At the conclusion of each year, your teacher hands you a list with about 15 books on it. Reading through the list you maybe recognize 2 or 3 books, at the most, with tons of authors you never heard of. We as students, are expected to choose 2-3 books and just hope that we made the right choice. Is choosing a "good" book even possible though? First of all, the topics on the books cannot be any worse. Sorry, but reading about geishas is not exactly enjoyable as a freshman of high school. Even when the reading list offered better books, my luck would only allow me to choose the worst. And from experience, i can tell you that reading a boring, plotless books during the summer is close to torture.
Not only, is choosing the books a pain, but figuring out when you will read them can be quite challenging. Most people want to get done with their summer reading as soon as possible. Of course that is great so that the rest of the summer you are free. But then you come back to school and are handed an impossible quiz on a book you read about two months ago. How can the teachers expect you to do well on these tests? So after that year of failing, you decide that you will wait to read the books closer to the end of summer. This sounds like a awesome idea, but now you find yourself stuck inside the last two weeks of summer cramming all your summer work. As you see, there really is no good way to approach your summer reading.
So really, what is the deal with summer reading?
Some of my worst summer reading experiences included these books:
Memiors of a Geisha
Ties that Bind, Ties that Break
The Lovely Bones
Maria, I like you do not enjoy summer reading. I understand that teachers want students to read during their time off from school, but I would much rather read books hand picked by me! You're correct saying that there's no good time to read the summer assignments. I've tried to read in the beginning of the summer then done badly on the test when I get back to school in the fall. Even worse is trying to finish all of the reading in the last week of freedom. However, I have picked some great books to read off the summer reading list. For example, I have read Perks of Being a Wallflower, Looking for Alaska, and Prep all for summer reading and they've become some of my favorite books. Well, tata!
ReplyDeleteMaria, I can agree with you. It is very difficult to find the perfect timing to start a book. It's even more challenging trying to finish it 2 days before to start school. Although the books can be boring, I have read a couple that were good. For examples, One Day, Looking for Alaska, and Persuasion.
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