English Novel

Casserine

What novel did everyone here study for English? My class did two.

"Wings Over Delft" by Aubrey Flegg
"Talking In Whispers" by James Watson.

My English teacher has bad taste in books. They were poorly written, not very engaging and seemed very childish. I would have preferred to do one of the more classic ones, To Kill A Mockingbird for example.

I've seen people here saying they did Animal Farm and Catcher In The Rye. Wow, I would have loved English class if so. Orwell and Salinger = top writers. Or even The Bell Jar or Lord Of The Flies or...anything really.

You?

Diarmsquid

We did "To Kill A Mockingbird"

Great book. I've read "Roll of thunder hear my cry" too and its amazing (even suspicious) how similar they are.

Casserine

Yeah, both have the same theme, racism in America...it would have been good to do either as I've read them both before. However, my teacher is possibly racist, so no luck there.

Mysteryfish

"to kill a mockingbird" is what we did.

I read "wings over deflt" in my own time, and i totally agree with you. It's boring! There's nothing remotely exciting about and I actually fell asleep reading it, something that I even managed not to do while reading "the Cay". Never read it if you can avoid it!

Casserine

What on earth is The Cay? I hear lots of people moaning about...

PurpleFistMixer

Casserine wrote:

What on earth is The Cay?

Awful.

I read it in second year, and all I can remember is that it involves a little kid on a desert island with a black man. That may even be wrong. It was that boring.

Hugh Hefner

In 1st Year we read Of Mice And Men (which I recognise is a good novel but I thought it was as boring as hell) and Lord Of The Flies (better than Of Mice And Men but still unenjoyable for me).

Then in 2nd Year we got a new English teacher and she continued with Of Mice And Men so we read it again (not an enjoyable time for me).

It's a good book to study for passing the Junior Cert. and I'm sure people liked it but not me. You must understand that I personally hate reading, I find it incredibly boring. The only thing I can read is Shakespeare (and I can't get enough of it, it's genius) and they're not even novels!

I wish we could study more modern novels like ones which have been written in the last 10 years and preferably don't have one of their themes as racism in America (Roll Of Thunder Hear My Cry, Of Mice And Men, To Kill A Mockingbird). What about Vernon God Little which won the Booker Prize a year or so ago? That'd be cool.

Casserine

Vernon God Little = Crap book. Themes have been dealt with so much better in other novels, and it was quite boring.

Hugh Hefner

Well I haven't actually read it. It's all I could think of.

PurpleFistMixer

As long as they don't put something horrific like The Da Vinci Code on... but yes, I agree that we don't want any more American racism books. After Roll of Thunder I was sick of To Kill a Mockingbird before I read it.
Of course, I suppose it's better than all the damn famine books we read in primary school.

Big Ears

We did 'To Kill a Mocking-bird' in second year and 'The Guns of Easter' this year .

Holly Golightly

The Guns Of Easter! I used to love that book.

Casserine

Something by Truman Capote would be nice....sigh. There's so many good authors out there.

Diarmsquid

Big Ears wrote:

We did 'To Kill a Mocking-bird' in second year and 'The Guns of Easter' this year .

Guns of Easter?
We did that book in 6th class! Or was it fifth? I think it was fifth.

Big Ears

Diarmsquid wrote:

Guns of Easter?
We did that book in 6th class! Or was it fifth? I think it was fifth.

Yes and quite a few people in my year also did it in primary .

Fenny

Our class did "Good Enough for Judith", possibly the most boring and poorly written book I've ever read. It's also either the second or third in a trilogy, which doesn't even make any sense to do - because we hadn't read the first one - and it's more about preaching than anything else. I couldn't face doing it for the JC, so I just chose a novel I'd read before: The Catcher in the Rye. We hadn't been given any notes or anything for Good Enough for Judith, so I didn't really miss out on anything. :P
Casserine: Orwell and Salinger = love.

Alqua

Seeing as I am in the same class as Fenny, we also did Good Enough for Judith.
And yes, it's a pain of a book. For the exam I wrote about "The Wishlist" by Eoin Colfer. It's a really funny book, but I always write about it as if it's a tragedy! Some of the stuff I write about it sounds so strange, that for some weird reason, every time I looked at the bit where I had randomly written "Belch went straight to hell" I couldn't stop laughing! I collapsed into a fit of giggles during the exam, I had to lie down on the desk to stop, but every time I looked at my paper I started off laughing again. You know those times when you just cannot stop laughing? I was sure the examiner would throw me out! Eventually I stopped though, but I couldn't look at that question after that.

Scarinae

Hugh Hefner wrote:

In 1st Year we read Of Mice And Men (which I recognise is a good novel but I thought it was as boring as hell)

Be warned - you may have to study it for your leaving cert! It was one of the texts I did
For the junior cert I studied 'To Kill a Mockingbird', I thought it was ok but I enjoyed it way more when I reread it afterwards - there's something about being made to study a novel that really kills it