The books I read in my junior English lit class were 1) To Kill a Mockingbird, 2) Childhood's End, and 3) Great Gatsby. The first two are not entirely depressing, although not what I'd call joyful. At least it's not Ethan fucking Frome.

Thanks Amy-- I read it that way, too, but I misinterpret things a lot!

There is also an issue in high school, I think, of why the class "English" exists (probably true of any subject)-- is it to teach critical thinking?, is it to teach love of reading?, is it to give someone a taste of what it would be like to be a Lit major?, is it to teach people how to see other peoples points ofview?, is it to teach writing?, is it to give everyone a common base of cultural reference?, is it to teach someone to read symbolism and theme?, or is it all those things or none of them.

Personally,I already loved reading, so it was great to learn to see patterns and interpretations, even though I may have fought against it at first. For example, I hated The Red Pony, and the instructor gave us a list of things that were always" symbols of death, like black clouds and crows circling. And it made meangry-- like, who was she to tell me and/or the author what things mean. ButI remember the lesson clearly, and as anadult,frankly, crows circling doe usually mean death!

Also, I do wonder what it is like for people who a) do notlike to read and b) read slowly. Because I already read voraciously AND fast, and I really felt like The Old Man and the Sea was fishing,fishing, fishing, and saltwaer getting into the wounds made by fishing lines. If I already didnt like to read, would I hate reading instead of not enjoying that book?

Sophia the answer is yes. Those are my students. Plus reading is hard when you aren't good at it. Today we read an article and I asked my students to circle words they needed clarified. One if the words they needed help with was seldom. Seriously. These kids are 17 and 18.

God, I hated The Old Man and the Sea. Ugh.

Jane Austen would qualify as not horribly depressing, I guess.

And Jane Eyre is happy ( and a total telenovela).

I think I might feel like your students when I try to read philosophy or really technical things, Kat. It is just like Charlies Brown's parents and I want to throw it across the room!

Jane Eyre is he first "real" book that spoke to me, but it was the anger Jane felt when she was unfairly locked in the red room, and the boarding school stuff. Not so much the Rochester stuff (I read it really young, like 8 or 9 and I lived in Rochester,so very confusing. Heathcliff(because of the cat comic strip, was also confusing)

ggested (gently) that it was actually OK if the kid just wants to reread her favorite books over and over

Heh. I still remember my dad putting a book on top of the fridge because he was tired of seeing me read it. Had there only been google at the time, he might have found out there was a sequel!

I don't remember much of my high school reading. Lots of Shakespeare, which wasn't all depressing. I found Medea entertaining because it was so ridiculously overblown.

I would never call Jane Eyre happy! I mean, there's hard-won happiness at the end, but there's a hell of a lot of awful crap before that. (That said, I adore it.)

Ben's a junior this year and so far they've read The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter.

BTW, as a natural speed reader I can tell you that reading slowly is not incompatible with loving to read. I've heard reading slowly called "the editor's gift". My single biggest problem in self-editing,especially self-proof reading is rushing through my MS too fast. I don't want to speak universally, since I'm sure there are good editors who are not slow readers, but I've been told that many of the great editors natural reading speed was a slow one. I wonder what modern editors think of calling reading slowly "the editor's gift".