[linda_22003]

"A book you didn't want to read leaves your head the day the assignment is done and you will never consider it again - or consider reading it again either."

Wow, is that ever wrong. I can't count the number of people I've talked to - friends, family, coworkers - who talk about books they hated in school, only to rediscover them years later and finally "get it". A great example is "Moby Dick". Teenagers should never read that book; it goes right over their heads. It's not a book about whales; it's a book about what obsession can do to you.

There isn't a sixteen-year-old alive who understands that; there isn't a forty-six year old who doesn't.

Some people never DO consider reading those books again. They tend to be non-readers in any case, which includes far too much of our adult population.

[Tax-chick]

Teenagers should never read that book; it goes right over their heads. It's not a book about whales; it's a book about what obsession can do to you.

Many other great novels are similarly NOT, shall we say, oriented to the emotional level of teenagers.

[CGTRWK]

Teenagers should never read that book; it goes right over their heads.

There isn't a sixteen-year-old alive who understands that; there isn't a forty-six year old who doesn't.

And yet this is exactly the kind of classic material which is forced on teenagers in school. They don't comprehend it, they don't enjoy it, and the very best you can hope for is that in 20 years later they won't be too stubborn to read it again.

Some people never DO consider reading those books again. They tend to be non-readers in any case, which includes far too much of our adult population.

There would be many fewer non-readers if early reading experiences were made fun. The classics aren't.

[Little Ray]

I think this happened to me - I don't like Dickens, or Melville or Tolstoy - BORING. It seemed to me that school literature courses always picked the most boring possible books and short stories (imagine someone finding a boring Thurber story...). The only story I remember, that I liked was "The Most Dangerous Game."
If kids have to read "classics" they ought to let them read Doyle, Wren, Wells, Verne, Henty, Buchan, and the like.

The fact that Literature class was boring didn't stop me from making A's or B's, though!

[LexBaird]

It's not a book about whales; it's a book about what obsession can do to you.

Yet, years later, I still know how to flense a whale.