I just came from a Youtube video entitled 'Literature Education is Broken: Here's How to Fix It'. I agree, and I want to spread the word.
Reading levels in America have fallen since the 1970's- despite the Harry Potter phenomenon. This video shows us why: the vast majority of the books taught in high school and college literature classes are depressing.
How to fix it? We need more joy in our literature classes.
We need more love, more hope. More positive emotion.
More triumph over difficulty.
And we have to do it ourselves, as students, or as parents of students.
The system won't change. But we can make sure that ourselves and our children are exposed to something more hopeful.
Think of it: if all the literature that your teacher recommended was depressing, would you want to read?
And I have recommendations.
Lord of the Rings. Fagel's translation of The Odyssey. Dryden's translation of The Aeneid.
Read Moby Dick out loud. Your literature class will probably have you read Moby Dick. If you read it silently, you are missing the good part, and it will indeed be depressing.
Not if you read Moby Dick out loud. Moby Dick is poetry- it is meant to be read aloud. The greatest part of the book is hearing the glorious sound and thrill of the words read out loud.
And Moby Dick is like a heavy metal album- it is meant to be read LOUD!
Ramesh Menon's retellings of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. A good translation of Matsuo Basho's travelogues with Haiku poetry.
The poetry of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Yeats, Keats, and Emily Dickenson. Shakespeare's sonnets.
Asimov's I, Robot and Foundation trilogy. Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two. Stranger in a Strange Land.
This is a list of recommendations full of hope, joy, triumph, beauty, thrills, and much, much more!
This is literature that is not depressing!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson