How to comprehend hard books like Walden?

alamode
Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:21:27 +0000

definitely use sparknotes

i had no clue what was going on when i read it, but my teacher was really good (though gave an unfairly large amount of assignments–don’t get me started). For most of what was required, especially in the beginning, she’d go through it with us and point out important things, literary devices, meanings, etc. It helped us get used to what to look for and stuff and then she’s assign a few pages at night and the next day we’d go through as a class what we found and add to our own books (we had photocopied versions). The final product was what looked like a complete mess of highlights and pen and notes and arrows. We did that for all of Economy and then had two choose 2 other sections to analyze by ourselves and complete a paper on.

examples:
http://i14.■■■■■■■.com/4mt6h43.jpg
http://i19.■■■■■■■.com/62r6smo.jpg
http://i17.■■■■■■■.com/4tsxag8.jpg
http://i17.■■■■■■■.com/4qgk9r7.jpg

The Great Gatsby was even worse–post its on every single page I tell you.
But then I actually liked that book :P