# Sumer reading list? WTF? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 23, 2008, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sumer-reading-list-wtf/461037 "2008-08-23T19:15:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sumer-reading-list-wtf/461037/61 "2008-08-26T16:12:02Z")
Never had a summer reading list, never even heard of one until the last few years. I graduated high school in 1988. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sumer-reading-list-wtf/461037/62 "2008-08-26T17:09:16Z")
[QUOTE=Cisco] I got a summer reading list every year after ~5th grade. They would lecture us at the end of the year that we’d better read them or we were in deep, hot water when school got back in session, but when we came back in the fall they were never mentioned and I don’t know a single person that read any of it. [/QUOTE] I had this too. . . but in the later years (i.e. High School), we were expected to turn in book reports on what we’d read. When I was still underage to work commercially during the summer (legal working age was 16 in New Jersey), I would read the books between mowing lawns, helping around the house, what have you. Once I turned 16 and started working my arse off to earn some money, I consciously blew off the reading lists and turned in a crap paper. One teacher actually questioned me, and I answered tactfully (in writing), “Ma’am, I’m expected to to homework during the school year. During the summer, I work two jobs to save up money for myself. Your reading lists are, quite frankly, in competition with what little free time I have during the summer, and are of less-than-immediate importance to other plans and preparations I have for my post-high school academic career.” I’m paraphrasing, but she got the jist of it. I never heard about the stupid _Oedipus Rex_ paper again. I don’t think the class ever heard anything about summer reading after the first two weeks anyway. . . Tripler Schematics don’t flow well in prose. Draw me a damn diagram of the electrons. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sumer-reading-list-wtf/461037/63 "2008-08-26T19:51:25Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] Hmph. That’s not literature; that’s just chicken-scratches. What are they giving kids these days, En-me-barage-si’s shopping list? [/QUOTE] No, it says, “Under the cover of darkness, we raided the enemy village, and killed their warriors, stole their asses and ravished their women” - or ravished their asses and stole their women, I’m not sure. I actually can’t read cuneiform, but my daughter took a class in it in college - for fun - and that’s pretty much what all the inscriptions say. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sumer-reading-list-wtf/461037/64 "2008-08-26T20:03:18Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] Unless you read cuneiform, it probably doesn’t matter… [/QUOTE] I tried to learn but I kept getting a wedgie. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sumer-reading-list-wtf/461037.md?page=3)