I am older now; I have more than what I wanted, but I wish that I had started long before I did

[primroseburrows]

When I was in high school, we had to read things like Flowers for Algernon and other depressing fare.


Kids have it better in today's English classes.

What books did you have to read in school? Did you find books you'd read forever? What books did you hate? What about books from the outside? Is there one book that forever defines your youth? Is there one book you WISH your English teacher had used in his/her curriculum?

I really, really wish there'd have been more SF and Fantasy, but. Books like I Never Promised You a Rose Garden still haunt me. I don't know how many times I read it as a teenager, and I first discovered it (along with Go Ask Alice and Lisa, Bright and Dark) in my school's Resource Room (where I used to hang out, geekily, because d00d, teh Books).

Geez, it's no wonder I'm a psych nurse, with what I read as a kid. Of course, I also read Helter Skelter so many times that at one point I had memorised the first few paragraphs. *ponders*

Comments

[littlealex.livejournal.com]

I can't remember a lot of books that I was given to read as a kid in primary school, but I do remember a lot of books I read outside of school for fun. I read a lot of Goosebumps, lots of Choose Your Own Adventure stories, I tried to get into Jules Verne and HG Wells (I remember reading Journey to the Centre of the Earth, but I don't think I ever got through 20000 Leagues Under the Sea), and I failed to get into Anne of Green Gables.

As for high school, I kind of lacked an extra-curricular reading habit, but I did manage to enjoy a lot of the in-class books we read. I did not like sophomore English, it was a fucking waste of time, I never want to see Chinua Achebe or The Things They Carried again, thank you. However, freshman English with Shakespeare and Sophocles, that was pretty good. I didn't do a lot of junior English because of my China-going, but that's okay because my favourite year was senior English, which I picked Brit Lit for. I loved the teacher for that class, so everything from Chaucer to Nick Hornby and everything in between (even bloody Forster and Conrad) was made good by that class.

And nowadays, though I don't take English class anymore, I read a lot of non-fiction, biographies, when I do read. Lots of fiction based on Chinese-born Americans, lots of Jung Chang, Amy Tan, Adeline Yen Mah. Actually what I can say is my favourite book at the moment, and one that I really really love and recommend to anyone, not just those sinophiles around, is Adeline Yen Mah's "Watching The Tree". It's a really personal and intimate perspective and explanation of a lot of Chinese and East Asian philosophy and traditions. I really learned a lot from it, and found it really interesting and insightful. Great thing is, I got it from my grandmother.

Now, you know I'm not a book person, but that's my little book history for you.

[littlealex.livejournal.com]

Oh man reading the other comments -- I totally forgot To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice And Men! I think the former was great, I really loved it, but the latter was the first book I ever cried at. It was terrible, I was just sitting there on the couch in the living room doing my homework when all of a sudden - ouch. I finished the book and just started crying.

Also, unrelated sort of, but a movie my parents got my sister and me into young was the Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing. So while it's not necessarily reading the play I like, I think it's still really cool that parents can get their kids into Shakespeare. But there's a whole other rant about movies being as good at moving people and transporting them to another place as books are, and that'll be for another time.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

I like Amy Tan. The Kitchen God's Wife is on my list of Books to Reread, Someday

[littlealex.livejournal.com]

Random comment, but I also loved Emma which I read for senior Brit Lit. I didn't know what all the fuss was about Austen. I also read & loved The Importance of Being Earnest, and how can you not love Wilde, seriously?

Also Amy Tan has many books not just The Kitchen God's Wife. :) I mean, I'd say that her most well-known book is the Joy Luck Club, which is another fabulous story about mothers & daughters and expectations and everything. Next is the Hundred Secret Senses, which is a bit more ethereal and deals with some traditions of ghosts and things like that. After that was the Bonesetter's Daughter, which I have yet to read. I think she's come out with more but I'm not sure. But definitely give the others a try, maybe Joy Luck Club.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Oh, I definitely know Amy Tan. I haven't read all of her stuff, but her style and sense of history and tradition and family and all that stuff is wonderful.

Did you know she's a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders?". How cool is that?