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/lit/ - Literature

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3712125 No.3712125 [Reply] [Original]

Finished 451 a few days ago. Our teacher "clarified" that it's not about censorship, but no one thought it was about censorship anyway.

Anyway, what was your favourite secondary school book?

>> No.3712133

Lord of the Flies

>> No.3712146

Hamlet.

>> No.3712150

tossup between:

1984
Brave New World
The Hobbit

I also read a few books for this individual study class I set up with my teacher where I got to read A Clockwork Orange.

>> No.3712152

Finnegans Wake

private nerd school

>> No.3712154

>>3712133
this, people think it's entry level as fuck but william golding is a boss, read pincher martin

also catcher in the rye of course, but admittedly i have an emotional bias towards it

>> No.3712155

>>3712150
You read Hobbit in high school? Bro I read that in middle school.

>> No.3712159

>>3712155
My high school included 7th and 8th grade. My elementary school included K - 6th. Very odd when I saw how other districts worked it out.

Anyhow, I read it in 7th.

>> No.3712160

We didn't had to read many books in high school.. but i'd say my favourite is '100 years of solitude'

>> No.3712164

>>3712152
Bullshit. If you actually did that, I want to move to wherever you are. Because I don't think there's a secondary school in my state that touches anything close to Joyce.

>> No.3712165

>>3712159
Same. Your school is still weird.

>> No.3712178

>>3712133
I'd have to agree. I truly hated Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird, but Lord of the Flies was beautiful.

>> No.3712181

>>3712178
Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird were just too mainstream?

>> No.3712184

Infinite Jest

>> No.3712186

>>3712164
I don't think he's bullshitting. My school (also a private, nerd - though really not that nerdy, just nerdy compared to most schools - school) had a Joyce class as well. It was fun.

>> No.3712193

>>3712181
No, they were just painful to read., and I didn't care about any of the characters. I kinda want to try re-reading them, now that I'm several years older, and have more developed literary tastes, but I don't think I'd be able to get past how much I hated them back in school.

>> No.3712194

>>3712181
>Lord of the Flies
>not hyper-mainstream

>> No.3712217

Liked Lord of the Flies
The Physicists
The Visit
I actually liked everything we read in school

>> No.3712218

To Kill a Mockingbird. Sue me.

>> No.3712226

>>3712125
>Our teacher "clarified" that it's not about censorship
...wat? S-so what is it about?

Did anyone have to read A Separate Peace in high school? At the time I thought it was meh but now I think it might have been better than I thought...

>> No.3712231

Ulysses

>> No.3712233

>>3712186
See, I had to enroll in college sophomore year over the summer to get some basic Joyce into my bloodstream.

Good for you, I guess. How far did you get in his stuff? I assume Dubliners because of it's relative accessibility.

>> No.3712237

>>3712231
Again, I envy all the lucky bastards who were able to get taught Joyce in high school.

>> No.3712241

>>3712133
>>3712178
socialists pls

mine was catcher in the rye

>> No.3712254

>>3712226
It's about embracing ignorance and other things that pretty make up 21st century life. Did you really think it's about censorship? I'm curious how you got that, seriously.

>> No.3712286

>>3712254
Well, there is inherent censorship because certain information is kept back from the public. Censorship is a factor, even though the book is about much more than that. To put it another way, even though the main point is that the majority doesn't care about book burning, book burning itself (censorship) is still important.

>> No.3712294

>>3712286
To me the whole point of the book is not the book burning itself, rather that they started burning books because muh equality.

>> No.3712296

>>3712226
entertainment. see wife's earpiece and "family", the chase scene

>> No.3712304

>>3712294
That's a part of what I was trying to say. It was to warn us about a culture that accepts book burning. But censorship, in the form of book burning, is also very important.

>> No.3712315

I'm beginning to wonder what book summaries and Sparknotes would read like if written by 4chan users.

>> No.3712352

I went to a really shitty school and in 11th grade we had to do a book report on any book and the teacher let this kid do a report on a Clifford the big red dog book. Ugh. For some reason I can't remember the books we read in school other than F451.

>> No.3712374

>>3712186
Yes, teaching Joyce isn't unheard of, but teaching FInnegan's Wake is.

Stop flaunting your ignorance.

>> No.3712379

>>3712254

This actually sounds pretty interesting. Is there hope for someone who didn't like Something Wicked This Way Comes?

>> No.3712411

>>3712379
There is. Just don't think too much about the censorship, just the reasons that led up to it.

>> No.3712446

Wilson's Fences or Delillo's White Noise.

>> No.3712466

>>3712186
>>3712164
>>3712237
I don't understand why you'd want to be taught Joyce in highschool. They'd completely butcher the material, I don't mean to make Joyce to be harder to understand than he is, but I doubt the average public highschool english teacher would be capable of handling him, let alone teaching it.

Imagine the tests and assignments you'd be getting: memorize all the literary allusions in Finnegans Wake, define "portmaneua", "nonlinear" and "pun". What year was Joyce born? Group project, create a brochure on the town Dublin.

It was embarrassing just seeing White Noise taught, in an AP class at a relatively good school. Postmodernism defined as anti-capitalist satire, a classroom full of ivy-league accepted 4.0 GPA students who "don't get satire."

>> No.3712497

>>3712466
If there's anything I've learned about AP-taking overachievers, it's that they have absolutely no original thought when it comes to analyzing literature or art that's not just rehashing platitudes.

