Thanks for clarifying that, I thought I was stupid because I couldn't understand a word he said..........
As a side note, I think I was supposed to read The Great Gatsby in high school but I don't think I did......maybe it was the Cliff Notes.
IMHO, books like that and Shakespear and A Tale of Two Cities should not be required reading for high schoolers since the majority of them, like me, don't have the intellectual capacity to understand the author. And I still don't......
I tend to agree. The novels of the Romance Period would be better fare. Captain Blood, The Three Musketeers, Scaramouche, Treasure Island, The Count of Monte Cristo all have interesting plot lines and action to keep a boy and girl interested. Gatsby is too tough for that age. As for Catcher in the Rye, I have never been able to make myself like it. Even less Frannie and Zooey.
If you want to enjoy Shakespeare, and you came of age in the MTV era (or at least could enjoy Miami Vice), may I recommend Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet? (The same director is about to release The Great Gatsby, starring the same lead, Leonardo DiCaprio.)
Luhrman didn’t modernize the language, but he cleverly used visual clues to help people understand what the characters were talking about.