Yeah, because reading is just so hard, dontchaknow?
When I was in jr and sr high, I’d go to the library every Saturday and get my allotted three books out and read all weekend.
One of my daughters is reading ‘Crime and Punishment’ for a 9th grade class. She doesn’t live NY state though.
Students can swipe right and left, and spend hours on end posting 10-word reviews on tiktok, but struggle to compose two related paragraphs? Why are they given a passing grade, then?
Everyone is addicted to technology.
The parents didn’t instill a love of reading in their children. Our home was filled with books. All my children loved reading from an early age. One of them found long novels boring, but he would curl up with other books.
With that said, even though I myself always loved books, too, I don’t think ‘literature’ should be a required course for all majors. JMHO.
Very.
The big ones, the ones you are almost guaranteed to read, are the Iliad (they gave us a free copy during Orientation, so that was nice), the Odyssey, the Genesis part of the Bible, Herodotus’ The Histories (highly underrated among students), something by Aeschylus, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, Plato’s Symposium, the Aeneid, (pauses to breathe) Augustine’s Confessions (bleh), Dante’s Inferno (pretty cool), Montaigne’s Essays (this one actually seems to get dropped a lot), King Lear, Don Quixote, Pride and Prejudice, Crime and Punishment, and To the Lighthouse.
I hear they added one of Toni Morrison’s novels as well, though I can’t tell you how likely it is to be incorporated into a syllabus yet.
the Iliad
the Odyssey
the Genesis part of the Bible
Herodotus’ The Histories
something by Aeschylus
Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War
Plato’s Symposium
the Aeneid
Augustine’s Confessions
Dante’s Inferno
Montaigne’s Essays
King Lear
Don Quixote
Pride and Prejudice
Crime and Punishment
To the Lighthouse
Douglas Dalgleish, a Professor at Arizona State, once assigned 18 books to read and in the next class I took with him as the Prof, he held back a little and only assigned 16 books. A great lecturer, his classes were fast paced and very dense with information. I can still read quite quickly because of him. He is sorely missed.
I thought those 600-page Harry Potter books gave all those kids a love of reading and of getting an education. What happened?
They need cliffs notes for the cliffs notes.
I’ve always loved to read, and used to consume them by the pound, almost. 600 pages, couple of days. Alot of information I have found valuable in my life came from reading for pleasure.
Having said that most “important literature” is dry as sand. IMHO, such emphasis on “the classics” is undeserved and unnecessary fluff to drive up tuition costs.
Reading is racist, didn’t ya know?
I used to read all the time and then the Internet came.
" ... And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn't just for fags and neither was writing. People wrote books and movies, movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!"
When she was pregnant with me my Mom read all the Tarzan and John Carter books aloud, plus Jules Verne’s works. I’ve been a voracious reader ever since. Can’t do the e-book thing, have to have the real thing in my hands.
The biggest problem is attention span. College-aged kids never learned to focus for long periods of time (something that video games can actually help improve, especially when working with others in-game is required). Their entire lives are in snippets; Tweets, Insta Stories, Fascistbook posts, and even a lot of podcast material can be found truncated.
I happily read - and write. Most of it has been fiction as of late, though.
Fah! Insect ranchers destined for the Farming Collectives of the People’s Paradise shouldn’t waste their time “reading”.
This ain’t gonna’ work out. We really are headed for an idiocracy.
The Pearl by John Steinbeck (New York: Viking, 1947)
The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966)
Whirlwind: An Account of Marshal Tito’s Rise to Power by Stephen Clissold (New York: Philosophical, 1949)
A Puppet No More: The True Adventure of Tony Kemeny and His Life-Long Quest for Freedom by Tony Kemeny (Buena Park, Calif., Thomas Litho & Print, 1963)
The Fate of Admiral Kolchak by Peter Fleming (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1963)
This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness by T. R. Fehrenbach (New York: Macmillan, 1963)
Up Ship! By Charles E. Rosendahl (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1931)
The Ragged, Rugged Warriors by Martin Caidin (New York: Dutton, 1966)
Way of a Fighter: The Memoirs of Claire L. Chennault by Claire Lee Chennault (New York: Putnam, 1949)
Jutland by Donald Macintyre (New York: Norton, 1958)