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  #11  
Old 08-29-2007, 10:18 AM
SoloAJ SoloAJ is offline
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Default Re: A Modern Reading List for High School?

[ QUOTE ]
"Don Quixote," "Robinson Crusoe," "Pride and Prejudice," and "Crime and Punishment" should all be required reading for 9-10th grade. "Romeo and Juliet" would be a good start for Shakespeare, and I would save Hamlet and the other plays for later grades.

Also, something by Stephen King would stimulate them enough to get them into the habit of reading.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can understand why I wouldn't include the first few books you listed, yes? Granted, I actually haven't read any of those in their entirety. As for Romeo and Juliet, obviously it coudl be included. But since I'm supposed to hav ea list of around 10 (manageable to teach), I just stuck with Hamlet, which is my favorite.

Oddly enough, I was wondering about On Writing by Stephen King. I haven't personally read it yet, but from what I understand about it...it would be something a little different from your typical high school book material. In this way, I think it would be a good choice for the list.
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  #12  
Old 08-29-2007, 10:22 AM
SoloAJ SoloAJ is offline
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Default Re: A Modern Reading List for High School?

DB,

Sorry, should have mentioned ages. I sort of forget sometimes that you folks across the pond aren't super intelligent like I sometimes give you credit for (I just assumed you knew the ages for some reason, shrug).

As for your list, I have only read MacBeth, so that is a reason that your books aren't included. Lord of the Flies has been on my "need to read" list the longest, as I never was assigned it in school.

In all honesty, I haven't heard of half of those. I have never heard of the Bradbury or the King stories. I will definitely have to look into these and hopefully some other people who have read them can chime in on their potential validity in the class.

PS. Isn't the Hobbit like a zillion pages long? I swear I remember trying to read that in 5th grade and giving up. Maybe it was just because it was 5th grade and it was too dense for me.
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  #13  
Old 08-29-2007, 10:26 AM
SoloAJ SoloAJ is offline
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Default Re: A Modern Reading List for High School?

Tigermoth,

You have a lot to respond to and I don't have the time at the moment. But I wanted to ask where you're from. Your assessment of high school kids seems, to me, a little skewed. I am under the impression most high school kids don't want to read, so the idea is to give them some ways of getting interested by reading. Saying that they just want to be challenged strikes me as odd, and I find most lower high school students to be apathetic toward reading. Yes, no?
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  #14  
Old 08-29-2007, 10:40 AM
diebitter diebitter is offline
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Default Re: A Modern Reading List for High School?

No prob, we have 'years' here which start at 'year 1' for 4/5 years old etc, so my 11 year old is just about to start 'year 7'.

On Writing - a bit dry for this age really. Good for the aspiring writers though. I think King can be a good writer for this age though, if you pick the story wisely. I was wondering about 'The Green Mile', actually...


Hobbit is about 200 pages, and apart from the opening 35 pages which is a tea party essentially, is pretty action packed, funny, entertaining. The section where Gollum and Bilbo have a riddle competition is a classic.
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  #15  
Old 08-29-2007, 10:43 AM
Tigermoth Tigermoth is offline
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Default Re: A Modern Reading List for High School?

SoloAJ,

I'm from Atlanta.

I am pretty opinionated when it comes to public education. It's always struck me as government-funded baby-sitting, catering to a non-existent "average."

Often, people go through their lives as apathetic because no one has enough faith in them to challenge them.

My mother teaches art history to mostly ex-felons. I've met her students, and for most of them, society's given up on them. She treats them as intelligent adults, and the response has been enormously positive.

My mother also used to say that high school English teachers are the most evil people on the planet, because they impart their love for literature on to their students, who in turn get English degrees in college, then study to become high school English teachers, who impart their love for... Basically, because English teachers are so awesome, their students end up broke (but also awesome).

Give your students cool, interesting things to read, and they will want more. Give them books written by people who are 200 years dead and that have no relevance to anything that's happening now, and both you and the students will not gain anything.
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  #16  
Old 08-29-2007, 10:53 AM
diebitter diebitter is offline
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Default Re: A Modern Reading List for High School?

'The Body' was made into the movie 'Stand By Me' BTW.

Another interesting one is 'The Shrinking Man' by Richard Matheson (it was made into the movie 'The Incredible Shrinking Man'). BUT I'd prep them first in this way: Get ahold of a copy of 'Danse Macabre' by Stephen King and read his take on this story, and how its subtext can be seen as akin to getting a terminal disease and dying, and the stages people go through when this happens to them. And then present this view to your students before they read the book.

This will be really good brain-food for the intelligent ones, as they read the original, pulpy story.
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  #17  
Old 08-29-2007, 11:05 AM
John Cole John Cole is offline
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Default Re: A Modern Reading List for High School?

In tenth grade, I read (or was supposed to have read)Pride and Prejudice, Lord of the Flies, Macbeth, Henry IV (parts one and two!), Addison and Steele, the Roger DeCoverly Papers, selected essays by English writers such as Charles Lamb, and more I forget. We also did weekly vocabulary lists: termagent, xanthippic, martinet, and so on.

BTW, this was a public high school.
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  #18  
Old 08-29-2007, 11:10 AM
Shadowrun Shadowrun is offline
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Default Re: A Modern Reading List for High School?

[ QUOTE ]

Give your students cool, interesting things to read, and they will want more. Give them books written by people who are 200 years dead and that have no relevance to anything that's happening now, and both you and the students will not gain anything.

[/ QUOTE ]

I dont think that the age of the author has any relevance.
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  #19  
Old 08-29-2007, 11:12 AM
Butnahhhhh Butnahhhhh is offline
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Default Re: A Modern Reading List for High School?

10 little indians
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  #20  
Old 08-29-2007, 11:13 AM
John Cole John Cole is offline
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Default Re: A Modern Reading List for High School?

See Jonathan Yardley on Francine Prose's article in Harper's.

School Pap
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