There are also the books that are not horridly depressing, but seem designed to convince you that reading is at best dull and boring. I had The Great Gatsby as assigned reading in a college class. The only reason I could stand to read it was that it could be spread out throughout the semester. Characters ranged from, "I'm supposed to like this guy because...?" to "I care not one iota what happens to this character."
Fortunately my parents made it clear that they were more concerned with my reading than just what exactly I read. They might look at something I picked up and express surprise that I'd want to read it, but they wouldn't stop me from doing so. As a result I think I started reading The Right Stuff somewhere around fourth grade and IIRC made a first try at A Canticle for Leibowitz around fifth grade.
In fact the only time I can recall their taking away any books when I was a kid, was when a coworker said, "Hey, you're son likes to read, right? I've got a whole box of books my brother is done with." They looked through and pulled out a few that they decided looked like porn, but left behind the science fiction and fantasy and the rest. So the only time I can remember the doing that was with books I hadn't even picked out myself.
And while I wouldn't want to have to go through grade school again, there is one thing I miss from that time. I regularly went through at least three or four novels a week. When we would go on vacations I would read in the car and often polish off two or more a day (I think I went through the first eight Chronicles of Amber novels in two and a half days that way -- I had an aunt send them over with instructions to let her know if the most recently published book concluded the series yet).
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There are also the books that are not horridly depressing, but seem designed to convince you that reading is at best dull and boring. I had The Great Gatsby as assigned reading in a college class. The only reason I could stand to read it was that it could be spread out throughout the semester. Characters ranged from, "I'm supposed to like this guy because...?" to "I care not one iota what happens to this character."
Fortunately my parents made it clear that they were more concerned with my reading than just what exactly I read. They might look at something I picked up and express surprise that I'd want to read it, but they wouldn't stop me from doing so. As a result I think I started reading The Right Stuff somewhere around fourth grade and IIRC made a first try at A Canticle for Leibowitz around fifth grade.
In fact the only time I can recall their taking away any books when I was a kid, was when a coworker said, "Hey, you're son likes to read, right? I've got a whole box of books my brother is done with." They looked through and pulled out a few that they decided looked like porn, but left behind the science fiction and fantasy and the rest. So the only time I can remember the doing that was with books I hadn't even picked out myself.
And while I wouldn't want to have to go through grade school again, there is one thing I miss from that time. I regularly went through at least three or four novels a week. When we would go on vacations I would read in the car and often polish off two or more a day (I think I went through the first eight Chronicles of Amber novels in two and a half days that way -- I had an aunt send them over with instructions to let her know if the most recently published book concluded the series yet).