"How many pairs of eyes where watching Marlow as he got off the boat?" and to get the answer you not only had to remember the passage, but actually divide the number of eyes by 2 to get "pairs of eyes". I think my answer of "a lot" was right!
RIGHT! I wouldn't be able to remember how many pairs of eyes (and wouldn't figure out to do the math anyway) but I could tell you what it all symbolized and what not.
(And, not that it was a competition, but I did score higher than she did on the SAT and AP English tests...and now we have basically the exact same job. So there you go! And we are still best friends after almost 30 years despite our differences testing-wise.)
in the quiz that was supposed to tell if you did the reading "How many pairs of eyes where watching Marlow as he got off the boat?" and to get the answer you not only had to remember the passage, but actually divide the number of eyes by 2 to get "pairs of eyes".
That's a totally ridiculous question - how is that level of detail even remotely relevant to whether or not you read and understood the book??
huh ... my school never had any summer reading lists (really - it was a bad school), but I read every chance I got anyway. Everything I could lay my hands on.
Mine was one of the better schools in the district, and we didn't have summer reading lists either. I still haunted the library, though.
That's a totally ridiculous question - how is that level of detail even remotely relevant to whether or not you read and understood the book??
This is a sensible question. Do you expect a sensible answer?
I read
Brave New World
for high school sophomore English, and
Clockwork Orange
for pleasure no later than freshman year of college.
Of the two, I'd pick BNW. BNW is a good choice. On one hand, it's accessible to an intelligent reader, and on another, it explores very legitimate issues of mechanization and individuality.
CO isn't a bad choice. It explores issues of the individual and society. However, it's less accessible, and I'm very, very glad I had a copy with a glossary in the back. But constant referring to the glossary breaks up the story. (sj, I'm assuming your cousin doesn't speak any Russian. The slang owes a fair amount to the Russian language, and a little background reduces the need for a glossary.)
But I haven't read the others, and any of those may be very good choices, too.
I suspect most of us in this thread were That Kid who read ALL the summer reading books...or never got around to them because we were so busy reading other things.
My cousin is not that kid, his older brother was but him nsm.
CO isn't a bad choice. It explores issues of the individual and society. However, it's less accessible, and I'm very, very glad I had a copy with a glossary in the back. But constant referring to the glossary breaks up the story. (sj, I'm assuming your cousin doesn't speak any Russian. The slang owes a fair amount to the Russian language, and a little background reduces the need for a glossary.)
I am fairly confident he doesn't know any Russian.
Thanks, everyone for the advice!
Tributes in Memorim Lilian Jackson Braun - who passed away last week just short of her 98th birthday. (Her birthday was June 20th and she passed on June 4th.)
Aw, I read a bunch of The Cat Who... books as a teenager.
Brave New World also has the virtue of being short, for people who aren't big readers.
Brave New World also has the virtue of being short, for people who aren't big readers.
A Clockwork Orange
is also short, but that's probably its only virtue.
A Clockwork Orange is also short, but that's probably its only virtue.
Pfah! Can you have so little love for the play of language?
