I remember being really disappointed in my reading lists when I was in middle school. My teachers avoided the classics like the plague and stuck to some really bleak stuff. They seemed to labor under the delusion that all you need is a lot of depressing with a healthy helping of hopelessness, add a dash of licentiousness and congratulations! You just made the middle school reading list! No wonder teenagers these days tend to be so jaded and sullen. All of the books they have read merely communicated to them that life sucks and then you die an untimely death.
