Hello everyone!
I want to discuss a topic that has been on my mind for a while, required reading. What brought this up was when I started reading The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald. I understand why we have to read it for school, because the language is beautiful. The plot was really slow throughout the whole story and the characters are really flat in my opinion.
All of the characters are grey characters, but if the reader doesn't know who to root for than they will be less interested in most cases. I understand that this may be an unpopular opinion because I have seen many people love this story. The reason I explained all of this was to show that maybe if I choose to read this book on my own I would have liked it more. Required reading puts a pressure on us to read. Reading should be fun, with stories that we enjoy.
What do you think about required reading?
I think that required reading expands your horizons to different genres of books. It also helps you see how to find literary devices. But often times during required reading, you have to annotate (I do this naturally in my head) or do an assignment. Which I think takes away from the reading experience. One way that I like teachers to do is to give you a list of books to choose from and you can read something that you're more interested in.