FoxTrot by Bill Amend for September 12, 2021

Andy’s high school days must’ve been way different than her kids’ high school days.

Wait till college, Paige. Every one of your professors will expect that every day. And then you also have to write papers on various topics.

Umm, it depends. What’s the book? Most of the stuff that they feed you in high school is not worth using as bird cage liner. If it’s Pratchett, Heinlein, Ringo, or Correia, I’ll be done shortly.

Today’s classic Sunday strip we’re missing:

https://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2000/09/10

My mom can read a 200 page book in 2 hours. I used to reread the same paragraph for 10 minutes.

Girl, please. You’ve been in high school for thirty years.

I agree with the mother!

My parents and Granny read to me from the time I was born. I was reading simple words before kindergarten, and I was reading/comprehending college level in junior high. So yeah, school could be rather boring at times. But I still love to read :) Real books.. I love the feel and smell of them!

It’s pretty hard to read a book you didn’t choose yourself. I disliked almost every single book I was assigned to read for high school.

So, start at page 74.

My 8th graders are reading “The Outsiders” right now and having the same problem Andy had. Too good to put down.

Stay gold, Ponyboy!

What are these “books” she references?

No, not what she meant, Andy. Though amusingly, I can weirdly relate to both sides of this topic. :P

THERE’S the “Reset Button.” Had me worried there for a minute – I thought Peter might actually have to graduate.

Andy must often wonder how Paige and Peter are here children. Proof of recessive genes, I guess.

Everything about high school and college reading classes seemed designed to suck all of the fun and magic out of otherwize perfectly good stories. Except when they were making you read incomprehensible nonsense and genuinely didn’t seem to be able to tell the difference. No wonder so many people don’t read, with all of that negative reinforcement associated with it.

Can I trade places with Paige? I want to go back to high school.

This intense dislike of reading is something I cannot relate to. I always loved to read. In grade school we had bookworms made of paper rings. Mine was the longest.

You can see which parent the kids take after.

The Fox family seems to be a lot like the DeGroots in that they are stuck in high school for 20+ years now.

I suppose it depends on the book…

Yup, I got in trouble for reading ahead in class, and rereading ahead, and rereading again. What can I say? A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was a good book, possibly the best I had to read in high school.

Reading is my favorite past time. Unfortunately, I tend to stay up too late doing it and am tired when I have to go to work the next morning.

I used to have to make myself stop so I didn’t read the whole book all at once… but that hasn’t been a problem in some time, since now I have much more limited time to read. (Although, the past two and a half weeks, I’ve had that ol’ virus and have been able to read a lot more—that’s one upside, for sure.)

As I related in a comment elsewhere not long ago, when I was in sixth grade our teacher told us to read the first five chapters of The Count of Monte Cristo over the weekend, and I ended up reading the entire book. I don’t think the rest of the class ever finished it (though a few people might have done so on their own eventually).

For me it depends on the book. If I get really going I can spend hours reading and have it feel like no time at all. Other times it’s all I can do to finish the chapter I’m reading. My current project is a combination of the two. Flying through it until I reach a paragraph that leaves me wanting to be sick or weep uncontrollably. And then forcing myself to finish the chapter.

I am definitely in Andrea’s camp here.

I am with you Andy

What books do you recommend to read?

I DO THAT TOO ANDY

That’s so cringy and I hate it!

I read the lord of the rings and it was torture to have to stop