Genevieve Marie: So what is he, the dumbest president we've ever had or an academic elitist who thinks he's better than everyone else just because he has some fancy book learnin'?

I lose track.

Genevieve Marie: So what is he, the dumbest president we've ever had or an academic elitist who thinks he's better than everyone else just because he has some fancy book learnin'?

I lose track.

Who let you out of the kitchen?

bulldg4life: None of you can talk until you read Old Man and the Sea.

Seriously, there were chapters about his hands holding rope.

Good bathroom reading material. I never read it in school, just in chunks of bathroom time. Amazing book. It's all about how hollow success is if you don't have anyone to enjoy it with, and how the sharks (read lawyers or any hanger ons) will nibble it away while you work to reel it in. It may pull you further than you want to go. Ultimately, your prize is in the garbage heap to be gawked at, you're beaten, nothing to be proud of after all your work, and all you have is a story for others to tell and the next day to look forward to. Well, that's my take on it.

Genevieve Marie: So what is he, the dumbest president we've ever had or an academic elitist who thinks he's better than everyone else just because he has some fancy book learnin'?

Funny how what goes around comes around, eh? Remember, Bush was an idiot "chimp" who was too stupid to speak plain English yet was also a nefarious mastermind whose chief aim was to invade every nation in the Middle East for their oil while eliminating all civil liberties in the United States. Now Obama is the Crypto-Muslim Fascist usurper who oh by the way can't write a speech above an 8th grade reading level.

Shaggy_C: yet was also a nefarious mastermind whose chief aim was to invade every nation in the Middle East for their oil while eliminating all civil liberties in the United States

I'm pretty sure Cheney was the nefarious mastermind. There was no duality for Bush.

War and Peace made Crime and Punishment look like a Hardy Boy's mystery.

Leo Bloom's Freakout: On the topic of film adaptations of Shakespeare, I like almost everything Kenneth (you may remember me as Gilderoy Lockheart from the 3rd Harry Potter movie) Branagh has done (please do not watch Loves Labour's Lost.... I have no idea why that happened). Though if you watch only one, it's tough his Hamlet is amazing and I felt as relatable as the Daines/DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet (weak sauce of Shakespeare writing, watch Othello for the adult version of that story) or possibly Much Ado About Nothing for wonderfully witty banter well delivered.

Branagh's Hamlet was great except for two parts: the fx for the ghost appearing at the beginning of the film went on way too long, and Branagh running around during the play-withing-a-play. I kept wanting one of the extras to say "Hey Hamlet! Down in front, I'm trying to watch the friggin' play!"

On the other hand, it was the first time I got what was going on with the whole Norway subplot.

/Still prefer Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

tenpoundsofcheese: Leo Bloom's Freakout: in any context during a massive recession, that you enjoy firing people.

This is EXACTLY why politicians need to talk at an 8th grade level - for people like you.
Romney said he likes firing people who aren't doing a good job.

So you want to keep people employed, like wall street bankers, who are doing a bad job? Really, that is what you are fighting for?

I just fired you.

/plonk

Since most daily newspapers are at a 5rd grade reading level, he's probably still not reaching a large percentage of Americans with his extensive vocabulary.

surprised no one has mentioned that these readability things are bs. Slip some beckett in there for good old fashioned fun.

theknuckler_33: The Great Gatsby is a terrible book. It's about as good as Hemmingway's The Sun also Rises. SNORE!

Now Steinbeck, THERE'S a writer!

DrippinBalls: skullkrusher
DrippinBalls: Actually, I thought his speech was great if your a mongoloid, or possessing an IQ of 90 and dropped out in the 9th grade. Otherwise, SSDD.

you sound all of the above

Wow, you're dicky downer. Don't let the bulge in your head get in the way of logic, or comedy. Oh, and go DIAMMFASAMFP.

If I see either, I'll be sure to let you know

As long as this thread is about the books we hated in high school, when I first read (and had to do the paper/project on) The Bear (Faulkner), I farking HATED chapter 4, especially since it was originally published without it, not only lending toward the book being much easier to understand, but frankly chapters 1-3 and 5 make a nice hunting story.

As time as passed though, it has grown on me to where if I could actually find a copy of the darn thing, I would probably enjoy reading it again.

/hah, I'm so cool cuz I'm hatin' on a book you've probably never heard of
//it's totes better that I am also the only one that thinks only a single chapter is cray-cray
///illiterate slashies come in threes

RexTalionis: Also, why does everyone hold The Great Gatsby out as some sort of exemplary example of the great American novel? I thought it was a massive bore.

GATSBY SUCKS BALLS!

/English teacher

I think literature is the only medium in which people form an opinion about in high school and never, ever, ever, ever, ever go back and re-evaluate. You can bet that the list of books that Fark loathes the most is identical to the list of books that shiathead teachers shove down kid's throats before they're literate and emotionally enough to really digest that shiat.

Jonathan Hohensee: I think literature is the only medium in which people form an opinion about in high school and never, ever, ever, ever, ever go back and re-evaluate. You can bet that the list of books that Fark loathes the most is identical to the list of books that shiathead teachers shove down kid's throats before they're literate and emotionally enough to really digest that shiat.

Being forced to take tests and write essays and straining to see whatever symbolism the teacher sees is a lot of what killed some books for me in high school. I think I only ever enjoyed The Call of the Wild and 1984.

