What are you currently reading?

[Milla aka. the Slayer]

True. Very true.

[Kalah]

I just read an article about why school books are so badly written. It's mostly because the authors aren't interested in writing well; only in the science they are communicating.

[ThunderTitan]

Was it an article in the "Captain Obvious Daily" local paper?

[Kalah]

There's nothing obvious about it. And no, it was a newspaper article, which we used in the teacher's academy. It actually made me remember one of my first university books, a chemistry introduction by Michael Munowitz. Not only did he know his chemistry, but he could also write well and explain things in a simple manner. When we changed to a Norwegian chemistry book a year later, that quality disappeared too.

[ThunderTitan]

There's nothing obvious about the purpose of a work influencing it's structure?! Right...

[Kalah]

Don't be silly. The purpose of a school book is not merely to write down and publish knowledge, but to educate its readers. How is it supposed to do that when the pupils can hardly understand what's in it? Therefore, poorly written school books are in fact working against their own purpose; it's much like a teacher who knows a lot about stuff, but doesn't know how to teach it to others.

Thing is, this article claims that most of the authors aren't interested in writing well so that kids could learn; they were more interested in writing for themselves and their colleagues.

[Pol]

Very true. And difference between well written school book and just some summing up it's huge!

It's exactly the difference between people liking the book, whereas learning its subject, devouring it with hunger for knowledge and curiosity and certain passion or abandoning it.

And leaving is with: "Math is bad, it's boring subject.. . History is bad, why I should remember all these dates? etc.. "

[ThunderTitan]

Don't be silly. The purpose of a school book is not merely to write down and publish knowledge, but to educate its readers.

Hahahaha... look at you and your crazy new age ideas...

[Kalah]

Don't try to talk your way out of the fact that you didn't get the point.

Right now I'm reading some stuff about bullying; it's for a paper we're handing in at the teachers' academy.

[ThunderTitan]

Yeah, i didn't get the point, it certainly wasn't that i was making fun of your naivete concerning the reason why someone would write a school book... or the fact that the conclusions of that article where pretty obvious.

[Kalah]

The conclusions weren't obvious, that was the point.

The "obvious" conclusion was that school books are written poorly because the authors can't write. But it's not that they can't. It's that they can't be bothered.

[Corribus]

Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card

[ThunderTitan]

The "obvious" conclusion was that school books are written poorly because the authors can't write. But it's not that they can't. It's that they can't be bothered.

Those 2 aren't exactly independent of each other you know...

And both of those where obvious... kinda like Twilight.

[dogthenine]

I just started reading the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks. I'm 500 pages in and it's very good so far.

[Kalah]

I'm reading Max Manus' autobiography.

[ThunderTitan]

The Illiad... on my mobile phone... man, where those ancient greeks a bunch of pricks or what...

[Kalah]

Just the ancient ones?

[Angelspit]

Went back to Stephen King's The Dark Tower, Wizard and Glass now (by far my favorite of the series). Interesting, but I don't see myself reading another King again after that series.

[GreatEmerald]

"Gegužė ant nulūžusio beržo" (translation: "May on a crashed birch tree" or "Cuckoo on a crashed birch tree" depending on interpretation), a novel series by Juozas Aputis. It's another book that I have to read for school, but it's very amusing, because even though he writes only about countryside, the situations are quite original, good suspense is created and he just loves averting tropes. You can't expect the endings of any novel, or even if there will be an ending to begin with!

[ThunderTitan]

Just the ancient ones?

Well i haven't read any books about modern greeks, so i don't know...