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What book should be REQUIRED reading for everyone?

ja9 said:
I liked "Stranger in a Strange Lane" when I first read it as a teenager, but I read it again not long ago and it's incredibly sexist. I was quite put off by it. I can usually just accept that it was a different time and read around it, but this book really made me cringe. Great idea, good execution, but F- for its treatment of women! For that reason alone I don't think I could recommend it comfortably.
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I agree, ja9. i recently read Stranger in a Strange Land for the first time, after hearing fantastic things about it. i enjoyed the story, but was REALLY put off by the mysogynistic tone. if you think about when it was written, you can see where that came from, but that didn't help me to like it any more.
 
And (Jenem), I notice that Heinlein takes that tone with virtually every book he has ever written. Either women are nonexistent in the story, or they are present only as two-dimensional characters whose sole function seems to be decorative. I like his story ideas, but even taking into account the climate of the time in which he was writing I think he's Neandertal in the way he writes about women. Too bad, but I find that as I get older and more discriminating (if not actually wiser) I am more offended by him than I used to be.
 
after Stranger i didn't bother picking up anything else by him. thanks for the info, i figure i won't bother. that sort of thing pisses me off, too. i haven't read a lot of Hemmingway for the same reason.

geez- that's almost travesty on a book forum for me to say that!
 
cajunmama said:
In American schools, when the term "English class" is used, it is a broad term, used to name classes from the actual study of the language, as in grammar class, to classes also known as literature class. It basically means, not mathematics class, or science class, or history class, or physical education, or art class, etc. So it is quite common to find a student reading Camus for and "English" class assignment.
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Oops, I thought it was the same as here, where the books read in the English class are originally written in English, not translations.
 
clueless said:
Oops, I thought it was the same as here, where the books read in the English class are originally written in English, not translations.
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Well, they call it English in most high schools, but it's really indoctrination into selected ideas about society and responsibility. That's why you always get To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Brave New World, Farenheit 451, and stuff like that, but no Ring Lardner, Raymond Carver, Joan Didion, or other authors whose work might not embody the moral and social ideals the school is trying to get behind. That's why you might also read Camus or Marquez in translation, but not PG Wodehouse or SJ Perelman in their playful, astute English originals.

There's nothing wrong with this pedagogy, but I often think they should call it Great Ideas of World Literature, not English. Kids might be more interested if they knew what they were supposed to be learning.

And someone should purge the currciulum of all those books about deathly ill children, orphans, and dead dogs. (I have a 14 year old, so I know how immersed in this 'genre' the kids are.) Anyone worried about nurturing an interest in reading would be smart to look at how much of this depressing, fatalistic material is being force fed to adolescents.
 
novella said:
And someone should purge the currciulum of all those books about deathly ill children, orphans, and dead dogs. (I have a 14 year old, so I know how immersed in this 'genre' the kids are.)
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If it's the book I think you mean, you are talking about the book which my school librarian did not allow me to read at 12, even when the school had made us watch a film based on the book at 10. And you have to agree that the film is a lot worse. I could have strangled that little high-picht voiced moron.
 
novella said:
Well, they call it English in most high schools, but it's really indoctrination into selected ideas about society and responsibility. That's why you always get To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Brave New World, Farenheit 451, and stuff like that, but no Ring Lardner, Raymond Carver, Joan Didion, or other authors whose work might not embody the moral and social ideals the school is trying to get behind.
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We read Carver in my Grade 11 Literature class - loved it! I think Short Cuts is even on the Grade 12 reading list (for state wide centralised exams, that is).
 
I think Poe would be a good choice. Kids love creepy stories. When I was in highschool I loved doing Shakespeare because we always got to have movie days with it. Really, I think they would be interested in anything that would make the soccor moms cringe. And if there is even one cuss word in it, it's a hit.
 
Since i am a teenager, maybe i can make a little comment.

