Ask Lemmy

The majority of the books we read in school. They almost seem like the only reason they're promoted in school reading class was as a deal by the authors and the schools to save the book from disinterest. However, I tend to get a lot of flak for it, especially when I bring up Of Mice and Men and A Christmas Carol. No matter how I read the first one (since everyone keeps telling me I'm reading it wrong), all that rings in my head is a plot demonstrating the struggle of two individuals in an old crochety version of rural America that leads up to a justification of euthanizing based on weaknesses that shouldn't have been set up to show in the first place, and a Christmas Carol is just an old man being bullied by three ghosts who could be out solving some of the world's biggest issues but somehow think some random old man who did the crime of refusing to give generosity to someone is the world's biggest priority.

It's a common meme to compare the aesthetics/style/ethics/accuracy of a book to the Twilight saga like the Harkness Test (e.g. "wow, the Quran has worse ethics than Twilight" or "this Harry Potter story might be misguided, but at least it's not Twilight"), and I wouldn't exalt the majority of the books I've had to read in high school above the Twilight books.