/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2924152]

You're a high school English teacher. What books do you make your kids read?

[Anonymous No.2924160]

The Cantos - Pound

The Twilight Saga - Meyer

[Anonymous No.2924162]

Books

[Anonymous No.2924167]

Mother Night
TCoL49
Portrait of the Artist
Catch 22
Notes From Underground
King Lear
Franny and Zooey
The Trial

[Anonymous No.2924168]

Finnegans Wake. Spend all year on it.

[Anonymous No.2924169]

sage

[Anonymous No.2924172]

Looking for Alaska, Catcher in the Rye & The Body - for coming of age type rubbish

Frankenstein and various Romantic poetry - for Gothic and Romanticism

The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises and The Last Decade for early 20th century lit

Animal Farm and Slaughterhouse 5 for fun if we have the time.

[Anonymous No.2924176]

I dunno. Whatever they want.

[Anonymous No.2924181]

>>2924168
the whole class fails

[Anonymous No.2924182]

>>2924176

Have fun with your Hunger Games lessons

[Anonymous No.2924183]

Younger class

To Kill A Mockingbird, Animal Farm, Adventures of Arthur Pym


Older class

1984, On The Road, Old Man and the Sea,

[Anonymous No.2924184]

what kind of course am I supposed to be teaching?

[Anonymous No.2924186]

>>2924182

I could do that. I'd much rather teach them how to read than what to read.

[Anonymous No.2924188]

>>2924186

Hunger Games won't teach them how to read. It'll teach them how to passively consume content without engaging it.

[Anonymous No.2924189]

Heart of Darkness
Catch-22
The Good Soldier
The Sound and the Fury
The Odyssey
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet
Macbeth

[Anonymous No.2924192]

For a world lit class? If I could narrow it down to 20th century

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
stories of Lu Xun
stories of Jorge Luis Borges
stories by Bruno Schulz
stories by Angela Carter
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
some Beckett, Kafka and Mann

and then other shit, I dunno, I'm bored of this now

[Anonymous No.2924194]

>>2924188

I'm not expecting a book to teach anyone how to read. That's my job, no?

[Anonymous No.2924195]

Fuck all fiction, we're starting with excerpts from Adler & Van Doren's "How To Read A Book."

>>2924152
Also,
>"I Heart Nerds"

Oh lawdy, that plot.

[Anonymous No.2924201]

>>2924160

10/10

[Anonymous No.2924203]

>>2924194

High schoolers already know how to read. Your job is to teach them to read closely and attentively, to engage the work with thought and struggle. Reading The Hunger Games only hinders this.

[Anonymous No.2924206]

I like the "create a syllabus if you were a literature professor" threads better. They're more creative, at least.

[Franz !!8ZELb56UWUx No.2924209]

>>2924195
Oh, look. People other than me mentioning that book.

[Anonymous No.2924210]

>>2924203

I disagree. I haven't read The Hunger Games, I've only seen the movie. But there's lots to engage with in the story. I would be stoked to teach it. Plus the main characters are young, which is a plus.

[Anonymous No.2924211]

The Great Gatsby
On The Road
The Crying of Lot 49
White Noise
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

[Anonymous No.2924212]

>>2924203

>Your job is to teach them to read closely and attentively, to engage the work with thought and struggle.

That's what I mean by 'to read'.

Please explain why they I can teach them to engage Steinbeck but not Collins.

Please explain why, if I were to assign papers on The Hunger Games, I wouldn't receive anything in return.

If you say "because there's nothing there" I'll slap you.

[Anonymous No.2924213]

>>2924203
actually no, not the guy who wants to teach Hunger Games, but Hunger Games can be very good example when teaching how to engage a written work with thought and struggle and not be a blind trend follower/consumer

[Jeff Mangum Died For Your Sins !rAl8Mz2mp2 No.2924219]

Homer, Shakespeare, The Bible. Everything else is supplementary.

[Anonymous No.2924224]

>>2924209
I've only seen it mentioned on here once or twice.

[Anonymous No.2924228]

>>2924212

>Please explain why they I can teach them to engage Steinbeck but not Collins.

You can teach them to engage both, in the same fashion that both Ulysses and Spot the Dog can be engaged

[Franz !!8ZELb56UWUx No.2924236]

>>2924224
I've never seen anyone else talk about it. I always post it whenever I see a "I'm bad at reading what do I do?" thread - which has become quite often.

[Anonymous No.2924241]

>>2924211

Actually had a class very similar to this my senior year. Really opened me up to lit.

