What post? Those were the books I was referring to that ds was forced to read. What was worse was that he has Tourette's Syndrome and could never finish a test because the timer was ticking away in the corner of the screen and his eyes had to continually try to refocus amidst the tics. In 2nd grade they were testing him at a 1st grade reading level when at home he was reading the dictionary. I made them test him off of the computer and low and behold he was actually at a 5th grade level. :roll: Sorry 'bout the tangent, but it is so frustrating to see what lengths they go to to "test" and yet are killing kids' desire to use reading as a tool--for information or entertainment.
Ya'll have no idea how much ya'll influence me! I just got back from the library where I checked out Pride and Prejudice! I am really going to try and read it just so I can say that I have read a classic:lol:. I really gave alot of thought to a PP who said you have to cultivate a taste for good literature,so here goes! I am cultivating. maybe this will rub off on dd and she'll read something besides pop culture tween trash.
OH MY GOSH!! Pride and Prejudice is my all time favorite book! I love it so much I could read it over and over again. My dd14 and I love the movie with Collin Firth I think his name is. It was a PBS series or something and it is almost word for word with the book.
MonkeyMamma, I really like "The Count of Monte Cristo". It's my favorite, as well as Jane Eyre. Both the movies are great too (the newest version of The Count). GREAT books!
LOVE Jayne Eyre and Wuthering Heights so much. I also recently began The Picture of Dorian Gray but I'm not quite half way through. It is required reading for Samantha's pre-ap class and I'm trying to read everything on her list that I haven't read yet. She is finishing 1984 right now.
Count of Monte Cristo was a difficult read, but an interesting book. Didn't enjoy it NEAR as much as The Three Musketeers or The Man in the Iron Mask. I FINALLY saw Jane Eyre when they showed it on Masterpiece Theater. I loved their Jane Austin stuff, but would have prefered if they were spread out more, rather than one right after the other. After the third, they all begin to all sound the same!
I agree Jane Austin can sort of run all together if watched or read back to back. I love Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility and there is another I enjoyed but can't for the life of me remember the name of it. I'll have to look it up.
Jane Eyre is my all time favorite. Still, Camille by Alexandre Dumas fil is a masterpiece in its own right. I love A&Es version of Pride and Prejudice as well as their version of Jane Eyre. It really picks up on the characters of Jane and Edward. The one area every Jane Eyre movie can't seem to master is the relationship between Jane and her childhood friend Helen. Helen was such a huge part of the book even after she dies. Her influence ran through Janes blood, as an adult, and was the first person who Jane felt love from. Helen and Edward were the two people who brought a piece of life to Jane she had never known before.
Classics and BBC Actually, it was a BBC/A&E series -- not to say that it has never been shown on PBS. Masterpiece Theatre probably has shown it quite a few times over the last decade and a half. I have watched that movie so many times. Often when I can't sleep, I'll go downstairs and put in a classic movie. I've seen them all so many times that when I fall asleep and miss things, it doesn't matter, because I know the movies so well. My dd, who is 11yo, enjoys watching the classic movies with me. Even dh enjoys them, although he doesn't want to watch them over and over again like I do. My poor family has been subjected to the audio version of the book many times. I like to put it in when I'm working in the kitchen. Of course, they also have been subjected to the Colin Firth movie many times. BBC usually does a fantastic job with the classics. Even though each classic book movie/mini-series typically lasts from 4-8 hours, I'm always disappointed when one ends and wish they had made it a bit longer. :lol: The Colin Firth P&P is my favorite one of all. Some other favorites are North and South, Jane Eyre (I linked my two favorite versions), Our Mutual Friend, Little Dorrit, and Martin Chuzzlewit (this is unusual in that it's an amusing Dickens work). For anyone who has a hard time reading classics, I strongly recommend that you first watch a BBC miniseries on the book. You'll have images from the movie in your head instead of being able to construct your own, but that's better than never being able to enjoy the classics at all. BTW, in a previous post, I mentioned the BBC North & South movie and stated that I wasn't referring to the Civil War movie, but I put the link for the Civil War movie (which I went back to and changed). I feel the same way. We usually stick to the unabridged versions. None of my kids has read a graphic novel. They enjoy the real thing. When dc#1 was 7yo and dc#2 was 4yo, I read the unabridged Swiss Family Robinson to them, and they loved it. When they were no more than 8yo & 5yo, I read the unabridged Robinson Crusoe to them, and they loved that. They would sit still for 2-3 hours at a time while I read those books. Unfortunately, my two younger aren't like that, but that's mostly my fault, since I didn't read aloud much to them. But anyway, my boys loved Wishbone. We used to watch the TV show, and they read the Wishbone books from the library. Since ds#2 loved them so much, he bought a used set from the library. Ds#1 is finishing up American Literature. I told him that I wanted him to read Billy Budd, since he should read something by Melville, and that's a short book. He told me that he read Moby Dick a few years ago and didn't like it. I didn't even know he had read it. I wouldn't even have suggested it, because I've heard over and over again how boring it is. We own lots of classic books, and my older boys have read a lot of them with no prompting from dh or me. They've read a lot more of the classics than I have When I was in school, I hated to read. Well, actually, I loved reading at first. We had a wonderful series of readers when I was in lower elementary. I loved those books! :lol: When I got in fourth grade, the older reader series was dropped for a more modern one. I hated the new books, and that was what probably turned me off to reading. I enjoyed reading Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew during middle school and then Grace Livingston Hill in high school, but that's about all I read on my own. I absolutely hated the books we had to read in school. In high school, the only book I had to read that I enjoyed was Animal Farm. So, I thought I hated to read, but I really didn't. If I found something that interested me, I enjoyed reading it. I just didn't know how to find books that I would be interested in. After deciding to homeschool 18 years ago and researching methods and products, I started discovering interesting books. I learned that I didn't really dislike history. To the contrary, I found out that I love history. I just need it in the form of an interesting book and not a dry history textbook.
Masterpiece also did a fine version of KIDNAPPED. Another one I'd watch before trying to read! I absoltuley HATED Melville!!! I read "The Confidence Man" in college. EEEWWWWW!!! I've also read "classic" books to my children at young ages, especially Phillip. By the time he came along, my older two were listening, so he heard them all pretty much from birth! We did Treasure Island, The Little Princess, The Secret Garden, Swiss Family Robinson, Tom Sawyer. Last year we did The Prince and the Pauper (to go along with the study of Henry VIII), and we just finised with Around the World in 80 Days. I'm thinking of doing The Man in the Iron Mask or maybe Huck Finn next. Oh, btw, Rachael found a quote from Mark Twain, from Huck Finn: Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. She says he's a "guy after my own heart!"
Have you read "The Diary of Adam and Eve"? It ends with Adam standing over Eve's grave, and he says, "Wherever she was, there was Eden."
That's it in a nutshell. I wouldn't let my kids read it. I have noticed that probably 90% of the books at our library aren't worth reading. We don't just browse and pick up books at the library anymore, because we have accidentally ended up with books just like the one you described. Instead, we use book lists that we trust, and sit down at the computer and put the books we want on hold.
Rachael's english teacher was fussing yesterday that Dickens was horrible when it came to punctuation. Twain, on the other hand, was very particular in that area.
I love both Dickens and Twain. I just found out that Samantha needs a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray by tomorrow and it can't be a library copy! I have the library copy because I am reading it now. We live in a small town with 1 bookstore and they aren't answering the phone. Ugh! Guess I am making a trip to the town square today.
