Wiki article about the Beatles song "I am the Walrus":

"Lennon received a letter from a pupil at Quarry Bank High School, which he had attended. The writer mentioned that the English master was making his class analyse Beatles' lyrics. Lennon, amused that a teacher was putting so much effort into understanding the Beatles' lyrics, wrote the most confusing lyrics he could."

I have to contribute "Sexus" by Henry Miller. His "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn" have a place of honor on my bookshelf, and, in fact, a Henry Miller quote hangs above my desk. But "Sexus" strikes me as all the best things about Henry Miller exaggerated to the point of unattractiveness.

MotherGoose,

I enjoy dissecting and analyzing poetry up to a point. Some requires not only dissection but a post mortem. But I remember sitting in 8th grade English class tearing apart a Robert Frost poem. While the discussion was going on, I was reading a note at the end of the chapter questions saying Frost abhorred such study of his poetry, that it was meant to be read aloud for pleasure, and analyzing it ruined it. Silly me--I raised my hand to share that tidbit (always the trivia buff). The teacher was not amused. "In this class, we analyze Frost." Yes, ma'am.

Quebroblema: oh dear, so sorry you had such an awful instructor! I distinctly remember my 10th grade English teacher as being the best one (one any subject) that I ever had. He gave A+ to three different submitted essays written in response to a "moral question" on "Grapes of Wrath" and none of the three were even remotely related. I imagine those types of teachers are frowned upon/penalised in these days of "political correctness"... I mean, heaven forbid that "free thought" should be encouraged. Sigh.

p.s. back in the day when Beatle's lyrics were being "analysed" for every "nuance", John Lennon purportedly wrote totally nonsensical songs for no reason other than to just sit back and watch what people would come up with as to the "supposed hidden meaning". Perhaps he felt the same way Frost did lol.

edited to add: I really don't know how I missed lesley's post lol gmta?