Your favorite reading memories from school

[j brown's body]

The world of reading really opened to me in college where I could study poetry, short stories and Shakespeare.

Took a class called Novels of the Absurd and read Camus's The Stranger, Barth's The Sot Weed Factor, Heller's Catch-22 and Nabokov's Pale Fire. Amazing stuff.

 

[Superfly]

Ramona books were my jam for awhile. The Mouse and the Motorcycle is still a favorite in my classroom every year too.

Loved that one! Brings back such good memories.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Elementary, junior high/middle school, high school, college..... what are your favorite memories around reading during those years? Anything in particular make a lasting impression on you?

I was absorbed in all kinds of books from age four on but as for SCHOOL, my first real literary thrill was an offbeat one.
I found an author named Richard Wright in seventh grade and read Black Boy cover to cover in a day.
That did not sit well with the teachers in the crappy Northern Virginia private school I was sent to for that one year.

I also found Steve Allen, yes....THAT Steve Allen, who apparently wrote a book about migrant workers in 1966 called "The Ground is Our Table", which opened my eyes to the miseries of the migrant farmworker.

 

[justabubba]

Anne of Green Gables I've always liked that book because of how wholesome it was and it's depiction of a rural maritime community. For those who aren't Canadians this treasured story book from LM Montgomery follows Anne, an orphan girl who maybe murdered her parents in America before being trafficked to Prince Edward Island in Canada to do backbreaking farm work for the spinster farmer and her effeminate weak brother. (well I should say every word of that can be justified by what's written in the book) but actually it's a tale about an unwanted orphan girl who is adopted by farmers in Canada who want a boy to do work on the farm, and she soon endears herself to the community. There's even an anne of green gables national park in Canada. maybe ill go some day.

I only recently bought a copy, although i've read this book maybe four or five times in my life. plus a follow up book written from LM Montgomery's notes called Christmas with Anne. I plan to start reading those to my daughter in a few years when she's old enough for story time.

felt compelled to offer this after reading the above
my granddaughter just turned six months
her mom & dad have been reading aloud to her since she was in the womb
she is engaged when they read to her daily, multiple times
she just learned to sit up by herself
and now can hold the book in each hand in a reading position
promised not to place her photo on social media, otherwise would offer a picture to underscore what i am posting
even though your daughter is quite young, consider reading to her now. allow her to hear the words being spoken. the cadence. the gusto. the fun
bet you will be surprised by the attention she will give to your bonding experience with books

1961. old school Charlestonian widow, Mrs Griffith. would read the bible to us daily. again, 1961; old south. neither of my folks ever entered a church other than for a funeral or wedding ... plus my two kids' Christenings
that exposure to the 'word' caused me to attend church alone for three years; enough to gather that i was not a Christian; truly, a lasting experience

on fridays, she would read us short stories from the state poet laureate, Archibald Rutledge (doesn't get more Charlestonian that that!)
his poetry sucked. but he was a profound short story writer; the equal of Twain. that exposure to a spellbinding local story whetted my appetite to dabble in the reading of fiction

 

[ralfy]

I also loved all of the Edgar Allen Poe books. If you have Netflix, watch The Fall of the House of Usher. It won't disappoint.

It made me interested in the medieval and the Gothic. I remember that during the weekend, I was at home and Pop was out at work, so I and some cousins started fooling around in his den. That's where we saw the stash of Playboys, but at that age we weren't interested in girls yet but in the sci-fi short stories published in the mags.

Later, everyone else decided to go home, so when I remembered Poe I decided to look at Pop's library of books, and then found Boccaccio and his story of the cleric and the young woman who struggled to tame "the devil".

 

[ralfy]

You were forging through Poe in second grade? Whoa.

It was in the literature textbook but I don't think it was assigned for class. The teacher was too sleepy and made us do SRA until the end of the period. I must have finished early (the last story was about Einstein being considered a dummy for not answering questions quickly), so I got bored and decided to look at the textbook. For some reason, I started reading "Masque", and probably because it had "red death" in the title (you know how boys are at that age).

 

[MaryP]

It was in the literature textbook but I don't think it was assigned for class. The teacher was too sleepy and made us do SRA until the end of the period. I must have finished early (the last story was about Einstein being considered a dummy for not answering questions quickly), so I got bored and decided to look at the textbook. For some reason, I started reading "Masque", and probably because it had "red death" in the title (you know how boys are at that age).

You could read this in second grade? You were a child genius, methinks.

THE “RED DEATH” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.