Edit to say because I kinda feel bad now: I have nothing against English teachers! Please don’t send your mafia of learned lit nerds after me! …Or do, lit nerds are hot.
Edit to say because I kinda feel bad now: I have nothing against English teachers! Please don’t send your mafia of learned lit nerds after me! …Or do, lit nerds are hot.
My brain is having trouble with the idea that anyone could read any of the books I just listed and come away feeling anything othet than revulsion
Terry Pratchett is great and all, but don’t you have any interest in learning new things? The Jungle is essentially journalism, it exposed real shit that was happening in our own country… and being fed to us. It changed minds. It basically led to the creation of the food and drug administration. It saved lives. That’s a powerful work of art. Revulsion is the intended response. It’s kind of a horror novel.
The other books you listed…. How about wonder? Hope? Fear? Fascination? Dread? Excitement? At least they make you feel something. Boredom is what kills love for reading in my experience. None of the books you listed are boring.
And Terry Pratchett is boring? Reading Thud! and exploring racial tensions through the lens of British humor is not worth doing because it doesn’t give me the thrill of watching someone go out of the frying pan and into the fire, only to realize the “fire” was just a bigger frying pan which he has just come out of and is currently on a downward trajectory, over and over again, for 300-odd pages?
Even apart from that, you of course do you, but if I’m going to read a book for high school, boredom is WAY preferable to revulsion. I’d rather read a physics textbook word for word than be forced to continue reading every time someone dies.
Books like The Jungle are undoubtedly important from a journalistic standpoint, and having students read them and analyze them as such is important, but 1) I’d like to do that and not talk about what the main character is thinking and 2) I’d like some books that aren’t …that… thrown in for variety. If my parents didn’t thrust their Pratchett stash upon me at an early age I might’ve grown up thinking all Serious Grown-Up Literature was like that.
I’m absolutely not denigrating Pratchett or calling him boring. I sincerely think he’s great. I just think those other books are pretty great too. They’re all really interesting reads. I don’t mind reading disturbing material though, my first grown-up novel was The Shining swiped from my dad’s bookshelf.😅