h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm just beginning "The Ancesters Tale" by Richard Dawkins.
After reading "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker" by the same author, I have high expectations for this one.

YB

I'm still working my way through The Selfish Gene. So far, so good!

We did Of Mice and Men at school too, although we were just given the book to read for homework. We then went to see the play and had a day in English just discussing it. A totally unique way to study a book - and it was fun too!

Shame I lost all interest in Lord of the Flies and most Shakespeare material with the normal aggressive studying in later years

Oddly enough, 'Lord of the Flies' was our other 'O'-Level book. We were asked which one we wanted to concentrate on and chose Mockingbird. I still - despite the endless repetition - believe we made the right choice.

Incidentally...there has been some talk recently about the dangers of teaching children just to pass exams, as opposed to 'educating' them. T'was ever thus! In my independent school (...but I was a scholarship boy from the wrong part of town), they taught us 'easy' books like that. At my sister's comprehensive, they did Chaucer!!!

(By the way...I'm fairly convinced that my English teacher was the father of a member of the dully melodious band Keane. He had the same slightly unusual double-barreled name. He also had a striking resemblance to the Fonz from Happy Days)

I'd have loved to do Chaucer at school!!

There was this one time in second year when I wanted to do Silence of the Lambs for a book report. My Robert Harris hating teacher said no way and seeing as I was brighter than the average second year I should do a Dickens book. When I told the teacher I'd read Dickens' works (and I had - my granny had his complete works) and I hated him, I was sent to stand in the corner for the end of the lesson. True story!

In the past fortnight I have completed the rather wonderful 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' by Kate Atkinson and then raced through the rather less impressive 'Hotel Honolulu' by Paul Theroux.

I've read a lot of Paul Theroux's books and I have to say that I liked all the others a lot better than this. There is a great deal of rather joyless sex in most of Mr Theroux's work, but I thought 'Hotel Honolulu' was particularly sordid and had absolutely no likeable characters in it. I was also slightly uncomfortable with the way that the Hawaian people were portrayed.

I have now started reading 'Money - a suicide note' by Martin Amis. It's too early for me to have an opinion about this one yet.

Following on from the previous posting - I thought the books we had to study for CSE English Lit were largely dreadful. They included 'There is a happy land' and 'Kes' and the play we studied was 'Billy Liar'. The only book I enjoyed from my CSE was 'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee.

For Standard Grade English it was Lord of the Flies for the book and Romeo and Juliet for the play. The poetry was dire too, but I can't remember what we read for that!

We did Chaucer as part of our Eng. Lit 'O' level - it was a section from the Prologue (as it had no rude bits in it that might deprave or corrupt our innocent 15-year-old minds!). Part of the deal was that you had to translate it from the original into Modern English. This kinda took the fun out of it.

The obligatory Shakespeare was Julius Caesar (again, no sex please, we're 15!); the other book was To Kill A Mockingbird; we also did some poetry, which annoyed me.

RF

Why did the poetry annoy you?

Well, it was the teacher actually - he made a mistake: We were given an anthology and he told us that 3 of the sections would be included in the exam: love poetry, war poetry, and...er...something else that I can't remember. He then said that he wasn't going to teach the poetry section, but it would be useful to study it ourselves in case we needed a back-up question. Which I duly did.

Stup b@st@rd got 2 out of the 3 sections *wrong*, didn't he? There was only 1 poetry question I even knew the poem of, so I did that one, but I'm sure it dragged my marks down.

RF

Well done that bloke

Yeah, well, I passed, but only with a C. And it was 20-(mumble-mumble) years ago, so I think I'm over it now.

RF

I got a 3 in my English exam because I just didn't enjoy my classes. Teacher paid too much attention to the attention seeking know-it-alls and when I came to him with an interest in doing English as a Higher and teaching the subject, I was practically laughed at. I'm not thick, I just wasn't in the in-crowd

Reddyfreddy, did you do your Eng-lit O-level in 1980? We had the poetry (Rhyme and Reason) War Poetry (not too much Wilfred Owen...) Love Poetry (including the rather fab Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd) and Towns and Machinery (loved some of those, the one about London which started 'Rise up thou monsterious anthill on the plain of a too busy world' sort of stuck for some reason, as did one of the ones about the Fire of London)

Novels we had Brighton Rock (didn't even start it, for some reason) and Silas Marner which despite doing to death I still love. For Shakespeare the choice was between JC and Midsummer Nights Dream. We did the faires (including the sexy bits)

I did Chaucer many many years later when I did English lit A-level for fun by correspondence course (reason: I was on a tram for nearly 2 hours a day, reading like mad, and thought I'd do it constructively) fantastic stuff.

Anyway, back to the ragged trousered ones: does anyone else think it reads more than a little like a poor mans Dickens? I love the names of the bosses.

we did of mice and men as the novel, an inspector calls by jb priestly as the play and macbeth as the shakespeare and i got an a at gcse! ok so im good at english i could read by myself by the time i was 3/4. at 7 i was reading anne franks diary and black buety(?) and other such standard books. but i never did learn how to spell!

Fellowship of the Ring.

Once again I'm being amused by how un-PC the whole thing is nowadays.
"Gaffer said he was a black chap."

I read Billy Liar relatively recently (the novel, not the play). It's a trully excellent book! Very insightful about internal, mental dialogues.

It's a pity that so many people get put off great authors by having 'done' them at school. As well as Steinbeck, many people have said the same to me about the great Graham Greene. One of the problems with teaching Greene is that schools always launch straight in with his more serious novels - Catholic guilt and all that. I'd recommend starting with one of his 'entertainments' like 'Our Man in Havana' - still an excellent book - or maybe one of his post-60s novels. 'The Human Factor' is particularly good.

Still - it could be worse. I had to study John Betjeman!

And 'Money' by Martin Amis is wonderful. 'My name's Amis. I'm in the book'. (Amis makes himself a character in homage to Kurt Vonnegut's 'Breakfast of Champions'. In one of Clive James' books, he has himself at a party saying to Amis 'You're that bloke who put himself in his own book.')

Hi, Sho - I did my Eng. Lit. 'O' level in 1981. So it looks very much like the dopey teacher had set the previous year's poetry sections.

Still struggling through White Powder, Green Light. But it's not very good. If I haven't finished it by Christmas I'll probably give up (I'm *bound* to get something more interesting for Christmas! )

RF

1981?
i wasnt even born!

On the principle that 'doing' a book at school ruins it for so many people, maybe there are some that we feel deserve to be nominated.

My choice would be the awful, politically suspect 'Lord of the Rings'

ive not read lord of the rings, ive read half of the hobbit and got bored bt ive been told its easier to get into the lord of the rings so may try it!
i have a list of books i want to read, its just buying them! my next big thing i think will be 1984 george orwell, my friend is reading animal farm and i read that at least 5 years ago and been wanting to read 1984 since!