What's a book you were required to read in school that you're happy you read?
Robot
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
Oh - I recall enjoying several books that were part of our English Literature syllabus:
No special order, but -
Factual: Thor Heyardhal's The Kon-Tiki Expedition - his account of how he and his team proved the possibility of ancient South Americans having used balsa-wood rafts with very basic, single square sails, to cross the Pacific to islands in its West.
The rest fiction:
H.G. Wells' The History of Mr. Polly. An imaginary biography of a haberdasher struggling to make ends meet from his not very successful shop, his slowly dying marriage, and his eventual escape.
John Meade-Faulkner's Moonfleet. Though fiction, and chosen by a remote examinations board, this novel about smuggling chimed with our school for it being set in our locality.(Thomas Hardy's novels would have done that, too, but none were in our syllabus.)
William Golding's The Lord Of The Flies. The original, in which the boys are all from English schools. It was Hollywood that translated the film version to American for no sensible reason. Its start is not very credible: it relies on all of the adults who had been on the aeroplance having died in the crash but all the children had survived unscathed. Nevertheless it is a chilling account of the boys attempting to survive despite being two groups from very different backgrounds, cooped up together on an otherwise unihabited island.
Previously to these, one book was called something like The Rose and The Crown ? By Thackery? I recall very little about it - as you will have guessed - but it was likely satirical, a comic story of some fictitious nation's royal family set some centuries ago. I have just tried to track it down but there are many novels and plays combing the two nouns; and without recalling either novel or novellist correctly, it was a lost cause.
We did not study any of Charles Dickens' novels; nor any American literature; but I think some American classics like Uncle Tom's Cabin[/] and [i]One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest are now in some UK school literature syllabii. Nor any translations of other nations' works.
The complete five-year course also had Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth, and George Bernard Shaw's drama version of the Aesop fable Androcles and the Lion.
Oddly, Wikipedia cites the last as
Wiki's real biography shows Shaw was born in Dublin; moved to London in adult life; had dual British and Irish citizenship. Although he wrote the screen-play for a Hollywood film version of Pygmalion he was not American and none of his writings are part of American literature, as the reference implies.
No special order, but -
Factual: Thor Heyardhal's The Kon-Tiki Expedition - his account of how he and his team proved the possibility of ancient South Americans having used balsa-wood rafts with very basic, single square sails, to cross the Pacific to islands in its West.
The rest fiction:
H.G. Wells' The History of Mr. Polly. An imaginary biography of a haberdasher struggling to make ends meet from his not very successful shop, his slowly dying marriage, and his eventual escape.
John Meade-Faulkner's Moonfleet. Though fiction, and chosen by a remote examinations board, this novel about smuggling chimed with our school for it being set in our locality.(Thomas Hardy's novels would have done that, too, but none were in our syllabus.)
William Golding's The Lord Of The Flies. The original, in which the boys are all from English schools. It was Hollywood that translated the film version to American for no sensible reason. Its start is not very credible: it relies on all of the adults who had been on the aeroplance having died in the crash but all the children had survived unscathed. Nevertheless it is a chilling account of the boys attempting to survive despite being two groups from very different backgrounds, cooped up together on an otherwise unihabited island.
Previously to these, one book was called something like The Rose and The Crown ? By Thackery? I recall very little about it - as you will have guessed - but it was likely satirical, a comic story of some fictitious nation's royal family set some centuries ago. I have just tried to track it down but there are many novels and plays combing the two nouns; and without recalling either novel or novellist correctly, it was a lost cause.
We did not study any of Charles Dickens' novels; nor any American literature; but I think some American classics like Uncle Tom's Cabin[/] and [i]One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest are now in some UK school literature syllabii. Nor any translations of other nations' works.
The complete five-year course also had Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth, and George Bernard Shaw's drama version of the Aesop fable Androcles and the Lion.
Oddly, Wikipedia cites the last as
Theater: George Bernard Shaw wrote a play in 1912, blending the fable with social satire (Wikipedia; American Literature).
Wiki's real biography shows Shaw was born in Dublin; moved to London in adult life; had dual British and Irish citizenship. Although he wrote the screen-play for a Hollywood film version of Pygmalion he was not American and none of his writings are part of American literature, as the reference implies.