I'm 16, and I'm finally getting around to watching The Godfather for the first time. I've been planning on it ever since last summer, when I played Romeo in an early 60s mafia setting of Romeo and Juliet.

I finally watched the original film on AMC; then I read the book in two days and I'm halfway through the second film. Next up after I finish watching the trilogy is reading The Sicilian, and then The Godfather Returns.

This isn't the literary area in which I usually foray. My favourite books are The Lord of the Rings and Dune, so this is very different from what I am used to. I'm really looking forward to buying the DVD trilogy when the time finally comes.

Just thought I'd let you all know that the appeal of the Godfather lives on, and not just in wannabe gangsters...

Good to see a young fan of the series. Enjoy the films

It's nice to know that a good read lives on. On the novel side of the board, we have an 8th grader chiming in. This is something you should both know:

The Godfather is a trash novel. It's a great trash novel, but it's trash novel, nonetheless. At your ages, you should be reading great books by people like Joseph Conrad, Alexandre Dumas, and Jack London. Once you read all of those, you can move on to Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters.

Once you have all of that background, then you will be able to find something useful in trash novels like The Godfather and the Da Vinci Code.

And whoever placed Romeo and Juliet in a 60's mafia setting is an idiot.

A huge Godfather fan, actually. And it worked out brilliantly. Had a lot of parallels to GF, actually. In that setting, Romeo is very much Michael Corleone.

Don't be so sure about that.

It worked pretty well in a 1950's NYC street gang setting -under the name of 'West Side Story'.

Apple

A far, far better thing that he be a Shakespeare fan.

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Originally posted by Struck By the Thunderbolt:

I finally watched the original film on AMC; then I read the book in two days and I'm halfway through the second film. Next up after I finish watching the trilogy is reading The Sicilian, and then The Godfather Returns....

Wow! Two days? I read it when I was 16, and it took me three days.

Sorry but I have to chime in on the whole "who he should be reading" thing.

I won't sit here and say that Conrad, Faulkner, and Co. aren't awesomely great writers, but for 75% of high school students, those writers are too much for kids who are more interested in trying to be cool and getting laid. At least that is how it was when I was in HS.

In today's society, we should be happy that high school students are reading anything, so The Godfather would be an excellent book to read in HS.

I wasn't mature enough to get into Shakespeare and Joyce until college, and I'm not sure I could get into Ulysses even now.

High Schools should expand their ciriculum and allow students to pick from a list the books they want to read. Otherwise kids are just going to be reaching for the Cliff Notes when the usual suspects are rammed down their throat. Because nothing is more boring than Ethan Frome.

Besides, The Godfather, trashy as it may be, does have some excellent themes for High School students to chew on and learn from.

Just my 2¢.

Also, 16 is an excellent age to get into these films. I watched them my senior year in HS when I was 17. Instantly fell in love with them. And it's a love affair going on ten years. God... has it been that long already? I remember watching these films for the first time like it was yesterday.

Anyway, about watching these films as a teenager: They are still "cool" enough to hold teenagers attention, but the films contain enough "quality" to really propel teenagers into more complex art, both in film and literature.

If I had never seen the Godfather, I really don't think I would have ever been drawn into the classics... Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind...

It opened my eyes to an era of cinema (th one before the year I was born, LOL) which up until then, I had pretty much ignored.

I'm a huge Shakespeare fan, myself. I love Shakespeare. First I played Romeo, then I played Macduff in Macbeth.

It's not as though I don't read the literary classics. As I said, Tolkien. I'm a big fan of all the classics, as are most of my friends.

You mention Dumas. I've read Three Musketeers and Monte Cristo.

Jane Austen? I'm reading Pride and Prejudice right now, and I'm aiming for the role of Darcy in my theatre company this summer.

1984 is one of my favourites, as well.

The teenager stereotyping going around here is disturbing me.

By the way, my favourite film of all time is Lawrence of Arabia.

I do have to agree there is a lil too much stereotyping going on for teenagers here , as I am only 15 and I have been a big godfather fan for a year now and I've watched the trilogy and read the book.

I think Romeo and Juliet can probably be played in any timeline , which is why its a timeless classic

Young ones:

Be very careful about playing the "stereotyping" card. People in this world have been stereotyped but good, from Ireland to Germany to the American South, and every point in between, and if it ever happens to you then you'll beg to have back the day when some old grouch told you that you shouldn't be wasting your time on trashy novels.

