When I was a teenager, I would have rather taken a beating than read Beowulf or Hardy. Come to think of it I did both. I much preferred Michael Crichton's rendition of Beowulf, "The Thirteenth Warrior."
As for Dickens, there is plenty of violence, child abuse and class warfare in his stuff. What do people want their teenagers to read in school anyway? Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Tom Swift hardly qualify as literature.
22 posted on 08/16/2007 7:10:58 AM PDT by CholeraJoe
("I shall need the clankers.")