"I'm a high school student. Today, my English teacher said: 'The difference between sarcasm and irony is that sarcasm has to be mean, while irony is nice sarcasm.'"
"I'm totally opening my Goethe lessons with that when I have to cover him in class. 'Kids. Goethe sucks donkey dicks.'"
"Holden's incessant whining and indulgence in self-pity annoyed me. I wanted to say to him what I say to my son or my students: Look at your life and get over yourself."
"I know as an English teacher, I'm supposed to love The Canterbury Tales and there's a lot of language in there that's teachable, especially from an evolution of linguistics point of view. But it was just tough for me to get into. So there."
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD - THE GREAT GATSBY
"When my yr.11 class whined to our teacher over how much we hated this book, she replied with 'This is english advanced..you're not going to read fun,interesting books in english advanced..you're going to read boring, old novels'"
"Now I am a teacher and at one time found myself in a position where I had no choice but to assign my students _The Great Gatsby_ ... And don't you dare tell me I didn't get the book. Since I was supposed to be teaching the thing I read it three times (well, to be frank, two and half times; midway through my third reading, I gave up in disgust, both at myself, for having persisted so long, and at the novel itself). I mean, who really gives a fig for any of the characters in the book? Or for that stupid green light? Oooh, ah, and the Valley of Ashes! How very apocalyptic! And T. J. Mecklenburg, or whatever his name was. How could anybody really give a fig for any of it?"
"back in high school, after we were finished with the book, my english teacher told us he never understood why this book was so highly regarded. he called it 'stupid.' i had never agreed with a teacher until that moment."
SAMUEL BECKETT - WAITING FOR GODOT
"As an English teacher, an avid reader, a Lit major, et cetera, I am sure I am supposed to give this play six stars, but I was unimpressed. Severely. It feels more likely that this is an enormous hoax on the literary world than it is a legitimate piece of writing - as if in 40 or so years, the Beckett estate will reveal a letter saying something like, 'Just Kidding, y'all. It's garbage, and I know it'. The hat scene - surely cited as 'postmodern lunacy' or somesuch bilge in theatrical reviews, seems more like a tired Warner Brothers skit. Oh well."
HERMAN MELVILLE - BILLY BUDD
"I had to teach this book to juniors in high school and could never figure out why. It is a VERY difficult read and I absolutely hated the book until the end. I'm not sure if I would recommend it or not, but if so, I wouldn't recommend it to teenagers or even early college-aged students. It was very difficult."
"My A.P. English teacher decided that to pass her class we would have to read and take a test on Billy Budd, so we would be able to take the A.P. exam and pass it. This is a woman who appreciates good literature told us 'anyone who likes this book is crazy and should be shot.' needless to say I can't stand it. The only thing that perplexes me, is why people actually read it, why it's such a 'good' book."
SHAKESPEARE - JULIUS CAESAR
"I've never been a fan of reading Shakespeare. As a 10 gr. English teacher, I face the challenge of making relevant and exciting the reading of a play I don't find relevant or exciting."
CORMAC MCCARTHY - THE ROAD
(I DON'T REALLY THINK THIS IS A GOOD BOOK BUT THE QUOTE IS HORRIFYING SO HERE WE ARE)
"As an English teacher, I appreciated the imagery and the amazingly lyrical writing throughout the book. I will also admit to not being able to stop reading it, but not because I was enjoying it. This book was full of gruesome ideas and dark reality. Could this or would this happen after an apocalypse, I am convinced that it would, but I did not find the father continuing on with his son in this black, white, and shades of grey landscape inspiring or faith building."
MARK TWAIN - THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
"I want to love this book, really I do. I'm an English teacher so shouldn't I love it."
"I read this book out a sense of responsibility to America's literary canon. I hadn't read it since middle school. I've taught high school for ten years, and I would not choose this book to read with an English class. I just don't think it's really that deep. Satirical, comic, adventurous, page-turner, yes, but deep, well no. There are other books that made me think more. The people in the country towns are depicted as lawless and base. Jim, while noble and kind, is stupid. Huck is a child swayed by what other people think, and not yet old enough to make his own convictions. Tom Sawyer is a foolish child whose antics cause pain for people. The women in the book are all kind but out of touch with reality and easily duped. There are a couple well educated, intelligent characters, but they are the exception to the rule. For such a long book, there's just not much meat there."
