Reading Strategy Help? This Book is Ridiculously Boring...

edited July 18 in Books
Ah, August, the month to do all of your summer schoolwork that you haven't even touched yet.

For European AP History, I need to read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, and A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester.

David Copperfield is actually a good book. It's really long, but it's deep, the characters are good, and it's a page-turner sometimes. Get past the length of it, and it's a good book. I've been reading it a lot in my spare time.

On the other hand, A World Lit Only by Fire (I'll save you the trouble of googling it) is the most rediculously boring book I have ever come in contact with. Being only 200ish pages long, you'd think it wouldn't be that bad. Oh. My. God. Seriously, just read the first few pages (which is all I read before tossing it on the floor) and it's literally (sorry Hammy) like a bunch of words just barfed onto the page. I can't read it. I can't. It's not that I'm lazy, I seriously cannot read anything this poorly written. It's jammed with way to much information; it's like reading a list of facts.

After 15 and a half years on this planet, I know that if you are not interested in something, you're not going to be able to deal with it easily.

Any ideas for attempting to read this and actually remember anything about it?

As a side note, there's a 'Tube video of the book being burned! :O
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Comments

  • edited August 2008
    The only real advice I can give is to just soldier through it. Don't go reading the cliffnotes and expect to be done with it that way (although, you aren't in college and could probably get away with it).
  • edited August 2008
    One time I did a book report for an AP US History-assigned book just by reading the back of the cover and a short description from Amazon.com or something... I got a B- on it. (points taken off for using pencil instead of typed up)

    I mean, I would've read it, but somehow my library didn't have any copies available until the day it was due. What kind of class assigns a book you have to find yourself?


    Also, I don't think I ever finished Fahrenheit 451, despite taking several tests on it...
  • edited August 2008
    When I was your age I had to read Salt, a horrifying book that ONLY talked about the history of Salt. I made a good effort in reading it, and thought it was actually pretty interesting! I lost interest when the guy started talking about Cod fish, and I couldn't help but think "Ugh, you already made a book about Cod fish, whyyyy are you still obsessing over this??" (btw I'm 100% sure I told this story in another thread not too long ago, if this seems familiar).

    I think I only knew one person who finished the whole thing. Everyone else, including me, read maybe 50-100 pages (out of around 200), gave up, and then looked on Amazon book reviews to sort of BS the paper we had to write. There WAS no sparknotes for that book, I doubt there is now either.

    In the end, the teacher obviously realized that no one read the book based on our horrible essays, and I don't even think she ended up giving us a grade on it and just gave bonus to the kids who actually wrote a decent paper. My point of this whole tangent is... hopefully it's not THAT bad. Another horribly boring book is The Scarlet Letter. Blargh. Maybe you'll get lucky and your teacher will come to his/her senses and think "Now why would I EVER assign something as dull as this??"

    My attempt at helpful advice: if you REALLY REALLY can't read it, go with Sparknotes, make sure you can pass the little tests they have on the site, and maybe try to find something on pinkmonkey.com that would help. It's ALWAYS best to read the book, but... for high school, most teachers you can afford to read the sparknotes and get away with it.

    EDIT: Reading some of those book reviews for Salt, I wish they had been written when I was writing my paper. The ones I was stuck with weren't near as informative.
  • edited August 2008
    What the hell is AP History?!
  • edited August 2008
    I never did any of the summer reading assignments. I was confused as all hell the first 2 years they had it and I came back and people had read these books I never heard of. Then when I found out what they were doing, I still just didn't do it.
  • edited August 2008
    Night Lord wrote: »
    What the hell is AP History?!

    Advanced Placement. It's basically a college course in high school so I don't have to do it later.
  • godgod
    edited August 2008
    My school is really lax on summer reading, except for if you take AP English (the only AP class we have) like Panda. They give us a list and say "Okay, read one of these books. But I guess if you read a different book by the same author, it's okay. And you'll probably get away with reading something completely unrelated, too." Because of this, we dont get tests on the books. They say to write about what happens, and our thoughts and predictions while reading, but I got an A last year for just summarizing the book.