ON THE ONE HAND, If you teachers really want us to start reading, give us book that worth the reading. With this i mean, dont give me classic. PLEASE NO SHAKESPEARE, PLEASE. this only makes things worst.

You have to stop choosing those old books and maybe go modern.
Presonally, if you teachers gives me THE DA VINCI CODE i am telling you, i will start looking for others books of the same type; and even if this aren´t pedagogical books, this are the kind of book that will wake my interest up and will make me want to read some more. And this is what is important becasue woth this, you just introduced me to the life of literature.

ON THE OTHER HAND, you may say that it is imperative that we read some classical books in order to enrich our general culture. BUT you take the risk of distance us form Literature (plz forgive me if i didnt say it correctly, not english :) )
 
I think that Heinlein's portrayal of women is something of a dual sided coin but I don't think that it's extremely sexist and I certainly don't think that it's misogynistic.

In 'Stranger in a Strange Land' three of the women are making chores and serving because that's what they are employed to do. Their employer is rich enough to have people do things that he doesn't care to do.

In 'For Us, the Living', 'Glory Road' and 'Job: A Comedy of Justice' for example, it's women that are guiding the male protagonists to a more rational way of thinking and they are certainly not two dimensional or merely decorative.

Heinlein has also written novels and short stories where the protagonist is female.

While the women in Heinlein's works often are rational and liberated the other side of the coin is that they often adjust to the decision their romantic interest even if the decisions aren't always rational but it is still obvious to the reader who's right.

The most two dimensional portrait of a woman I've encountered in Heinlein's works is the wife in 'Farnham's Freehold' but both the daughter and her friend that the male protagonist falls in love with are very rational.
 
Wolhay said:
I think that Heinlein's portrayal of women is something of a dual sided coin but I don't think that it's extremely sexist and I certainly don't think that it's misogynistic.

In 'Stranger in a Strange Land' three of the women are making chores and serving because that's what they are employed to do. Their employer is rich enough to have people do things that he doesn't care to do.
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I thought their actual employment was as writers, editors and unbiased recorders. I suppose the servitude could have been part of their employment; however, it wasn't this that bothered me. It was the way that Jubal spoke to the women that offended me. He had 2 other men working at his home- they were maintenance etc, but you didn't hear him ordering them to get him a drink. I don't think it's a mysogynistic book, it just has mysogynistic tones.
 
When I was in high school, we had to read a different book each month and take a test on it at the end of the month. Some of the books were:

Oliver Twist
Pygmalion
Les Miserables
Wuthering Heights
Merchant of Venice
Pilgrim's Progress
Cyrano de Bergerac
A Tale of Two Cities
Silas Marner
The Odyssey
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
The Red Badge of Courage
Life on the Mississippi
The Scarlet Letter
The House of the Seven Gables
Great Expectations
Huck Finn
The Old Man and the Sea
Uncle Tom's Cabin
 
Bookworm88...wish I had gone to your school! What a great book list.

I don't remember having to read any books in school that I didn't like. Some were more interesting than others, but I think all of them had something good to offer. I loved Shakespeare; my high school English teacher had us read "Romeo and Juliet" and "West Side Story" at the same time, and we thought that was pretty cool. We also read "MacBeth" aloud in class, and being able to actually hear the words spoken made it an experience that I still remember all these years later.

I think the important thing is to get kids interested in reading, no matter what the book is. The content does not necessarily have to be sophisticated, but if they get into the habit of reading and start liking the medium they'll go in whatever direction their curiosity takes them, and hopefully that will open the door for them in the same way it did for me.
 
In high school we read lots of The Taming of the Shrew aloud, playing the parts, and that got me into Shakespeare for pretty much the first time ever, though I had already read Romeo and Juliet.

I also tried to take English classes that had non-British/American elements to them when I got a choice, and got some of these treats:

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky (that one was great!)
The Stranger by Camus

... crap, I can't remember the others.
 
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