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Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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If you were in charge of setting high school fiction reading curriculums, what books would you choose? I think Dune holds up, maybe Blood Meridian? But I’m not as well read as some of you

Blood Meridian is the best novel I ever read, but it's also a hard and unrewarding read for most people. I doubt it'd be suitable for highschoolers. If you want them reading McCarthy, then I think the Border Trilogy - either of the first two (All The Pretty Horses and The Crossing) or the whole trilogy - would be much better-suited on account of their more personable protagonists and less violent plots.

Dune I'm similarly not sure about. There are lots of people who just refuse to take Sci-Fi seriously. Maybe Dune can overcome this to some degree thanks to its fame, maybe it'll just cause a bunch of culture warring due do its mighty whitey plot, hard to say - but it's also been around for a long while; surely teachers somewhere must have experiences on how students react to Dune?