Which Books Did You Hate in School but Enjoyed in Adulthood?

[Sheilbh]

I Am David, some Sherlock Homes short stories, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Macbeth, Inspector Calls, Look Back in Anger, Great Expectations. Must have been others, but it's a very unimaginative, very English list.

Thing that struck me looking back was that all the writers I remember reading are white, the only post-colonial novel is by Keneally. I'd be surprised if there's not a broader range now particularly of post-colonial writing. Also surprised that it was as 19th century as it was, but admittedly one unit was "The Victorian Novel".

I think now I'd expect curriculums to be more thematic (but still poetry, drama, prose) and spread across time rather than doing a specific form in a specific period.

I didn't notice it at the time, but there was gender balance (also I think we did Mrs Dalloway - definitely remember reading it at high school).

[Gups]

I Am David, some Sherlock Homes short stories, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Macbeth, Inspector Calls, Look Back in Anger, Great Expectations. Must have been others, but it's a very unimaginative, very English list.

Thing that struck me looking back was that all the writers I remember reading are white, the only post-colonial novel is by Keneally. I'd be surprised if there's not a broader range now particularly of post-colonial writing. Also surprised that it was as 19th century as it was, but admittedly one unit was "The Victorian Novel".

I think now I'd expect curriculums to be more thematic (but still poetry, drama, prose) and spread across time rather than doing a specific form in a specific period.

I didn't notice it at the time, but there was gender balance (also I think we did Mrs Dalloway - definitely remember reading it at high school).

The national curriculum for Eng. Lit GCSE is still pretty old fashioned and very English focussed.

https://thenationalcurriculum.com/gcse-english-literature-texts/

40 odd years on from my schooldays, An Inspector Calls remains ubiquitous closely followed by Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies.  Plus ca change as you wouldn't be allowed to say.

[Josephus]

They made us read Moby Dick in high school. I hated it. I reread it in my aforementioned American Lit class, just a few years later, and eureka--I got a different take on it all together.

I think the problem with reading Hardy (ugh), Shakespeare or any of the old classics in high school, is that they're clearly not meant to be read by hormonal teenagers. Shakespeare really was never meant to be read at all.

[Sheilbh]

The national curriculum for Eng. Lit GCSE is still pretty old fashioned and very English focussed.

https://thenationalcurriculum.com/gcse-english-literature-texts/

40 odd years on from my schooldays, An Inspector Calls remains ubiquitous closely followed by Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies.  Plus ca change as you wouldn't be allowed to say.

Yeah that is mad. That basically looks exactly the same as what I studied. Although it doesn't include the coursework unit which is where I think the teacher has a bit more freedom and that's where I had Carter - because I remember the teacher giving us a sample of three books and asking the class to decide which writer they wanted to read.

Particularly insane that while I get An Inspector Calls is probably quite easy to teach - it is a didactic piece of socialist (sort of) realism that premiered in the USSR after all - it seems mad that a play set in 1912 is probably a very popular pick in the post-1919 fiction or drama section.

A Level seems a bit freer as you'd expect - eight texts, 3 pre-1900 (including at least one Shakespeare) and 1 post-2000, can include texts in translation etc.

[crazy canuck]

Gups' post made me think we should have a thread about high school books you were forced to read, loved and continue to read.

Animal Farm and 1984 are definitely on that list for me.

[Sheilbh]

I enjoyed Shakespeare I like Macbeth and Othello a lot, but I really loved King Lear. It may just be that I was 18 by that point so a bit more mature and able to enjoy it more but I think it's an incredible play. Been to see a couple of versions - the one that sticks out was Simon Russell Beale as Lear (though I think he's a little young).

Wise Children by Angela Carter. Started me off reading all of her novels and her re-imaginings of story tales and I still think she's an incredible writer.

Also Wuthering Heights - when I was at uni I had a tutor who said the world can be divided into Emily or Charlotte Bronte people and I think there's something to that I am fully a Wuthering Heights boy. With King Lear, I might just have a thing for people emoting at weather

[crazy canuck]

Your point about age and stage is a good one. Thinking back on it we started reading Shakespeare in elementary school and I just couldn't get my head around the context or the language.

[Sheilbh]

Your point about age and stage is a good one. Thinking back on it we started reading Shakespeare in elementary school and I just couldn't get my head around the context or the language.

