Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
I was class of '88 and I see Heathers and Breakfast Club as decent representations. I was friends with people across cliques, but wasn't really in a clique myself. So, not nerdly but also not super cool.
Catcher in the Rye
made me think of
King Dork
again. Loved that book!
In my school, the stoners were a clique. And they didn't want me.
What I meant was, maybe I didn't notice. What with the being stoned. But that was largely facetious.
There was a *lot* of crossover in my school, between dating and academics. Stoners who were on the paper, jocks who were mathletes, etc. I'm sure, as in any school, there were kids who felt left out and otherwise *outsider* but I am serious when I say, there wasn't any outright cruelty, and it was a fairly small school, so it would have been hard to miss. Which, essentially, just made high school a nice experience for *me*.
We had cliques at my high school, but no malice that I can recall. It was a small enough school that there was heavy overlap between the different sets and more than a few guys who agonized over being on the football team vs. being in the school musical.
Phineas, though? Didn't get tossed off the branch soon enough.
My sister!
My high school experience captured on film: Dazed and Confused, River's Edge, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
I also honestly don't remember anything I read in seventh grade other than
The House of Stairs.
Which I think was an optional thing. Eighth grade English, I sort of remember my teacher but nothing else. Wow. I wasn't even doing drugs then.
Ninth grade I know we read
Romeo and Juliet, The Red Badge of Courage, Heart of Darkness,
and some short stories. I'm sure there was more, though.
I was class of '88 and I see Heathers and Breakfast Club as decent representations.
Class of '89, and these are DEAD ON.
I can't remember my first impressions of Phineas, I read it again in high school for a class and it was okay.
I loved The Outsiders and I read and reread it and also Rumble Fish. (I think that was the one).
The books I really liked, although I didn't read them in order, was the Tillerman Cycle. I read Dicey's Song first, but Homecoming is the first book.
Did anyone read To Take a Dare by Cresent Dragonwagon and Paul Zindel? About a run away. I liked it a lot and identified with the main character as being an outsider and wanting to escape her life but not for the same reasons.
I have no idea what to call the bunch of people that I usually hung out with in high school. We were spread all over the place in terms of academic stuff. A lot of us stayed in Girl Scouts years after it stopped being cool. I think that just about all the vegetarians in our grade were in our crowd. None of us drank or smoked much, mostly because we just didn't see the point. Not many of us played any sports, and when we did, it was usually track or softball, not the cool sports like soccer or basketball. Some of us were in band or chorus or the musical or drama club or various academic teams or art stuff. Most of us volunteered at the same few places -- soup kitchen, camp for disabled kids, literacy program -- during the summers and after school.
I liked The House of Dies Drear and Julie of the Wolves. I don't remember them as being especially depressing. The Westing Game is great. I do think of them as being for younger than 7th grade, though.
I never saw Holden's appeal.
I was class of '91, and like Plei made me realize, Heathers and Breakfast Club were a little more 7th and 8th grade. And I can't think of a movie or book which really captures my high school or college experience, although, at the time, I thought Reality Bites captured the post-college years fairly well.