My parents took my family to Barnes and Noble literally every Saturday till I was like 12 so I read a fair amount and think books are universally superior to movies with a few exceptions like the "classics". Tale of Two Cities and the Jungle were alright I guess but like the Great Gatsby and Grapes of Wrath were pretty lol to me. Don't even get me started on Beowulf or the Iliad or whatever.

i loved the sound and the fury when i read it in my mid 20s but there's no way i would have gotten more than a couple pages in if i had to read it as a teenager. schools are elite at choosing novels that very few teenagers have any possible chance of enjoying.

I mean, like half of TSATF is stream of consciousness which seems like a bizarre choice for something that you'd want your average high school student to enjoy while they're learning.

read a decent amount in class, walked through parts, etc. "average high school student" also an relevant/inaccurate phrase.

See Tuq, he gets it.

I can confirm I didn't send a book to The Dean

Favorite childhood authors:

Stephen R Donaldson
Piers Anthony
Stephen R Brust
David Eddings
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Raymond E Feist

I kind of wish I had read what I was assigned in high school/college, so I could actually participate in the discussions. But I almost never did, would always cram at the last minute, so most classes were just all anxiety that the teacher would call on me because I hadn't read anything. It kinda sucked.

Now I do like reading although I probably don't do it enough. I do think that with more information available in many different ways, it makes sense that lots of people just don't read as much. Not as many ELIte TV shows, movies, sports, or poker websites back in the day

did any of these guys write under pseudonyms? I haven't heard fo a single one.

Great Gatsby was definitely pretty sweet, the illusive dreamscape that Gatsby chooses to live in is so compellingly at odds with the desperate tedium and tensions of the every day lives of its cast of characters - like Daisy just wants to look pretty and drink booze and eventually pop a kid out, ya know?

mark twain goat

woat book i read in school was the things they carried

l liked his books as a kid too but piers anthony is a pedophile

edit:
http://litreactor.com/columns/themes...-piers-anthony

http://www.amazon.com/Firefly-Piers-.../dp/0380759500

Great Brain series was my favorite as a kid. Nowadays I mostly read non fiction. My fiction is always pretty standard airport stuff like the kite runner or some other non pretentious stuff. I still think Michael Crichton is super elite for some of his older stuff

**** mrs dalloway

catcher in the rye

Rice fired, Banks gets signed by Falcons. Good day for sports.

How rigorous were you guys' high schools? How much sway did the students have in what work they did and how much homework was assigned or when or if you had tests?

I think I had a pretty unique HS experience. We had the highest rated public HS in the highest rated county in the state pretty much every year. The top 15% or so of the students were smart enough that we knew we had leverage over teachers if we banded together like a cartel or companies that are price fixing. By the end of sophmore year we just outright refused to write some papers, read certain books, take tests, do full homework sets, etc. Basically this put the teachers in a spot where they either had to give in or fail the 75% of the class that was cooperating on it. We forced teachers to cancel dozens of papers or tests over the next couple years and basically did at least 50% less work than we should have. Sure it was immature, but it was a pretty solid power play and allowed us to have a ton of fun.

Meh, dunno about that.

Daisy has a kid that she seems to not really be overly caring of. I think the representation of almost all the women, including Daisy, in that book are presented as non-maternal, at least in a historically relative sense.

Holy **** this is elite. Had to hit escape to read the text. ForumWithdrawal GOAT.

While I don't really read novels I did enjoy short stories in High School. Took a class and enjoyed Harrison Bergeron.

Anyone remember the Scarlet Letter skit on SNL where the women's letters represented what they did? One woman entered the scene with "BJ" on her chest. Another with "HJ", then "3-way", "DP", etc. LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

The guys in the town were like "Wellll, I don't think we have to banish these women from the town. I mean...sure they made mistakes but..." then a couple of the guys walked over to the 3-way girl. LOL.

I'm probably remembering it incorrectly but it was hilarious. Better than the book or movie.

Great Gatsby was absolutely fantastic.

lol that they let you do this, threaten expulsion once and you guys wouldn't step out of line again.

yeah i dont believe that story at all. probably a great exaggeration deriving from one time where the class complained and a teacher moved a test date to a week later.

Phildo,

Yes I know his issues. Very prolific tho and early Xanth books and some of his sci fi (eg bio of a space tyrant) was awesome.

lol sick play. My high school experience was pretty standard, but my wife went here. It was ranked as the best high school in the nation her senior year. If you got two Cs you got kicked out, and you had to take IB level courses for basically every class. If she had gone to Michigan instead of Princeton, she would have entered school with 2.5 years of college under her belt.

It was nuts, she studied way more than me when we dated in high school.

nope. they tried that. no one really cared. The teachers and principal called parents, had conferences with parents, ISS for the people who were most defiant, suspended a few people from sports for a week or two (including making myself sit out the first golf tournament of senior year), Fs on all kinds of things, lots of us spent weekends grounded. Once it became clear that we didn't care they gave in and made easy makeup assignments or let the final count for like 80%.