DiamondEcho wrote:Yes yes and thrice yes
For English-Lit O-level, which due to the timing of my birthday I sat and failed aged 15, we had what would now perhaps be considered an overly heavy reading list.
I remember enjoying 1984 and Farenheit 451, though I really doubt I got the message behind the story.
I don't recall much about Catcher in the Rye, perhaps that speaks for itself?
I managed to make some kind of connection with Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country.
Ditto Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, but again it's deeper meaning would have gone over my head.
I don't recall what I made of To Kill a Mockingbird.
I found Julius Caeser extremely hard going, sadly it did nothing for me.
Chaucer's Pilgrims Progress - OMTG! I was 14/15 when I had to read it, my mind boggles looking back, was this meant to encourage a passion for great literature?
Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I got the storyline, but it's deeper meaning would have been completely lost on me.
Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana. That can be read at multiple levels, and I enjoyed it as a 'spy book'.
There were others, but those are the ones I recall. I agree with BJ^, maybe it was partly because of such tasks at school that I veered off into rebellion by becoming a punk rocker.
In fact Greene is perhaps my favourite author. He was a master of setting a scene such that you could almost imagine you were there. His descriptions of the various characters involved was IMO equally as 'simple but forensic' such that you imagined you had the measure of them. It was only years later reading his obituaries that I came to learn the extent to which his own experiences are reflected within those books and characters. The broken marriages, the whole 'Catholic guilt' thing. That adds yet another dimension to the prism when I occasionally go back and read them again.
I was lucky in 2 respects with my Eng-Lit O level, both to do with Chaucer.
First, I was struggling to read it while were were visiting relatives in Northumberland and an old great uncle asked what I was reading. I said I was more "trying to" read it and having trouble with the words. He asked to have a look and, after a few moments started reading it out loud. That was when I realised that Chaucer was written in something close to phonetic Northumbrian. From then on, as I read it I would hear Great Uncle Lionel's voice, which made it easier. NB Northumbrian has little resemblance to Geordie.
Second was the good old Beeb. Aunty did a dramatisation of at least some of it, including naughty bits which was shown while I was actually doing my O level. It increased all of our interest.
I was unlucky in the Shakespeare in that we were given Romeo & Juliet which I have never got on with to this day. The triumph of young stupidity over all.
Farenheit 451 was not on my syllabus as my school wouldn't have had anything to do with SciFi, but I already owned a copy, together with almost everything else by Bradbury.
Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana belongs in the Books you failed to finish thread, for me. In fact I don't think I've ever read anything by him.
Slarti
