Potholer
Active Member
For those of you who don't know what a reading log is:
Many schools have these things where they give you genres to read from, then you read certain books and write a response about them, talking about characters, plot, opinion of the book, whether it was bad or not, that sort of thing.
When I was 3rd form (13yrs old) it wasn't so bad, read 12 books during the year, cover things like a short story anthology, a new zealand writer, a book written pre-20th century, things like that. Not so bad.
But, not that I'm 6th form, they make it much harder. It's only 9 books but:
There has to be a gender balance: at least 4 male and 4 female writers.
I've got to cover, pre-twentieth century, a book about another culture, a NZ writer, a contemporary writer and a biography/autobiography. But they all have to be from a list called the 6th Form A Reading List, meaning what we read is limited and most of them are really really really bad/boring books. And you really can't enjoy a book while looking for thigns to write about while reading it, so even if it's good, you can't get into it because you're on the lookout for quotes (as you also have to use at least 2 quotes in the response).
I do understand why they make us do logs - it makes us read things we wouldn't normally read and I've discovred some good books I probably wouldn't ahve otherwise read but it's still incredibly stupid how we have to have all these restrictions on us! The list is of "critically acclaimed authors" and I'd like to know how such crummy writers came to be critically acclaimed.
Reading Logs should die a slow painful death. They're due on tuesday but it's better to hand it in on monday because then you get more notice on which book you have to do a semi-impromptu speech on. This is how they make sure we've actually read the books.
I love reading but not writing about books (unless they're good and I want everyone to know what a great book it is so that they can join in and share the wonderfulness of the good book).
Die, reading logs, die
Thank you for your time
Many schools have these things where they give you genres to read from, then you read certain books and write a response about them, talking about characters, plot, opinion of the book, whether it was bad or not, that sort of thing.
When I was 3rd form (13yrs old) it wasn't so bad, read 12 books during the year, cover things like a short story anthology, a new zealand writer, a book written pre-20th century, things like that. Not so bad.
But, not that I'm 6th form, they make it much harder. It's only 9 books but:
There has to be a gender balance: at least 4 male and 4 female writers.
I've got to cover, pre-twentieth century, a book about another culture, a NZ writer, a contemporary writer and a biography/autobiography. But they all have to be from a list called the 6th Form A Reading List, meaning what we read is limited and most of them are really really really bad/boring books. And you really can't enjoy a book while looking for thigns to write about while reading it, so even if it's good, you can't get into it because you're on the lookout for quotes (as you also have to use at least 2 quotes in the response).
I do understand why they make us do logs - it makes us read things we wouldn't normally read and I've discovred some good books I probably wouldn't ahve otherwise read but it's still incredibly stupid how we have to have all these restrictions on us! The list is of "critically acclaimed authors" and I'd like to know how such crummy writers came to be critically acclaimed.
Reading Logs should die a slow painful death. They're due on tuesday but it's better to hand it in on monday because then you get more notice on which book you have to do a semi-impromptu speech on. This is how they make sure we've actually read the books.
I love reading but not writing about books (unless they're good and I want everyone to know what a great book it is so that they can join in and share the wonderfulness of the good book).
Die, reading logs, die
Thank you for your time