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iambored

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were there any school texts you had to read that you ended up liking?

i liked snow falling on cedars
 

Daemontreu

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Brave New World was good, I agree (had to read it last year)... I didn't mind Frankenstein that much. Well, not as much as other people apparently did. :rolleyes:
 

braindrainedAsh

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I didn't study Wild Swans, but it is a HSC text and I really enjoyed reading it. I also liked Wuthering Heights when we read it in Yr 11... and To Kill a Mockingbird is good too. Brave New World was also quite good.
 

MiuMiu

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Hehe I read like the first chapter of Snow, and then got bored with it and never went back to it, yet I wrote bout it in detail for my exam!
I really liked Animal Farm and Pride & Prejudice when we did them in Yr 11, Much Ado about Nothing in prelim Adv was pretty good too. This year Stoppard and The Real Inspector Hound won hands down!
 

MiuMiu

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Nope I didn't do that I did Hound in extension (also by Stoppard). I am looking forward to reading Rosencrantz too...
 

Daemontreu

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RaGaD was quite good. It's the best if you can get a group of people (who don't have problems reading out loud from books) who are enthusiastic to read out loud from it. Brings the word-play between Ros and Guil out a lot better. :D
 

MiuMiu

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Yeah we did that in extension English for The Real Inspector Hound...it was so much fun! It didn't take effort and sound really crap like reading outloud other plays, we really got into and the acting came naturally!
 

Loz#1

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To Kill A Mockingbird, Angela's Ashes, Hamlet and Birthday Letters (poetry). They're the three I really enjoyed.
 

arls

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Originally posted by Ms 12
Yeah we did that in extension English for The Real Inspector Hound...it was so much fun! It didn't take effort and sound really crap like reading outloud other plays, we really got into and the acting came naturally!
We did too! I loved reading out the critics part and getting so tongue tied and acting completly over the top with the pompous voices and all!! We had so many crack ups!!

HOwever, if your planning on reading it.. I think its pretty crap! Fun to read aloud but i thought the actual content was stupid and it would be pretty weird to read.. and get too confusing. BUt yeah a lot of fun on the stagE!!

I loved snow falling on cedars.. at first i thought it was a boring piece of shit.. but it grew on me, and now i love it! i like frontline too... i spose that goes for everyone though!:)
 

MiuMiu

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Originally posted by arls

HOwever, if your planning on reading it.. I think its pretty crap! Fun to read aloud but i thought the actual content was stupid and it would be pretty weird to read.. and get too confusing. BUt yeah a lot of fun on the stagE!!
I think I found it good cos we were studying the crime fiction genre concurrently and you can fully appreciate the subversion.
 

Gregor Samsa

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Originally posted by arls
We did too! I loved reading out the critics part and getting so tongue tied and acting completly over the top with the pompous voices and all!! We had so many crack ups!!
Ditto.. I played Moon, and it was generally quite the hillarious experience.

Although, in a sense, it's actually meant to be 'stupid' to read, seeing it's making the cliches absurd. I think it's very clever myself, with some of the jokes being subtle and working on multiple levels, like Faced with such ubiqious obliquity, it is hard, it is hard indeed, and therefore I will not attempt, to refrain from invoking the names of Kafka, Sartre, Shakespeare, St Paul, Beckett, Birkett, Pinero, Pirandello, Dante and Dorothy L.Sayers (This is reason to this flow besides it reading well.. Dorothy L.Sayers actually translated some of Dante's works into English, and the placing also suggests that her writings are 'below' the Inferno..). Of course, this is just one of many examples throughout..

It becomes even more enjoyable if you've read/seen The Mousetrap, as it's the basis for the plot..

But as for set texts I've enjoyed;
Harper Lee-To Kill A Mockingbird (Only set text I enjoyed from Year 7-10. We were given some shockers..)
William Shakespeare-Richard III
Gwen Harwood-Selected Poems (Especially 'At Mornington' and 'The Glass Jar'.)
Aldous Huxley-Brave New World (Had read this previously, which always helps.. Better than Blade Runner.)
William Shakespeare-King Lear (Probably my favourite of his plays that I've read, perhaps as a result of the close study, and getting to appreciate it..)
Rob Sitch et.al-Frontline.
Tom Stoppard-The Real Inspector Hound.

Snow Falling On Cedars is less definate.. On the whole, it's pretty good, and clever in how it appropriates CF conventions in order to convey Guterson's message to a larger audience, but some parts were boring. (And the ever-so-eloquent 'Frozen penis envy' bit, which while understanding the symbolism behind it, was rather unpleasant...)
 

Sassasas

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Hmmm

king lear
frontline (how could you not??)
to kill a mocking bird
immigrant chronicle
macbeth
romeo and juiliet
othelo
waiting for godot
the bald prima donna
the dumb waiter

Hmmm call me a sucker for shakespeare
 

Loz#1

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Oh I forgot about Romeo & Juliet, I loved that story, but my yr 10 english teacher completrely trashed it for us.
 

MiuMiu

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We did Romeo & Juliet in year 9, and I got the shits with the amount of people that couldn't read it outloud yet the teacher insisted on us reading the entire thing outloud. It was sooo tedious...
 

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