[Anonymous No.2924245]

50 shades of gray. But only my female students.

[Anonymous No.2924248]

>>2924195
>>2924209
>>2924224
>>2924236

Anyone have an ebook of it?

[Anonymous No.2924249]

American Lit:
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The Great Gatsby
Slaughterhouse Five
Blood Meridian
Neuromancer

[Anonymous No.2924274]

Life of Pi for class discussion and undestanding how to see the author's intentions in writing the book (I don't think it is a master piece, but it full of examples, it also is very easy and interesting to make an analysis)

Then I would suggest some books:
The Stranger
Clockwork Orange
1984
A Hundred Years of solitude
The Trial
Crime and Punishment
etc
(or whatever the student likes, assuming it can be done and it is not something like RA Salvatore or anything)

for a report/ Essay on the book

[Anonymous No.2924282]

>>2924183
>On The Road
Really?

[Anonymous No.2924293]

This would be one of them for sure.

And i'd fail any student who didn't appreciate it properly (because high school teachers can do whatever).

[Anonymous No.2924320]

i'd probably just make them read shakespeare the whole time. just keep reading it. and then the bible. and maybe homer.

[Anonymous No.2924398]

>>2924189
You will never get an entire class of high schoolers to appreciate The Sound and the Fury. Most of them will never even finish the Benjy section.

[Anonymous No.2924415]

Whatever the fuck they want

>> Be in high school
>> Reading stuff like 1984, we, ect
>> Get told off
>> Have to do a project on some shitty sports novel

[Anonymous No.2924445]

I wonder if you could have half the class read Battle Royale and the other half read the Hunger Games and do some compare/contrast sort of business.

[Anonymous No.2924482]

A Farewell to Arms
Bluebeard
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Lost World
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Master and Margarita

[Anonymous No.2924541]

Definitely American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

[Anonymous No.2924563]

>1984/Brave New World/We, with a unit comparing them
>The Sun Also Rises
>Slaughterhouse-5 or God Bless You Mr Rosewater
>A Clockwork Orange
>A unit devoted to Conrad
>Finally, Nietzsche/Santayana's commentaries on him

I'd get fired in a heartbeat, wouldn't I?

[Anonymous No.2924565]

ITT: everyone teaches the same books

Myself included.

[Anonymous No.2924571]

>>2924183
Basically this.
>>2924167
Have you actually read To Kill A Mockingbird? It's shit.

[Anonymous No.2924577]

I would make them read mythology influential on English literature. I don't think my 6th grade education on mythology was nearly enough and I didn't appreciate it, so in high school I would try and expound allegory, because without knowledge of folk literature you won't fully understand most academic literature. I'd then move on to Shakespeare and things like that which are also essential.

Also my school made me read shitty American authors most of the time and I am mad at the forced nationalism when there was so much better literature to read.

[Anonymous No.2924584]

>>2924577
>shitty American authors
>American authors
>shitty

I disagree with that.

[Anonymous No.2924588]

>>2924577
I think music and literature are the two places that I will never try to defend the US. At least my HS made each English class read at least one of Shakespeare's plays.

[Anonymous No.2924591]

>>2924577
>Shitty American Authors
You mean like stupid teen novels, or things of actual worth, like Hemingway, Vonnegut and Clarke?

[Anonymous No.2924594]

1. The Odyssey
2. The Inferno
3. Madame Bovary
4. Anna Karenina

lolenglish

[Anonymous No.2924595]

>>2924584
No, but To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, etc are not very good in my opinion. I wouldn't care so much if we were taught equal amounts of more essential literature. To their credit, we did read Poe and a few Enlightenment writers who were pretty enjoyable.

My gripe is that they taught those books over Shakespeare (read one or two plays), Homer (none, ever), or anything like that so essential to modern literature.

[Anonymous No.2924601]

>>2924595
>>2924571
Oh thank god. I just started browsing /lit/ today and I had been thinking about how I don't like To Kill A Mockingbird.

[Anonymous No.2924602]

>>2924594

Whoops, meant to add translators.

trans. Fagles, Durling & Martinez, Davis, Pevear & Volokhonsky

[Anonymous No.2924605]

>>2924595
Oh then I can understand why you'd be upset. At my highschool our required reading was generally varied and we only read a couple of books by American authors, so when I read in my free time most of the authors were American.

But yeah, you can't teach Mockingbird over Shakespeare or the Odyssey.

