Is it really so bad if it's appropriate?
Good thing you never watched threads.

>>5001

No, but Junk by Melvin Burgess was a key formative influence for me, especially the BBC dramatisation. Oh, lovely lovely Jemima Rooper.

>>5005
>Is it really so bad if it's appropriate?

What does this have to do with the price of fish?

>>5006

Same here, Junk is one of those rare 'young adult' books that doesn't offer a 'neat ending' for its characters and seemed to approach its chosen topic with an amount of realism. I've also always been very glad to have been made to read this at school as well; I think I was a little too old to have been shocked by it much when we did in it class but it seemed to make a much stronger impression on my classmates, which I think was probably a good thing for us overall.

>>5007

I never really related to Lord of the Flies - I appreciated it on an aesthetic level, but it didn't really shock me. I think partly it was the archaic language and the apparent poshness of the boys involved, but mainly because I lived in an environment where people would be upset but not surprised if a fat lad got shoved off the roof of a multi-storey car park.

>>5007
I found Lord of the Flies to be too dry, I much preferred Of Mice And Men, and to a lesser extent Billy Liar. Of Mice And Men had a tragic ending but also a deep sense of hope in between, as well as more interesting characters than some fat kid with asthma.

As for shake spear I can't stand that archaic drivel.

I agree LotF wasn't all that brilliant, I think Golding failed to make the reader empathise with any character in particular. Of Mice And Men on the other hand does it really well.

>>5007
>What does this have to do with the price of fish?
An appropriate fear is not a negative trait. It seems crazier to not be afraid of such things.

>>5009

>As for shake spear I can't stand that archaic drivel.

Give it a chance, I thought it was all toss in year 9/10 and the way they taught it didn't help. Did Hamlet and Othello in sixth form and really enjoyed them. If you really can't stand it, try some Greek plays, Euripides has some solid entries though I did find Sophocles a bit dry. Some great shit in there though.

The only story I remember from school was depressing as well.

It was set on another planet (Jupiter I think) where a bunch of kids where living because something shitty had happened on earth.

They only saw the sun once every 50 years or something and the sun was about to rise that afternoon. But the children were playing a game and locked a girl in a closet and she missed the event.

There was probably some deep meaning to it about losing your virginity or something but I was not really that interested.

>>5012
>I agree LotF wasn't all that brilliant, I think Golding failed to make the reader empathise with any character in particular. Of Mice And Men on the other hand does it really well.

The point of LotF was to inform by allegory. It was an educational children's book - not Harry Potter And The Lord Of The Flies.

>>5015

What's the point of an allegory if it's just as hard to connect with as the thing it's an allegory for? That won't teach you anything.

>>5017

You don't need empathy to engage. If >>5012 had said that Golding had failed because the book was boring or hard to read and failed to engage the reader then you would be right.

Sage for extreme Sunday morning autism.

>>5018

I'm sure you'll find some way to differentiate the two but I don't think it's very different.

>>5006

I did love Junk as a teenlad. Some of it was a bit heavy-handed looking back, and it did actually moralise a bit more than I consciously realised at the time, but it was pretty perfect teen fiction.

I read The Machine Gunners when I was about 10, there was also a CBBC series based on the book.

>>5023
I read that too. Good book, that. Pretty gritty at points too.

>>5023
That's a terrible illustration. That boy looks like he's made of plasticine.

I read Z for Zachariah at school and I was fine.

In a similar vein, I had a dream as a child about my school getting rained on by giant columns of fire from the sky and I've been scared of global warming ever since. Learning about non-linear dynamics in fourth year didn't help either.