Some high school must reads include:

Steinbeck's Winter of our Discontent
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
Malamud's The Fixer
Salinger's Catcher in the Rye
Knowles' A Separate Peace
Melville's Moby Dick and
Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

I'd also throw in Verne's The Mysterious Island.

Nothing wrong with a junior or senior reading The Godfather, a perfect summer read, and the basis for the greatest cinematic achievements.

I have to disagree with what they are saying about reading the novels. With the exceptions of Julius Caesar and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I didn't enjoy any of the novels the teachers and professors forced down my throat. I ended up resorting to Cliff Notes or asking my friends because the books weren't interesting. They were downright boring. The ones I enjoyed were the ones I found on my own.

The Godfather is one novel I enjoyed very much. But I think that was due to the fact I had seen the movie so many times prior to reading it, that the novel was just adding background information.

I then decided to read The Fortunate Pilgrim since so many, including Puzo, have said it was better than The Godfather. I couldn't disagree more.

Let kids choose what novels they want to read. If they're going to be forced to read, it should be brief (not short by the true definition) stories.

Boringness is subjective. What you think is boring may not be to another. Laziness and resorting to cliffnotes varies aswell.

And greatness is subjective, too. Most movie watchers and critics rank Godfather I & II in the top five movies of all time. However, there are people who disagree and don't even like the movies.

I wonder what percentage of people who read the "classic" novels actually enjoyed them.

well, morons do in fact exist.

If you polled every high school student in America, I bet an overwhelmingly large amount of them would say they found the "classics" boring and resorted to Cliff's Notes to pass the tests that accompanied those books.

I think that is what is wrong with the school system today... that they aren't adapting to society today. They're sticking with the classics and alienating a new generation of students who aren't interested in them anymore.

I'm not trying to stereotype any teenagers or anything, but on a whole, most of them aren't interested in the classics -- at least not at that age -- but they do have interests. We should allow their interests to play a larger role in reading.

If a student wanted to do a book report on The Godfather, I think that would be fine. Like I said there are plently of themes in that book that could really spark a 17 year old's essay.

After all it is better to have a student leave high school having actually read a book -- instead of having him rely on Cliff's Notes or the internet to pass a test on a book he didn't want to read.

The problem with this line of thought is that the job of a school is not to ensure that students aren't bored or to let students read what they want but rather to educate students and prepare them to enter society.

While I don't dispute that there are themes in Puzo that can impart life lessons, it's hardly the best way to show students the craft of literature. A good teacher will find a way to relate the classics to things that interest the students.

There are certainly differences of opinion on what is great writing, but those decisions are better made by teachers than high school students.

Don Cardi

First off, I haven't read The Godfather by Mario Puzo, but I will eventually come to a point that I just have to

Teenagers today are exposed to very little of the classic world. I think it's good that high schools still somewhat enforces students to read the classics. The thing about Cliff Notes and the Internet is that they are only useful if you're writing an essay and are definitely not useful if you're taking a test.

What young people have to understand that there are books other than Harry Potter that exist. The world of literature is huge and very rich. Yeah, there are some older books that I just couldn't bare to read on (like The Once and Future King) but there are also books that defines the greatness of literature. But young people should choose what they would like to read. Just because they are searching for classics doesn't mean they are obligated to read Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Charles Dickens ... there are so much more writers out there to choose from.

As for classic movies, I'm a sucker for them. (That reminds me that I still have to watch Citizen Kane!) But I think my first exposure to them is when I saw The Godfather. I think anyone who is interested in starting off in watching classic movies should definitely check out The Godfather because you will be surprised of how different it is from today's pile of junk we get from the movies (apparently, Crash is 2005's best film). But the 70's was just a really good decade for film.

I'm in an advanced English class, where we read all the classics and all comprehend them. It doesn't go over our heads.

I cannot speak for the general teenage population in their schooling, on the other hand.

It took me two weeks... Is that bad?!

I'm reading it at the mo. On the train to work every day, it'll take a good few weeks, then im going for the godfather: the lost years, for the first time

I think it is up to the teachers to make the classics interesting. However, that still isn't good enough in many cases. I think that allowing students to choose from a list of classics, perhaps with some contemporary classics thrown in, would go a long way in making students more interested in literature.