We had time devoted to quiet reading & that was what you were expected to do when you were done with a test, ect., so unless you’d really rather stare at a book and pretend to read it, you were always reading a book. You logged the books you wrote and our teacher knew who read what and what you liked and what your reading habits were. Most of the time if it wasn’t part of an assignment you could read Stephen King or Star Wars books or whatever the hell you wanted, but it had to be something. I don’t remember believing that there was anyone who truly did not like reading, and if there was then it was probably only one or two kids in a class.

Our teacher let us read almost anything, but she wasn’t shy about what books she thought were not good. I read Lord of the Flies on my own and I remember her saying that it was overrated. I loved it, but I haven’t read it since and was never assigned it in high school, but other people in my school who were in a different class did. I don’t know if only honors read it, or if it was just a different teacher.

We had regular assigned reading for English class, which did include some novels, but it was usually short fiction and not enough to take all of our reading time.

Up through 8th grade our teacher also read novels to us during lunch, and I think most people liked most of the books most of the time. One or two times she DNF’d a novel because she got thought people weren’t enjoying it and asked us if we wanted to finish it or to have her find another one.