Reading is a chore?

[Betsy]

I love to read! Its my favorite "chore" ever.

That is a shame. My entire family loves to read. We have been known to have to go and take flashlights and books way so they would go to sleep.

Most kids who don't read live in homes were there are few books and have no idea what they would like to read.

Mom routinely had to take away booklights and books from me when I was supposed to be sleeping. Dad always tells the story about how for the longest time he would sneak up the stairs and peak into my room a few hours after bedtime only to find that my covers were glowing. So one night he came upstairs and my covers werent glowing and he was so relieved, but then he noticed that the closet was glowing I had discovered that it was more comfortable sitting in the bottom of my closet surrounded by stuffed animals than to crouch under my covers.

Now Im marrying an English professor so there will never be a lack of book-love in my household! In fact students write to him after the class is over saying "I never realized that reading was so enjoyable, I hated english class in high school".

[Evalieutions]

Our three sons are all voracious readers, as am I.  In fact, (teachers, get ready to cringe) the most effective method of punishment for our oldest son during his teen years, was to "ground" him for a set period of time, from reading anything that wasn't necessary for school.

[RoseRose]

Our three sons are all voracious readers, as am I.  In fact, (teachers, get ready to cringe) the most effective method of punishment for our oldest son during his teen years, was to "ground" him for a set period of time, from reading anything that wasn't necessary for school.

I had the same punishment as a teen.

And my covers also often glowed... which would be a cause for the grounding from books.  Never did stop me from reading, though.

[madmusician]

That is really sad in the worst way. 5 pages? I think sometimes it is a result of parents who don't encourage anything as long as the kids keep to themselves...I remember when I was little my mom got to the point of throwing all my books away because I spent too much time reading. Still haven't figured out whether or not I deserved that...

[fklwmn]

 The Great Gatsby, for example, is, well, great, but the way that teachers dissect it is boring. 

AGREED!

I LOVE to read. love love LOVE it. but in school I always wanted to say.. "Did it ever occur to you that these authors were just... writing a story?" I want to enjoy a book for what it is, and not have to dissect it. I mean, doing so in an interesting and entertaining discussion with friends is one thing, but having to find symbolism and themes for a class is something altogether different.

Of course, I'm the kid who took the second grade reader home and read the whole thing in 3 days. Then spent the rest of the year bored while we worked through the book *sigh*

[Tabris]

Did it ever occur to you that these authors were just... writing a story?" I want to enjoy a book for what it is, and not have to dissect it.

Okay, as a writer myself, I'd like to interject here some thoughts about great fiction:

1) The writer should first and foremost be telling a story.
2) The reader should first and foremost be able to read that story and understand it.
3) Afterward, if the reader re-reads it, he should be able to realize that there were a lot of subtle underpinnings he didn't notice the first time around which made the story enjoyable.
4) If the author was skilled enough, the reader WILL NOT HAVE NOTICED these things.
4A) That's what English teachers are trying to show their students
4B) Concentrating only on the underpinnings will bore everyone to tears
5) But the underpinnings of the story--the symbolism, the foreshadowing, the relevancies to the time in which the writer was writing--those all need to be there in order to create a story that resonates within the reader.

Having said that, my stepfather is an English teacher. One of the first times my mother and he took us on a field trip (they were dating) we got on the subway and I pulled out a book a thick as a meatball hero. He looked at my mom and said, "Oh, she's got a project due?" and my mother said, "No, she just likes to read," and he nearly fell over.

[Cupcake Fiend]

We're a reading family too.  So far the boys love it.  We read to them daily -- bedtime stories at the very least.  DH and I are both avid readers too, and we are hoping it gets passed on!!

But when I was in school I remember a lot of the other kids did not enjoy reading, and I got picked on as a bookworm a lot.

[housewife2k]

But when I was in school I remember a lot of the other kids did not enjoy reading, and I got picked on as a bookworm a lot.

My sister and I were picked on, too. Hubby and I are lucky in that the school we send Oldest to is A) relatively small, and B) a multi-lingual/multi/cultural school. Many of the students in his school are reading either very early or relatively late. The late readers like having another kid read to them, or with them. They are more comfortable asking another kid about the story or pronounciation than they would a teacher. Also a large emphasis is placed on reading in english at home, and with others, being formal english teaching doesn't start until second grade, and then is only ninety minutes a day. I shudder to think about what he would be dealing with at a 'standard' public school.

[Venus193]

This is sad.  When I got the measles in 1st or 2nd grade my parents had to take the lamp out of my bedroom to prevent me from reading.  When the doctor told them "No television and no reading" I felt like I was being punished!

BTW, both my parents enjoyed reading.

My best friend was ready to pull her hair out when she worked in a bookstore and encountered parents who either were annoyed that their children were being required to read or were attempting to enable their children to avoid reading their assignments by asking for the Cliff Notes.

There is a recent college graduate on another forum of mine who thinks that paper books are out of date and wants to replace them with e-books with SFX.  He was the one dissenting opinion in that forum.  I'd hate to see what he would try to do with the book I'm reading now (The Best of H.P. Lovecraft).

[mrsbrandt]

Unfortunately my DH never grew up with a love of reading.  He really doesn't enjoy it much at all.  But I think part of that is that he's still in school (grads in May hooray!) and profs and teachers have forced him to read things that don't always interest him.  FWIW He's been working on the same Micheal Crichton book for the past year and a half, since he just has no spare time.  I don't really have much spare time either, but I wind up going through books too quickly. 

