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".

David, which books would you suggest instead? Where are these happy happy joyful books?

Good question. One Hundred Years of Solitude?

Jane Austen? (Not that Emmett would particularly enjoy that.)

Winter's Tale?

My Antonia? (Which I loved in HS.)

Roberto Bolano?

I'm not saying Emmett needs to be spared from sad tales, but there's no variety. They're all very much social issues books which are taught as social issues.

I loved most of the books I read in high school, including Thomas Hardy! But I was a big reader by the time I got to hs and I had great teachers there.

There's so much great non-fiction, including long-form journalism, that I think would appeal to teens and teach all the things Sophia listed. Plus! graphic novels!

The last couple of years we've been doing a periodic cull of our books and passing appropriate books on to our friend who is a Baltimore City hs English teacher for her classroom library. It's so amazing to hear about which ones the kids really respond to. This year they've been loving the Sweettooth series. [link]