I’ll be happy to never do a summer assignment again
The best part about “How to Read Literature” was how easy it was to read. I could easily read my planned 3 chapters a day, and it didn’t physically wound me like “Crime and Punishment” did. It was a great time.
The worst part about “How to Read Literature” was all of the examples given in the text. I felt like some chapters were 50% examples and it bothered me. Although examples are there to show the main point, I felt like there were far too many examples all proving the same thing. I have never heard of any of the books he referenced (which I didn’t expect to) but with the sheer number of examples, it would have been nice to have a reference I understood (With the exception of the kid’s literature chapter).
The best part about “Crime and Punishment” was how dumb Raskolnikov was. It was very amusing to me. He is probably a very intelligent fictional man, but after the crime happened he had the intelligence of a bag of rocks. I absolutely lost my marbles when he waltzed into the police station after murdering two women. What kind of self-respecting murderer does that. And then he passed out when he heard people talking about his crime. What a dumb guy! He thinks that he’s all that and a bag of chips but he’s dumb. I love it!
The worst part about “Crime and Punishment” was that it felt like my eyes were trying to swim through concrete. I like to think I’m a pretty strong reader, I spend most of my free time reading my lovely young adult books. Everything was golden in my Utopian book world. When it came to Crime and Punishment, all bets were off. It was truly humbling. The part I hated the most was how long and ramble-y some of the chapters were. JUST GET TO THE POINT RASKOLNIKOV, STOP SLEEPING AND WALKING AND DO SOMETHING!! I know that reading the book was hard, but I remember nothing. Somewhere online, I read that the human body can’t remember what pain feels like (I tried fact checking this but the results were dicey, so just hear me out.) I’m assuming since I can’t remember the process of reading the book, the emotional pain it caused was excruciating. Despite the pain, “Crime and Punishment” was a little bit helpful. It was like a near-death experience. Knowing that nothing will ever be as painful to read as “Crime and Punishment” has inspired me to read the “difficult” books that I’ve been putting off. I feel like I can run a marathon, but instead of running, its sitting in place reading hundreds of books.
The google classroom assignment was alright, but writing the essay responses with 200 words each was difficult. Responding to other people’s answers with 200 Words was even worse. Despite this, I am very, very glad I didn’t have to write an essay or make a presentation about the books. It was a nice, fun summer assignment. I really liked the quizzes. The “How to Read Literature” book was incredibly helpful, and I’ve caught myself analyzing the fiction books I read for fun. Even if there’s nothing to analyze, I’m still trying to connect the dots. This is kind of a random point, but last year l went through one of my favorite books and marked all of the symbolism and foreshadowing and all of the fun analysis stuff, and I felt pretty darn good about it. I reread the book last week, and I caught SO much more that I skipped over the first time. Without “How to Read Literature” I wouldn’t have even noticed (This sounds like a sales pitch for the book, but I’m just really happy that I learned something from it.) So, long story short, I am glad you made us read it.
In conclusion, “Crime and Punishment” caused me pain, “How to Read Literature” was a blessing, and the summer assignment was alright. My pals and I made mediocre memes to help us remember what happened in the book, so here are some of the better memes. It had to be done.
Katie Ranting about English 