    They always have The Thief of Time on there, so I read a Terry Pratchet book that I was going to read regardless of whether it was required or not.
  • edited August 2008
    I both enjoyed and hated AP US History. The classes were fun and informative, and we got to go on field trips which is odd for an 11th grade class, but the homework load was HUGE. And the summer assignment beforehand was to read like the first seven chapters of the textbook (all the boring pre-Revolution stuff) and do a 100-question test packet on it. I normally do good in school, but I was literally on the bottom in that class, and actually failed one marking period...
  • edited August 2008
    hlavco wrote: »
    Also, I don't think I ever finished Fahrenheit 451, despite taking several tests on it...
    =(
  • edited August 2008
    Hey god... just out of curiosity, do many of the students who take the class at your school pass the AP test at the end of the year? Both my English AP classes my junior and senior year required an assload of work, practicing multiple choice tests and writing essay after essay analyzing literature we had to read. And I still know plenty of people who didn't pass. Is it possible to do well by only reading one book, that you might only have to read?
  • edited August 2008
    I don't know what schools you guys went to, but I would have been screwed if I didn't read the books my classes assigned.
  • edited August 2008
    My school is so lax that I they pretty much say, "Read two books that are at or above your grade level." They don't give out summer homework and during the school year they pretty much don't give any other homework either, homework, can either be finished in class, is a punishment, or is study material for the test that is extra credit. Fun times.
  • edited August 2008
    I hear that High School is different than Junior high. Didn't some of the AP classes say to expect 2 hours of homework every night?
  • edited August 2008
    I think they were talking to people who get easily distracted by stupid things and have an average grade of a D at all times, like all the average supposedly rebellious teens around here.
  • edited August 2008
    I found a class (AP European History A/B/C) That has a note that says

    "Students entering AP European History should expect to devote an average of one hour of homework per day to the readings and assignments in the course"

    More than you get in Junior high, Haha. And I'm not sure that any D average kids can get into AP classes.
  • edited August 2008
    I'm expecting to have 3 hours of homework a night this schoolyear. Still nothing compared to what Night Lord used to do.
  • edited August 2008
    The only AP class of mine that was really THAT demanding was Psychology, and that was partly due to the teacher and partly due to the class only being a semester instead of an entire year. English for me mostly just required reading more than anything else, and reading isn't all that bad. After you read the books, you can complain about them to all of your friends on how horrible it was when you get back to school, and then feel superior if they didn't bother finishing it, haha.

    Still, nothing gets you a better grade in high school than making good first impressions with all of your teachers. Once you do that, writing essays are so much easier than if the teacher didn't like you.
  • godgod
    edited August 2008
    Mish42 wrote: »
    Hey god... just out of curiosity, do many of the students who take the class at your school pass the AP test at the end of the year? Both my English AP classes my junior and senior year required an assload of work, practicing multiple choice tests and writing essay after essay analyzing literature we had to read. And I still know plenty of people who didn't pass. Is it possible to do well by only reading one book, that you might only have to read?
    I really don't know. We aren't offered AP until our Junior year, which is what I'm going into this year, and I had no interest in taking AP. The only part of English that interests me is Etymology, and I suck at essays. This pretty much counts me out any chance at success in AP English.

    On the subject of two or three hour homework loads, thats what I'm supposed to start getting this year from my Electronics class. I remember in freshman year not being able to wait for our academic cycles to end, partly because I would have two weeks of virtually no homework, and now it's going to probably be more.
  • edited August 2008
    Zlamzambo wrote: »
    More than you get in Junior high, Haha. And I'm not sure that any D average kids can get into AP classes.
    I was a D student, but they let me into AP Biology and Calculus. The decision is really up to the department heads/course instructors.

    Bruce/Anybody not familiar with the American High School System: AP is not Associated Press, but rather denotes an "Advanced Placement" class. In conjunction with the College Board, many high schools in America offer these classes to students who show potential in a subject or are just very studious. The classes culminate in the end with a standardized AP test, administered under the guidance of the College Board (who also administers the SATs, which you may be familiar with). The test is independent of the course gradewise, in that one may fail the class but pass the test, or vice-versa. The classes are recognized by most universities, and you can use your test scores as credit in classes that would otherwise be a waste of time for you, since you've just...taken the class.

