The Literary Blog Hop is hosted by "The Blue Bookcase". It's a biweekly hop for blogs focused primarily on literary fiction. Click above for more information!
Here's our prompt this week...
My freshman year of high school I took a course called "Witnessing our World", which was two back-to-back periods of combined English and World History, team-taught by two great teachers. In retrospect - what a neat idea for a class! At the time, it was a thorn in my side.Discuss a work of literary merit that you hated when you were made to read it in school or university. Why did you dislike it?
This was mostly due to these massive projects we had to do - incorporating doing art work in the style of a certain time period, writing a letter from the perspective of a child working in a factory, stuff like that. I struggled with this. I've always been the kind of student who prefers to write a research paper, or take a comprehension exam. There are certain things that bring out the small part of me which is type-A. This is one of them. Math? Same way. We get assigned 100 algebra problems? Dream come true. 10 word problems? Shoot me in the foot.
Anyway - we're not here to discuss my quirky personality. In this class, we read Tess of the d'Urbervilles and I hated it. Now, I'll admit to you that I can't remember WHY I hated it, just that I hated it. This book is actually on my TBR list at the moment. I think I need to give it another shot.
My best guess is that I was just too young to be reading this novel. It was my first experience reading something that wasn't YA without our teacher guiding us every step of the way. I think I got lost in the language. I remember breaking down crying and my Mom buying me the
I made it through, got an A, all that... but I think Tess got the short end of the stick.
It was a long time ago. My tastes have matured. I think Tess and I need to try again.
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