Comment by bgbntty2

>I would say most of the books I read were crap and written poorly.

So you've encountered Sturgeon's Law[0] in the wild. It applies to pretty much everything, so perhaps you might broaden your focus when considering that.

Were you aware that this is actually a thing?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

I was intrigued by the idea that it might be unreasonable for a book to include a glossary or dictionary to explain usages for made up or unfamiliar terms. I like that this list [1] exists because I was struggling to think of such a book. But then I thought about The Lord of the Rings, and it even includes an index of terms among its appendices, which is something I remember using to revisit parts of the story when I first read it. Another book with a glossary of terms is Dune, which I found fun and reasonable to avoid trying to explain hierarchy where doing so would break the narrative flow. But maybe that just means it's not as cleverly constructed or organized as it could have been--but the trade-off has to be how to engage a wide selection of readers...

Is the complaint about the dictionary at the end because it wasn't comprehensive? I'm unreasonably curious about the book and which phrases were included and which were not.

I think all written works occur in a context that should be taken into account when thinking critically about them. That context is temporal and linguistic and is more apparent when you consider something like Beowulf in Old English or The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Understanding it requires either a modern reinterpretation or consideration given to the sociolinguistic context in which it was written.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/180823.Novels_with_Gloss...

God forbid we learn new words or learn words form the past... Why even bother with history right? It's just old stuff anyways let's focus on new stuff, what could these old things teach us anyways

Meanwhile my grandma still knew how to speak Latin at 70+, which she learned in school as a teenager

> Avengers end game is also art. I engage with this type of art. I don’t consider opera the art of our modern culture. It is unfortunately a niche.

That's the thing, though - in English literature class, there is nothing stopping the teacher from using popular media to introduce things like tone, ambiance, character motivations, arcs, etc, and then ask for parallels to the set works.

They don't do it though, the system is not set up to produce a bunch of critical thinkers from English Lit.

Yes! Art that's taught in school and that is "required" to know if you want to appear intelligent or fancy is just what GP posted.

But art is also:

* electronic music (if you're not aware, it's not just repetitive dum-dum-dum for 8 minutes, although I enjoy that style, as well);

* rap (it's not just guns, drugs and mysoginy);

* all the other music genres, of course, but I gave electronic music and rap as examples because they're usually treated badly by people who're not familiar with them;

* games (I've been emotionally moved by many flash games, let alone new immersive games);

* movies, series - live action or western animation or anime.

Yet, in school we either learned about classical composers, or about regional composers. Only once, around 10th grade, we had a cool music teacher who played other genres for us - Fat Boy Slim, random metal groups, even a few pretty out-there experimental things. Much better than learning about some composer who lived 50 years ago just because he is from the same country as you.

Same for paintings and similar art. What good does it do a 7th grader to look at Picasso? The context matters, but for people who don't care about such art, it's useless. I won't feel better if I can "intelligently" discuss the art scene in $nation in $year. I have, later in life, read interesting articles that actually mix politics and life in general with the art that was "allowed" to flourish. Like art in Soviet Russia. But that context, if it was given at all, didn't mean anything to a 7th grader, especially if they didn't learn about Soviet Russia in history before the art class. In my experience my education was all over the place.

get gud @ reeding