Re: The Demonization of Shakespeare

On 9/04/25 10:20, Peter Moylan wrote:

On 09/04/25 01:49, Paul S Person wrote:
 

Of course, part of the problem is the insistence (well, back in the
60's it was) of the teachers on expressing their personal liking for
the books instead of taking a more objective approach, making any
comments less than adulatory unwelcome. Why bother to engage with a
book when the teacher has already told you how you must feel about
it? And I suspect they are reading all sorts of stuff on their own.
Just not books. And certainly not books recommended by adults.

 
WIWAL there were two kinds of books. There were books that were
compulsory reading, and then there were books that were read for
pleasure. Making a book compulsory made it less interesting.
 
Maybe that's how I picked up the habit of reading lots of SF. SF was not
quite respectable in the 1960s (our school's assistant librarian became
quite concerned at how much of it I was borrowing), so it rarely got
onto the "compulsory" list.
 

That is my experience as well. Although not stocked in the school
library, the public library kept up to date mainly with the yellow and
black Gollanz books. I appreciated and respected my English teachers but
was too immature to appreciate Shakespeare at that time.