<p>*Student did homework for five hours, staying up until two am to finish a report about Shakespeare.</p>
<p>Are there really no /good/ books that are somewhat realistic? I used to think Boarding School was like Harry Potter and you could stay there all year except for the summer. (I’m still waiting for my Hogwarts acceptance letter, actually. Maybe it’ll show up March 10th.)</p>
<p>When I get into Boarding School I will document everything faithfully and then make a story out of it. And I’ll try not to throw a dragon in.</p>
<p>No, there’s not really anything realistic. I, for one, love reading Private and It Girl because it’s funny to laugh at how completely unrealistic they are and I enjoy quick, stupid reads as a break from the type of things we read for school. I thought Prep was good. I hated Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace, but I had to read them for school and I didn’t like my teacher that year, so that could have something to do that.</p>
<p>Dead Poets Society is legendary among boarding school students - some site it as being the primary reason they choose to go there. I personally think it was a brilliant movie. It’s very authentic, I believe one of the actors went to Saint Pauls and the director went to Hotchkiss so the movie has a real boarding school feel to it. I highly recommend it. Its a classic.</p>
<p>I’ve never read Catcher in the Rye. I haven’t read many classics. (Unless you include The Princess Bride as a classic, of course.)</p>
<p>I don’t read It Girl or Gossip Girl because I can’t stand those people for more than five minutes in real life, so why spend hours reading about them?</p>
<p>It accurately portrays a LOT of things about private prep schools which hold a majority of wealthy kids (which, I’m sorry to shatter your dreams, still rings true. The majority is lessened with a more 60/40 rate than 99/1 but regardless) in it. If you really didn’t like the sex scenes, you skip them. At the end you realize that Lee, regardless of how rich or smart she was, would never have truly fit in. I secretly believe Curtis Sittenfield had a similar experience because it’s way too realistic -__-</p>
<p>^mentioned before on the thread, but definitely give it a chance. It’s quite sad though, not one of the types of books to sugar coat the boarding school experience. I think it was written by former headmaster of Lawrenceville?</p>
<p>idk prep was sorta similar but realistically, none of these books aka Private, It Girl etc. are very realistic because as others have said - nobody would want to read them if they were realistic. sure sometimes, day students sneak in alcohol, drugs, or people bring them, but it’s not like people drink every night and spend like 5 min. on homework. at the schools i have experience with, there are real consequences for drinking/drugs and especially repeat offenses you can get kicked out. And everyone definitely spends a ton of time on hw, sports, etc. unlike books and tv where people never seem to do any work.</p>
<p>i kind of liked and hated prep at the same time. lee could be annoying, but sometimes i felt myself feeling bad for her. i did not like when curtis skipped ahead. however, with the skipping ahead, it gave me more time to ponder about the book. the book didn’t really have much of a plot i would think, except lee’s experience at boarding school.</p>
<p>A separate peace was really good though, to me o_O I loveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed the way it was written the symbolism (which is not nearly as much as lord of the flies, the book I read before I began a separate peace. it keeps you sane)</p>
<p>This is a great book…I believe Wolff attended the Hill School…it takes place in the 60s but really gives a great view of the overall ambience of boarding schools and the relationships students and teachers form within them.</p>
<p>I am reading the Private series now by Kate Brians, and I AM GETTING MAD at Ariana!!! I hate the plot because I think she is so STUPID! I shouldn’t have picked it up at all because I’m reading it on the bus, at lunch, and throughout class… finding out what other dumb thing’s going to happen.</p>
<p>^^haha wait until you find out what ends up happening. there’s a new series focused on ariana, the first book wasn’t set at boarding school but it looks like the next one will be.</p>
<p>I like the Chalet School books, by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, but they are a. about an all-girls school with no boys anywhere, b. in England and Europe, c. set from the late 1920s to (I think) 1960s so not very current, and d. very hard to find in America.</p>
<p>Someone else mentioned Kipling’s Stalky and Co., which I’ve read many times. There’s also Diana Wynne Jones’ “Witch Week”, which is fantasy and possibly more appealing to pre-teen readers but very, very, very good.</p>