It’s Friday, it’s been a stress free week with a stressful weekend to come, but only great things I have to plan so that’s not too bad! This evening, I’m going to dinner with three of my best friends and I’m super excited! I mean we see each other in school every day, but it’s nice to get some quiet time and talk while devouring a pizza/pasta! To the bookish part – for today’s tag, hosted as always by Rukky @Eternitybooks, we are discussing a super important and hot topic: required reading: a punishment or a blessing in disguise?
My opinion when I was younger
We all know the feeling of having to read school books that don’t interest you because they don’t affect you in any way, might be written in a very very different time period and are for somewhat reason relevant today that you can’t quite grasp? Been there. Teachers tell you that this book is super relevant, but all you can see is a very slow pace and uninteresting characters.
vs. my opinion now
For the past two years, I’ve had the blessing to read have to read good books for school and I think I know the reason why. The older we get the more deep and advanced topics and the more relevant topics for society we are able to understand and discuss. I know that the earlier books were classics as well, but now we’re getting to the very philosophical books such as Faust in Germany.
On top of that, I sometimes find it useful to have a general knowledge of classics, also of national classics, as it’s mandatory for everyone to have a certain level of education and I believe that literature and also the ability to interpret and discuss complex texts.
However, besides the recent development to the tendency “blessing in disguise”, there is a never ending problem where I can never see an answer. No matter how much I liked a book, I will always get tired and end up hating it after analyzing it at school for hours and hours straight – and I have a blog about books (that’s the weird part). I simply don’t like interpreting books at school, I find no joy in that and know I also never will.
That’s it – tell me, what do you think about required reading, is it a punishment or disguised blessing? Feel free to comment!!! Happy reading and enjoy your weekend!
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“Teachers tell you that this book is super relevant, but all you can see is a very slow pace and uninteresting characters.” – This hit home with younger me! I remember reading a quite old classic in German class when I was younger and thinking, ‘why would we do this’. It really changes as you get older, I agree! ☺️
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Oh, I’m happy you agreee! And the early books in German class really weren’t the best, but I get why they kept the best for last! Happy reading!
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I still have to deal with required reading, so I guess I’m a bit biased😅 part of my problem is that I’m a total mood reader, so having to read and analyze a lot of books I’m not in the mood for bothers me. But you have a great perspective on how important required reading can be! Classics can introduce such meaningful ideas. Great post!💜
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Thanks so much! And I totally get that! During the winter holidays I also had to read a classic and all I wanted was to spend time with my family, but then I had to make time for the book. It was an excellent book but I wasn’t in the mood and that was super frustrating!! So I can totally understand you! Happy reading 😍😍
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Oh no! I know right, it can be very frustrating. I’m glad it was a good book though lol! Thank you so much, you tooo💜
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thanks so much!!!!
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Oh yes! I’ve realized that they aren’t so bad anymore, but discussing and dissecting it in class, and finding all these far fetched ideas and conclusions from a simple straightforward sentence annoys me so much and makes me hate it. Like really. And then to the teachers, it seems so obvious that far-fetched idea X is the only logical conclusion of the sentence, and I’m here wondering if I’m somehow blind or reading the wrong sentence. I think this is what kind of made me hate required reading when I was younger as well lol
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OMG same here! I HATE THAT!!! These far fetched ideas are the worst and especially the teachers reacting when you interpret something “super obvious” for them and it wasn’t what they wanted you to say – that’s fun!
Happy reading!!!
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