Musing Mondays is hosted by Rebecca at Just One More Page...What books did you read while in school? Were there any that you particular liked, or even hated? Did any become lifelong favourites?
What books did I read in school? Heh... writing out that list could take all day! I'm not sure my memory is up to the task, either.
I remember reading Cue for Treason and Word to Caesar (both by Geoffrey Trease) in grade 7, and I really enjoyed both of those. Actually, we were reading Word to Caesar when the year ended, and I was enjoying it so much that I asked to keep the book for a few more days so I could finish it! Yeah... I was kind of a book geek.
In high school, I don't know if I particularly enjoyed much. I sort of liked Henrik Ibsen's play, A Doll's House. Really, though, I hated most of what we were forced to read in high school... from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (bullfights and sulky men with no... manly bits) to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (crazy old ladies in flaming wedding dresses) to the Theban plays by Sophocles (incest and eye-gouging). Whoever designs those curricula needs some therapy, I think.
In university, I encountered my absolute favourite and least favourite "forced-reading" books in one class. My favourite was Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. My least favourite was Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (and the less said about that one, the better).
I just re-read Sophocles because my son had to read it for a college class, he thought it was interesting, I thought it was YUCK.
ReplyDeleteI love Jane Eyre, though we didn't read it at school - I had to discover it for myself.
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