Shouldn't 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (aka Explore the Ocean, Find Strange Animals, and Eat Them) be read first?

Not really. I had not read 20,000 before Mysterious and it still made sense. The Nemo part plays a pretty small part as I remember. I could be wrong.

thanks so much. this is nice to hear. and thanks to everyone who contributed. oliver and i looked over a lot of the suggestions and came up with an interesting list. we're meeting with the head of the school tomorrow to construct the outline of his curriculum. youse guys really helped today.

That is so fucking rad. I remember HATING school, especially the reading selections, because I thought then, as I do now, that they were ruining children's love for reading by having us read shite. NO ONE should EVER have to read Nathaniel Hawthorne, under any circumstances, save personal enjoyment, if that is indeed possible. Thankfully by 11th grade, I discovered Mailer, Heller, Thompson, Wolfe, etal, and became the self educated dolt you all know and loathe.

Cliff Noted that beast. Still haven't read it.

Tell you the truth. Never read more than about 70 pages, have never read a Cliff's Notes, and was able to make a 98 on my final paper for 11th grade about Scarlet Letter, and also write one for a friend of mine and HS girl with loose morals, willing to "pay" for an A paper.

Hawthorne was a piece of cake. Now Henry James was a bitch to get through.

Steve

i never hated school that much. especially english. i did the communist manifesto in grade 10 for a book review. best book review i ever did.

If you mean Thomas Wolfe, I am with you. Tom captures a narrative well, but is a bit dry. Thomas is full-bodied: lively, meaty, personal not clinical.

Otherwise, this is qual.

Unfortunately, the only one I got to (sort of) in high-school was HST. I was in twelfth grade when Gilliam's F&LLV adaptation hit cinemae everywhere, and I schemed to see it opening weekend. As well, and unbeknownst to me, my ninth grade English teacher -- for whose class I had completed the assignment "write an ending for the Lady & the Tiger" by preparing a rendition of a menage a trois between protagonist, his prize for choosing wisely, and his unrequited love, the princess -- had figured me to be on-line already to see the film, and asked me, "So, what are you going to be seeing this weekend?"

"Fear and Loathing", I responded.

"Gotcha. Figured as much", she answered.

That was serendipity.

... Then, Heller I got with Catch-22, reading it during the down-hours in Spain, and Wolfe (Thomas) between frosh and junior years at uni, when I started, re-started, and finished You Can't Go Home Again.

Also, read Man in Full during frosh, and have Electric Kool-aid on my shelf to get to.

Right now, though:

nr (now reading): World According to Garp, Irving

np: I Ain't the 1, N.W.A.

i second A Clockwork Orange

Got into THOMAS wolfe much later Have never been able to complete You Can't Go Home Again or Look Homeward Angerl, even after several fits and starts.

Read Tom Wolfe's JOURNALISM, and you will be astonished. Start with Electric Kool-AId (and read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest before, during or dirctly after) then check The Right Stuff.
F&LinLV movie misses a lot of the humor. Like Goodfellas, I regard this serious book as a comdey, and any attempt to play it differently smacks as misinterpretaion to me.
{/drunl}

I assummed he meant Tom Wolfe. Have you read Bonfire of the Vanities? Horrible movie, great book. The Right Stuff is terrific too.

I'm actually going to be reading Catch-22(again) right after finishing up what I'm reading now.

Almost all Irving is, of course, great.

Good to get the kid to a place where he can breathe... standards. and academic rigor have become rigor mortis... and kids don't learn to think and love thinking.

I second Knowles' A Second Peace... and any Heinlein (I read them all as a hormone-fearful boy...and still love all the stories but be careful of an underlying SF facism... Ursula Le Guin is safer if you worry about tribal testosterone science fictions).

Other noteworthy texts for the boy/man brain: Johnw Fowles' The Magus (magic, sex, mystery...all PG rated) or similarly... The Alexandria Quartet (deep in depraved colonial Hellenic Egypt).

DeLillo's Libra. Raymond Carver Short Stories... sand for God's sake...Melville - Billy Budd, some Dickens...even fucking Austen.

And of course from the Beat Standard: Hesse's Siddartha, Kerouac's On the Road.

AND... there's this thing called self-selected reading... sometimes it actually means they read...

Bonfire: Great book----GODAWFUL MOVIE!

Right Stuff: Great book and a great movie for different reasons: The movie illustrates the astronaut stuff better than the book ( i mean, it blows the fucking book AWAY); The movie has no time to fully explore the Chuck Yeager aspect (the X-1, X-2 testflights etc.); It can only gloss over these incredibly interesting (and stupidly underreportred) things that are integral to the Wolfe narrative; and to the history of flight in general. and jesus. and the bible..........

Exactly. The key is to get them thinking and love thinking, not rote fucking memorization as dictated by NCLB.

Dickens, "Tale of Two Cities" Sydney Carthon is the fictional character I have always identified with.

That should tell all of you who have read it all you need to know about me. Pop-psychology and all.

oops, sorry Ayah, got distracted by tom wolfe......

um; i went to a really religous private school from grades 3-6. It was fine. My family isn't really religous so it was pretty cool; I got to get a VERY one-on-one education, read, make my own lesson plans, study all kinds of CRAZY ASS religous stuff (including a couple of passes through the Bible which was tantamount to renouncing all that organized religion etc etc etc);

In the end. It was positive. But for real girl, and with apologies to the well read and well meaning Obnish; does not the reading need to be, at this point, kicking toward Beverly Cleary and more particularly, Judy Blume (and that ilk); I mean, shit, Judy taught us all somethin.......


Anyway......I know that you will figure it out; There is a valid argument for every different kind of schooling.; Much luck.......

I went to Catholic school in Kindergarten and for second thru fifth, and in fifth grade, I got as good a (clinical) survey of human reproduction as I could get in any school in America. And, taught by a nun no less. Nocturnal emissions, menses, ovaries, testes, epididemes -- the whole ball of sex... I mean, wax.

Then again, unlike you Protestants, sex can be fun, or, at least, copious, since our Church wants us to breed, and breed, and breed. (Although, for some priests, to malevolent ends.) So, why not teach bird and bee at ten, or eleven?

(I then followed this up with a fairly incisive unit in actual sex ed, meaning a bit more jocular (as the sex is frivolous, mostly), in my one year in SC public schools (sixth grade). Of course, they did have to separate the class into male and female sections, with a male phys. ed. teach taking the male section, and a female phys. ed. teach taking the female section.)

I wouldn't go with Clockwork Orange. Even with a 12th grade reading level, you have to get through all that somewhat futuristic neo-chek slang/lingo. additionally, i think it's too graphically violent for a 6th grader.

i'd go with War Of The Worlds by HG Wells or maybe Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

bort

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Hitchhiker's series

this is exactly why i've pulled him out. he's always been a rabid reader and could sit on his own just thinking about stuff--interesting stuff. all he's been doing in school over the past few months is rote memorization and photocopied worksheets.

yesterday, at the new school, he had his first class in logic and even though he said he didn't understand half of it he was completely intrigued and engaged by it and can't wait to go back. hopefully it will continue as the weeks go by.

thanks again, everyone.

Let us know what you decide on, and how they are received.

Very cool. Makes me actually want to try and learn to read again.

*picks up book and tries to read upside down*

I love this book, but I agree with this. Maybe in a few years. Another good down-the-line book might be Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.


A book that might be really good now, however, is The Giver by Lois Lowry. Maybe even Rand's The Fountainhead.

I would still go with Anthem at this age, given its length and depth. I would save Fountainhead for another five years, and please please please you make sure the teacher is equipped to teach it. Definitely not a book to read without guidance the first time out.