@gene-kooper giants in the earth was the 8th grade English class read that I thought was too boring to read so I didn’t. Maybe I should give it a shot now that I’m older and wiser.....
We were supposed to read it during my Junior year of English. We didn't do book reports but a group of five or six of us would sit at the front of the class while the teacher peppered us with questions. Fortunately for me, all the others had read it cover to cover. I had read about every fifteenth page and flipped through the others looking for names that might be important. It worked. Got my A.
I read it for a freshman American history course in college. Rølvaag's descriptions of blizzards and the isolation of living on the prairie reminded me of living in the Sandhills. Our nearest neighbor was 2-1/2 miles away.
”It's still in the oven.”
That means he’s still thinkin’ up names to protect his kinfolk from any silly legalities. ????
That could have been more interesting than my HS required reading. Great Expectations. Silas Marner. I've thankfully forgotten if there were others. I didn't learn anything from the sufferings of people in prior centuries in a culture different from mine.
I recently remarked to someone that something said reminded me of Spoon River Anthology, and wished that had been one of the school selections instead of those others. It teaches that various people see things differently when evaluating shared events, and neither is necessarily wrong in light of their situation, a useful lesson.
Who could ever forget Pip, Miss Haversham and her petrified wedding cake?
One of our books is probably banned today. Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The teacher gave up on having us read Moby Dick because the precursors to Beavis and Butthead were classmates of mine. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh yuk yuk heh heh heh, she said Dick. The poor woman was ultraconservative and her brother was a Lutheran minister. She couldn't handle their sense of humor.
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck was the one book that I swore I would never read again even if it meant I would be shot at sunrise if I didn't read it. Blech!!
Who could ever forget Pip, Miss Haversham and her petrified wedding cake?
You remember more than I do. I only remember Pip because we were dissecting frogs (Rana Pipiens) in biology class and I named ours Pip.
I had an teacher like her.?ÿ When I was called on to "stand up and read aloud" she was full of interrupting drill sergeant barks like "stand up straight!" or "speak louder!"
I was kicked out of that 8th. grade English for mispronouncing Silas Marner as "Silly-ass Marner".?ÿ I also usually referred to the town as "Latrine Yard" instead of Lantern Yard (I think?).?ÿ But I didn't get that far before the teacher ushered me out of class to the principal's office.?ÿ I bet that taught her a lesson about asking me to read a part of the story aloud...
I can't figger out if I was Bevis OR Butthead... 😉
?ÿ
Who could ever forget Pip, Miss Haversham and her petrified wedding cake?
Me, Great Expectations was almost worser than?ÿOf Human Bondage. Don't even get me started on?ÿWar and Peace. All three of which were forced reading in parochial prison. ?????ÿ
