A Modern Reading List for High School?

[John Cole]

I think we were both shocked. No insult intended, and I would have attempted to answer your questions if I thought you were asking questions. Instead, I believed your questions to be statements disguised as questions.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "relevant." Here's a challenge: read King Lear and then see if you can tell me what's "relevant" about the play. In fact, you don't even have to read. Watch a good version of the play. Then you may wonder why the play was performed for two hundred years with a happy ending.

Also, the English language would get along just fine without Shakespeare although it may lack a few of the words Shakespeare coined.

When you read Shakespeare's plays, you learn about Shakespeare's plays. I'm not going to make any grandiose claims and say that reading Hamlet will make you a better person or provide a moral education. But you will know something about Hamlet, and if you take the time to work through its complexities (and I don't mean the language), it can be very rewarding.

[diebitter]

Chaps

I think you're both right to a degree, but not completely. The merits and what you get out of a work are reader-dependent.

Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.

[John Cole]

Perhaps, but some readers are better than others. A film like The Graduate can be "read" in a number of different ways. I'm certainly not about to discount a feminist reading of the film that investigates the nature of middle-aged female sexuality, or a Marxist reading of the film, or even a historical reading of the film that locates it within a tradition of romantic comedies that begins with Harold Lloyd.

If I'm to listen to someone who wishes to discount Shakespeare, then that reader better know what the hell he or she is talking about. Once someone tells me that Shakespeare stinks because the language is "Old English" or he's too hard to read, I'm not going to take him or her seriously. Why should I? Of course Shakespeare is hard to read, and critics have debated various problems in Shakespeare for centuries. But Shakespeare also adapts to our time. See the film versions of his plays. See his plays performed. Read Jan Kott's Shakespeare, Our Contemporary.

I can't do math. Would anyone take me seriously if I said that trig is too hard to understand and holds no relevance for today's students? If I were to make that claim, someone would want to lock me up. I'm not much good at physics, either. Hell, let's throw that one on the scrap pile, too.

It's okay to f*ck with Shakespeare, though.

[John Cole]

You may want to show students this version of Hamlet .

[Rick Nebiolo]

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Rick, - I agree completely with Going after Cacciato. It, along with Dispatches, are my favorites. If you haven't read it, you should also try Paco's Story. It also seems O'Brien's novel is out of print; that's a shame.

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I've read all three along with Philup Caputo's "A Rumor of War", which would be among my favorites. Now that it's "three wars ago" (roughly counting) I guess Vietnam War books don't sell quite so well.


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Classical still offers a "classical degree," but few students choose the option. (I think only three students received one last year.) Nevertheless, it still attracts and produces good students.

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But not as good as you guys [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

~ Rick

[suppasonic]

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I read R and G are dead my senior year AP English class. Could be a tad over the head of the 10th graders, but I loved it. Really funny, really witty, and very intriguing.

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I really hope you've seen the movie so you can give me some basis of comparison. I think the movie would be a little over their heads at parts, but not really too much. I'd just have to pause it and be like "You see what they're doing here with the coin and probability is..."

If the book is a little more dense than the movie, indeed, it might be trouble. I don't know.

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I saw the movie. It's not necessarily more dense, but it really helps to illustrate some things in the play that you wouldn't otherwise understand. Like the "play at questions" scene or when R&G first arrive at the castle and many people walk in and out. You'd be best served doing the play and the movie, in my opinion. And the movie is almost exactly like the play, so nothing to explain that was in/ex cluded in the movie but not the book.

[John Cole]

DB,

Here's a story from a friend who had Bart Giamatti at Yale.

"I always think about what I heard Bart Giamatti say to a student who said he didn't care about Spenser (that was Giamatti's specialty). 'You may not be interested in Spenser,' and he pointed to the kid in the audience and thundered, 'but Spenser was interested in you. And in all honesty, the question to ask isn't whether Spenser is good enough for you; it's whether you're good enough for him. So let us proceed.'"

And, I've always thought alongs the lines of Keats who said, "Let us have Shakespeare and Robin Hood, too."

[Zeno]

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DB,

Here's a story from a friend who had Bart Giamatti at Yale.

"I always think about what I heard Bart Giamatti say to a student who said he didn't care about Spenser (that was Giamatti's specialty). 'You may not be interested in Spenser,' and he pointed to the kid in the audience and thundered, 'but Spenser was interested in you. And in all honesty, the question to ask isn't whether Spenser is good enough for you; it's whether you're good enough for him. So let us proceed.'"



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To add emphasis, Mr. Giamatti should have given a judicious rap to the student’s head with a bamboo pole. Physical displease is a wonderful stimulus. Even Shakespeare knew that.


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And, I've always thought alongs the lines of Keats who said, "Let us have Shakespeare and Robin Hood, too."

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Let us have Ingmar Bergman and Russ Meyer, too.

-Zeno

[Knuckles]

This a great list, I will definitely be reading all the ones on here that I have not read. You didn't mention what type of high school you are going to be teaching at. If you are at a school that has a sizable portion of students that are not college bound I would suggest The Contender by Robert Lipsyte. I had a sizable number of friends that were not college bound and they truly enjoyed this book. It is short , well written, and has a very important life lesson if you don't know what to do with your life.

[Jailblazers]

1. 1984
3. Farenheit 451
4. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
5. Of Mice and Men
6. Oedipus
7. To Kill a Mockingbird
8. Ender's Game
9. Great Expectations
10. Lord of the Flies

Also, these should be included but are usually not:
1. King Dork
2. Joe College
3. Catcher in the Rye (banned)

Basically hated anything else.