Acculturated: During my senior year AP English class in high school, we read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It was brutal. I thought I was a pretty good reader because I had worked my way through most of Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and Leo Tolstoy, but I struggled to get through Heart of Darkness. To this day, it’s still one of my least favorite books. But you know what? I made it through, and I actually learned a few things. And when my class got to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, I found it easier to read and more enjoyable since I was familiar with a more complicated language and writing style after making it through Heart of Darkness.
Today’s teenagers are less likely to have that same experience taking on challenging books. Consider the recent news that even Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is considered so difficult to read that Brown is now writing an abridged version targeted to teens; evidently younger readers need more coddling when it comes to understanding the Illuminati. MORE
I had been an avid reader since before grade one. No kindergarten in those days.
As a HS freshman, I had a full week to read Captain’s Courageous but waited till Sunday evening to read it for Monday’s class. Not a bad situation given the size and thickness of the book.
Shear panic set in because it was in dialect. In order to understand what I was reading I basically had to read it out loud.
My brother gave me a compendium of Sherlock Holmes stories (mentioned in the article) when I was about 19. That was one of my favorite books of all time. I read it cover to cover 3 or 4 times and still have it somewhere. I’m guessin’ a millennial of today’s caliber would find it misogynistic and very difficult to read because it was written in the Queen’s English. Excellent reading for anyone that likes mysteries though..
This is very sad indeed… Um, okay I’m just gonna go ahead and admit that I’m thrilled to see that you used a hello kitty book for this. :’)
Good: Stop Dumbing Down Books for Teens
Better: Stop Dumbing Down Kids in Govt Indoctrination Institutions
OOps, typo. That should be SHEER, not shear. I’ve got to stop commenting late at night.