"I know, I know... I am an English teacher who doesn't like Mark Twain. It's a shame, but at least I will never force my students to read this boring book!"
SOPHOCLES - OEDIPUS REX
"This book is overrated, or at least my teacher overrated it. In the beginning of the story, the prophet tells Oedipus that he will live in sin (make love to) his mother. My teacher constantly said that we wouldn't be able to fathom how awesome the plot twist would be, however it was spoiled near the beginning (and if you've ever read these stories, the prophet is NEVER wrong. No matter what happens, their prophecies will not be stopped). We cant forget that the ending is DEPRESSING! Dont bother waiting until you read this story to roll your eyes and say 'THATS IT!?' because I'll tell you now. Oedipus unrealistically flies to get eaten by gods or something. No real reason, no real gain, no loss, just leaving his family for god(s)."
EMILY BRONTE - WUTHERING HEIGHTS
"Ugh. I don't have the level of concentration required to read this book right now. I made it up to like, page 70, mostly driven by guilt that I'm an English teacher and have never read this. Decided life is too short to trudge my way through Victorian sentences in a book where neither the characters nor the story interest me. I was, however, amused that the narrator used the word 'ejaculated' about 15 times in the first 20 pages to mean 'exclaimed.' ('"Wretched inmates!" I ejaculated mentally.') Otherwise, I was both bored and confused. I may come back to it someday, but probably not. I think I'll pick up the 3rd Twilight book instead."
"Very tedious. But on the bright side, now I can grade papers on this work intelligently."
SHAKESPEARE - ROMEO AND JULIET
"Geez... why do so many people insist that this is the PERFECT Shakespeare play for 9th graders? I don't think I can teach it again. HELP!!! I am drowning in a ridiculous love story that gets compared to gang warfare all the time."
"I don't even think Shakespeare wrote this one, it was probably one of those poseurs. Ugh! I had to teach this play and pretend I liked it! That was not fun."
"I am so so so tired of this play. It is an excellent introduction to Shakespeare for young readers (like the freshmen I teach it to) but it is defintely one of Shakespeare's weakest plays. (i.e What's up with all of the plot summary in the dialogue?)"
"I'm sick of this crummy work getting accolades from the literary adult world. Haven't kids suffered enough?"
CHILDREN CAN NEVER SUFFER ENOUGH
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
THE BEST OF JUNE
THOMAS MANN - DEATH IN VENICE
"The boy represents 'ideal beauty', but why? I know that may seem like a dumb question to some, but, I never quite got it. Why did HE have to represent it?"
EMILY BRONTE - WUTHERING HEIGHTS
"I would never really reccomend this book to anyone, except for Osama Bin Laden. He can read this book."
"When I first picked up Wuthering Heights, my English teacher warned me that frame tale, the literary style of a story within a story, is the most complicated style there is. I shrugged my shoulders and turned the page. After all, I’ve done it before.
But, man, Wuthering Heights is difficult with a capital DIFFICULT. And I’m still not quite sure I understand because, as painful as this is to admit, I didn’t know the housekeeper was narrating until I looked it up on SparkNotes. I tried to get into this 'classic' but by the time I reached the halfway point, I was frustrated beyond belief ... And this book is told in the most boring way ever, all from the point of view of one servant woman. She just drones on and on and on ... I expected a lot from Wuthering Heights, especially after it was referenced in Twilight, but I was sorely disappointed."
"The lack of plausable discription takes its toll on this could be great story. At one point in the book while discribing a trellus of flowers it was depicted as follows: 'I noticed that there were flowers surrounding the barn.'. Not to be rude... but... What kind of barn was it? was it old, or new, or red, or green? Flowers? What kind? What color? This very bland discription of what MAY be a older barn that MAY have help horses, and that MAY have had flowers the MAY have been yellow creats no mental image of the area that MAY exist. Wuthering Heights was once descibed as a gloomy building. I mean, excuse me? A gloomy building? Is it 2 stories high, or maby 3? What color is it? Surroundings?"
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE - THE SCARLET LETTER
"Most of the 'alliteration' in this book don't really mean anything further than what was said. On the count of it, many of the characters just seem like shallow pools ... The writing style, yes, while appropriate for the times, was highly boring to follow. There was little to actually make the book interesting, and the storyline felt altogether wanting, and lacking."
