The Question:  What do you think of required reading in school?

My thoughts:

While I loved the idea of reading novels for credit, and fully appreciate how important a part of the curriculum it is, I never could quite enjoy required reading no matter how much I wanted to.

My problem with required reading was always the way that the books were taught. I mean yes, there were always some boring ones (Animal Farm can die, honestly), but even the good ones were often made boring just by the way they were taught to us.

No original thought allowed, no discussion of the literary impact of the books, no appreciation of their impact on popular culture of the times they were published, no analysis deeper than “can you spot the foreshadowing” was allowed. We weren’t even allowed to voice displeasure with the text. I got kicked out of class for saying that I didn’t like Lord of the Flies. (Literally just that, nothing more, nothing inappropriate.)

It was just ridiculously unenjoyable, almost intentionally so.

I also always thought it might be fun if they would let us vote as a class to pick one book a year (from a list of acceptable books) so that at least once we could be reading something we chose.

I’d love to know what you guys thought of required reading in schools and what made you feel the way you do!

I’ll admit, until high school I was one of those “why do I have to pick it apart?” kind of people. I either liked a book or I didn’t. And with the exception of Harry Potter — which I wouldn’t even say I looked at critically at the time, just that I talked about what was happening in the books quite a lot — I didn’t really have in-depth discussions about books (my friends weren’t readers).

Then in 9th grade there was this discussion of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and I got way more into it than I expected to. I wound up making a connection that shocked my teacher and sent the class discussion in a totally different direction and ended with the teacher giving me French candies and taking a bunch of notes to talk about that thing with future classes. She told us that in 9 years of teaching Ender’s Game she had never made that connection herself, nor had any of her students. Needless to say I left class with a new appreciation for analyzing novels!

These days I have three main reasons for looking deeper into the books I read:

1. If it’s a book I enjoyed, analyzing it helps me review it so I might convince others to read it too. The more specifics I read in a review the more likely I am to take the reviewer’s recommendation, so I try to apply that to my own reviews.
2. If it’s a book I didn’t enjoy, I’ve found dissecting it to be incredibly cathartic. There’s nothing like digging into a disappointing book to lay out all the reasons it didn’t measure up! And if you’re lucky enough to know someone else who hated it, the two of you can sit for hours and completely eviscerate it and when you’re done you’ll have cured yourself of the feeling that you just wasted a whole day of your life on crap.
3. The third and most important reason (to me at least) is that if I don’t analyze a book just a little I won’t remember it! No matter how much I enjoy a novel, if I don’t get some chance to talk about it, even just a little, I’m likely to forget everything that happened. Which admittedly can be nice when it comes to rereading a book, but overall I’d rather remember the story the first time!

Now this isn’t to say I make myself delve deep into everything I read. Sometimes I just don’t have the energy for it, or if it’s one of my favorite books I’ll have read it so many times it wouldn’t make sense to analyze it every single time I reread it. But I try to do a little. That’s part of the reason I started doing a monthly wrap-up post, so I’d have to say at least 2 things (favorite/least favorite thing) about every book I read.
It would be more fun if I had people to analyze my books with, instead of always screaming into the void on wordpress and tumblr, but anti-social beggars can’t be choosers!

I do run into one big recurring problem though:
I find it ridiculously hard to analyze a book I really like! The more I like the book, the harder it is for me to pick it apart into individual elements. I have yet to come up with any sort of solution to this problem though. Instead I just stare at the book for a ridiculously long time and eventually in a week or so I either manage to cobble together a review or I give up.

I’d love to know if other people have the same problem, and if they have any solutions.
Which is easier for y’all, analyzing a book you love or a book you hate?