/However, nothing and I mean NOTHING can make me go back and re-evaluate O Pioneers. I may be a lousy Nebraskan, but Willa Cather's books are just too dry.

BiblioTech: bulldg4life: None of you can talk until you read Old Man and the Sea.

Seriously, there were chapters about his hands holding rope.

Talk to me after you finish War and Peace. Too much peace, not enough war and pages upon pages talking about a ball gown. Worst part was coming to what would seem like the end of the book and realizing you still have 200 pages to go. Rip out the Peace parts and just make it War - then it would be a good read.

Moby Dick was worse then both of those combined. If you spend multiple paragraphs describing a piece of wood, you need to be taken out back and beaten to death with a dictionary.

Jonathan Hohensee: I think literature is the only medium in which people form an opinion about in high school and never, ever, ever, ever, ever go back and re-evaluate. You can bet that the list of books that Fark loathes the most is identical to the list of books that shiathead teachers shove down kid's throats before they're literate and emotionally enough to really digest that shiat.

I think you're right. The best explanation I heard of that problem was that people are made to read great literature before they are old enough to understand why it's great. At the moment, I can't remember who said that.

Gatsby is a good example. I actually liked it when I was a kid but that had a lot to do with the period in which it is set and the prose. I still think it's beautifully written but I began to appreciate it for different reasons as I got older. It's easy enough for a teenager to understand what their teacher tells them about the green light at the end of the dock but I think the message resonates more once a person has experienced several years of adulthood.

/good literature helps us recognize junk
//even the really entertaining junk

What 8th grade reading level actually means (new window)

red5ish: We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. Etc.

We can argue over the content or structure of the speech. That's an interesting topic.

But holy gods, the commenters on that site are dumb as fark ...

DePaul: Jonathan Hohensee: I think literature is the only medium in which people form an opinion about in high school and never, ever, ever, ever, ever go back and re-evaluate. You can bet that the list of books that Fark loathes the most is identical to the list of books that shiathead teachers shove down kid's throats before they're literate and emotionally enough to really digest that shiat.

I think you're right. The best explanation I heard of that problem was that people are made to read great literature before they are old enough to understand why it's great. At the moment, I can't remember who said that.

Gatsby is a good example. I actually liked it when I was a kid but that had a lot to do with the period in which it is set and the prose. I still think it's beautifully written but I began to appreciate it for different reasons as I got older. It's easy enough for a teenager to understand what their teacher tells them about the green light at the end of the dock but I think the message resonates more once a person has experienced several years of adulthood.

/good literature helps us recognize junk
//even the really entertaining junk

I'm in that exact boat. I'm re-reading it again right now and the biggest thing that jumps out to me is that it's one thing to know what the fark that green light is all about, and another thing to read it after having a decade of life kicking the shiat out of you to know what's it like to stare at your own light across the dock for that goddamn girl who got away.

A Gatsby Thread gets the greenlight at the end of the Fark pier?

/Really? The first?

I love the comments to that article. Obama derangement syndrome at its finest.

Obama is an intellectual left-coast elitist. Obama is an idiot who reads speeches off his teleprompter at an eight grade level. Obama is diabolically smart, because he is secretly orchestrating a scheme to turn America into a socialist dictatorship where the government controls who lives and dies from Washington, DC. Obama is a kenyan socialist colonist and speaks in Ebonics. Obama likes arugula and is owned by corporations who donated to his campaign, and keeps giving them government handouts. Now, Obama wants to make the entire country a European style socialist state.

This derp is out of control. It's out of control, and we'll be lucky to live through it.

Chummer45: I love the comments to that article. Obama derangement syndrome at its finest.

Obama is an intellectual left-coast elitist. Obama is an idiot who reads speeches off his teleprompter at an eight grade level. Obama is diabolically smart, because he is secretly orchestrating a scheme to turn America into a socialist dictatorship where the government controls who lives and dies from Washington, DC. Obama is a kenyan socialist colonist and speaks in Ebonics. Obama likes arugula and is owned by corporations who donated to his campaign, and keeps giving them government handouts. Now, Obama wants to make the entire country a European style socialist state.

This derp is out of control. It's out of control, and we'll be lucky to live through it.

they don't know why they hate him. they can't settle on any cogent reason. well, they DO know, they're just too embarrassed to admit it.

chimp_ninja: RexTalionis: Also, why does everyone hold The Great Gatsby out as some sort of exemplary example of the great American novel? I thought it was a massive bore.

Obligatory quote on the topic:
"Professor Winchester also said something about there being no modern epics like Paradise Lost. I guess he's right. He talked as if he was pretty familiar with that piece of literary work, and nobody would suppose that he never had read it. I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester says, and it meets his definition of a classic-something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."-Mark Twain, "Address at the Dinner of the Nineteenth Century Club" speech, 1900
High school 'required reading' lists should be looking for the maximum product of the quality of a given book times the number of students who will actually read it. It turns out that there have been a large number of fantastic books written within the last 50 years which speak to the same themes as "the classics", yet are much easier for modern readers to relate to.

I'm a reasonably avid reader, but I was assigned Paradise Lost in (public) high school, and I never came close to reading it.

Eh, I read it some time after high school and I enjoyed the mythology of it, so I guess your results may vary.