TOLSTOY - WAR AND PEACE
"I will always hate tolstoy for ruining War & Peace for me."
HENRIK IBSEN - A DOLL'S HOUSE
"What the hell?? I could of wrote this book. And I'm not a writer."
SAPPHO - POEMS AND FRAGMENTS
"Lyric poetry is dead. Why?
Because if poetry is nothing more than communication, we can do a hell of a lot better describing something with a picture or a song or a youtube video. In fact, it would be so hard to make our descriptions more beautiful and important than a mere daugerrotype that we should stop trying ... lyric poetry is fucking useless.
Unless your entire life is based on being some pathetic emo kid, the lyric won't get you far (and even Keats wrote narratives, y'all). Sappho sucks, the reason we have western culture is named Homer, and we poets better wake up to that fact or we will be about as relevant as Jazz."
SHAKESPEARE - MEASURE FOR MEASURE
"The fact that I don't know anyone who's read this speaks to the plain and simple fact that it sucks."
OVID - METAMORPHOSES
"The use of the gods names in Roman, not Greek. I realize Ovid was writing as a Roman, but I mostly know my Greek mythology with Greek names. I found it hard to equate the Roman name with the Greek name. Add to that the difficultly of using multiple names or odd descriptors for someone and the task of figuring out who is being talked about can be rough (son of _____ was very common, actually there's an appendix in the front of the book for all of these, it's a few pages long)."
ST AUGUSTINE - CONFESSIONS
"If there is a hell lets hope this bastard is there."
"The boy represents 'ideal beauty', but why? I know that may seem like a dumb question to some, but, I never quite got it. Why did HE have to represent it?"
EMILY BRONTE - WUTHERING HEIGHTS
"I would never really reccomend this book to anyone, except for Osama Bin Laden. He can read this book."
"When I first picked up Wuthering Heights, my English teacher warned me that frame tale, the literary style of a story within a story, is the most complicated style there is. I shrugged my shoulders and turned the page. After all, I’ve done it before.
But, man, Wuthering Heights is difficult with a capital DIFFICULT. And I’m still not quite sure I understand because, as painful as this is to admit, I didn’t know the housekeeper was narrating until I looked it up on SparkNotes. I tried to get into this 'classic' but by the time I reached the halfway point, I was frustrated beyond belief ... And this book is told in the most boring way ever, all from the point of view of one servant woman. She just drones on and on and on ... I expected a lot from Wuthering Heights, especially after it was referenced in Twilight, but I was sorely disappointed."
"The lack of plausable discription takes its toll on this could be great story. At one point in the book while discribing a trellus of flowers it was depicted as follows: 'I noticed that there were flowers surrounding the barn.'. Not to be rude... but... What kind of barn was it? was it old, or new, or red, or green? Flowers? What kind? What color? This very bland discription of what MAY be a older barn that MAY have help horses, and that MAY have had flowers the MAY have been yellow creats no mental image of the area that MAY exist. Wuthering Heights was once descibed as a gloomy building. I mean, excuse me? A gloomy building? Is it 2 stories high, or maby 3? What color is it? Surroundings?"
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE - THE SCARLET LETTER
"Most of the 'alliteration' in this book don't really mean anything further than what was said. On the count of it, many of the characters just seem like shallow pools ... The writing style, yes, while appropriate for the times, was highly boring to follow. There was little to actually make the book interesting, and the storyline felt altogether wanting, and lacking."
TOLSTOY - WAR AND PEACE
"I will always hate tolstoy for ruining War & Peace for me."
HENRIK IBSEN - A DOLL'S HOUSE
"What the hell?? I could of wrote this book. And I'm not a writer."
SAPPHO - POEMS AND FRAGMENTS
"Lyric poetry is dead. Why?
Because if poetry is nothing more than communication, we can do a hell of a lot better describing something with a picture or a song or a youtube video. In fact, it would be so hard to make our descriptions more beautiful and important than a mere daugerrotype that we should stop trying ... lyric poetry is fucking useless.
Unless your entire life is based on being some pathetic emo kid, the lyric won't get you far (and even Keats wrote narratives, y'all). Sappho sucks, the reason we have western culture is named Homer, and we poets better wake up to that fact or we will be about as relevant as Jazz."
SHAKESPEARE - MEASURE FOR MEASURE
"The fact that I don't know anyone who's read this speaks to the plain and simple fact that it sucks."