[Anonymous No.2924606]

>>2924591
We never read those, no. They would be a step up - not sure if I'd include those in high school but I didn't mean to imply all American writers were shitty (though as a whole American writers have hardly written enough to compare to the entire European canon)

[Anonymous No.2924610]

>>2924595
Are you fucking serious? No Homer? Did you read any Greek tragedies at all?
>>2924601
I hope you enjoy your stay anon.

[Anonymous No.2924612]

>>2924606
Well of course, America hasn't had as long of an intellectual history as Europe.

I agree with you though. The idiot that says To Kill a Mockingbird is more important than the Odyssey is a fucking moron. The problem is that most students in High School are too bloody stupid to understand things like that...

[Anonymous No.2924614]

>>2924571
Switch those.

[Anonymous No.2924616]

>>2924610
Nope, not until recently on my own. Embarrassing really, and it's maybe my favorite area of literature now

[Anonymous No.2924632]

Blood Meridian

If I could get away with it

[Anonymous No.2924644]

I am an actual high school English teacher in Japan. I teach at a private international school.

I teach grade 12.


My reading list goes as follows, for this year:

- P.G. Wodehouse
( Code of The Woosters, Jeeves & The Mating Season, Crime Wave at Blandings)

- Voltaire
(Candide)

- Shakespeare
( Merchant of Venice )

- Homer
(The Odyssey, Selected passages)

We are in a constant state of reading and discussion. The way my classes are constructed seems more of a book club, rather than a Lit. class.

My students sit around in a circle in our ''big comfy chairs'' and we discuss what we've read in private or in class. I allow them to discuss their ideas and not spoon-feed them the answers. I'm very proud of how far they have come and how willing they are to participate in class.

[Anonymous No.2924650]

>>2924644

Forgot to mention:

Grade 11 does this:

Oscar Wilde
( Ballad of Reading Gaol )

Shakespeare
(Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream)

Dante
(Inferno)

Milton
(Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained)

[Anonymous No.2924655]

"Shoplifting from American Apparel" by Tao Lin. Great book, you've probably never heard of it.

[Anonymous No.2924660]

>>2924584
Hemmingway, Vonnegut, and the majority of other American writers you have are shit.

I would say your saving grace would be Mark Twain or Henry Miller.

All of the other novels I have ever read from the states is the same sort of book structure. It's sad really.

[Anonymous No.2924661]

>>2924660
You're saying that Vonnegut and Hemingway use the same structure?

[Anonymous No.2924663]

>>2924660
You're British? Go back to reading your Dickens, little Timmy.

[Anonymous No.2924666]

The Kite Runner
Night
The Kite Runner Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
All of Toni Morrison's books
Some book by a gay guy who has AIDS? It would be good if he were an Israeli too

[Anonymous No.2924669]

>>2924663
I will stay content with my Dickens, Shakespeare, Milton,Wodehouse, Austen, Beevor, O'Brian, Rushdie, Hawking, Fry, Waugh, Chaucer, and many many other writers.

>>2924661
Down with the established life, man. It's like, totally real in (insert either name) here writes.

[Anonymous No.2924679]

>>2924669
>Austen

Clearly this poster has sexual congress with animals

[Anonymous No.2924688]

>>2924679
not this poster ->>2924669
but i got to disagree with you. austen is fucking awesome. im a guy and ill admit it, i like pride & prejudice.

[Mean Mr. Milkman No.2924695]

I think Siddhartha could be a good "intro to alternate philosophies" book, and the prose is simple enough for students to keep up with.

Problem is, some parents might get pissy about the "alternate philosophies" thing.

[Anonymous No.2924700]

>>2924695
You'd be surprised at what they teach in schools outside of the US. When I went to German high school on an exchange program, their English class was reading Satre for Beginners (in a semi-comic book form). We also read A Clockwork Orange, it was fucking amazing. German school was fantastic...

[Anonymous No.2924704]

Is that what girls are wearing to high school these days? Those fucking high heels? Shit, I should have been a teacher.

[Anonymous No.2924773]

Haven't been lurking /lit very long so dont know how often this is done, but anyway.
Book you are currently reading thread???

Book: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Current page: 34
First thoughts: I'm finding Brave New World to be a very exciting read, within the first few chapters Huxley has already shocked me with his imagination to how society could be run. The idea of genetic engineering is marvelous but also disturbing and I am keen to see where this book takes me.

[Anonymous No.2924774]

OHHH FUCK ^^^^ sorry makeway for the newfag

[Anonymous No.2924776]

>>2924695
>>2924700

Siddhartha was assigned reading for us in either 9th or 10th grade. I went to a public school in the South.

