FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for October 19, 2015

I always got in trouble for reading too much when I was their age.

What was the book: Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations”?

The only book I had trouble with in school was “Silas Marner”, as it was so everlovin’ boring. I could handle “The Hobbit”, “Catcher In the Rye”, “The Outsiders”, “Ordinary People”, etc. – even “Romeo & Juliet” – but “Silas Marner” did me in.

I read tons of books but could not do a book report on them. I read mythology and SF and went to a Catholic School. None of the books I read were “allowed”. So I had to fake book reports from Classic Comic Books.

“The Scarlet Letter” is the worst. Beyond boring. Despite it being about sex, you couldn’t make a good porno movie out of it.

Funny how differently different people perceive these – I loved “Silas Marner” and “The Scarlet Letter” but I could NOT get through “Catcher in the Rye.” Still haven’t to this day.

I read “Moby Dick” almost ten times before high school. I enjoyed the book very much. Then when we got into Senior English/English Lit. The instructor totally ruined it for me.He wanted “what is this characters motivation; what is the author saying here; and what is the deity’s motivation here?”

My high school English teacher insisted we buy the unexpurgated “Romeo and Juliet” then took delight in pointing out the passages the School Board didn’t have the guts to put in their version

I tried to do a book report on one of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories where he explained that he was writing to pay for his drugs, and condemned anyone who attempted to put an inner meaning into it.