Books

speed said:
"And I have yet to find any use for it: it didnt show up on the Ap Exam?" Thats the talk of a business school or engineering flunky. For shame. No work of literature should be read merely because one will take a test on it. Literature has no meaning in our society anyway, but to rob it of its personal value and replace its value with some pointless test is a crime.
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No offense, but I think you sort of missed my point. I read it because it was required reading as part of the course I took. (Incidentally, for high school and not business or engineering. So pardon me if my intellect is not up to par...)

Why require it as reading if one's knowledge of it is not going to be put to any academic use? And why nit-pick in discussion of it if the points raised have no practical application EXCEPT in the off chance that they appear on the exam? Since I am not likely to apply Siddhartha to my day-to-day life, where else am I supposed to use it? I hate learning things simply so I can say I know them; I'd rather learn practical things that I can apply to and use in daily life, and I could have spent that time reading something in which I was actually interested in learning about. I hate having reading material chosen for me, and I hate having to analyze every little detail of it. Dissecting meaning and metaphor in fragments for me detracts from the work as a whole. Which is probably why I despise school-mandated reading lists and the way the works are deconstructed in class, right down to "why is this punctuation mark a comma and not a period, etc etc." I have no passion for this.

Lest you take me for someone who only does things because they're required to, I should clarify that I read extensively on my own. I finish at least one book (of my own choice; not related to school in any way) every three days, and sometimes one a day if I have a lot of free time on my hands. But I read because I want to. I don't believe people should be force-fed material that does not interest them. To do so, as you have said, defeats the purpose of literature. That was the point I was trying to make with my original post, though clearly I didn't word it very well. Probably something to do with the fact that I haven't slept for two days :Spin:
 
Well I agree with this last thread, you must admit your earlier thread implied you didnt want to read classic books if they were of no academic use to you. This is what I called you out on.

I suppose this last post clarifies your real position. I too was fraught with reading a number of awful english and american books I could've cared less about, other than they were considered musts for high school and college literature. I cant tell you how much I hated reading Jane Austin, E.M. Forrester, Nathanael Hawthorne, Ray Bradbury, Ernest Hemingway etc. I personally tore the books apart during class, much to chagrin of my instructors.

And I actually enjoyed Siddharta; its a myth, and I thought a well done one. I do like Hesse though. If you thought Siddharta was bad, you shuld try the Glass Bead Game (or Master Lodi's Apprenticeship). This book is at once awful and brilliant, one of the most pretentious yet enlightening Ive read.
 
I almost exclusively read classic books. Why waste time on something that's not even going to survive into the next decade?

I've got a soft spot for Clancy, King, Crichton, Grisham, and...JK Rowling.
 
anonymousnick2001 said:
I almost exclusively read classic books. Why waste time on something that's not even going to survive into the next decade?
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Does it really matter whether something will go down in history as a 'classic,' so long as you genuinely enjoyed reading it and/or got something useful out of it? Why choose what you read based on other people's opinion of the work's literary merit?
 
I have a pretty good idea of what constitutes a classic. The opinions of others doesn't affect me as much as their familiarity. Books still have the ability to spread through word of mouth. The classics always survive. And I like to read books that survive. Not because they survive, but because I generally like books that have an everlasting spark within them.

That said, Clancy and JK Rowling were the exceptions to the above. ;)
 
the thing is, they haven't been around long enough to test that presumption of survival. their authors still live, and their franchises still unfinished. they are not really "classic" until they've been given the time to age like a fine wine.
 
I found Siddhartha to be a highly enjoyable read. I read the whole book in like two hours. You read the books in AP Literature to generally expand your mind past the usual nonsense in this world, and you never know whether or not it will be on the test or not. If I recall, Heart of Darkness could have been used on this past exam for the open ended question. Yeah it could've because the question dealt with a character and his inner struggle but his outwardly conforming appearance.
 
Hmm. Did your AP Lit class have to read The Crying of Lot 49? We did, and I'll probably get flamed if I say THAT was nonsense, but in truth it really made no sense to me. If anyone thinks they understand what Pynchon's trying to tell us, I'd love to hear your interpretation. That book drove me crazy!

I'd forgotten what this last year's exam question was until you mentioned it :Spin: I think I used the character Huckleberry Finn for that one. Kind of a stretch perhaps, but I must've done okay on it because I got a 5 on the exam...
 
Faulkner's great. This year in my AP class, I had to read:

The stranger
siddhartha
hamlet
sonny's blues
a doll's house
pride and prejudice (that was useless)
sound and the fury
the loved one
a modest proposal
heart of darkness and maybe a few others that I can't remember
 
I just finished Inherit the Wind, based on the Scopes "monkey trials." It is fascinating to me that religious elements were at one time able to suppress entirely the teaching of logical fact, and even to punish those who spoke out for what they believed (and logically so) to be truth.

Now I'm reading The Flight of the Iguana by David Quammen. I love this book...
 
unknown said:
Faulkner's great. This year in my AP class, I had to read:

The stranger
siddhartha
hamlet
sonny's blues
a doll's house
pride and prejudice (that was useless)
sound and the fury
the loved one
a modest proposal
heart of darkness and maybe a few others that I can't remember
Click to expand...

Thats a much better list than I was forced to read. I too was stuck with Pride and Prejudice. 19th century English novels (especially those written by anyone other than Dickens) are the pinnacle of boredom.
 
If you thought Siddharta was bad, you shuld try the Glass Bead Game (or Master Lodi's Apprenticeship). This book is at once awful and brilliant, one of the most pretentious yet enlightening Ive read.
Click to expand...

I'm almost done with it right now. Thats a pretty fair critique, too - what with the innumerable references to Bach and Hegel. However, it maintains interest and if the artifice is set aside, is an excellent portrayal of Hesse's views on the role of the intellectual. Castalia was a well-formulated embodiment of a relatively popular intellectual ideal: detachment from politics and existence-essentials to further knowledge. It is primarily a critique of this ideal, and viewed in this context, makes for a read I wouldn't recommend missing out on.

Damien was what hooked me onto Hesse though. While it would be idiotic to defend Hesse against claims that he loved infusing obscure Eastern mythology with contemporary issues, I do not find that as repulsive as most readers would; it only lends a more interesting instrument to further a view.
 
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