OVID - METAMORPHOSES
"The use of the gods names in Roman, not Greek. I realize Ovid was writing as a Roman, but I mostly know my Greek mythology with Greek names. I found it hard to equate the Roman name with the Greek name. Add to that the difficultly of using multiple names or odd descriptors for someone and the task of figuring out who is being talked about can be rough (son of _____ was very common, actually there's an appendix in the front of the book for all of these, it's a few pages long)."
ST AUGUSTINE - CONFESSIONS
"If there is a hell lets hope this bastard is there."
Monday, June 27, 2011
St Augustine - Confessions
"SPOILER ALERT!!
Bad
+Bad
+Bad
+Bad
+Bad
+Bad
+Bad
+Jesus
= Confessions of St. Augustine"
"Why do people feel the need to publish all of their deep dark thoughts and secrets? The LAST title I'd ever pick for a book is 'confessions.'"
"If you're contemplating suicide (a real attempt), this would be the wind at your back."
"I had always read that augustine was this great thinker and shaper of Christianity. Well he shaped it alright. Ugh. Now I know where all the neuroses started. I think the most telling part of the story was when he was talking about his mother who was a slave. Because she was ashamed of being called a drunk by her master's daughter she would refuse to allow her own children, including Augustine, to drink water, because it was a sin of the flesh. At his mother's death bed Augustine promised to never take pleasure in the real world but would hope for happiness in the after life. There you go. 'Mom I want you to rest easy knowing that I'm going to stay here and be miserable.' F'd up."
"his writing is so dense as to be neigh inpenetrable."
"I couldn't get through it (this was my second try). Augustine is utterly self-consumed, as a writer he never says in five words what he can say in forty, and there are long stretches spent on refuting what seem to the modern reader very silly ideas like astrology. But it might all be bearable if not for the interminable self-prostration and sycophancy (e.g. Oh Lord, You who are so unimaginable great and wise, and I who am but a puny digusting worm, etc.)"
"Read this for a Early Mideavel Culture class in college. It went on and on. I think Augustine like to hear himself talk"
"most of it is self-righteous dogmatic crap with a majorly and stupidly overdeveloped sense of self-flagellation for the smallest of minor transgressions (including, famously, stealing apples while he was a boy)."
"I believe this will be the only book I will never finish, as this drab of uncessant praise and philosophy never ends, and is forced down your throat. I don't know about you, but I don't like anything forced down my throat."
"If there is a hell lets hope this bastard is there."
Bad
+Bad
+Bad
+Bad
+Bad
+Bad
+Bad
+Jesus
= Confessions of St. Augustine"
"Why do people feel the need to publish all of their deep dark thoughts and secrets? The LAST title I'd ever pick for a book is 'confessions.'"
"If you're contemplating suicide (a real attempt), this would be the wind at your back."
"I had always read that augustine was this great thinker and shaper of Christianity. Well he shaped it alright. Ugh. Now I know where all the neuroses started. I think the most telling part of the story was when he was talking about his mother who was a slave. Because she was ashamed of being called a drunk by her master's daughter she would refuse to allow her own children, including Augustine, to drink water, because it was a sin of the flesh. At his mother's death bed Augustine promised to never take pleasure in the real world but would hope for happiness in the after life. There you go. 'Mom I want you to rest easy knowing that I'm going to stay here and be miserable.' F'd up."
"his writing is so dense as to be neigh inpenetrable."
"I couldn't get through it (this was my second try). Augustine is utterly self-consumed, as a writer he never says in five words what he can say in forty, and there are long stretches spent on refuting what seem to the modern reader very silly ideas like astrology. But it might all be bearable if not for the interminable self-prostration and sycophancy (e.g. Oh Lord, You who are so unimaginable great and wise, and I who am but a puny digusting worm, etc.)"
"Read this for a Early Mideavel Culture class in college. It went on and on. I think Augustine like to hear himself talk"
"most of it is self-righteous dogmatic crap with a majorly and stupidly overdeveloped sense of self-flagellation for the smallest of minor transgressions (including, famously, stealing apples while he was a boy)."
"I believe this will be the only book I will never finish, as this drab of uncessant praise and philosophy never ends, and is forced down your throat. I don't know about you, but I don't like anything forced down my throat."
"If there is a hell lets hope this bastard is there."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)