DH bought me a book for my birthday, last night he gave it to me and now I'm almost half way through it.  ("Baby Laughs" by Jenny McCarthy. - kinda crude, but truly hysterical.)  It makes me sad that my library branch isn't open later and that I don't have more time to go there, otherwise I'd wind up living in the library.  I'm glad that DD (she's 2) loves reading.  Every night we read, unfortunately it is the same book, before bed, but often times through the day she enjoys reading too.  I wish there was more I could do to make DH enjoy reading, but it's hard to find books that would interest him.  I gave him the DaVinci code (prior to the movie) after I finished reading it.  His sister wound up picking it up before he even managed to give it a second thought and then his mom grabbed it, but DH said he wasn't that intrested anyways.

[eport]

I am a reader too and I hated high school and college lit classes (especially some with lots of college lit majors unfortunately) and I felt too many people were trying to pull items out of the book that just weren't there (i.e. this author is trying to demonstrate how the plight of women is related to the type of house the women lived it) and other minute details that just didn't seem to matter to the whole story (which is the important part)

Worst class story: white professor who concentrated on minority authors. We read a book about a bi-racial main character (american indian and white) and he mentioned that all bi-racial people of this type feel a certain way (as he would know because he's read lots of fiction on it). One member of class finally spoke up, "I am half indian, half white and I've never felt that way" to which the professor replied "You probably just haven't accepted that you are half indian yet"

Best class story: same college, different prof. We were reading a book that the professor's graduate advisor wrote. A discussion started between lit majors about the symbolism of where the female characters lived (ie. women are more oppressed if they live in a house instead of an apartment). Class ended. The next class period, the prof came in and said "I called Kent (the author) last night about the symbolism thing from the last class, he found that theory funny and full of sh**. That particular character lives in a house because that is appropriate for the area in which I was writing, there is no symbolism to it." The lesson: enjoy the story and don't try to put your belief system into someone else's writing.


I enjoy fun reading then class reading anytime.

[Cz. Burrito]

The only time I ever got in trouble in school, it was for reading.   

(It was in "reading class" in 4th grade and I didn't like the book that the teacher was reading aloud, so I decided that I would read my own book.  I always kept a book in my desk.  I received a "discipline warning," which you would have to have your parents sign and bring back.  I was absolutely petrified to show it to my parents, because I was in trouble!  15 years later, it's pretty funny.)

[Lisbeth]

Tabris:

Concentrating only on the underpinnings will bore everyone to tears

Unfortunately, that's how English teachers are told to teach books in the syllabuses they are given.

When I was in elementary school, they always did it the same way: first, there is a list of vocabulary words that have to be looked up and put into sentences.  If that wasn't enough of a turn-off, it was usually followed by a list of questions that had to be answered in complete sentences.  At that point, I couldn't care less about how good the book is.  Finally, there is usually some kind of project that involved a diorama, a big posterboard, a model, or some kind of 3-D construction.  By then, I'd be ready to burn the book.

Either that or there was a pop quiz (very common in middle and high school).  When I was in 10th grade my English teacher started almost every class with a pop quiz and some of my classmates kept pre-numbered sheets of looseleaf paper on hand, because she always opened with, "Number your papers from 1 to 10."

It was like my English teachers were deliberately trying to get us to lose whatever interest we might have had in reading.

[Cyndi]

Wow, I didn't expect this thread to get so many replies!

I have a little story of my own to tell you all:
I went all the way to fifth grade with no reading comprehension. Yes I could spell words perfectly, but I couldn't use them properly in sentences because I didn't associate a written word with an object or an action or an emotion. On spelling tests I always got 100% on the words, but when it came to using them in sentences I made no sense at all. (ie if the word is Lamp, I might have written "The lamp ran down the street." because I knew that was a sentence). Therefore, reading seemed like a useless activity that made no sense to me. The school system just kept passing me along until finally I was in full time special ed and that teacher seemed to recognize my problem. She took me aside and started pairing pictures with words until I had the epiphany that Helen Keller did at the water pump.

I've loved to read ever since.

But if Mrs. Foster(bless you, wherever you are!) hadn't done that, I might have continued on and probably flunked out of my English classes. Instead, now I love to read and I can also write fanfiction and poetry. Someday I hope to write a book.



Tabris: CRUD MONKEYS! I had to do something similar in high school. Usually it'd be kids wrote down words they didn't know and they wrote their list on the board. Whoever already had a word put a check next to whatever word was already up there. Whatever words had the most checkmarks became the vocab words for that chapter.

Well, because they wanted to get through it fast, most of the kids put up bullsh*t words and the real words I actually listed got ignored. I ended up looking them up on my own time. It made books pretty boring.



CB: LOL! That made me remember some of the books read to my class after lunchtime recess! Some of the books included Pig City and Superfudge(Judy Blume) and The Indian in the Cupboard(Lynne Reid Banks). Usually I'd draw while listening, but we were allowed to do that.

[Xanthia, Maker of fine Tin-foil hats since 2007]

Well, I love to read, sometimes I will go a month without picking up a book because I am so busy, and Jellybean will actually tell me to slow down, and go read a book.  He does not share my love or reading "stories" but gobbles up Technical Manuals ()

Now, that being said, a sure fire way to get me to NOT want to read a book is to try to FORCE me to read it.  I hated assigned reading in schools, I hated being FORCED to read anything, suggest a book to me and I am all over it, tell me to read a book or I will flunk and I will resent the "book".  My 3rd, 4th and 5th grade teachers knew this about me (I went to a small private school for advanced children at the time) and would give me book "suggestions" during the year and during summer camp, I read them up, and did not mind reading them again when it was time for the assignment...the first assigned book that I did not "resent" was "Island of the Blue Dolphins" and i was assigned books by two of my Fav authors, Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume before that.

I am just hard headed!