Some high school English teachers are cool as fuck and really understand literature, though. We read Dostoyevsky, Melville, T.S. Eliot, Woolf, Kafka, Joyce (short stories), and Ibsen in my AP class, which I know aren't all that obscure of authors for high school, but he communicated it to the class really well. However, it doesn't help much when most of the class can't into literature in a way that's not just regurgitating information. Best teacher ever.

>> No.3712523

>>3712497
Great thing about my schol is that we don't have regular English. You're going to take AP because you're here, and we have great discussions.

>> No.3712532

>>3712133
I could barely finish To Kill a Mocking Bird.

Lord of the Flies was my favorite in school.

>> No.3712535

Heart of Darkness

>> No.3712537

Not a book, but I really liked Hamlet.

>> No.3712554

I found a book of Nostradamus' quatrains in my school's library when I was in 9th grade and read the shit out of it every day. You have to understand, I was going to a fairly fundie Christian school at the time and finding something like that in our school was tantamount to finding a book of occult sex magick.

>> No.3712556

>>3712532
I take that back, Heart of Darkness was my favorite.

Lord of the Flies is a close second.

>> No.3712581

>>3712556
Ever watch Apocalypse Now! ?

>> No.3712585

Don't taint Based Conrad's name by mentioning that movie.

>> No.3712594

>>3712585
What, it was a good movie.

>> No.3712618

>>3712535
>black and white, black and white
>oh man africa is like living in the primordial soup of humanity
>shit this guy died, man is naturally evil because we took their shit and he took his life and he was like a god because the natives were dumb as shit and it shows how humanity strives for hate and violence
>fuck society they just dont understand me, they are all just dumb sheep, why cant they see how stupid they are
>CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES

yeah nah HoD is shit, I can honestly say that was the worst novel I had to read in highschool

at least it was funny to see the token black guy get offended because it said nigger like twice

>captcha: artistic nigmeat

>> No.3712655

>>3712585
Hipster faggot

>> No.3712662

Tuesdays with Morrie and the Things They Carry

>> No.3712672

On the road by Jack Kerouac. Still my favorite book.

>> No.3712677

Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Feed
Hamlet
The Road
>My school liked to teach a lot of contemporary lit as well.

>> No.3712906

Slaughterhouse Five.

>> No.3712913

>>3712672

i would like that book but i cant stand the way he talks about eating apple pie and ice cream. Everything was fine until he says something to the effect of "and i ate apple pie and ice cream, because i knew it was good for you. and the more west i went the apple pie got bigger and the ice cream got richer."

at first i was like, "oh cool, adventure! being young and shit. im about that."

but no, this is about some fat and happy asshole 20 something just farting around the US always stuffing his fat and happy face apple pie and ice cream, and i can't shake that from my head. ever. and i hate that about this book.

>> No.3713274
File: 10 KB, 247x248, 1334397837230.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3713274

>>3712618
Your post was shit but
>that CAPTCHA

>> No.3713320

Probably The Lover by Duras or else Great Gatsby. Probably the only two books which I had a genuine interest in. For some reason, my school didn't do shit like To Kill A Mockingbird or 1984 or whatever. All really obscure shit, with the exception of Fitzgerald.

If we count middle school, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, simply because it was massively entertaining.

>> No.3713334

>>3712913
hahahhahahaha

YES! FINALLY SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS!
>That is the only part of that book that stuck with me and GOD ALMIGHTY does it piss me off.

I wanted to read about adventure, not have a glimpse into his speed hunger for pie.

>> No.3713342

For everyone who said 1984

http://samkriss.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/forget-orwell/

>> No.3713350

>>3712466
This post is incredibly disheartening but totally accurate. "A brochure on the town Dublin", lol, man, that just opened a floodgate of memories.

>> No.3714190

>>3713334
>>3712913
I don't remember this in the book, I haven't read it since highschool, but it's obviously just romanticization/patriotism/fetishism for america.

>> No.3714203

The Great Gatsby and Hamlet were based, Wuthering Heights was alright. Everything else I studied was kind of meh.

>> No.3714218

>>3712125
>This novel has been the subject of various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas.

from wiki.

>In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury stated that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 because of his concerns at the time (during the McCarthy era) about censorship

you and your teacher are fucking retarded. how is it about censorship? how about the whole idea of burning books that conflict with the phi they're trying to push on your average citizen?

>> No.3714226

>>3714218
>going by the author's intentions and not what the art unveils on its own

pleb

>> No.3714235

>>3714226
>a bradbury novel
>art
pleb

>> No.3714947

>>3714218
http://www.cracked.com/article_18787_6-books-everyone-including-your-english-teacher-got-wrong.html
I agree with OP
captcha: rsilwa Laertes

>> No.3715315

Sophie's World: beat that you fags.

>> No.3715356

As I Lay Dying, easily. Brave New World, Hamlet, and the Great Gatsby were all pretty good as well.

>> No.3715362

Farenheit 451 is extremely mediocre, also. Prose is clunky and it's relatively trite compared to Brave New World. I've always disliked Bradbury because I've found his contempt towards technological progress retarded.

>> No.3715724

As I Lay Dying
Great Gatsby
Wuthering Heights
The Awakening
Heart of Darkness

>> No.3715945

The Catcher In The Rye
A Clockwork Orange
Fahrenheit 451
Hatchet

Idk what to read next. Help?