[Anonymous No.2924808]

Nothing. The kids don't want to read books and will spark-notes them anyways. The two kids that actually enjoy literature and have the ability to discuss it can do that on their own. Everyone else gets grammar packets.

[Anonymous No.2925124]

>>2924808

I see we have an actual high school teacher here, thanks for ruining the world you incompetent cunt.

[Anonymous No.2925391]

>>2924644
I had a teacher in school just like you. You are the teachers that no one forgets and I just want to say thank you. Teachers like this need to be in every subject because they make you want to learn.

[Anonymous No.2925441]

>>2924189
Sounds like you taught my english class.

[Anonymous No.2925449]

I don't.

I don't want to be a fucking teacher. I've spent 23 years in education, I'm not going back for more, whether it's for me or anyone else.

The kids that want to read will read, the ones that don't will screw and get drunk and do drugs and maths and all that other wacky, unlikeable shit.

[Anonymous No.2925455]

So there are two actual teachers ITT? Fuckin' A. I think this is the most collected form of intellectuals/educators we've had on /lit

[Anonymous No.2925496]

>>2925455
>intellectuals
>teachers


ahahahahaha

[Nutrient Fan No.2926999]

Lost Horizon
Heart of Darkness
National Geographic Magazine
Plato's Republic
Wall-street
A Christmas Carol
Hamlet
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
A Brave New World
The Bible
The Odyssey
Mein Kampf
The Communist Manifesto

[Anonymous No.2927055]

A Song of Ice and Fire, because I'm a really lazy history teacher.

[Anonymous No.2927077]

Infinite Jest, 75 pages a day.

[Anonymous No.2927114]

>>2927077

This is actually a great idea

[Anonymous No.2927148]

>>2924188
>>2924211
>>2924577
>>2924588
>>2924644
>>2924655
>>2924666
>>2924688
>>2924700
>>2925455
>>2926999
>>2927055
>>2927077

[Anonymous No.2927176]

Uh...
>The Communist Manifesto
>Animal farm
>1984

[Anonymous No.2927187]

>>2927148
>>>/v/

[Anonymous No.2927296]

I went to a poor public school in rural Ohio. When I was in high school, everyone had to take 4 years of English. My English teacher for my senior year taught English Literature. It was awesome.

[Anonymous No.2927313]

>>2924211
Good list. I totally agree about On the Road. I didn't like it much but it would fit perfectly in a high school class. The idea of the open road and the beauty of humanity is always a great thing to learn about at an early age.
Good balance

[Anonymous No.2927328]

>>2924219

CORRECT.

[Anonymous No.2927345]

>>2927328

Provided it's the King James Version, of course.

[Anonymous No.2927518]

>>2926999
The Bible is the most intellectually lazy and poorly thought out book ever written by anonymous camel herders.

[Anonymous No.2927520]

>>2927518

[Anonymous No.2927526]

The Gaunt's Ghosts series.

[Anonymous No.2927718]

Wetlands and only wetlands, everything else just isn't edgy enough

[Anonymous No.2927738]

Animal Farm
1984
The Stranger
A Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Catcher in the Rye
Of Mice and Men
Flowers for Algernon
A Brave New World
The Great Gatsby
Frankenstein

>based on these books, does anyone suggest a book for?

[Anonymous No.2927749]

>>2927518
Perhaps in English, but in Hebrew it's a beautiful poetic object, and - of course - it isn't 'intellectual' at all, although neither is Homer, and intellectuality (literary self-consciousness really) is not the sole or even the main criterion of a great work of literature.

[Anonymous No.2927754]

>>2927148

[Anonymous No.2927755]

>>2927754
>soclose.jpg

[Anonymous No.2927765]

>>2924188
>>2924211
>>2924577
>>2924588
>>2924644
>>2924655
>>2924666
>>2924688
>>2924700
>>2925455
>>2926999
>>2927055
>>2927077
>>2927755

>typical dumbass reaction

Enough with your "dubs" shit.

[Anonymous No.2927769]

>>2924183
>Adventures of Arthur Pym
Why would you do this to people?!

[Anonymous No.2927770]

>>2924188
> It'll teach them how to passively consume content without engaging it.
Not if he has them, ya know, engage it.

[Anonymous No.2928757]

>>2927770
How does one engage a book within which there is nothing to engage? And don't even pretend that simple application of contemporary literary theories is in any meaningful way engaging the text