Yes, I also remember reading that book. In fact I can remember several works that we read in school I really think were a mistake. One year we had a summer reading project where students picked between three books and wrote a review of one. The options were Ready Player One, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and something else I forget. I took the second option. It depicted some questionable things including incestuous sexual abuse but there was at least some point given that it was autobiographical in nature although I almost felt like the scene in question had a quasi-erotic character which made it even weirder.

Ready Player One was far worse. I later went back and read the book, because that was the one that the vast majority (somewhere around 2/3rds) of the guys picked. It did not have much literary value at all. The book was about a virtual game world called "The Oasis". I believe the book caused undue hype for VR and also the game Star Citizen. I remember when the first beta of Star Citizen came out, my friend said "It's been compared to the Oasis" which made me cringe. One scene in the book described in some detail, though not graphically-explicitly, a slew of self-defiling devices and simulations in the game world that the users could employ. That was quite surprising because I went to a private Roman Catholic school. The school later admitted that assigning both of those books was a mistake. Ironically they ended up assigning another book that was a massive mistake but I won't go on a ramble about it.

To go back to your thought, I really didn't like Algernon. I didn't understand the point of the book then, and I'm not interested in going back to find out. Most of the books I ended up reading in school made my eyes glaze over and imparted a long-lasting bias against any fictional works that took years for me to exorcise. I wish I could give more reflection on Algernon but I don't actually have much to say because my memory is so vague. What got me the most in school was how one of my teachers assigned Anthem. Ayn Rand was a hack and a pseudointellectual, who managed to create a postmortem legacy of even more imbecilic pseudointellectuals that not only believe her works to be great literary achievements, but some of the greatest literary achievements of all time. When Rand's book was assigned I had already taken very particular theological and moral views. At the time I was an adherent of Dimondite Sedevacantism and Rand's atheism felt so utterly alien to everything I believed, though I later toyed with it myself for a time. It felt very schizophrenic--I knew the teacher who assigned Rand was a social conservative and devout religious person, but Rand's views were anything but, and I don't even think bare theism was necessary to show it. Sorry for writing a rant, but I guess my point is that all the books that were assigned in middle/high school were thoroughly unattractive to me, and I believed they poisoned the well. I think I'm going to write either a blog post or some other spiel about a positive idea of how to improve students' views of literature

had i not read algernon in my youth i highly doubt it would interest me much at all, it is because of my overly sentimental nature that i tend to look backwards on things such as that with a generally positive view rather than anything tangible. looking at it objectively i would argue it was a travesty that such a young boy has access to something with such crass and vulgar contents, and while i find the premise of the book and the literary style it employs rather interesting the pacing is rather poor and its exploration of the core concept is pretty shallow. it passes off better as a good batch of popcorn rather than a proper dinner, a sentiment i felt applied to 'the andromeda strain' as well after i was talked into reading it by a man who went on and on raving about its quality until i relented. neither are truly bad books so much as they lack any lasting substance to reflect on after you've finished reading

though i'm unfamiliar with either of the two books you mentioned from that course, i did find your rant about ayn rand to be quite funny. while i definitely agree with your general sentiments towards her works and philosophy as a whole, i do think we take different approaches to reading both fiction and non-fiction. rand is someone that i regard in similar way to a man like baudrillard, or perhaps even marx to a lesser extent: they bring up genuine issues in modern civilization, often in ways that frame things in a fresh or new light, but their approaches and conclusions are absolutely abhorrent. i was surprised after reading 'atlas shrugged' how much i could empathize with her frustrations regarding the terror of government regulation towards honest men, and her sentiments about the potential strength of a man's will when properly convicted of a noble goal, but it was precisely the implications of those goals which convicted her leads in the story that i found laughable at best and abominable at worst

there is something very telling about the modern condition that such books and such a philosophy came from the pen of a mannish-looking woman in the twentieth century, because her ideas are neither novel nor profound as you have said. these sentiments are merely another billowing echo of wretched man's heart laid bare, reverberating endlessly throughout the halls of time from his earliest days. it is that same impious spirit carved into the victory steles of primeval mesopotamian warlords erected over the corpses and rubble of their conquered foes forty centuries ago, unchanged wholly in substance but appearing to us in these latter times through a different muse. it is through how she writes the character of daphne taggart (her blatant self-insert who is so laughably different from her actual personage that it borders on pathetic) that you can see a rare honest glimpse into the heart of a woman subject to the pressures of this modern industrial age. i could wax poetic on this regarding the schizophrenic, nonsensical desire that many women tend to have towards both danger and safety simultaneously as well as offer up plenty of examples of this from my miserable dating life, but for the sake of brevity i'll just say that human women have the greatest potential of all creatures on this fair earth towards unabashed cruelty on large scales towards those they perceive as lesser or unfit as a result of their unchecked passions, and it is precisely because they are hardly ever themselves the instrument that carries out their own will. there is no more obvious example of this than rand herself, and if her philosophy was carried out to its logical extreme i would go so far as to say that even satan himself would have pause, for the earth then would become a more damnable realm than hell itself

today i was reading a service manual for an engine and discovered that lubrication in french is spelt lubrification. that's the whole thought i just enjoyed seeing that

That sounds simultaneously way more technical and way more dirty

chipmunks have an identical morphology to cats but they are four inches tall

currently imagining a reverse vampire. that is, instead of dying when exposed to sunlight rather they die if ever not exposed to sunlight. they must constantly wander west with the sun their whole immortal lifetimes to stay under it. maybe some reverse vamps weave back and forth between the poles according to the seasons so they might be able to truly rest when the days are longest at those areas, but maybe some of them would stay at the equator just for the constancy in day length rather than trying to take advantage. they could go inside but really only immediately next to windows in order to stay in the sunlight

still teasing out the whole blood sucking aspect though. think i would still play it straight where they still have to feed on blood to retain strength since having to do so in broad daylight would turn them into brutal predators in remote regions just populated enough to feed but not populated enough that people would just start killing them outright. at first i thought about making the blood sucking aspect reversed as well where they produce so much blood they have to inject it into people otherwise they explode or something but that seemed really stupid because they would just become perpetual blood donors and people would like them. maybe their blood is poison? i dunno that still seems like a stupid idea

overall could be a cool idea for a story i dunno. could tie it into a theme of people that were so vain that they desired immortality but in seeking it they abandoned all that made them truly human, unable to stop and rest at any point lest they be caught in the dark and perish. i like the symbolism there

what if instead of sucking blood, they sucked ambition out of people

an interesting idea matthew, but i rather prefer the idea of the physical mechanism being impossible to replicate even despite the best effort of the reverse vamps. perhaps some of them develop or retain a scientific mind and try pursuing a mechanical solution, but despite their efforts no mechanism ever produced actually works no matter how identical to the sun it is in function. they would be strongest at solar noon but only begin to truly cripple as the sun sinks behind either horizon, dying at the moment it fully falls under the earth. in this way i see it as a cosmic force beyond physical explanation specifically ordained to punish them for their ambition, leaving room for strange metaphysical developments and cultic behavior practiced by the vamps who have long realized they are well beyond any human understanding in their lives of constant wandering

very much like that idea aery, literally feeding on the ambition of others to stay motivated in their endless pursuit of a pointless goal for the sake of their own vanity lest they prefer death to life from a lack of feeding. it would mimic that peculiar type of person in our own lives that derives pleasure and purpose from the suffering of others