Before I’d say 8th-9th grade-ish I loved reading. I could read a book or two a week. And not kids books. I’d read long book and I didn’t care whether it was classic literature or not. I would read a variety of anything, if it looked interesting I got it.
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I distinctly remember English class forcing constant Shakespeare and Wilde upon me. To this day I STILL cannot read Shakespeare. For every book assigned in English class I would just google the sparknotes on it and pass. I would try to read it but they don’t just want you to read it. They want you be able to recall what date a character did something. Which character said this statement or what order did this happen. When it came to understanding subtext and symbolism it was never, “What did you pull from this? How do you interpret that?” It was “this is what you are supposed to pull from this and if you didn’t you are wrong.”
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Getting this classic books and not being able to read them as I would normally read something just ruined it for me. Reading and knowing I have to recall very specific events and will have to pass a test on it or write a report on it just made me dread reading. From 9th grade to around age 22ish I got out of reading. Which was a shame because I used to love it. I’d have the light attachment on my bed so I could read in the night when it was dark. I have now gotten back into it and average 2-3 books a month. I’ve lately been reading a lot of classic literature in my own way and genuinely enjoying it. I read As I Lay Dying not long ago and loved it. I couldn’t help but imagine the amount of paper work I would have had to do on this book had it been for school.
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I remember a teacher had us read Dracula but reading it in that way made it incredibly stressful and boring and annoying. I picked it up recently and haven’t been able to put the book down. The prose, the suspense, and the formatting of it being told through letters and journals. It just works so well and has me on the edge of my seat despite being aware of how the Dracula story generally goes. Even though it was written in the late 1800s it feels very current. A teacher making something as entertaining as Dracula a miserable experience is a skill in it of itself. Maybe one day I’ll attempt Shakespeare again but the sheer AMOUNT of Shakespeare we had to go through in English class just makes me shiver at the thought of picking up one of those books again.
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\*I can’t put all the blame on English class. It is having to do English class along with math, science, and history along with a couple of other electives. Going home and doing math work, then science right after, and then English. I’m going to just cheese my way through as much as I can.\*
by twoscoopsxd
2 Comments
Not particularly. I was mainly disappointed by the things we were made to read and how the teachers could make some of them seem so boring, but I still loved reading for pleasure and ended up reading many of my favorites in those years.
Reading a book for a class can certainly suck the fun out of it and I think it’s quite common for people to slow down or completely stop reading in high school and college. A common theme I’ve noticed among some friends of mine is that we were all avid readers when younger, ripping through Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, hunger games etc. Then in high school you’re a lot busier and your tastes may change and then you are forced to read books that are outside your preferred genres for a change and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
For my example, I had to read Dune as a summer assignment which immediately pissed me off because who wants to be doing a big school project over the summer. I just skimmed the book and bullshitted the project and didn’t even remember anything about the book. Once I watched Dune part 1 I was like hey, that prolly was an interesting book tbh. But I just left it. Then I watched part 2 and was like holy shit I have to re read this. I devoured it in like 5 days, it is incredible. So just the context of being forced to read it vs choosing to read it made all the difference.
Anyway I was in honors and AP English and read dozens of classics, some I liked, some I hated, but the other classics I’ve read since I definitely enjoyed more bc it was my choice to read them. And other books by the authors we studied I enjoyed a lot again, bc it was my choice.