My thing about book reading (as well as tv and movies) is that it's my escape time. I don't want heavy. I'm not looking to learn anything mind blowing. And I DON'T want to analyze anything.
I fully agree. I have a friend who's a book nut and she reads all the boring old books like
War and Peace and
The Scarlet Letter. I read YA dystopian novels and murder mysteries. I'm a grad student and I do a lot of reading for school, and all of it requires a tremendous amount of thought and analysis. By the time I come home, I want to turn off my brain and enjoy pulp fiction.
Yes, I had a problem with reading ahead too! Very difficult to remember what you shouldn't yet know about when you're being asked what characters are doing in this or that chapter or what is being foreshadowed.
I did that too, but I just fessed up that I'd read ahead and left it up to the teacher to be my spoiler alert. I never had any teacher be upset that I'd enjoyed an assigned book enough to read it "voluntarily."
I remember one classmate who always had that problem: he'd already read most of the assigned books years earlier. The teacher just didn't bother calling on him because she knew he knew the answer, and wanted to give someone else a chance. Also, she knew that if she let him answer, he'd takeover the class and turn everything into his own personal discussion. He tended to over-analyse books and disagree with the "assigned interpretation."
Catcher in the Rye would have to be the worst just for being bad.
I read that book last year, thinking "this book has such a reputation, I should read it." The whole time, I just kept waiting for there to be a plot. Finally I got to the end, and I'm like "that's it? wtf." Thankfully, that was never assigned.
We actually had good books on our curriculum. I enjoyed
Of Mice and Men,
Wuthering Heights... I can't remember the other classics we read. Dystopian novels were big in our curriculum. Had it been written yet, I'm sure Hunger Games would have made its way in there. We did
Animal Farm in grade 11, and in grade 12 we chose one of 8 dystopian novels. I picked
1984 and I really liked it.
The Giver was another of my favourite assigned books, around grade 5. I keep meaning to go back and read it through adult eyes.
I ended up hating Shakespeare but I don't necessarily think his work was bad in and of itself, just mediocre.
We only did 1 Shakespeare play per year. I enjoyed
Hamlet and
Macbeth,
Romeo and Juliet was so-so, and
The Tempest was poorly taught but in hindsight not so bad in and of itself.
I did enjoy Ender's Game but I did that despite the class.
We didn't do
Ender's Game in school, but I read it on my own and enjoyed it a lot. I was disappointed by the follow-ups, which weren't nearly as good.