    Back to the subject at hand: I recall coming across a link to a nifty browser applet into which one can paste text. This text is then flashed on your screen, one word at a time, at a rate of about 150 WPM. I think it would be helpful for Carter here, since the words will flash regardless of whether you want them to or not. I tried it out with Hamlet, and could understand it all pretty well actually. If anything it will help him to read through the boring book FASTER, so he won't spend so much time on it.

    Does anybody know what I'm talking about here? I can't remember where I saw the link.
  • edited August 2008
    Double Post:

    Here it is: http://www.spreeder.com/

    I remember now, I got it off of Digg. All you need now, Carter, is the text of the book you're reading. Happy hunting with that, man.
  • edited August 2008
    Mish42 wrote: »
    Still, nothing gets you a better grade in high school than making good first impressions with all of your teachers. Once you do that, writing essays are so much easier than if the teacher didn't like you.

    It’s the same in Junior High as well. My bro's and angel A+ child, so any teacher that has had him loves me from the start. But in one of my classes it was the opposite. My English teacher (that I hated) loved my writing, and therefore me. I got away with SO much crap in that class! Kids would have to call their parents when they didn't turn in a paper, where as I would say I forgot and she would tell me to turn it in the next day. I also got to retake spelling test (I can't spell) when she said at the beginning of the year, she didn't allow re-takes on spelling tests. I got away with speaking out of turn, bending the rules for assignments, and other similar things. The other kids in the class thought it was so funny that they forgave me for being the teacher’s favorite.
    If your feeling bad for her, DON'T! She's the worst teacher I've ever had. And I've had some messed up teachers.
  • edited August 2008
    John, that spreeder thing is awesome. I wish I had had that when reading John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged... I just finished it a few days ago, and it took me like a month in a half... I found a copy of the speech online and put it in the spreeder, put it at 500 words per minute. I can actually comprehend everything being said, and at 32,965 words that would have let me be able to read it in just over an hour. I mean, sure, I might not have gained as much knowledge from it, because I ended up going back and re-reading the good bits... but I can pretty much read everything it's saying, even when going so fast. It also makes me laugh thinking that I'm capable of reading 500 wpm. Based on that, I'd say I naturally read about 475 wpm.

    EDIT: the only thing that kills me is the dashes- they put two words into one, and those are the only words that go by too fast to read. Other than that... this is awesome ^_^
  • edited August 2008
    I tested it with a long post, that's pretty sweet, John. Doubt I'll find the text though.
  • edited August 2008
    OMG, if John Galt tried to broadcast his speech over the airwaves nowadays, people would just turn it off. <3 Atlas Shrugged. Dagny Taggart is the SLUT! *boooooooooooooong*
  • edited August 2008
    ...what?
  • edited August 2008
    Who is John Galt?
  • edited August 2008
    That was actually pretty clever. And John, that's exactly what I thought when I started the speech... in today's society people would think "This guy's kind of a jerk" and turn off their radios.
  • edited August 2008
    I don't like the spreeder! It hurts my brain! I am a very slow reader. I can't force it like that.

    In one of my college classes I would end up spending 8 hours every week trying to read 30-40 page chapters. That didn't include the homework time. That class was not the most demanding class I took either. I had figured the number of hours I used to spend on homework once when I had like 3 classes and one of them had no actual homework and anther had relatively little, but the 3rd required a good 20-30 hours a week by itself. Let's just say that learning how to use 3D studio Max in a 12 week class that meets once a week for 4 hours at a time isn't for the lazy. Then there were those summer classes that compress full semester classes into 16 days spanned across four weeks. Ick.
  • edited August 2008
    You can adjust the speed (or the spreed) of the Spreeder, X! I think it's like exercise reps: start at a slower, but still challenging, pace, and then increase the speed as you get better.

    Of course, there exist situations in life where a square peg just will NOT go into the round hole; I don't know if this is one of them.
  • edited August 2008
    I copy-pasted in several articles, in succession, to find a speed I couldn't read at. I stopped fully comprehending things at around 650 wpm.

    Edit: I just noticed that one reason can become harder to comprehend in the spreeder is a paragraph change, when the subject changes that fast it stops working the way that should.