I don't think we did any Shakespeare before high school and I don't think it'd be a good idea. I think we did A Midsummer Night's Dream at one point but I can't remember when

I think we did Macbeth aged 15-16 and I believe that is the most popular Shakespeare to teach at that level because it's the shortest, relatively straightforward with some good language and an easy way into teaching how to read a text, such as analysing themes (as another lecturer put it "Lady Macbeth and her tits") or language ("the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red"). I think Romeo and Juliet is also popular as accessible to mid-teens.

AS was Othello (I think the other option was Julius Caesar) and then A2 was King Lear (I think the other option was Hamlet). And I think that approach makes sense. There is no point setting a text at a level when it's just going to be very difficult for the students, on the other hand you want to stretch them. So I think there's a logic in those journeys from the simplest, most direct (and short) tragedies to the longest and most challenging (and arguably most profound).

I think it's the same with poetry. It's alien to most kids so you want to start with something attainable and then build up to more challenging work.

[celedhring]

I first "read" Shakespeare at age 18, too, when in a strike of hubris I purchased his complete works in English. I didn't understand half of it (and that's being generous).

I managed to read it all over the years though, as my English language skills developed and - above all - the Internet grew and I could use it to check the meaning of all those obscure 1600s English words.

EDIT: Actually I remember reading a Catalan translation of Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It when I was a teen.

[Josquius]

Though we never read books at my school we certainly did Shakespeare.
MacBeth in Year 9 and Romeo and Juliet for year 11.
Though IIRC we didn't read the whole thing and just the scenes from the test.
I was meh on it. Fine enough as a stand alone but going over the same bits again and again and practicing how to answer exam questions....

[Valmy]

I would watch movies of the Shakespeare plays I was supposed to read. At the time it felt like cheating but in retrospect that was the way they were originally consumed, so really reading them was cheating.

[HVC]

My grade 11 and 12 English teacher, for all her faults*, was great at teaching Shakespeare. She'd explain all the dirty jokes and innuendos. Funny how a bawdy humour written for the masses became the go to for high class writing.


*she was a cantankerous old lady that everyone dreaded getting.

[Sheilbh]

My grade 11 and 12 English teacher, for all her faults*, was great at teaching Shakespeare. She'd explain all the dirty jokes and innuendos. Funny how a bawdy humour written for the masses became the go to for high class writing.

I feel lie that is key.

I would watch movies of the Shakespeare plays I was supposed to read. At the time it felt like cheating but in retrospect that was the way they were originally consumed, so really reading them was cheating.

Definitely encouraged here - when I was doing AS and A2 (so 17-18) one of the requirements was around engaging with other interpretations. Which meant we all loved plays because you could refer to film adaptations or productions. For poetry and novels it normally meant reading some literary criticism which was less fun

It was normally something written for that age group on, say, feminist or post-colonial interpretations of Wuthering Heights with quotes from actual critics that you'd memorise and use in the exam Unfortunately it also meant that the texts you might find easiest to read because they were recent could be in other ways the most challenging to do an essay on.

[crazy canuck]

We did Romeo and Juliet, in either grade 6 or seven, and the exact opposite happened where the teacher had to rush past the bawdy humour.

To the extent we would've understood it at all

[OttoVonBismarck]

Hm, this thread makes me wonder about the greater Anglosphere--in the U.S. education system a number of English authors are featured heavily in literature instruction--obviously Shakespeare (I would say most American students do a couple of his major works as part of core curriculum, typically Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet and Hamlet, less commonly some of his other well knowns like Othello and Midsommer Night's), Charles Dickens is almost universally taught--usually "Great Expectations", but sometimes also "A Tale of Two Cities" and "A Christmas Carol."

George Orwell is commonly assigned reading as well.

The Canterbury Tales is usually studied, albeit often in translation (showing the raw Middle English might be done to show the evolution of the language, but High Schoolers are never expected to learn how to understand Middle English.)

I don't know if Beowulf is considered "English" per se, but it is also almost universally taught.

Aldous Huxley is commonly taught.

A lot of this makes sense because obviously, England is the origin point of the shared language and many of these works fall in the category of being seminal "developmental" works in the history of the language.

But it makes me curious--do Canadians or British (or I guess even Aussies and New Zealander) children learn any American authors at all? In American schools several American authors are almost ubiquitously taught: Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Harper Lee, F. Scott Fitzgerald probably being the "big four", or are they largely just considered "American" authors and not of interest to children's literature education outside of America?